October 26, 2025

Transcribed by Beluga AI.

And we’re going to hear some stories tonight of the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. All right? So, come share with us.

So, yeah, it’s good to be here and share with you guys this evening about the goodness of God. And truly been a blessing this past summer to serve God in Thailand and in India. And I first want to just share a little bit about what kind of brought us into that. And that started, of course, around the time that Covid hit. Marcia and I were at a point in our life where we were just, like, we just sensed we were missing something. You know, we just—there was just something that wasn’t fulfilling us.

We had established our little hobby farm out there in Quilcene, but now the kids were all growing up, moved out, married, and gone, and we just felt like there was something else to get a hold of with the Lord, and being as we were somewhat cooped up during that Covid period and watching a lot of church services on the computer, it seemed like every time I was watching a message on the computer, the pastor would speak-, be speaking to me and telling me, “You just got to get up off that couch and go. It’s hard for me to steer a ship that’s parked at the dock. You know, I can’t steer a ship that’s not moving.” And it’s like this conviction just kept coming to me. You know, you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go.

And so that’s about the time period that I started looking into things, and the Lord worked things out so that we could go and work with Samaritan’s purse. And so we did that for two years.

And then that all came to an end, and we were like, okay, God, what’s next? You know, what else do you want us to do? Because we don’t want to go back to what we were doing. We don’t want to go back to that hobby farm again. There’s just nothing there for us anymore. It’s not where our heart’s desire was.

And so, as we were traveling around that summer after Samaritan’s Purse, we were kind of starting to sense that the Lord might be opening some doors for us to go to Thailand. We heard about a man and his wife, which is Galen and Veda. Veda is the one with the hat on, Galen’s the one in the black T-shirt beside her. They had done ministry in Thailand before, in previous years, and they were looking to put together a team to go into Thailand to do ministry.

Primarily, Galen’s burden and his focus and vision that the Lord had given him was to work in northern Thailand and minister to the people across the border in Myanmar and Laos and the northern borders of Thailand. And what he wanted to do was bring people, primarily pastors, out of that region down into northern Thailand, train them in the gifts of the Spirit, in the Gospel, and then send them back into their tribes and villages in Myanmar and Laos.

So we talked with them, and over a period of just a few months, like from October of last year through November/December, just step by step, the Lord began to open the doors for Marcia and I to become part of this team.

And so we actually went and joined them in Chiang Rai, Thailand, in mid-February of this past year. Yeah, yeah, this year. It was this year.

So this is our team. All except, of course, me and Marcia. Marcia and I aren’t in this picture, but this is the team that came together to do this ministry.

So from Galen’s previous work in Thailand, he had a few connections of guys that could interpret it for us, be interpreters. And on the left there is Jacob. Yeah, Pastor Jacob. And sitting down just in front of Galen is Solomon, Pastor Solomon. And Jacob was one of our primary interpreters.

Solomon wasn’t such a good interpreter. But I tell you what, that little guy, Solomon, I think he knows everybody in Thailand. I mean, that guy, he knows everybody. And so Solomon would arrange for us to go into a lot of villages and speak at the churches in the villages and whatnot. Jacob would go along, and he would interpret for us.

There’s Solomon and his wife Esther with us, which is just outside the front door of the house where we were living. They got us a pretty nice place to live while we were there. All of us that were in that picture before, we all lived in the same house together pretty much. It was a big house and pretty nice place.

So Galen’s vision was to bring these pastors into Thailand. So we needed a training center, a place where we could bring these people together and meet them and teach them the things we had to teach.

And so at first, there was this building we were looking at in Chiang Rai. And I just know it was the Lord speaking to me. When Galen took us to look at this building, he says, “I want you guys to come. Let’s check out this building. Let’s look and see if this is what God wants us to rent to train these pastors in.”

And we went and looked at it, and I was like, “This just is not it. This is not the place.” I could just, I could just sense. I was like, “No, this is not the place.” It was right in the heart of town, and it just—the building itself was pretty ratty in more ways than one. And it just didn’t, it just didn’t fit the bill.

And I told Galen. I said, I said, “Galen, I, I don’t think this is it.” You know, they, they were trying to figure out how they were going to make it work. And I was like, “Galen, I’ll be honest with you. I just don’t think this is it.” I said, “I’ll work with you if you decide to get this building or not. I’ll work with you, and no matter what you decide, I’ll back you on it, but I don’t think this is it.”

So we kind of put that off, and a few days later, he said, “I got another place for us to go look at.” He took us out to this place. And I mean, as soon as I got out of the vehicle and started walking around, I just sensed the Spirit of the Lord, like, “This is it. This is the place. This is it.”

And this is just, there’s a couple rooms like this that make excellent housing units. We put bunk beds in them and stuff for the people to stay in. There’s a housing unit there. On the right is a big open area, dining room, teaching area. To the right side here that you can’t see is a kitchen for that whole area with a bay window that opens out into that area on the right. There was a living quarters there for whoever was to stay there and take care of the place, which ended up being Solomon and his family. They ended up living in this portion of the center.

And here’s another. That’s another classroom. And actually, what this place had been, this place had been a girls’ home. Yeah, a girls’ home. A Christian girls’ home. That was-, who was that? That organization that originally founded that, what was the name of that? The Koreans paid for it, but it was through some other organization that I’d heard of. I can’t think of it right now. But anyway, they’re the ones that built the home. There, that building there made an awesome. Whether you want to use it for a training room or church sanctuary or anything like this, that’s the inside of it right there.

And all these, all these buildings, this whole land, it was a little over 2 acres of land and a really nice facility. I was like, “This is the place, this is the place.” And so we did. We ended up renting that place and ended up bringing in—generally we would bring in 20-25 pastors and their wives from Myanmar, from the Chiang Rai area, from Lao, wherever. We’d bring them in and when it was cool enough, we’d have teaching sessions outside like this, and then that’s inside the one building I was telling you about. You can see the bay window to the kitchen back there in the back.

And this is how we spent a lot of our weekends, just doing the two and three day training seminars with these pastors and their wives. And what we would teach them… you’re thinking, “They’re pastors, why do they need training?” Well, because they’re pastors, yes, because they believe in the Lord Jesus and they have some basic Bible knowledge, but they don’t really have any training.

Some years ago, the Koreans, the Church of Korea, went into Thailand and they built a bunch of churches in Thailand, a bunch of churches. But what they did was they said, “Okay, here’s a church for you. There you go.” And they left. They didn’t leave any missionaries there, they didn’t leave any pastors, anybody to guide. It was just up to the people to fill the churches. So, you know, these Thai men would take over pastoring these churches even though they really didn’t have any education, any basic knowledge they’d gained from the Bible.

Well, there’s a lot of confusion because of just the Thai religions and the dark activities of the spirit world there and beliefs that they have. One of the main tribal people we ended up working with was the Lahu people. The Lahu are not Thai because they descended out of China and the regions above Thailand into the mountain areas, escaping persecution and whatnot years and years ago.

And they brought a lot of their beliefs with them that weren’t accurate to Christianity. For one example, the Lahu people believe that they came from a gourd, that they were poured out of a gourd. So, you know, the demonic deception that is present in these people’s lives and the deceiving that has gone on in their lives… and then they learn a little bit about Christianity, so they’re like, “Okay, we believe in Jesus in the Bible,” but yet they don’t understand that the things they believed before were necessarily evil or completely against the teaching of the Bible.

And it’s really tricky to learn how to teach the Bible to them and help them understand that what they believed before was wrong and that it’s not a part of Christianity, that it can’t be a part of Christianity. Plus, you’ve got to watch the whole idea of speaking your Christianese to them.

It’s so easy for us as Christians here in the United States to talk to people about the Lord in another country like that and not realize their concept of what we’re saying is completely different. When you talk about being born again, they’re thinking, “Yeah, born again, reincarnation.” That’s what they’re thinking. You know that because they’ve always believed in reincarnation. They understand that to be real. So you’ve got to make it clear to them when you say born again, you’re not talking about reincarnation. And there’s several things like that, that you learn that you just can’t say to them with your Christianese language. It’s got to be made clear to them.

So anyway, as we taught them about the Gospel and about Jesus, and we taught them about baptism, so many of them, they get as far as baptism and that’s as far as they go. They think once they’re baptized, that’s it, that’s the limit. And then they don’t understand or have any more teaching or understanding about the actual baptism in the Holy Spirit and being filled with the Holy Spirit and learning to walk in the power and the strength of the Holy Spirit. In a country that’s so full and overpowered by such evil forces that they’ve had there for generations, how can they successfully battle those spirits and do spiritual warfare if they don’t have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within themselves?

So teaching them all these things and getting them to understand that.

And one of the major tools we used to help them see and understand the power of the Holy Spirit was by praying for them and them receiving healing when they had injuries. So we taught them all these things about the Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit. Then we would show them the evidence and the power of the Holy Spirit. And so we would pray for people and people would get healed. The Lord would honor what we were doing and people would get healed. And we spent many, many hours praying and seeing people delivered of evil spirits and people being healed of various things.

It was just, especially, I’m just talking about in Thailand. When we got to India, we’ve seen it even more. So I’m going to let Marcia talk mostly about India, but we saw it even more so when we got to India. It’s almost like the darker and the heavier the spirits are in the country, the more the power of the Holy Spirit is free to work and just evidence Himself. You know, it’s just really incredible to see.

And so, as we showed them these things and displayed the power of the Holy Spirit to them, then we began to have them pray for each other, say, “Okay, now you’ve learned and you’ve heard what we’ve taught you. Now it’s your turn to come and practice what we’ve taught you and see that God will use you, too. Because we’re not something special.”

Because they certainly do. They certainly want to look at us as the white people from America. “Oh, you’re special.” No, we’re not. You know, “You have the same access to God that we do.” Helping them to come to grasp with that, understand that, and take a hold of that was a fun and challenging thing to do.

I wasn’t planning on telling this, but it’s coming to my mind. This one group of men that we had there from Myanmar that we were teaching… this one fella, I had him, he came up for prayer for pain in his back. He had severe pain in his back, huh? Lao. That’s where he was from—Lao.

And he came up for prayer for pain in his back. I started praying for him—help me along with his story if I need it, Marsh—I started praying for him, and I had my hand on his back. He said something to the interpreter, and I didn’t know what he said. I asked, “What’s he saying?” The interpreter told me, “Your hand’s in the wrong spot.” I’m like, “Oh, okay, where’s my hand?” So I moved my hand to the right spot, and I prayed for him. And before I’d prayed for him, you know, he couldn’t bend over without pain or couldn’t move a leg without pain and stuff like that.

And so I prayed for him, and I told the interpreter, “Tell them, tell me to do something that hurt before.” And so she did. And he did some things that hurt him before, and his eyes got great big, and his smile came on his face, and he was like, “It’s gone. It doesn’t hurt.”

We’re like, “Praise God,” you know?

So we had the next person come up, and we’re starting to pray for that person. Then that guy comes back up again right while we’re in the middle of dealing with this other person. I’m like, to the interpreter, “What’s he want?” She asked him, and he says, “That was a miracle, right?” They’re like, “Yes, that was a miracle. God healed you. God touched you.” He just couldn’t believe it that God had touched him, you know?

And it was just such a blessing to us and such a powerful testimony to them of the goodness of God and the power of God.

And so anyway, that’s what we spent—once we got the center, the training center—that’s what we spent a lot of our time doing, was just weekend after weekend after weekend teaching these guys, spending time with these guys, helping them understand the gospel and baptism in the Holy Spirit and baptism in water and baptism in the Holy Spirit in a lot of that training.

And then besides that ministry at the training center, we got to spend a lot of time going into surrounding villages in the northern Thailand area in the mountains, which is where… these were strictly Lahu villages.

The Lahu tribes, you have several different groups. In the Lahu tribes themselves, you have the Red Lahu, the Yellow Lahu, the Black Lahu, and the White Lahu. Most of them, their dialect is slightly different. It’s like some of them can’t understand the others. But Black Lahu is pretty much a common language between all of them, so their Bibles, the Bibles they have are printed in Black Lahu. So most of them can read a Black Lahu Bible.

And this is the Pukai village, where—I personally had a real heart for the Pukai village. After most of the team had left and I was still there—I was still there through July into August. Yeah, almost September. Most of the team had to come back to America sometime by July. And so I spent about a month there. I spent a lot of time in the Pukai village ministering to people, just going and visiting.

The lady in the blue dress there, the polka dot dress, she was able to interpret for me. And so I would just go around from house to house and pray for people in the village.

Here’s a time when Marcia was with me praying for healing for a woman. And this, this poor woman, she had problems. We spent a lot of time with her, praying with her. I met with her probably about five different times. And when the first time I met with her, she asked us to pray for because her heart was broken because she had been in prison. I did not know why she had been in prison, but while she was in prison, her husband had died, and she had gotten baptized while she was in prison.

And so she was a young, struggling Christian.

And anyway, I went and talked with her and prayed with her a few different times. This was the last time I talked and prayed with her.

And I found out that just a few days after this picture was taken that she was arrested and put in prison again for selling meth, I think it was.

And so anyway, there’s no more difference than the US as far as drug problems and all that goes on. Even these people that don’t have anything and live in these bamboo huts still dealing with the problems of drugs and whatnot in that society.

So lots, lots of room for ministry up there.

Okay, this is where I’m gonna let Marcia take over right here.

And how do I do this? Arrow down takes you to the next picture. Okay. The little red dot is a laser that points. Okay.

So that lady that Troy was—the last lady, Nahto, he just said—she’s a Red Lahu. And the Red Lahu peoples are largely unevangelized. Animism is their main language, mixed with Buddhism. Traditionally, they were growing opium in Myanmar, Lao, and China. The Thai government went in and tried to clean out that and install them as farmers, but they are not first-class citizens. They’re not even citizens of Thailand.

There are five hill tribes recognized by Thailand and none of those tribes are considered, they’re not citizens. They don’t have the same rights as the Thai citizens. Their land keeps getting taken away. And they really do live high up in these villages. And you go in and you see the spirit protection bracelets on, on their hands, on their ankles, you know, right away they’re not Christians. The village Troy was talking about, Pukai Village, we went there a few times before Troy went up there many times after we all left.

And there was such a resistance, such a mockery against the Spirit of God in that village. I remember giving the gospel from Genesis to Revelation to a couple through an interpreter. They used to be Christians. They are happy in their having reverted to animism. They worship a god called Truth, and they believe this god called Truth is the same as Jesus.

But in the church, the one church in the village, years ago, the pastor was having an adulterous affair. Then the next pastor embezzled the funds, so they left.

But there was such a mocking spirit in both of them. At the end, I asked if I could pray for them. I challenged them that the spirit called Truth was deceiving them, and it didn’t care for them, that one day, that spirit was going to bow before the Lord Jesus Christ and was going to be cast into the lake of fire; that everybody that had bound themselves to the spirit was going to go with that spirit right to the lake of fire. I invited them to return to the Lord.

The man had been very—he’d been sitting at a distance—very… just a mocking spirit. But when I prayed, the compassion of the Lord came over me. And they were, they both got very quiet and very respectful.

I have good hope that God will draw them back to Himself. The reason we went to their home is because we had prayed for their granddaughter who lived with them, Napopo. And I don’t know, she was probably in her 20s, but she got an infection when she was young. And I believe it went like this: she lost her voice, the doctors treated her, and she lost her hearing. We prayed for her, and a measure of hearing and a measure of speaking returned. She could say, “Abuja,” praise the Lord, but that’s all.

And when we went to that bamboo hut to look her up and to pray more, her grandparents were there. Every time she said ,”Abuja,” her grandmother laughed with such a mocking spirit. It was incredible.

But I found the verse the other day. By the way, my name’s Marcia. I know I haven’t met you guys officially. Everybody else I think I’ve met. But I told Troy, “This is a verse for us.” Psalm 71. It says it’s a psalm for the aged, a prayer for old age. And I don’t think we’re old, but we’re not young anymore either.

“Oh God, you have taught me from my youth. And to this day I declare your wondrous works. Now also when I am old and gray headed”—that works for Troy—”oh God, do not forsake me until I declare your strength to this generation, your power to everyone who is to come.”

17 O God, You have taught me from my youth; And to this day I declare Your wondrous works. 18 Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to everyone who is to come. (Psalm 71:17-19, NKJV)

And that, to me, really encapsulates the cry of our heart right now and what the Lord seems to be setting us free to do. So I praise the Lord for that.

I wrote down some things I wanted to talk about this afternoon while Troy was still napping. You do have to rest up. That’s what Sunday afternoons are for. It’s like the Lord gave me just four areas to put them into.

And the first area is the stories of the power of God that we saw. So I’ll start with this picture right here.

One of the things that we did. The guy on the right, our right, is Zach. He’s from Texas. The guy second from the left, I guess that’s the second from your right, my left, in the white T-shirt with the glasses on, is Yotam. He’s from Israel, members of our team.

One of the things that we ended up doing was going to different children’s homes and sharing how to become a disciple in the ways that Troy shared. We would start with repent, believe, be baptized, be filled with the Spirit, go out and do the same, and grow in sanctification.

This particular children’s home ministers to tribal children, but they also have a drug rehab. The man in the center there, his name is Yoba. He had seen the power of God on display the week before when we were there, or two weeks before. I don’t forget-, I don’t remember.

After our teaching, my sister Cheryl had gotten up for a demonstration of the power of God. She invited anybody that wanted to come forward for prayer if they had a need. Somebody. And a young man from the drug rehab came forward. We didn’t know it at the time, but the leader of the drug rehab did not agree with the teaching about the Holy Spirit and the gifts for today and was a little hostile to it.

But one of the young men came forward with a severe pain in his back. He’d been on his way to the hospital, and the Lord talked to him and told him to come to this meeting that night. So he came forward, and Cheryl said what she was going to do. She laid her hands on him and told the pain to go. And she said, “Did it leave?” He said, “It moved from my back to my front.” As soon as Cheryl heard that it moved, she knew she was dealing with a spirit. And by the power of God, she knew it was the spirit of death.

She started rebuking the spirit of death, and he started retching. We got him a wastebasket because it’s a lot cleaner that way. He just retched, and he retched, and she rebuked the spirit of death. Then he was free.

Later that evening—and that got everybody’s attention. It was late in the evening. People were like, “This has been all day. I don’t even know if I agree with this.” But when they saw him get free, it got their attention.

Later that same evening, he came forward again and said that he could never fall asleep before midnight because of the dreams and the thoughts. This is a Red Lahu young man from the villages. Drug addiction, alcoholism, rejection, abandonment by parents, child trafficking. That’s the culture of the Red Lahu villages. And she prayed for him and peace to his mind and commanded those spirits to leave.

The next day, when we were finishing our teaching, he said he’d had a good night of rest. And we saw—we got to see him March, April, May, June—three months later, at that training center, Troy showed you. He was part of the worship team and just alive and vibrant in the power of God.

So two weeks later, when we came—Yotam and Zach had stayed up there to give training to these rehab people—Yobo wanted to be baptized. When Zach baptized him and came up and started praying for him to be filled with the Spirit, he started manifesting a demon. He started retching. And Zach was like—Troy and I were there watching, so was Yotam. By the way, that’s a fish pond, that muddy little hole. That’s where they get their food from. They stock it, they eat it. And so did we.

Anyway, Zach said, “I need some help here.” And Yotam went into the water. But I just remember standing on the shore and dealing with that spirit like this. And he just more and more and he came out of the water. We laid our hands on him, we prayed, and he went to change his clothes. Well, he didn’t make it to change his clothes. We didn’t know it, but we found him in a ditch, bent over, retching and vomiting and retching as demons came out. And demons came out.

So Troy and Zach and Tom, in particular, ministered to him. I don’t know how long it went, but I remember he looked at the—I don’t remember if he spoke English; it must have been through the interpreter. He said, “I don’t understand what’s happening.” And we said, “It’s okay. The Lord is setting you free.”

I want to show you. There they are in the ditch as he’s doing this.

This is Yoba in the middle about three days ago in his—probably his fourth or fifth semester of Bible college. Take a look at that shining face. God has done a work and set him free.

So that was one of the stories that I wanted to share with you about what we did there.

This is in India, Pastor Jaya and his wife Shruti, with our team leader, Galen. Pastor Jaya Raju was our host and our interpreter. And I’m not sure what other pictures are here. We all got opportunities to teach and train.

I’m not sure what church this is in because they’re sitting in chairs. I don’t know why they brought chairs in. Usually they sat on the floor.

But this lady right here is Pastor Sudhir’s wife, Sunitra, and the little girl is Honey. Galen had prayed for them a year before, or approximately, to conceive. They had been unable to conceive, and they conceived and they born Honey. And because of that, it opened their whole church up to the teaching about the Holy Spirit.

And I think everybody in the church that day received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

While we were in their church the night before, training, at the end, everybody—I’ve never been in a place where I’ve seen so many deformities, where I’ve seen so much outright lack of medical care and birth defects, severely cleft palates, you know, where the whole nose is involved, other fingers, appendages. But you feel the oppression.

They’ve had Hinduism for 3,500 years. They’ve never acknowledged, as a government, Jesus as Lord and Savior, never even acknowledged Judeo-Christian values.

So the church people are living—and here they’re living under oppression. And everybody wants prayer for healing. The unsaved and the saved want prayer for healing. They need prayer.

We were, after we did our teaching, we invited anybody to come up that wanted to be baptized, receive the Holy Spirit, or needed healing, and probably 99% of it was for healing. So we’re praying for people. It’s 100 degrees. There’s no air conditioning. That’s just how we live. And when you’re ministering, you forget all that. It’s really neat. You don’t care that you’re just raining sweat down.

They brought a lady to me. She was next in line. And through the interpreter, they said, “She was born deaf and dumb and she wants you to pray. Does she get her hearing and she’ll be able to talk?” And I was like, “Me, why my line? Why not Troy’s line or Cheryl’s line or Galen, Veda?”

And I thought, wait a second, in the back of my head as I started praying. All my life, I’ve read the Gospels. Literally since I was 7, 9 years old, I’ve read what Jesus did, and I believe it. He either does it or He doesn’t. I believe He does.

So I started praying for her. And I’m going in my head, o”Okay, Holy Spirit, what do I do? What do I do?” Okay, Jesus usually rebuked a deaf and dumb spirit, so I started rebuking the deaf and dumb spirits.

Troy came over for a while and prayed until somebody else needed prayer. Cheryl came over and joined. We were rebuking the deaf and dumb spirits. And you could see something rise up to about here.

And then she would go like this and back up and then look around. We didn’t know what was going on. Her interpreter, her sign language interpreter, had stepped away to be prayed for, actually, and she couldn’t tell us what was going on. But pretty soon she looked at our interpreter and indicated she could hear in her right ear.

And we prayed some more, kept-, and I—oh, before that I thought, what did Jesus do? Oh, I think He stuck His fingers in the deaf man’s ears and pulled them out. So I stuck my fingers in her ears and I pulled them out, and her right ear popped when I did that. She went like this, and she could hear in her right ear.

And then she started going, “Ah, ah, ah!” Well, nobody was there to tell us. I just assumed all her life maybe she’d been able to make that little noise.

After a while, her interpreter came back, and she told—it was her sister-in-law, we found out the next day—she wanted to come back the next day with her husband and keep getting prayer. And we said yes. So Cheryl and I decided to fast and pray until it was done to deal with our unbelief. Not that we had to beg God, but we didn’t want there to be a spirit of unbelief in us.

So the next day we were praying for people in the church. The church was packed. People were sitting outside. That lady and her husband were outside with their baby. And it’s like the Holy Spirit fell with a roar on the church. We were just praying for people in the church. I could see her out there.

And I asked the interpreter, “Please tell her we’ll pray for her, but we have to finish what we’re doing here.”

We were done in there. The church moved on to testimonies. We went outside and started praying for her again, Cheryl and I. And we did not pray a short time. I don’t know how it goes for a lot of people, but we prayed a long time on that Thursday night or Friday night. And we prayed a long time Saturday afternoon.

And then she indicated she could hear in her left ear, and then she started making those sounds again. I asked her husband through the interpreter, “Has she ever made these sounds before?” And he said, “No, she’s never made a sound before.”

So we kept praying. And all of a sudden, she looked at the little girl, I don’t know, 8 to 12 years old, and she said, “Baba!” I thought, “She’s babbling.” Well, Baba was the girl’s name. “Baba. Baba. Baba.” And they were excited. I leaned forward. Her husband’s name was Joshua. I said, I pointed. No sign language. I said, “Joshua.” She said, “Joshua.” I said, “Cheryl.” “Cheryl.” Cheryl made her, looked at her tongue to make sure it wasn’t wooden or stiff. And it wasn’t. It was fully functioning.

“Baja.” She looked at our interpreter. We said, “Krupa.” “Krupa.” “Baba. Baba.” And the smile on her face, the light in her eyes, was incredible. It’s so incredible to tell this story now, to think that God did that through me and through Cheryl. It was Him, but He used us.

That same trip to India, everybody in India and Thailand, I think, has had a motorcycle accident. If you want something fun to do, get on YouTube and look at Asian driving. You’ll know why they’ve had motorcycle accidents, especially when you see four or five people on one motorcycle with the family groceries, and maybe a panel of sheetrock too. I don’t know. It was crazy. No street lights, no stop signs. You just honk your horn and go.

Anyway, this man had had an accident about 10 years before, if I remember the story correctly. And he couldn’t sit, stand, or walk without pain. Troy had his hands wrapped around his knee. Yotam had his hands wrapped around his ankle. And David was praying, watching. As they prayed, Troy felt the ligaments and the bones move. Yotam felt it in the ankle, and David saw it in the foot. God healed him.

The whole rest of the 10 days or however long we were with him, he was healed. He could sit on the floor, no problem, stand, walk, no problem. That’s just two—well, three, including Yoba—stories of what God did.

The second thing I wanted to, that I thought about, was counting the cost. While we were in India, the pastors that were hosting us got word that about 60 miles from them, a fellow pastor had been abducted, tortured, and killed. They showed us pictures, which was never reported properly in the news. You know, Chris-, like “Voice of the Martyrs,” they didn’t have the whole story. His eyelids were cut off, his lips were cut off. He and his motorcycle were thrown in a ditch to try and make it look like an accident, which was reported as an accident.

About 100 miles from us, Galen, our team lead, had another pastor friend, his brand new completed church building, while we were there, was razed by radical Hindus in the government. It went like this. They didn’t look.

And Pastor Jaya himself is educated. He’s got a bachelor’s or a master’s degree; I’m not sure which. He lost his job years ago as a teacher because he’s a Christian. So these are not affluent people. They’re not wealthy at all. They all feed multiple children with feeding programs every day, three meals a day, to give them the gospel. They’re not—especially the church children… they’ve counted the cost, and they’re counting the cost.

I believe that as India goes the way that it is with the prime minister and the radical Hinduism that’s trying to make a comeback, we’re looking at a church being prepared to go underground in a lot of ways. So I consider it an honor to be able to go there in a week. I’ll be there for two and a half weeks.

That children’s home where Yoba got delivered from the demons and is now in Bible school, the gentleman and his wife who run it—Supakit and Sanglaw—Supakit, got baptized in the Holy Spirit two years ago, and it cost him his fellowship with the Baptist Association and the Presbyterian Association.

Being pushed out of the Presbyterian Association because he’s baptized in the Holy Spirit costs him his basically-free medical care that the Presbyterian Hospital Association provides for ministers. It cost him his fellowship with other people, with other believers. Brothers that sat with him before will now not sit with him.

When we would do our trainings, we had a group of about 25 pastors and their wives come. Maybe it was 31. They were so excited by the training. They were Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, and several other denominations. They got so excited about what they heard, and they made plans to come back the next week just to have Bible studies together.

When it came time for them to come back, one pastor and his wife showed up. None of the others would come because they would not associate with the Baptist, the Presbyterian, the Pentecostal, whatever else denomination they were. Some of them are counting the cost by pursuing God wholly, and it’s a real thing to count the cost in that way.

There’s another kind of counting the cost, too, that we encountered in a Red Lahu village that we went up to. No electricity, no running water. They had generators for certain amounts of electricity so they could charge their iPhones.

Anyway, Troy brought the word that day. Zach and I were with Troy. After the service, a woman with a spirit protection bands on her, who was married to a Christian, came forward to receive the Lord and was with us that day, and um—was Sara Licia with us that day? Or is that another day?

Sara was from Mexico. I can’t remember. We ministered to the woman, and then Troy and Zach ministered to a man who was married to a Christian woman, and he came forward to receive the Lord.

In that village, the pastor and his wife are Yellow Lahu. The Yellow Lahu are largely evangelized in a very traditional way. You go to church. When you’re 14 you get baptized, even if you don’t know why. And then you just keep going to church.

But they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. They had come up to that village of a family of, village of 40 families, eight of whom came to church. Just on the next hill there was a Red Lahu village of about 125 or 175 families. About 10 years ago, he went there to minister and a few people came to the Lord. Every Lahu village has a head man, and the head man is also the head spiritual man. You don’t go into the village without the head man’s permission in the Red Lahu.

When this pastor left, he raised his hand to bless the village, and when he did, the head man fell down dead. And the people of the village, which is largely—except for some brand new Christians—tried to, wanted to kill him. And he said, “I didn’t kill him. My God did that, not me.” And they said, “If you ever come back here, we’ll kill you.” He hasn’t returned since. The village is still unevangelized.

We told him, “We’ll go, we’ll go.” We haven’t had the opportunity yet. I don’t know if we’ll get the opportunity. But he’s counted the cost the other way. He’s gone the other way. It breaks my heart because God showed Himself powerful, and I’m sure that He would again.

And let me see here. I talked a little bit about the unity among the believers. We ended up teaching on unity among believers and having the pastors that were at our meetings pray in their own language, confessing the sin of division. And it was powerful, and it was beautiful, and it’s a necessary thing.

So there was the unity. And then, let me see here.

Oh, translation and language difficulties. Oh, my goodness. Got some funny stories about that. In Lahu and maybe in Thai, they don’t have pronouns like we have, so it gets very confusing when those that do know English are talking to you. And the—little Gracie broke her arm. She’s 8 years old. She stayed in the hospital all night. But what her dad tells us is, “I broke my arm. I’m in the hospital.” You’re like, “Oh, oh,” you know, it’s confusing.

Or when—this happened to Troy—Jacob, the interpreter, on a late Saturday evening, texts Troy, messages him, says, “What are you doing tomorrow?” basically. Troy said, replied, “I’m going to church.” He said, “Oh, where are you going to church?” Troy said, “I’m going here, whatever.” He said, “Are you going to the village with me?” Troy said, “No, I’m going to this church.”

Jacob said, “I’m going to the village. Meet me at 7:45 a.m.” Troy said, “I’m going to this church.”

What Jacob was trying to tell Troy was “I’ve arranged for you to preach. Meet me and I’ll take you there.” It was a very backwards way to get there. But they did get there. Troy did preach. The Lord moved and he was invited to preach in other villages. Those kinds of things.

How about when you’re teaching about the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, and the group from Myanmar that’s there is very confused, so they raise their hand and they ask you about the fruit of the Spirit.

The fruit of the Spirit is nine. There are nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit. What if you don’t want one fruit of the Spirit, can you have the others? Like what aspect of the fruit of the Spirit do you not want?

Actually Troy was teaching at this point and I could just see the clouds of confusion begin to swirl around Troy as they went on to talk about “We don’t want the Spirit. We don’t want the fruit of speaking in tongues.” He’s like “The fruit of speaking in tongues…?”

They were confusing the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the evidence of speaking in tongues with the gifts of the Spirit—tongues and interpretation. But they were calling them the fruit of the Spirit. It took a little while to unravel that one. It was really funny.

Some people did receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit that time, but the translation problems… Or how about this, the word for “horse,” “dog,” and “come.” Tell me if you hear the difference. Mao, mao, mao. We don’t hear the difference.

So going forward, what about us? What are we going to do next? I have a feeling that we will end up back in Thailand. We’ve had some words to that evidence. I’m not even sure what pictures Troy put on here. So let’s just…

India praying for people ministered to. Oh, Troy baptizing people in the Bay of Bengal. We go, we think we’ll be back in Thailand. That training center that Troy talked about, the Lord put it on his heart. Solomon and Esther are there. They are taking orphans and rejected children from Myanmar, which is war-torn, drug-filled, and has other issues going on. They have a little 7-year-old boy who was abandoned at age 2. He can be in Thailand and go to Thai school, get a Thai identity card, but that’s all. He’s not allowed to stay in Thailand. He doesn’t have the privileges, but they’ve got him in their home.

And the Lord laid it really on Troy’s heart while Troy was there the seven weeks without the rest of us. And Troy’s committed us—together we’re committed—to continuing to pay the rent on that training center so Solomon and Esther can have a children’s home set up there as they’re ministering to orphans.

Jacob, our interpreter, also has a children’s home. He said the Lord told him that the gospel for him is only taking in orphaned children. A lot of children’s homes take children from the villages for school. They might have parents. And then when school’s out, they go back to their villages. Jacob only takes children that have been orphaned. So we’ve been able to help Jacob, as the Lord has put it on our hearts, and especially this training center in Thailand.

Solomon and Esther would like us to come back and teach English to them. I don’t know what the Lord will have us do, but there’s something there. Thailand has had the gospel for 150 years and is less than 1% Christian. And those that are Christians, it’s often bound with either Buddhist or animistic religious philosophies that are still in there and very much keeping them in bondage.

In a week, I leave for India for two and a half weeks. And earlier this week, the Lord—I think it was the Holy Spirit—put it on my heart, I wonder if there’s any Telugu audio Bibles I can take. Well, I found that there are, and I’m going to be taking a whole boatload of audio Bibles in for illiterate women especially, and men in these churches. They don’t have any way to hear the Word of God except when they’re able to get to church. So that’s pretty exciting.

We don’t know, but I could stay here all night, but it’s already too late, and tell you other stories of things that the Lord did. I could tell you about living in community with 10 people and what the Lord did. Ten people, not in your own family.

I’ll end it with this verse right here out of Proverbs, which the Lord made alive to me some time ago.

Proverbs 24:11-12. Deliver those who are drawn toward death, and hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, surely we did not know this, does not he who weighs the heart consider it? He who keeps your soul, does he not know it? And will he not render to each man according to his deeds?

11Deliver those who are drawn toward death, And hold back those stumbling to the slaughter. 12 If you say, “Surely we did not know this,” Does not He who weighs the hearts consider it?He who keeps your soul, does He not know it? And will He not render to each man according to his deeds? (Proverbs 24:11-12, NKJV)

Always in the back of my head is that phrase, deliver those who are drawn towards death and those stumbling to the slaughter. So by the grace of God and by the power of God, that’s what we’ll be able to do for the last 30 years of our life.

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