Before I introduce my visitors, our guests, I should say, the halls, I want to, um, take a minute to recognize somebody. Brian Marler. He wasn't here last week, and his presence was missed. I'm not asking you to give him a round of applause. I don't think I don't think that's appropriate necessarily. But, um, I was heavy lifting last week, Brian. And I want you to know we appreciate you. We do. Connie. All right, so our guests today are the Halls, Jason and Monica Hall. Y'all come on up. I met them about a month and a half, two months ago, and they're gonna present their ministry, Wildflower Ministries. Guys. Thank you, pastor. It's so good to be here. We appreciate so much your pastor. And we, like you said about him, I guess been almost two months ago, we, we got to go to Circle Six Ranch and we met him there and set up a meeting to come speak to him in his office and just had a good time of fellowship with him and just shared our hearts and, and, and what we were trying to do. And so, um, He gave us a date to be here, and we are here, and we are excited to be here today. I want to start out just by introducing the rest of my family. Of course, y'all know Monica now, but we have seven kiddos. We have one that's actually traveling back from college. She stopped in Dallas and is going to church there, and then she'll be here later this afternoon. And she's 20, fixing to be 21. Her name is Danny. And then we have Ashley is 17, and Jeremy is 14. And Gracie is seven. Zachariah, five. And then we have two in the back. Jaycee is three. And so those three, we've already adopted. And then we have a foster placement. She's one. And her name is Allison. And so it looks like we're probably fixing to be adopting her, too. What we're gonna do is Monica's gonna kind of present to you a testimony, how we got here, why we're here, what the Lord's done in us. I asked her to do it because any of you guys that are married know that I'll forget something and then we'll get home and I'll get to hear about it for about a year. And so I'm gonna let her do all the details of everything and just share with y'all where we are. And then I'm gonna come back and give you some scripture to think about, okay? So Monica, go ahead. Well Everyone laughed because they know it's true. That's the way it is men Just turn us into the details as the ladies are I guess for the most part anyway, I'm short. Okay. Sorry Okay, so I just want to say thank you guys. Thank you for having us We are so excited like Jason said to be here. Thank you guys for being here. We are We started I say we started the Lord has given us a burden and Gave us a vision for this ministry called wildflower ministries I'll explain a little bit more about where the name came from in a little bit But first I just want to give you a journey kind of where we started about five years ago the Lord called us to full-time ministry and At that time, we had no idea what that meant or what it would look like. Usually when we think of full-time ministry, we usually think of a pastor, or a youth pastor, or song leaders, or counselor. We have different things that we think as vocational or occupational type ministry. And so that's the first thing that we thought when the Lord called us to full-time ministry, is that we're going to do something like that. So we began looking into colleges, kind of trying to figure out where does God want us to go. And through that time of searching and just seeking the Lord, the Lord began to redefine what full-time ministry meant. And we realized that full-time ministry was not something that just some Christians were called to. It's something that every Christian is called to. As Christians, we are called to minister. We are called that everything that we do should be centered around the gospel. And so that's what we began to do for that first year. We just dove into ministry. We just decided that everything that we were doing that wasn't centered on the gospel, we were just going to flesh it out get it out of our lives and we were going to begin to just make sure that everything that we did was centered on the gospel and so that's what we did for the first year we went into that we started several different things and dove into some different things and about a year into this i ran across a young lady who had come up through our junior high department we were junior high leaders for almost 10 years in our church And so I ran into this young lady who was working at McDonald's at the time and she told me she had two young children and that she had graduated high school at that point. And so we traded numbers and I began to reach out to her because I knew of her past and I knew that she had a broken family and just wanted to check on her and encourage her. Well, in the process of that, found out that her two children were in CPS care. And so what that did for us is it started us on a journey of finding out what it was like to deal with the state and the CPS system. And so what happened was is through that time, we did not end up taking her children in. We did try to, but it was the first of five different times that we would be presented with an opportunity to take children in in a one year time. Five different times, it was unbelievable, but it was kind of like God was starting to show us some things that there was this whole world of ministry out there that we never even really paid attention to. It's not that we didn't know it existed, but it wasn't in our face. And we didn't realize, it was like out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. And so anyway, we began to, um, we began to go, okay, Lord, what is this? What is it that you're trying to do? Because it would seem to be an ongoing theme for that year. And so, um, we began to search the Lord and we thought, okay, maybe he wants us to open a children's home. You know, we had all these ideas and, and I'm kind of a detective type personality. So every time the Lord gives me one little puzzle piece. I'm like, okay, I know what the puzzle is now, you know, and no, it was, it just, we just kept trying to figure it out. And so, um, over time, um, what happened was he did eventually show us what it was that he wanted us to do. But the neat thing is, is that Because of the way he started us out on that side of it with this young lady who had children in the system He gave us a very unique perspective because many times and Jason will talk something about that in his message But many times we tend to we tend to have this idea that people who have their children removed must be the most terrible people in the world and just deserve to never see their children again and And so what happened was is it gave us a compassion and a love and a desire to see families restored. And so what happened, so with that, we are very thankful for that unique perspective that he gave us. But in the process of time, the Lord did give us a ministry. Um, he showed us, um, well, let me just backtrack. Sorry. I got a little ahead of myself. So about, uh, it was in 2015 that we were talking to, um, his mom and stepdad and we were telling them kind of, we're wanting to do this, this ministry, but apart from the state, like we wanted nothing to do with the state once, um, we were done with that other case. And, um, The Lord is funny because we say we'll never do something right and then all of a sudden we're doing it. And so we're talking to his stepdad and mom and we're telling him kind of a vision we have for ministry. And we said, we want nothing to do with the state. Well, within a couple of days, I had received a text from his stepdad saying, hey, would you mind taking in two kids, three and four years old? And of course it was with the state and we're going, Well, I mean, we couldn't say no. God had given us already a heart for these things. And so we were like, well, sure, you know, we'll do it. And so the next day I get a call from the president of that organization that they were involved in. I don't know if you guys know who the guardians of the children are, but it's like a biker children's advocate group. And so that's how they knew about these children. And so the next day I get a call from the president and he says, okay, so there's a four-year-old little girl, there's a three-year-old little boy, and an 11-month-old little girl. And I'm going, wait a minute, there's a baby. Um, my youngest child at the time was this big guy right here. He was 12 years old at that time. And so I was going, wait, it's been a long time since I had a baby. I was freaking out. I mean, having nightmares. I'm thinking I'm gonna leave the baby in the car. And so she's just not gonna make it. You know, I, I hadn't had a baby in so long. And so I was really nervous and scared, but I mean, what do you do? You can't say no. I mean, these are three little kids. They need the, they need a place to stay. And so, We said yes, and so here they came and our whole lives were changed in a moment. We're used to, in the natural process of time, we have children, we add them one at a time, some people two or three at a time. when you get them, but it just, it was like, boom, life was different. And so that's how it all began. Well, once we got into the system, we began to realize there was so much need. First of all, the state, they're missing the biggest, most foundational piece to what really changes lives, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. But the neat thing that's happening and what the Lord is doing right now, is that the state is looking for the church's help. They want the help of the church, which gives us an opportunity to infiltrate the system with the gospel, y'all. We can get in there and we can tell these kids, not just these kids, but their parents about the Lord Jesus Christ. There is nothing to stop us. They don't, I mean, they're allowing this. And they, in fact, they've hired a guy that they call the faith-based specialist. He is his job is to try to reach the churches and try to get into the churches and try to talk to people. And so we are excited because we are in a place that we've never seen before with the state where we are able to get in there. They are seeking our help. We've just started some new partnerships with some different people that we're going to be starting some things, which I don't have time to tell you all about it, but it's exciting. It's exciting that the state is looking for us to help. And so with that in mind, I just want to tell you guys that just think about it. If you're in a place, some of you, you're not in a place where you could foster, you know, we know there's a, there's a time, there's a certain time where you can raise kids and where it's time for you to just babysit, you know, and then there's, you know, so we know that, but there is so many things that you can do. So if orphan ministry is something that you have a heart for or that you've just been thinking about or you would like to be a part of in some way, then talk to us because we can give you other things too. But y'all, 91% of the kids out of Howard County are leaving Howard County because we don't have the foster homes for them. 91% y'all. It's it's it's so sad because we have so many churches. We have so many churches It ought not be that way And so tomorrow night if you are interested in the information on how to become a foster parent on other things that you can do We will be here at seven o'clock to talk about the informational part of this. Thank you guys so much We are so thankful and excited to be here. Like Jason said and we appreciate y'all Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you about wildflower where the name came from. Sorry. Um, so the name wildflower actually came, um, in 2012 before we actually even knew what our ministry was going to be or look like. Um, so this ministry, first of all, we are, here to try to get the word out, give awareness to the need for foster parents, but we also want to help those broken families. So we're also going to be doing that. That's another phase where we're going to be working with churches, trying to get resources for these families, the parents that have broken homes and that are struggling. But the name wildflower came before we knew any of that those of you some of you might know the name I mean the Booth brothers. It's a music a southern gospel singing group Anyway, they came to our church one day and and he Michael Booth He had actually written a song for his wife who had a father who was in my a he was an alcoholic and he was not there for her and he said he told the story of how People are proud of their roses. They care for their roses. They take care of them. And when people come over, they say, look at my roses. Did you see my roses have bloomed? And he said, but the wildflowers, God takes care of them. He cultivates them. He cares for them and he grows them up. And the neat thing is, is that you'll see sometimes going through people's houses or whatever, that people actually have gardens of wildflowers, which is an amazing thing. And that's because, you know, we find value in what we find value in. And so we can choose to say there's no value because, you know, you're not a rose, or we can choose to find value in the wildflower. And God finds value in the wildflower. He takes care of them. And so that's where the wildflower name came from. So before we ever knew what our ministry was going to be, we knew that it was going to be something to do with wildflower. And so we're thankful that God gave that to us, that he gave us his vision. And thank you for reminding me to say that, because I forgot. Now, I got the memo for about a month. I can rub that in her face and say, hey, you forgot that. Gave her one job and she forgot. If y'all would, turn to the Book of Jonah. You may be thinking, the Book of Jonah? That's a kid's story, isn't it? It is used very much so often in kids' programs and kids' stories. story that's often taught in that kind of background. Not many times have I heard a sermon from the book of Jonah. After the Lord kind of started laying this on our hearts, I actually did hear several sermons come out of the book of Jonah, but there's some key verses that I wanna look at. Jonah's only four chapters, and so we're just gonna look at a few verses in each chapter and put some pieces together, try to give you some perspective of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And so I wanna start in Jonah chapter four, in the very last verse, verse 11. And God is speaking to Jonah, and He says, and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle. If you would, let's pray. Father, we just thank you so much for this opportunity to be here sharing your word this morning. God, we're so thankful for the Morgans and the work that they're doing in our community. We're so thankful for these people that are dedicated to this church, Lord, and that are here serving. And God, we're just so thankful for your salvation, Lord, and you placing yourself on that cross so that we can be reunited with you through adoption. So Lord, we just pray, God, that you just bless this time we have together. Lord, that you would help, just help us to grasp to the message. And Lord, that you know that we've already prayed that you were preparing hearts. So Lord, anything that happens here today, Lord, we know it was you, and we'll give you the praise and glory for it. In Christ's name, amen. And so I wanna back up just a little bit. If you would, go back to Jonah chapter one, Like I said, most times we think of this story as a kid's story. The world actually looks at it and laughs and mocks it, right? And calls it a fable. Says, you silly Christians, really? You're going to believe that some guy got swallowed by a whale? Come on, really? And so it's used oftentimes as ammo against Christians. just kind of like the dinosaurs this morning, you know, in that same perspective. But in Matthew 12 40, Jesus actually referenced Jonas's story. He says, in Matthew 12 40, it says, for as Jonas was three days and three nights in a whale's belly, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of earth. And so if Jesus quotes Jonas and uses Jonas, then. I have no reason to doubt that this story is real, right? I mean, it just solidifies it for me that this wasn't an accident, this story was here on purpose, right? That Jonah's story was here on purpose. And so if you would, back up to Jonah chapter one, we're gonna read just a couple of verses here. In verse one, it says, now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa, and he found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken." Here we have Jonah. And this is usually about the wrapping up of the story of Jonah that we hear in children's stories. But here we have Jonah. God comes to him and gives him a call, right? He tells him, I want you to go over to Nineveh and I want you to tell the people about me. And Jonah doesn't wanna go. So Jonah goes down, finds a ship going to Tarshish and jumps on it and takes off, right? And we probably know the rest of the story. We can probably think of it just in our brains. You know, this mighty storm comes up and they find out that Jonah is running from God. And so these fishermen throw him overboard, right? And the storm stopped, a big well, Swallows Jonah. He's there three days three nights. He repents The whale vomits him out on dry land, and he goes and does what God told him to do, right? And so it's a great story. It's an awesome story, but there's so much more to it, right? And so I want to, I'm a visual person, and so when I'm reading things, I have to visualize it. You should see my office. I have maps. I work in the oil field, and so I read a lot of geological... Geology reports and and so I have all these maps in my office that I have to visualize when they're talking about different layers and zones and and the earth I have to see it for myself or and or it just doesn't work for me And so I'm gonna try to help you visualize the way that I visualize and so You know, I look at Jonah and my first question was why is he running away from God and know what's so bad about the Ninevites that he would want to run away from God? Because I don't know about y'all, but often times I I don't have any problem separating myself from God, right? It just comes with my nature, right? I'm constantly trying to run to God, trying to stay close to God, not get away from him. But here's Jonah, he made a choice to run from God. And so that just didn't make any sense to me. And so I started looking and trying to find out why would Jonah run away from God? I don't understand. And so the book of Jonah doesn't actually tell us anything about it, but the book of Nahum does. And so if you go back and read the book of Nahum, you'll find out that these Ninevites, that Nineveh was the capital for the Assyrians. And so the Assyrians were bad, bad people. They were involved in murders, they were involved in prostitution, and they were cruel and ruthless people. They were often known to go into the Israelite camps and pillage their people, rob them, kill them. and just do bad, bad things to them. And so here you have these Assyrians that are living in Nineveh and Jonah is supposed to go over there. And so we don't know because the book of Jonah doesn't tell us, but I would assume that probably Jonah was directly affected by these people, right? I would assume that maybe a relative, aunt, uncle, grandparent, maybe even him himself, had some kind of contact with these Ninevites and had grown so much that he hated them, okay? And so he had grown to this hate of them and I'm sure he felt just like everybody else did, right? All the other Israelites hated them too, right? And so, What we find out is that Jonah didn't want these people to get saved. He wanted them destroyed. He wanted God's judgment to come down on them and wipe them out. He didn't want to be the man responsible for these people changing their ways. I mean, think about that. If Jonah goes to Nineveh, all these people get saved, and then how does he go home? How does he go home and say, oh yeah, I led them all to the Lord? they'd be, you know, he'd probably get stoned himself, right? And so whatever reason, Jonah runs from God. And so thinking about that and putting that into perspective with today, that's the mentality that we come against when we're presenting this. And it came very quickly. And I'm kind of sorry to say, but it even happened in our church. We're from Trinity Baptist Church. We're sent out of Trinity Baptist. But this is the mentality that we come against. When we got these first three kids, we had people tell us things like, well, I hope you get to keep them and they never go home. And that just kind of floored us. And we say, well, do you know the parents? Do you know something that we don't know? And they would, no, no, no, I don't know. Well, why would you say something like that? You know, that didn't make sense to us. Why would you not want these kids to be back with their parents and be, you know, the Bible tells us to raise our kids in the admonition of the Lord, to love and admonition of the Lord. It's parents' job to do that. Right? Adoption's a great thing. Adoption is the second best, but we know that God's good and perfect will is for each parent to raise their children in the love and admonition of the Lord. And if they won't, then adoption is definitely a good thing because these people need the Lord. But we often come against that. People automatically get put into this outcast type position where they're bad people. And when I think about that, I think about some of the men in my church, and I'm sure that y'all have them here, that I can think of four men in my church right now that were either alcoholics, drug addicts, dealing with anger, and involved in just some super bad stuff. that would not only put them in jail, but definitely would get a CPS case put on them. And those people got saved, the Lord got a hold of them, and those men are deacons now, and they're Sunday school teachers. Who did that, them? No, the love of God, right? Salvation did that for them. You hear about these people that are radically changed. Unfortunately, I don't have a testimony like that. Mine was a growing process and the Lord taught me slowly. He knew I couldn't handle a radical, I guess. But thankfully, because some of the things that they've been through and that they've seen, I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to have that on my conscience still. But these men and women were saved and were changed. Do not the parents of these kids deserve that? Absolutely. We need to get them plugged into churches that Bible-believing churches that are going to teach them the Word of God, that are going to help them to get saved, that are going to be a support system for them to change their lives so that they can get right with the Lord. We know, and Monica mentioned it, you know, the state, they don't offer up Jesus as a solution, right? They say, go to this program and do this class and do this and do that, and they can do it and get their kids back. But is it a long-term solution? No, more than likely five to 10 years down the road, they're right back in the same situation because there was no lasting change. The only one that can give a lasting change is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's our mission is we want to have these parents learn the gospel and accept the gospel and be changed, truly changed and help them turn over a new leaf. You know, I know that y'all probably heard many times that people that are rock bottom, that's where the Lord gets them, right? Can you think of anything more rock bottom than losing your kids? Absolutely not, right? I mean, it's devastating. And so, need to get these people saved. We need to get these people plugged into churches, and get these people learning about Jesus Christ so that they can have lasting changes. So, I want to go back and I want to read chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, it says, Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before me. Now, I want you to go to chapter 3, verse And verse one, and it says, and the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time saying, arise, go into Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. So Jonah arose and went into Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. And so here's Jonah, right? Chapter one, he gives him a call. He says, go to Nineveh, tell him about me. Chapter two, Jonah repents, okay? He gets swallowed by the big, the whale, at the end of chapter one. Chapter two, he repents. Again, it's a very visual story. You can go back and read chapter two, I won't for sake of time. But you know, chapter two, he's talking about, you know, he's laying there in the whale, and I can imagine it's a pretty tight spot. Says he has seaweed all over his face. And he's just laying there like, okay, Lord, You have my attention. For some reason, I'm not dead yet, and here I am in the belly of this well. I've got seaweed all over me. What do I need to do? And he repents, and God lets him out, right? And so then, we begin there in chapter three, and it says, the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. Did Jonah's call change? It was the exact same call he gave him in chapter one, isn't it? So Jonah threw this big fit. He said, I'm not going to do it, God. I'm running from you. And God stopped him, redirected him. And he said, okay, Lord, I'll do whatever you want me to do. And he says, okay, do what I told you to do. Go to Nineveh and tell the people about me. Right? And so, You know, here's the thing, as Christians, we're all called to do something. This may not be what you're called to do, but he didn't save you to sit in a pew, okay? He saved you to do a work for him. I heard Brother Tony talking about an outreach program. Man, maybe that's the ministry you need to be in. You need to go talk to people about the Lord. If you don't know how to talk to people about the Lord, I'm sure that they will show you how to talk to people about the Lord, because that's a huge need as well, right? Every one of us is called to do something for Jesus, okay? And so you need to find out what it is. You need to prayerfully ask the Lord, where should I be? What should I be doing for you? And I promise you, it's not just coming to church. It's not just reading your Bible daily. He's gotta work for you. And you could take the long road like Jonah did. I don't know, being in the belly of a whale didn't sound very fun to me, right? I wanna go just do what God tells me to do. I don't always do that, right? Because we're human and we make mistakes, and we pay the consequences for not, but, That's what I want to do, right? That's my heart's desire, is to do what God's called me to do. And so we find out it's all about Jonah's attitude as well. What kind of attitude did he have towards the Ninevites? He hated them. He hated them, he wanted to see them destroyed. And so he had a bad attitude towards what God was calling him to do. But his call didn't change. And so he fled, he was redirected, he repented, he surrendered, and then he did what God called him to do. And so, find out what's your call. I'm just going to leave that one with the question mark at the end of it. What's your call? What's your call? What has God saved you to do? If you'll look at the next verse of Jonah chapter 3, verse 3 it says, So Jonah arose and went into Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city, a day's journey, and he cried and said, yet 40 days in Nineveh shall be overthrown. And so Jonah, he goes to Nineveh. It's a three day's journey to get across there. And so me, as a visual person, I've got to know how big that is, right? And so you think about Cahoma, how long would it, like a couple hours maybe? 30 minutes? And get all the way across Cahoma? Big Springs is a little bigger. How long from 700 to one side of I-20 to the other if you walk 700? A couple hours, maybe. I don't know. It might take me a little longer. A couple hours, right? So that's definitely bigger than Big Spring. I work over in Midland. That's a pretty big place. I think there's a little over 100,000 people there. They're thinking, well, maybe, really? Midland's not that big. That's not three days. It wouldn't take you three days to walk across Midland. So I started looking into this, and I found out that they estimate that Nineveh was about a million people, a population of about a million people. And so that's definitely not in our area, right? Maybe Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington area, there's probably a little over a million people there. That's a huge place. And so here's Jonah, he walks in, he walks in one day, one day journey in, and he starts telling people. And it's not like he's even really even trying, like, you better repent, the Lord's gonna destroy you in 40 days, so you better get your stuff together. You know, and people start getting saved. People start repenting and people start turning to the Lord. Was it because of what Jonah did? Absolutely not. It was absolutely God that was doing the work there, right? And so let's go to Jonah chapter four, verse one, it says, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry. What's he angry about? People were getting saved. People were turning to the Lord. Even the kings were getting saved. Here's Jonah, and he's mad. I thought he repented and, you know, just doing God's work now. It was the attitude, right? The attitude's still there. And so he's very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore, I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. He said, this is the exact reason why I ran away to Tarshish, because I knew you were gonna save these people. You're a good God, you're gracious. You're gonna give these people a second chance. This is why I didn't wanna be here in the first place. Because now, more than likely, he's gotta go home and people are gonna know what he did. And so he's praying, he says, Lord, I knew you were gonna do that. Verse three, therefore now, oh Lord, I take, I beseech thee my life from me. For it is better for me to die than to live. Does this sound like a teenage, A teenage girl right here, right? Oh, just kill me now, right? I can't take it, this is too much. They said my hair looked nappy. It's the end of their lives, right? Here's Jonah, just take me out, I can't take it anymore. How am I gonna face the people now? Right, and he's being a big baby. Throwing a big fit. Verse four, then said the Lord, doest thou well to be angry? He asked him a simple question, really? Really Jonah, you're gonna be angry? You didn't have to do anything, right? I just asked you to go over there and tell him about me. Look at what you're telling him, you're not even passionate about what you're doing. I'm doing the work there, I'm doing everything for you, so what's the big deal? Verse five, so Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. And so here's Jonah, he goes out on the east side of the city, the city wall, sets him up a little camp, and he's just gonna stay there and see what the Lord does. I assume probably because he didn't wanna go home, right, and face the other Israelites. But he just wanted to see what God was gonna do, right? He did what God told him to do. He said, let's just see what happens. In verse six, and the Lord, God prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. Jonah's glad? This is the first time we've seen Jonah happy through the whole thing, right? And it's over a gourd. that he didn't have to prepare the soil for. He didn't have to plant the seed. He didn't have to water it. It says the Lord did the work. The Lord placed the gourd there, rose it up over him to give him shelter. Verse seven, but God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day and it smote the gourd that it withered. So God also created this worm and it killed the gourd off. Verse eight, and it came to pass when the sun did arise that God prepared a vehement east wind and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and wished himself to die and said, it is better for me to die than to live. And so here he is throwing another big fit. That gourd didn't cost him anything, right? Maybe if he had a good attitude, the Lord would have raised up another gourd to give him shelter, but instead he threw another fit and said, just kill me now. Verse nine, and God said to Jonah, doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. I'm gonna be mad about this for the rest of my life, Lord. Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for thee which thou has not labored, neither made us to grow it, and you didn't have to do anything for it, I did it all, which came up in the night and perished it then a night. Verse 11, and should not I spare none of it, that great city wherein are more than 6,000 persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle. Y'all's versions may say 120,000 people, right? And some of y'all may have some different versions in here. And I didn't know what 64,000 was, so honestly I had to go Google that and find out how many that was. But it's 120,000, right? It equals 120,000. And so, you know, we said earlier we knew Nineveh was about a million people, right? That's their estimate, about a million people. So these hundred, who's he talking about these 120,000? Every time I ever read the scripture, I always thought, you know, people that didn't know right hand from their left hand, didn't know right from wrong, right? That's what we think of. That's usually what we associate the right hand, the left hand. But I think he's being literal here. I don't think, I know he's being literal here. Okay, he's talking about 120,000 people that literally don't know their right hand from their left hand. Anybody in here not know your right hand from your left hand? Anybody? Everybody knows their right hand from their left hand? Wow, this is a smart church. I know my right hand from the left hand, so I could be a member here, I guess. Who's he talking about? He's talking about little kids, isn't he? We have a three-year-old? You could ask her. She's very smart, too, guys. Y'all wanna talk to her? She will tell you some stuff, I promise you. She's very smart, huge vocabulary. She might know what you're talking about if you ask her to show her right hand or left hand. She's got a 50-50 chance. And then we have a one-year-old. She definitely, I mean, she's barely learning mama, daddy, bubba, food. She knows those. She's learning some sign language because she don't like to talk. but she definitely doesn't know her right hand from her left. So we're talking about 120,000 children in Nineveh that are gonna get destroyed with the parents. Because of what the parents did, because of the choices that the parents have made, these kids are also gonna receive God's judgment. God didn't say, I'm just gonna wipe out everybody except for the children. He said, I'm gonna destroy them all. So these kids are gonna have to suffer. And so he asked Jonah a question here in the end, and should not I spare none of that great city wherein are more than 6,000 persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand and also much cattle? You know that Monica mentioned the statistic a while ago. 91% of the kids that go into foster care in Howard County are not in Howard County. 91%, the real number is that, and these are actually old statistics. We don't have the updated ones yet. There was 44 kids in Howard County that were in foster care. 40 of them were not in Howard County. That tragic? You think about that, 40 kids they had to find somewhere outside of our county, Howard County. to get a placement. We got invited to go to a PIPSC meeting in San Angelo. It's Partners in Permanency and Stability. It's led by CPS, but they also have the CASAs there. You've probably heard of them. We got invited there because we're working with foster children. It's just about anybody and everybody that has something to do with foster kids. They come together. They have a meeting. They share what they're doing, programs that they have. They open their calendars to everyone. And they told us when we were at that meeting that there was an infant in San Angelo that they had to send to Austin, an infant, because they had no homes in all of Region 9. We're in part of Region 9. Region 9 is from La Mesa down to Sheffield, from Abilene to Pecos. We have one of the largest regions in Texas, and they had to send an infant out of our region because they had no homes here. It's crazy, guys. They also told us that it's filling up all over the state of Texas, and they're running out of homes. The state of Texas allows you to have six children, including your biological children in your home. We have seven because we have one that's considered an adult, and so she doesn't count against us. But guys, our house is full. We're at our max. You see, most of them are little. It's gonna be a long time before we can take in more. We need your help. We need your help, we can't do this alone. We've gotta have you. 91% of the kids leave Howard County. When we heard that number, we thought 44, there's more than 44 churches in our community, right? I mean, they're like 7-Elevens on every corner, right? And so our idea was we need to get into these churches and recruit foster parents. If we can get one foster parent from every church in our community, this shouldn't be a problem. This shouldn't be a problem. If we can get one parent plugged into one church in our community, this shouldn't be a problem. These people should be getting saved and getting their kids back and raising them in the love and admonition of the Lord. And their lives changed. We should be able to do away with the foster system, with CPS and totality. And honestly, they didn't even get into this until the 70s. You know who took care of it before that? The churches. The churches took care of it. When there was an orphan, guess what? The church would go get that orphan and take care of that orphan. The state didn't, the government didn't get involved until the 70s, right? And then the church just kind of let their hands, let go of it and let the state run it. And it's become out of sight, out of mind. But now we have an opportunity to get back in there. We have an opportunity to take our role where we're supposed to be. And so I wanna close up there. I wanna tell you that we are having a meeting tomorrow night. If you're interested in fostering, we will absolutely give you all the information that we can give you. If we don't have the answer, we'll get the answer, okay? We want to be very real with you. We're not gonna sugarcoat it and make it look all pretty because it's not, it's tough. There's issues that have to be dealt with. There's restrictions. There's just a ton of stuff. But if we can do it, you can do it. I promise you. And so we're going to have a meeting tomorrow night to give you more information. We'll go into the details of what it takes to be a foster parent, some of the struggles that we have. One of the other things that we just started developing is a foster night out. where foster parents can come together and just vent and share, let the kids play together and we can just be a family and just build a community of foster parents. And so we've got that coming. So you're not in this alone, we promise you, okay? We're not gonna come and recruit you and throw you out to the wolves, right? We're gonna be there for you. We wanna help you, okay? Because we need you. And so come to that meeting tomorrow night. It won't just be about that. If you're not interested in fostering, you can't foster, whatever it may be, we can get you plugged into other things. When we went to our pastor and told him what we wanted to do, we had a list about this long. And he said, okay, what's number one? And we're like, all of them. And he said, no, which one's number one? And so we narrowed it down to two. The first one, recruit foster parents. Second one is disciple the parents. Get them into churches, get them discipled, get them saved, and help them be restored. And so we wanna get you plugged in to those ministries, right? There's a ton of things you can do. We're not just marking the rest of that list off and saying, hey, we're not focusing on that. So if you can, if you fit somewhere on that list, we want to plug you into that list, right? And so come, we can get you plugged in. We can give you other things that you can do, other areas that you can, that you can be a part of this. And so, you know, we have earnestly just prayed that God would come before us and that he would prepare the hearts here, that he would do the work here and that, the people would just step in and step up and not go about it the hard way like Jonah chose to do. And so I wanna leave you just with that. What is your call? What is God burdening you to do? Have you been ignoring him in an area? Maybe, maybe not, but there's a ton of work to do guys. a ton of work that needs to be done. And so thank you again so much, Pastor, for letting us come. I'll just turn it back over to you, and you can close up however you see fit. And we sure appreciate your patience and time that we had this morning. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Jason. Sir. Thank you. Didn't y'all appreciate that word from the Lord? Amen. Why don't y'all join me in standing as we sing?