This morning we're going to do something a little different both now and in the message. This is a time where we will be reading the scriptures almost in stereo. Jim and I will read back and forth. He will begin and I will read next. And we're going to read Psalm 116. This is a declarative praise Thanksgiving psalm. and it fits the circumstances of our deliverance out of Ukraine. And so pay attention as we read and I have put the verses up on the screen so that those of you who have hearing problems can read along as you see this on the screen. I love the Lord because He has heard my voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me. Therefore I will call upon him as long as I live The pains of death surrounded me and the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me Then I found trouble and sorrow Then I called upon the name of the Lord. Oh Lord, I implore you deliver my soul Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yes, our God is merciful The Lord preserves the simple. I was brought low, and He saved me. Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed, therefore I spoke. I am greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, all men are liars. What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. O Lord, truly I am Your servant. I am your servant, the son of your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all his people. In the courts of the Lord's house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem, praise the Lord. This is the record that God has given to us, eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. He who believes on Him is not condemned, but he who believeth not is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. For there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. For by grace, You have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other thing is able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. to whom be the glory forever. Amen. Before we get started, let me just open in prayer. Our Father, we're so thankful we can be here today to praise you, to talk about what you have done in your providential care to protect us and provide for us as we faced an enemy invading Ukraine while we were there And Father, we continue to pray for all those who we love and all those that we have worked with that are still there and those who have scattered to prepare their path, straighten their path, that they may find new jobs, new places to live, all the many different things that come once you have been unsettled from your lifetime home. And father we pray for us today that as we look at your word and as we reflect upon your character and your goodness to us that it will challenge each of us in terms of our daily walk with you that we might be more consistent because we realize that of all things the only thing that matters is our walk with you. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. As we come together this morning, we are here to declare what God has done for Jim and Phyllis and me as we faced being in the middle of Ukraine in the face of the dangers of this Russian invasion. What we're going to do this morning is different. I've never done anything like this or seen anything like this, but it is... one of its purposes is to be a teaching tool for all of us in the congregation. We're modeling what we're doing this morning on the descriptive thanksgiving psalms. A primary purpose of these psalms is to describe who God is and what He has done in the life of a believer in delivering from some adversity, maybe one that was life-threatening. It is more than simply saying, thank you, Lord. When we give thanks to God, it needs to be much more robust and done in a spiritually significant manner as we extol the greatness of our God. And that is what we see. It is a pattern in this Psalm that we read earlier and one that we will refer to as we go through the morning. The theme of this psalm is found in the 15th verse. Here's the title for the message, Loving the Battle. There's a story behind that. When I first went to Kiev, I don't even remember what the incident was, but there was this problem or that problem. And Jim looked at me and he said, Robbie, you have to learn to love the battle. And this was part of that battle. Verse 15 is the centerpiece of this particular psalm. It's a verse that I have quoted and referenced many times in funerals and memorial services. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Now that word precious is a translation of a Hebrew verb yakar which has the idea of something that is prized, something that is highly valued, something costly, something that is greatly esteemed. And so what the psalmist is saying here in this context is that God is not indifferent to the traumas and the trials and the adversities that we face. And He is surely not indifferent to the death of His saints. But their death is highly valued by Him in that He cares for our He is concerned about that which may threaten our lives, and He will not allow us to die apart from His plan or approval. I have said this many times, that God determines the time, the manner, and the place of our death. And nothing in heaven or earth can change that. And in this psalm, the writer reminds us of his dire circumstances where death seemed a reality. And in response, internally, he felt sorrowful and distressed. Oftentimes, we think, oh, well, that's the sign of spiritual weakness. Not necessarily. It's what you do with it that matters. When we feel afraid or we feel discouraged, we feel depressed, what we are to do is turn to God because He is the one who will sustain us in the midst of those circumstances, not giving in to the fear, the worry, or the anxiety but turning to the Lord. And that's exactly what this psalmist did. He reminds us that when we are in dire circumstances where death seemed a reality, he called upon the name of the Lord. This is what we often describe as the faith rest drill. We trust in God. We claim promises. And we call upon Him in prayer that He will intervene and He will protect us. And Psalm 116.5, we read, Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yes, our God is merciful. We've got three and four. Okay, I'll start here. The pains of death surrounded me, and the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the Lord." You see, he feels trouble. He's anxious. He's distressed. Those emotions are churning up. And he says, then I called upon the name of the Lord. And then he says, Lord, I implore you, deliver my soul. That is often, soul is used in this kind of a context, deliver my life, save my life. And then he focuses upon God. He says, Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yes, our God is merciful. So he focuses on three different attributes. That God is gracious. That means he delivers his people in spite of their sins and failures. That he is righteous. He is the one who is perfectly righteous and therefore he is faithful to his promises. And third, he is merciful. He understands the adversities that we face in life, and then he intercedes and intervenes and rescues us. So as we look at this psalm, our focus is on our thinking, not our emotions. We have to grab hold of scripture in order to stabilize our emotions, not succumb to fear or worry or anxiety. We focus on who God is. We think about the attributes of God, the essence box, and we think through each one of those attributes and how they relate to our particular promise, a specific situation. that stabilizes us so that we can face the fiery furnace like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Or we can face the lions like Daniel. Or we can be like Jeremiah and be in the midst of a war witnessing the total destruction of his beloved city, Jerusalem, and the temple. And that God will sustain us through whatever problem there is. In the scriptures we have these Thanksgiving Psalms. There's a report of the problem as well as a report of the deliverance. So that is what we are going to do today. We're going to go back and forth and report on what happened in Ukraine and what we went through during these four days. And this will tell and describe how God delivered us. At the heart of our praise is the challenge to each of us to learn to trust God in all of our decisions in all of our lives. The purpose of the Christian life is to glorify God. It is not to be comfortable. It is not to be successful. It is not to be happy. The focal point of our lives is to glorify God no matter what the cost may be. for we have been saved for a purpose, and we are not our own. We have been bought for a reason. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. I want you to point out that word on your own understanding. We can often face challenges in life where we stack up the pros and the cons and we work through all the specific details. And it looks like if I choose option X that some really bad things can happen. But God has a plan. And so our human finite understanding our human viewpoint says, that's not really a good idea. So we don't lean on our own understanding. We acknowledge Him in all areas and He will make our path straight. That is an important challenge for each of us. In Hebrews 4.2 we read, for indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, meaning Israel, But the word which they heard, that is the Exodus generation, did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it." That's the essence of the faith arrest drill. We mix our faith with the promises of God, but we have to have God's Word hidden in our heart. We have to memorize Scripture and have those promises at hand because we may be in a position where Oh, I can't find my Bible. I can't get to my Bible. Our Bible's taken away from us. Our notes are taken away from us. We have to have the Word of God in our hearts. And remember this, the Word of God is alive and powerful. Right? It does not say Bible doctrine is alive and powerful. I want you to understand that. Doctrine is the distillation of what the scripture teaches. It is important. I'm not minimizing it. But it is the word of God that we are to hide in our heart. We are to be memorizing scripture. And one of the wonderful things that's come out of this is the people in Jim's church and the students that have written him and said, we just thank God you made us memorize all those scriptures. Because we have those to claim as we go through this. There are times in life when we must make decisions, and the ultimate goal of those decisions is that we are to glorify God. God puts up various signposts. He closes doors. He opens doors. We're not looking for those things or meditating, trying to get some liver quiver to know what God wants us to do, but we trust Him And when we trust Him, He will make our paths straight. That means He's going to close some doors and He's going to open some doors. And we have a walk by faith and not by sight. So as we go through this, I'm going to ask Jim to come up and he's going to talk about the back story a little bit, what was going on between Russia and Ukraine leading up to these particular events. that people have written to express their gratitude for learning the Word of God. Luda Ugrimova, a godly woman, been with us for many years, wrote to me and she said, Pastor, I want to thank you for teaching us the Word of God. Thank you for teaching us about God. and thank you for requiring us to memorize scripture." She said, this is what has proved to be the source of strength and comfort in this time. Then she wrote this, if it is God's will for me to accept death and I pray for grace to do so, and I ask you to do so, if the Lord wants to be glorified through my preservation, I will be a tool in his hands. I will not run away. Pray for safety as well. I don't know how God wants to be glorified through my life. But even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me." That's what the Word of God will do in the life of a believer. But you have to know it. You have to know those promises. Because in a time of trouble, you need to be able to call them up. And they will give you iron in the soul. They will give you an anchor for the soul. They will lead you. They will guide you. They will comfort you. There's a young couple, graduated from our Bible college a couple of years ago, Katja and her husband, Kostya. Kostya is a nickname for Constantine. But Katya wrote and she said, we need spiritual and physical strength. Pray to God for us that he would help us to grow in the knowledge of him, that he would give us the strength to love and to serve those who are near. We talked for a long time to God about our plans. And we chose his life for ourselves. May God now renew us and in His mercy use us to the fullest for His glory. Pray that our souls will yearn to please Him and seek Him, that His word for us is above all. That Kostya will have wisdom for studying and teaching the Bible, and that I can teach the word to women and children. May God take whatever He wants and give what He wants. Please pray that we will desire to be pleasant to God as never before and that the fruit of the Spirit will pulsate in us so that God gives us the strength to accept and to go through everything that he allows with gratitude and humility. Now that, my friends, is orientation to the grace of God, to the plan of God. They know why they are here. God has not called us to comfort and ease. God has not called us to prosperity. God has called us to be like shining in the darkness in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. God has called us to glorify Him in every circumstance of life. I am so proud of our Ukrainian loved ones who have taken the word of God and they stand on it. They rest in it. And their focus is not just on personal safety, but rather it's upon what does God want me to do now? It's wonderful to see this in action. Background for the current conflict. When did it start? Many centuries ago, actually. If you go to Kiev, there's a place in which they have three separate monuments to peace between Russia and Ukraine. Because in different centuries, they've had a great conflict, then they made peace, and then they put up a statue or some other monument. The current situation, we could say many things, I would go back to the year 2004 when there was to be a democratic election. And Vladimir Putin had a puppet that he wanted to be installed as the president of Ukraine. There was a man who was running against this hand-picked Putin puppet, and that man was poisoned, you may remember that. His face was horribly disfigured. They tried to get rid of the opposition. Well, they had the election, and the election was, there was massive voter fraud. Now, we don't know anything about that in America, but. And the election, I mean, it was just massive fraud, and there came to be a great outpouring of people. I mean, thousands and thousands of people went out into the streets and they said, this is not right. We want to have a new election. And this was what they termed the Orange Revolution. You remember hearing about that. And the protest was so strong against the election that they actually held another election. And as it turned out, the good guy won. A man who was very pro-West, very pro-American. And he was president for five years, and then they had another election, and guess what? The Putin puppet got elected. Very corrupt man, very evil man. Now he had promised the people, if I am elected, then I will sign this agreement that will give us free trade with the European Union. It's going to provide a lot of prosperity for Ukraine. And so people said, hey, that sounds good. We like that. So they elected this man, and then he reneged on his promise. And he instead entered into agreements with the Russian government. in Moscow, drawing Ukraine closer to ties with Russia and the people were angry. And they began to go out into the streets and they began to demonstrate and this got worse and worse and at the height of this they had one weekend half a million people came to the center of Kiev in protest. And they were calling for the ouster of this president and he finally capitulated. He packed up big bags full of money and with billions of dollars, he fled to Russia. Now during all of these demonstrations, somebody put snipers up on the roof. They murdered more than a hundred people down in the city square. At one point, they even flew in a brigade of Russian special forces soldiers. We're very glad they didn't attack, but they were there. So this man fled to Russia, and then the Ukrainians set up an interim government until they could have another election. And Moscow declared that this new government was illegal. that it was the result of a coup, and they would not recognize it. And just a few days later, after this man absconded to Russia, a few days later, Russia took the Crimean Peninsula. And they took several cities on the eastern side of Ukraine. That's the industrial heart of Ukraine. This is where you have tremendous mining. and where you have heavy industry, many factories. Russia came in and took them. And they have occupied that area ever since 2014. And there has been ongoing conflict in that area ever since 2014. And what people don't hear much here in America is that In the past eight years, there have been more than 40,000 casualties. 14,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. You don't hear about that, but this has been going on for eight years. So here you can see on the map over the circle on the right, That's what they call the Donbass area. It's the Donetsk Basin. And this is where all those cities are that the Russians have taken over. And then down in the bottom is that peninsula, that uvula hanging down in the Black Sea. That's called the Crimea. So Russia had taken those. Now, there hasn't been any conflict in the Crimea, but there has been ongoing fighting in the east of Ukraine. We have been hearing about Russians and what their plans might be for eight years. And even though there was a buildup of troops along the eastern border of Ukraine and in the north, in Belarus, it was not something unusual. People were not frightened by this. This was not alarming news. Because you had Russian troops in that area for years. And so we were not alarmed when they began to build up their troops and rattle their sabers and so on. So we really anticipated that the situation would continue as it had for years. Now Kiev, the capital city, you can see it in the center of the map there, the little circle there. That's Kiev. It's more than 500 miles from the Russian border on the east, to give you a little perspective there. So if you were to go from the circle in the middle to the one on the right, it's about 500 miles. And our ministries in and around Kiev had not been impacted by the conflict in the east. Everything was normal. So in spite of troop buildup along the border, we didn't think there would be an invasion. And if it did happen, we anticipated that it would take considerable time for the Russian troops to advance to Kiev. So with this in mind, Robby decided it was safe to make his annual trip to Kiev to teach the Bible college. Now this was not some foolhardy decision to just go out and play in the midst of the Tigers. This wasn't, you know, something, oh, well, yeah, it's dangerous, but I don't care about it. It wasn't that at all. Was there a possibility of danger? Well, of course. Just as there was possibility of danger when you got in your car to get on the freeways to come to church. Is it possible that some idiot would run you off the road? Yes. And yet you're here. Now, if you had been run off the road, Would you say, oh, it was really stupid of me to go to church? I don't think so. We just understand that we're living in a world where things happen. And we don't make decisions based on the fear of what might possibly happen. If we did that, we wouldn't get anything done. And we don't stop preaching the gospel because we have fear that some madman is going to come in the back of the church and start opening fire automatic weapons. We're here. Could that happen? Yes. But we don't make decisions based on that possibility. Oh, that's happened in the past. It could happen today. I think I'll live in a cave. We don't do that. We read about the Apostle Paul. Did he go through dangerous situations? Oh, yes, he did. Of course, we evaluate the situation. We don't intentionally put ourselves in danger. We consider the circumstances, and we make rational decisions. But I will say Christians don't make decisions the same way that people in the world do. We have a different perspective. We have a different focus on what we're doing. We take into account our service for the Lord, and we often make decisions for the glory of the Lord, even though others might consider them to be foolish. but we do what we do because we want to serve the Lord. I know that there are some who've said, Robbie really made a foolish decision to go to Ukraine. I don't think so because his desire was to teach the Word of God and to help prepare people for ministry. It was a decision to serve God and so he put his life in God's hands, came to Ukraine. And as it turned out, God knew what He was doing. It's going to come as a surprise to some, but God was working behind the... He was working behind the scenes in order to provide for me and Phyllis. And we want to tell you some of the things that God was doing to make all things work together for good to those who love God. Now typically, Robbie comes to Kiev in January. He has for, I don't know, 20 years. But because of certain things that happened, He didn't come till February. Was that an accident? Well, that's the way things happened. He couldn't come in January. He couldn't come in February. This was providential. God's working behind the scenes to bring Robbie to Ukraine at exactly the right time. And then, of course, ironic, Robbie got to Ukraine And then God closed the door so he couldn't get out of Ukraine. It actually prevented him from leaving and ultimately this was God providing the means so that we could all get out safely. So a kind of a timeline here. On the 10th of February, Ravi arrived in Kiev. That's on the 10th. On the 12th, We got a notice that KLM was canceling all flights in and out of Ukraine effective immediately. Well, Robby had a flight booked on KLM for two weeks later, and now they've canceled all flights. So the next day, Robby being diligent as he is, got on the phone, says, I've got to get different tickets. And so he rescheduled. to depart on the 18th, which was really a week ahead of when he planned to go. But he said, OK, it would be wise for me to get out of Ukraine. I'll go ahead and get a flight on the 18th. Well, of course, in order to fly these days, you know you have to have a COVID test. So on the 17th, Robbie went to the clinic, had a COVID test, and he came back positive. the COVID, which means he can't get on an airplane. There is no airplane that would allow him to get on because he has this positive test. And so now he's got to cancel that flight he had for the 18th. And on the 20th of February, he rescheduled to depart on Friday the 25th. Now, you see, God could have intervened at any point along the way. He could have kept the airlines running. He could have kept Robbie from getting COVID, but he didn't do so. God could have changed the circumstances, but God had his own plan. There were things that are beyond our control. And when things are beyond your control, then know that God has a purpose for you right where you are. And all you have to do is say, okay, God, what can I do today? in this circumstance to fulfill your purpose. God knew exactly what he was doing. And so here is Dr. Dean stuck in Ukraine. It was all God's doing. Well, we came down to the morning of the 24th of February when Russia launched a full-scale invasion in eastern Ukraine. Now Phyllis and I live in a small village about 30 minutes from the college. About 4.30 in the morning I was awakened by a rather loud boom, rattled the windows. About five minutes later we heard another explosion. The Russians were launching missiles aimed at the airport. So we turned on the news and We were shocked at what we saw. We began talking with Robbie by phone. And Phyllis wanted to leave with Robbie. I didn't want to leave. I wanted to stay and minister to these people. Well, Phyllis began packing. Remember, God had already worked out all the details. And so we hear these explosions. Phyllis is getting ready to pack up so she can leave. Robby, you need to tell your part of this story. Well, on that particular morning, I was asleep in my apartment, the teacher's apartment over there. And it had been a rather warm day on that Wednesday. Temperatures got up to about 51, 52 degrees Fahrenheit for February. That's a little bit on the warm side for Ukraine. So I had my window open. I'm on the eighth floor. And the area where the apartment is, they would build these apartments in the Soviet Union where they're kind of in a box. And then in the middle you have an elementary school. That way the kids don't have to cross the highway to go anywhere. and they have a playground down there. But I'm on the 8th floor, 10th floor is as high as it goes, and so I've got pretty good visibility. But I woke up at 4.30 in the morning and did what you normally do when you wake up at 4.30 in the morning, and I'm crawling back into bed, and I heard this loud noise. And, you know, I'm making noise. I'm not...my hearing isn't the best. I'm making noise of bedsheets and everything as I'm getting back into bed. I thought, well, it didn't sound like a backfire. It didn't sound like a pistol. I don't know what that was. So I got back into bed, and I was just about back to sleep. And all of a sudden, I heard it again. It was an explosion, and it was in the distance. And my apartment faced due south directly toward the airport. What I found out later was that over the next two hours, I heard this about 10 or 12 times. and that this was anti-aircraft fire from the airport. So after it happened the second time, I was saying, I'm gonna try to go back to sleep, and I'm rehearsing in my mind the 23rd Psalm, claiming promises, and God's got control over this. But you just, uh-oh, something's up. And I picked up my phone, and it was blowing up with people in America who were sending me messages and links to Fox News and everything else that you're under attack. Missiles are coming in. But the news really was not being specific. It sounded like the whole country was under attack. And, you know, I expected to look out my window and see tanks rolling down the main boulevard just to my south. And I opened the window and there was nothing going on. It was quiet. People were not really looking out. You didn't see crowds going outside. Everything was calm. And so I continued to look at some of these reports and realized that most of this was south. But what was happening is they were making surgical strikes on all of the key airfields, especially military airfields. And there's a military airfield contiguous with the civilian airport south of Kiev. And that's what we heard. So I thought, well, I couldn't get a hold of Jim yet. And and like most people in Ukraine, they were sleeping through all of this. Nobody's expecting anything. There's no alarms going up. You don't hear any air raid sirens warning people to do anything. But I thought, you know, best I probably, you know, and I just and I, of course, OK, I got twenty nine hours left and I'm going to get my my negative covid test tomorrow and then I'm on the plane at six o'clock Friday morning and we'll be out of here. And then when I saw all of this, I said, well, that's not going to happen. And so I said, I better pack because I don't know what we're going to do. So I packed up my carry-on bag and my backpack with the most important things so that I could get, if I had to go light, I could do that. And I had my main suitcase packed. Well, I sat there and then began to communicate with Jim. And I'm on the eighth floor, which is not where you want to be if there's an air raid, if there's missiles coming in or bombs coming in. And I said, well, I think I'm just going to take a couple of my bags and go over to the college because it's on the first floor, and that's a much, much safer location. And I said, and Nina's over there by herself, so maybe, you know, I'll be with somebody who's a Russian speaker and translator, so I'll be in better shape. So I did that. And then as the day went by, we went to the grocery store, and I went back to my apartment and looked outside, and there were kids playing in the playground and people going to here or there running errands. It was light traffic, though, and the traffic I could see on the roads was rather light. It wasn't like people were panicking or trying to, that I could see were trying to leave town. Now, in the news reports, we could see that on the west side of town, people were trying to get out of town. That's what was going on. And I was down at the college. It's only 600 yards, 600 yards from my apartment to the college. So I came back and I thought, well, I'll go ahead and take my big suitcase over there. And that way, if something happens and I have to leave, it's there and they can ship it to me later, something like that. So now I've got all my bags there. When I got there, got back over there, Nina said, Well, Jim just texted and Vova and Natalie are coming to get you. Now, Natalie is the secretary for the Word of God Bible College and they live very close to Jim and Phyllis. So they were driving in from the east, which is where the Russians would be coming from, and they're going to pick me up. And they got there about five minutes later. So fortunately, I now have all my bags in one place, put everything in the car and we took off. and to my dying day I will tell you that was the most dangerous part of the whole trip. VOVA drives like an Indianapolis 500 race car driver when the traffic is bumper to bumper. So we're going out of town at about a hundred miles an hour and we're seeing Ukrainian troops here and there and a couple of tanks coming into town. And you go out of town about 10 or 15 miles, and you come to Brovery, and that's where you turn off onto a two-lane country road. And Volvo was passing 20, 25 cars at a time. And there's no shoulder. You just have two lanes. And so, you know, it's like, what, Mr. Toad's wild ride at Disneyland. I was really claiming a lot of promises. And we made it out to Jim's home, and you're just in a pocket of security there. Everything's normal. He's got Fox News on the television, and so we're watching the Fox News channel and learning about what's going on around Ukraine. And we learned you have to take all these news reports with a grain of salt, especially the ones leading up to this. There was so much speculation. And once I was over there, I realized that about a third of it was true, and the rest of it was bogus. So you really don't know what you can believe and what you can't believe. And so you just say, Lord, I'm here for a purpose. I'm serving you. I've got to teach this course. And never had any doubt that that's exactly where God wanted me. Well, something was happening here. My wife is a prayer warrior. She doesn't like any attention. She's going to kill me for this later. She doesn't want anybody to know what she's doing. She just quietly working, doing her thing, organizing different groups, and she's done this for many years. And she woke up, and in the words of Nehemiah, God put a name in her mind. And she said, I've got to let her know and let her get the word out. And the interesting thing here is all these people, there are two things that are interesting about this. Most of these Christians that were involved, if not all of them, are people that I would never allow within 50 feet of my pulpit. They are not people that we would agree with on a lot of theology, but they love the Lord and they understand the gospel and they are believers in Christ and we are one in the body of Christ. And as soon as this person heard what was going on she cranked things into action and got a hold of Sabrina Thomas who was the director of the Christian Outreach for AIPAC in the Southwest region. And 12 years ago I had gone on a trip, most of you will remember this, went to Israel on that AIPAC trip. And one of the men that I got close to on that trip, and we still communicate with each other on a fairly regular basis, is State Senator Jason Rapert in Arkansas. And he is assembly of God. He's an evangelist and that's all I'll say about that. But he loves the Lord and he immediately got on the phone to Senator Tom Cotton's office. And they contacted me via email and they said, or via text, And they said, can we have a secure connection with you through Signal, and we'll see what we can do. And by the time we got off the phone, they had contacted Project Dynamo. And they were getting on the line, and all of these people wanted to remain anonymous. And so I'm not mentioning anybody's name. And one of the men with Project Dynamo and Senator Rayford's office, and a lady with Tom Cotton's office were contacting me every hour, hour and a half throughout the next 48 hours to make sure, where are you? How are things going? Are there any problems? And not only that, but I had the Project Dynamo people were contacting me as well. Now, one of the things here is that I wanted to point out is that in everybody who was involved in getting us out, there was the AIPAC group. And for those of you who don't know, AIPAC stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States. And I remember years ago when I got involved with AIPAC, I'd go to policy conference, people would say, well, why are you doing that? Well, because I'm a pastor and I'm a leader and I lead by example. And Christians need to be involved in supporting Israel. Now, that's not a normal thing for a lot of pastors in our group of churches. They ought to be because that's important. And then as we were making our way down, I've got some pictures here. I'm going to skip past a couple of these verses I was going to put up here. skip past Jim's we're going down this route this way coming out of Kiev going south and then we went West and then we came south down to the border crossing down here and while I am on the way one of these guys with project dynamo sent me this map he said just so you know the light colored areas here are the areas where there are Russian troops And of course, see, we're out here somewhere, so we weren't in any threatened area. But all of these people that were involved in this were people who we met because we were involved in these pro-Israel activities. And then as we're on that route, Pastor Greg Allen from Pennsylvania texted me and said, Are you guys going out through Poland? I said, No, we're going to go out through Romania. Hold on. I know I did some short-term mission work in Romania. And let me see if I've got any Romanian pastors near where you're going to be. Now, we met Greg Allen when we went in 2016 to the Christian leadership training at Yad Vashem at the Institute for Holocaust Studies there in Israel. So everybody involved is because of our involvement in pro-Israel activities. There's this verse in Genesis 12, 3, and it says, those who bless Israel, I will bless. That's God's unconditional promise. And so this is a living illustration of the fact that because of our pro-Israel position, I believe God blessed us through all of those people. So, Pam's action to alert that Christian outreach group was essential. And at the same time, some of our Jewish friends found out about this and had, you know, several leaders in the Jewish community in Houston and at least one rabbi are contacting every international Jewish organizations that are trying to get Jews out of Ukraine and saying, and the hyperbole is embarrassing, said, this is the most pro-Israel pastor in America and we have to get him out of Ukraine. In fact, the rabbi contacted the chief rabbi of Ukraine and then sent his personal cell phone number to Pam so that she could call him and talk to him. Now, I've got to send him a text to thank him for his involvement. But this is the kind of thing that was going on. And anyway, after I got to Jim's place, I'm going to make this, shorten this up a little bit. We talked to Project Dynamo. They said, okay, they said, we're going to have, actually, they called me at 5 after 12. Jim and Phyllis had already gone to sleep. They said, we'll pick you up at this location near the university metro stop in the center of Kiev, and we want you to be there at 8 o'clock in the morning. And I thought, I'm going to have to wake them up early. because they'll be asleep until 730 if I don't do that. So I went back to sleep, reset my alarm for 530. About 4 o'clock I woke up and I checked my message and it said, okay, something happened and so we can't get you out then. We'll let you know later plan, just sleep late. That's one of about two times when I went, hmm, I wonder what God's going to do now. And you get a little bit nervous and say, oh well. So I went back to sleep and woke up about 645. And we were all packed, ready to go, and just waiting. And that's a hard thing to do. You know, we have to wait on the Lord, and we know that's a hard thing to do. And I was waiting on them. And finally, about 10 o'clock, they were texting a little bit, and they were saying, You need to go down there and do a recon. I said, It's 25 miles away. We don't know what's between us and there. We're not going to do it. We're not comfortable with that. At 10 o'clock he said, the Russians are just east of you, you need to get out and you need to head west and get into Kiev and we will let you know where the new pickup point is going to be. So we grabbed our bags, went outside, got in the car and just as we were getting in the car we heard two really loud explosions that were fairly close, I'd say three to five miles away. And we got in the car, and Oleg has got his Google map on his phone, and he's listening to some stuff in Russian, so we don't know what that was. But he's getting information. And he took off, and we were on hardtop roads for a little while, and then we were on dirt roads and side roads and back roads. And we came out in Ukraine, and we're right next to a Ukrainian artillery battery. There's about seven or eight there. And all this time, I'm describing everything to our Project Dynamo handler. And he is saying, okay, describe what they look like. What color? And he's sending me pictures of Russian artillery and Ukrainian artillery to identify all this different stuff. And so we made it into Ukraine. We went down to the center of town. I mean, we made it into Kiev, made it downtown. We turned around, we came back. And by the time we got into the center, they texted us the new location, and you're not going to believe it. From that pickup spot, I could see the teacher's apartment. And we got there, and we parked in the parking lot of this big grocery store, and then the air raid signal went off, and we're a half a block from the building where the church meets, so we just pulled in there and took cover, but nothing else happened. And then we connected with the bus. So Jim, I think you're supposed to come up here now and talk a little bit just briefly about, I was running into Kiev and I'll back the slides up to where we're supposed to be there. There are many Psalms written under very trying conditions. And they have provided comfort for believers for many centuries. I encourage people to learn the Word of God, to memorize Scripture. Students in our Bible college, I require them to learn some 200 verses before they get out of there. And I encourage people in the church, learn the Word of God. a psalm that I brought up in my thinking as we are making a trip into the city away from the village. I didn't want to leave but we woke up in the morning and I realized that if Phyllis went with Robbie then There's a possibility that she and I would be separated for a long period of time, and I didn't think that would be good. But also, I realized that if I stayed there, I would be a burden to the people there, that they're going to have to take care of an old man, okay? And they're going to be concerned about me. I mean, they, and they're going to focus more on taking care of me than focusing on what they need to be looking after. So I determined that I would leave if I could get out with them, because Robbie had been texting with this Project Dynamo and had a place for two. I didn't know if they would have a place for three, but I just prayed, OK, Lord, if you've got room for me, squeeze me in somewhere. And of course, the Lord is gracious and He provided that. We're going the back roads into the city of Kiev to try to meet up with this Project Dynamo and get to the extraction point. Psalm 91 is one of my favorites. He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge, my fortress, my God. In Him I will trust. Surely He will deliver you From the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence, he shall cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you shall take refuge. His truth will be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near you. Why? Because He will give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all their way. In their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone." Those are comforting words. The Eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Wonderful promises. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? So, tribulation, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword. As it is written, for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter and yet In all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other thing in all of creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have exceedingly great and precious promises. And that's what sustains in time of trouble. So the Lord got us into the city of Kiev. We got connected with the Project Dynamo. And we boarded the bus. You're going to tell about the trip to the border. There's our route. Now, we were coming out of Kiev, and we go down to Belotserka, and Belotserka, I heard yesterday, was just decimated in an attack. Large Jewish community there. And so we're on a four-lane highway on our side. Bumper to bumper, you can't put a piece of paper between the back bumper of the vehicle in front of you and your front bumper. And I will never have trouble in a traffic jam again, because when you're in a traffic jam for six hours, when you go maybe 100 miles, it sort of puts a lot of things into perspective. And so you're fleeing, possibly fleeing for your life, and so you've got God protecting you. So this is the route that we took. And as we went along the way, when we got close to the border, we were about four hours away, the bus started having some overheating problems. You know, it's a Mercedes-Benz bus, but it was not a luxury bus, I'll tell you that. It just, it did well and they were able to work with it. But we stopped at this shashlik place and everybody got out and they had about six different little stands where they were cooking meat. I knew that if I ate at a roadside stand of any kind anywhere, my wife grew up in Mexico City and so she's been hospitalized three or four times for food poisoning over the years. And she just, I would never live it down if I ate that food and got sick. Later when we're crossing the border, I asked the other guys, some of the other guys in the group, I said, well, how do you feel after you ate that meat? Well, not really so good. That was good. So we were driving through the countryside, and we went to this hotel where we hooked up with the Project Dynamo, one of the co-founders. But we had to take a five-hour break because our bus driver needed some sleep. And then he took us to the border, which was an hour and a half away from this place. And like Jim said, it was four lanes wide, and it's bumper to bumper. And he just got into one of the oncoming lanes because nobody's driving into Ukraine. So he got over into one of the left lanes, and just that would push any oncoming traffic into the far left lane, which there were one or two people that were coming that way. And he bypassed about four and a half miles or three and a half miles of trucks and cars that were standing still. Got us within a mile and a half of the border, and then we had to get out and walk. And Jim, I think you're supposed to come up and talk about that. And I do have a picture here for you of what the border crossing looked like. So it's midnight. We got to as close as we could in the bus. We got out and we had to hoof it to the border, suitcases, backpacks, whatever. And it's night, midnight, and it's cold. It's about 32 degrees and very damp. So anyway, we got up to the border, and when we got up there, it was just a sea of people. No lines, just a sea of people milling about, and nobody knows where to go, nobody knows what to do, there's nobody out there giving directions. It seems like there's nobody in charge. And so what do we do? Well, we were standing with this one group, and then someone said, no, you need to go over here. snaked our way through the crowd and they said, no, no, no, no, no, you're in the wrong place. You need to be over here. And it was just confusion. And after about three hours, I got to talking to this one man and he said, you need to go stand over there. Because they had formed a line over there. Somebody had gotten up and started shouting, women and children over here. I said, I don't qualify for either. He said, no, no. He said, you go stand over there in that line with the women and children. You're an American. You go over there. And so we got our group, and we walked over to that line. And within a relatively short time, we'd been standing out there in the midnight cold for three hours, just standing. started to open this gate. And the guy on the other side said, 45 people. We'll allow 45. And I thought, we're not going to make it. Because there were a lot of people in front of us. You know, we just made it. You think God was in there? We got through the gate and then they... it swung shut. Clang! You think God was working? I think so. Well, from there they took us and they put us on buses. And we sat on the bus and sat on the bus and then we moved up a little bit and sat on the bus and finally we got up to the passport control for Ukraine. They collected our passports, took them into a building, and a little while later they came back and handed us our passports. Had a stamp in it. Okay, step one. Now we're in this bus and we It starts moving forward and we came to the Romanian checkpoint. And again we sat and we waited. And so after three hours we finally emerged from the checkpoints and we are out of it. We're free. There's another picture of just the crowds. And there were thousands and thousands, I don't know, 10,000, 15,000, I have no idea how many people were there at the border. So anyway, we came out and you can tell it from here. And then what happened was I had been texting. We had a friend from Switzerland who had been in contact with me the whole time I was there. And he and his wife flew over to Bucharest and then rented a big van and drove up to the border. And at the same time I had been texting with Greg Allen and he gave me, he said, one of my, one of these pastors I know is 20 minutes from the border. You think God had a plan? God provided just the right people at the right places. And so we told my friend that, about him, this is the picture of Alex there, And so they came, and because we were delayed, we were about 12 hours late getting across than what we thought, Alex just put them up in their home. And then the next three in the morning, I texted them that we were halfway across the border, and they came to get us. Now, one thing we haven't mentioned, there was a young man with us on this trip. He showed up at the bus to be extracted, and when they asked him for money, it was $250 to get out, money well spent. And this poor guy, he didn't have any water with him. He barely had the clothes on his back. And he said, I got a credit card. You take credit card? The driver said, no, only American dollars. He says, I've got Bitcoin on my phone. So we felt sorry for him. And this is a story of grace because I didn't lean back to Jim. I said, let's let's pay for his thing. So we did. And then he the other end, he has no idea how he's going to get to Bucharest. We say, well, you come with us. And he came with us. And Alex here took us back to somebody in his church home. And they already had an American pastor, missionary, and his wife and four kids there that had come through the day before. It took them 24 hours just to get through the border crossing. And they're already there. And we came in and they welcomed us like we were long-lost relatives they hadn't seen in years. And it was one happy family. And they had this huge table set up full of food, everything for us, just treated us wonderfully. They had put up our friends overnight. And later this guy that came out with us told Jim, said, I've never seen anything like this before. We're total absolute strangers and they welcomed us into their house and they fed us and they treated us like we were their best friends. And it was a real testimony. And he's got the website and I've been texting with him since we came back. But that's just one story as we come along. Well, we need to wrap up. this morning. And I want to finish up with just a couple of key points. And if I can find what I had written down. There we go. First of all, as we look at Psalm 116, we look at these verses 7 through 9. And what this tells us is that because God has delivered us, is what the psalmist is saying, we see the reality and power and the protection from God which should strengthen our desire to know Him, to know His Word, and to walk with Him. These verses, he says, return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. Because God has done this, it strengthens our commitment to Him and our determination to walk with Him. Next in verses 10 and 11 we see that the Lord alone is worthy of our trust, that all men are sinners, none are worthy of our trust, only God is the one who can deliver us. In verse 10 he says, I believe therefore I spoke, I'm greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, all men are liars. And then the last part of the psalm We cannot repay the Lord for our deliverance, but we must acknowledge Him in the presence of all so that God will be glorified and God gets the credit for delivering us. What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits towards me? See, there's nothing we can repay, nothing we can give God. I will take up the cup of salvation. and call upon the name of the Lord. We will pray to Him. And I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. O Lord, truly I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant. You have loosed my bonds. You've freed me. I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving. I'll take the time. I'll go down. It costs something to be thankful to God in the Old Testament. You have to take an animal and follow the regulations for a Thanksgiving offering. It's not just standing up and saying, well, I thank God because He did this for me this year in that great sit down. It costs something to express your thanks to God. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of His people in the courts of the Lord's house in the midst of you, Jerusalem. Oh, praise the Lord. And so we come together today to rejoice in what God has done in delivering us. But we need to remember those that are left behind, those that are taking advantage of their situation to witness to others. There are some remarkable things being accomplished there. We have Americans, we have thousands of Americans who are going over there to fight for the Ukrainians and for their freedom. I was contacted the other night by someone I know that is a former some sort of alphabetic agency with the government. And he and another guy, who actually had been one of our instructors for some of you, took some of the tactical courses. And this guy is also formerly with one of these alphabet agencies. And they're going over there to try to, there's a log jam. You hear on the news that all this equipment's going in. The Greek word for that is skubala. because they're going over there to break the log jam, to try to find people who will drive into Ukraine and take this equipment into the Ukrainian army. And we need to pray for these people, for their safety and for what they are doing. And they have no reason to do that, but they are leaving their families and their homes, and that's what they're doing. And so we give praise to God for this. As we went through our trek, there was a part of the third verse of Amazing Grace kept going through my mind. And that is, grace has brought us here thus far, and grace will bring us home. So I'm going to ask Jim to come up after we sing and to close in prayer, but I want us to stand up together now, and Alan's gonna get up here, and we're going to sing Amazing Grace number 202, and then Jim will dismiss us in closing prayer.