Stories from
Africa, The United States,
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and Hong Kong
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that and much
more coming up next.
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Hello, I'm Gary Krause,
and welcome to Mission 360.
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Coming to you today
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from the bustling
metropolis of Hong Kong.
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I'm standing in a
very special place.
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Beside me is the grave,
the tomb of Abram La Rue.
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Abram La Rue was a Seventh-day
Adventist lay person,
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who came to faith later in life
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and he had a burden to take
the good news of Jesus Christ
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and the Seventh-day Adventist
message to the people of Asia.
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At around age 65,
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he contacted the
General Conference
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of Seventh-day Adventist
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and told the leaders
of his desire, his passion
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but they replied
that unfortunately
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they didn't have the money
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and besides that
well, he was a bit too old.
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But nothing was to stand
in the way of Abram La Rue,
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he was the man of resources,
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he had quite a
history as a gold miner,
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as a woodcutter, as a shepherd,
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as a sailor and he
went back to his old trade
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and he got on a
boat to Honolulu.
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There he worked for a
while and then he worked his way
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across to Hong Kong,
where he landed in 1888.
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And for more than a decade,
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he worked here
mainly sharing literature.
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In 1891 he had
printed the first tracts
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in the Chinese language.
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He ministered to sailors,
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he ministered to
different people.
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And in 1902 Pastor
Anderson and his family came
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and the first
people were baptized
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and joined the
Seventh-day Adventist church
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right here in Hong Kong.
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And it was these
beginnings with Abram La Rue
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that started the
work that of course
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then continued on
into mainland China.
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And it's a
privilege to stand here
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to remember the
importance of this man
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who dedicated
his life to mission
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because he never went home.
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He never went home.
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Well, we have a
lot more about mission
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in this region of
the world coming up,
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but first up let's meet
a Global Mission pioneer
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in Botswana.
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I'm here as an
Adventist Global Mission pioneer
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and I've been
here for six months.
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The village is quite
interesting to work in.
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When I first
came to this village,
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we had five regular
members but the population
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is estimated to be above 18,000.
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At first I was
a bit discouraged,
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because I was form an atmosphere
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where you fellowship
with more than 50 people,
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where worship services
will be vibrant and to come
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and find five people
who couldn't even sing
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was the main challenge.
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We embarked on the
house to house project,
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house to house visitation
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where we share with
people the love of Jesus,
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and the Lord has been so good.
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To begin with, we now
have more then 80 people
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who are regular in attendance.
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Every Sabbath we have on
average 10 or more visitors
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and we have been having
baptisms on a monthly basis.
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The first
initiative that we took
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was the one for prayer
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where we
intensified our prayer life,
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where we would go to a village,
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to a home instead of
maybe studying with them,
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we start to pray for them.
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We have encountered
people who have been so sick,
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and after praying for them
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we saw them
being healed instantly.
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I asked my Lord, where
does He want me to serve Him?
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I made a covenant with the Lord.
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I said, "If what I
did pleases you Lord,
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you will find me something to do
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which will uplift your name."
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To me, to be a
Global Mission pioneer
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is a humbling experience,
if I may I use that word.
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One of the things that
I want to see accomplished
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is to have the
gospel permeate this village
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and the surrounding
areas to have people
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living in harmony
with the principles
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laid down in the Bible.
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Those are basics priorities
that I want to see achieved
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and
accomplished in this village.
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My guest is Pastor Jeff Scoggins
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who is the new planning director
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for the office
of Adventist Mission
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here at the General Conference.
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Jeff, thanks for
joining us. Thank you.
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Now, Jeff, when I first met you,
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you were actually working
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at the Adventist
world headquarters,
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what were you doing there?
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Beginning when?
When I was there.
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When I came out of college
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I was in ADRA in
north American division
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and then about 1998 maybe you,
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actually it was Mike I
guess who was invited me and you
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to do communication
for Global Mission.
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Right, so that's
where we work together
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but was it too long
after that you were invited
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to go to Moscow
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to work in the
Euro-Asia region of the world.
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What were you
called to do there?
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I was called to be
the field secretary
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for strategic
planning and global mission.
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Okay, so you'd been
talking about global mission,
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you've been
promoting global mission,
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you've been doing brochures
and every thing like that.
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Now you actually
going into the field
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to be involved, you know.
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That was it. So what did you do?
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When I got there, we
walked into not the same day
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but very soon there
after walked into Adcom
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and they said, "Let us tell
you what we want you to do."
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Which I thought I knew
what I was supposed to do,
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turns out I didn't.
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They said in the next two
years which was my term there,
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the next two years we
want to plant 300 new churches.
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House churches to the
former Soviet Republics.
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Can you raise four
million dollars to do that?
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And I don't know
what I was thinking
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but I was
inspired and I said sure.
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Is that all? Yes,
that it. Yeah, exactly.
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I got a reality check
when the first donation came in
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for 10,000 dollars and
my wife so kindly said,
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"Do that several
hundred more times
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and you'll have it."
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And that's when
the amount of money
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just hit me of
what it really was.
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Yeah, and while
you prayed through it,
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and you work through it
and there's actually a book
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published full of wonderful
stories from that project
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because how many
churches were planted?
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311 if I'm not mistaken by
the time we were done, yeah.
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And these were planted by
whom? Global Mission pioneers.
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We brought in 300 young men,
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really from all of those places
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where they were
going to be planted.
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We brought them
in from local places
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and train them at
the seminary Zaoksi
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for three months.
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And then we sent
them out into the field,
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we went and we
purchased very cheap houses
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for them to live in,
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which they also
used as a church.
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Wonderful.
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And so yeah, it was,
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it turned out to
be quite the project,
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people still talk about
it in its 15 years later.
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Right, and I was just
talking to someone the other day
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and hundreds of those
churches are still operating.
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They still are.
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In fact I was a
little worried about it,
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because I've been out
of touch for quite a while
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after leaving there and they,
I asked somebody just recently,
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"How many are still going?"
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And the guy that I worked
with closely Ivan Ostrovsky,
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he said at least 60
percent are still going strong,
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others are still struggling,
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some of them had to be
sold or whatever which is fine,
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that's the process.
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He said some of the
young men that we brought in
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are now conference presidents.
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That's wonderful. Yeah.
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So, Jeff, share a story
from one of the pioneers,
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one of their
experiences in this project.
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One of my favorite stories
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is about a
young man named Andre.
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And I'm not gonna tell
you where he was working at
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because for all I know
he's still working there
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and it's a closed
country right now.
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But he came out
of a life of crime.
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He was in big
time in organized crime
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and I have to shorten the story,
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I make this
assortment because it's a long
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and it's great story
but it turned out that he,
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somebody handed him a Bible.
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And he discovered not only Jesus
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but he discovered
the Sabbath in the Bible.
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He never heard of a Seventh-day
Adventist in his life.
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He was on death row
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through a series of
miracles he was released.
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After being
tested on the Sabbath
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and all sorts of things,
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I mean he was going to be
killed by the prison warden
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due to his beliefs
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and he stayed
staunchly with him,
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even though he had no
training nothing like that.
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He had been miraculously
preserved in the uranium lines.
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People didn't lived there,
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that was a death
sentence in of its own.
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He got out of prison
and he went to find out
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if there was any other
people that kept the Sabbath,
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discovered the Seventh-day
Adventist and when I met him,
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he was planting a
church in his country
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for a
Seventh-day Adventist church
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and he was there with
a bunch of other pioneers
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that we were talking about
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and they were talking
about how difficult it was
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and how they were
afraid of the local authorities
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and things like this.
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And I was watching
this young man, Andre
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and he was just down
there shaking his head.
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And I knew what he was thinking
'cause this guy was fearless
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after what he had been through
and I even asked him I said,
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"Can I share your story?"
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I said, "Will that
get you in trouble?"
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He said, "I don't care,
if it gets me in trouble."
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I still don't do it for his sake
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but he was just
an inspiring story
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of what God can do even without
the infrastructure or that,
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you know, maybe could
have come and baptized him
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or something like that.
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He worked through our
men, he was planting churches.
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Amazing story.
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Yeah, and so throughout
the former Soviet Union
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these lighthouses
were established seminaries
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where there were no
Adventist congregations.
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Correct.
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So why is church planting
like you're involved in there
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in the former Soviet
Union, why is that so important?
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Because it's what pushing us out
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into the frontiers of mission.
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We don't want to
be here much longer
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if we can do anything about it
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and the thing is that
Jesus gave us the ability
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to do something about it.
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He said go tell the world,
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and when we tell the
world he can come back.
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What we are doing is we're
not just planting churches,
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we're planting
churches in the areas
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where there are not
currently Seventh-day Adventists
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and so that is our mandate.
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We are doing what
Jesus told us to do.
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That's why it's so
important. Fantastic.
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Extremely fantastic
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and that's why you're
our new planning director.
00:12:24.81\00:12:26.61
Welcome.
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So, friends, at home
please remember to pray
00:12:28.01\00:12:29.98
for Global Mission pioneers.
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Pray for Global Mission
initiatives to reach into new
00:12:32.05\00:12:35.02
and challenging
areas and people groups.
00:12:35.05\00:12:37.39
And to find out more information
00:12:37.42\00:12:39.09
about church
planting and Global Mission
00:12:39.12\00:12:41.39
and how you can support through
your prayers and your finances,
00:12:41.42\00:12:44.96
go to AdventistMission.org.
00:12:44.99\00:12:47.23