When Good Works Replace God’s Word: A Review of ‘Sunday Sermon’

[00:00:09] [SPEAKER UNKNOWN]:
Thanks for watching!

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]:
Good morning the bridge!
[00:01:25] How's everybody doing this morning?

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]:
It is loud in this room today.
[00:01:31] It is very loud in here.
[00:01:32] I can barely hear myself think.
[00:01:38] You got the volume up there, Tom?
[00:01:43] He's doing the feed.
[00:01:45] All right.
[00:01:56] We're just giving our sound guy a second.
[00:01:58] I think our volume is a little too low, Tom.
[00:01:59] You might want to turn the house up a little bit.
[00:02:03] Check one, two.
[00:02:03] Check one, two.
[00:02:07] Our sound system is weird.
[00:02:08] That's all right.
[00:02:08] Let's do this.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]:
Ready?

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]:
One, two, three.
[00:02:14] Where you go, I'll go.
[00:02:17] Where you stay, I'll stay.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]:
When you move, I'll move.
[00:02:23] I will follow.
[00:02:35] All your ways are good, all your ways are sure I will trust in you alone Higher than my sight, high above my life I will trust in you
[00:02:58] Where you go, I'll go.
[00:03:08] Where you stay, I'll stay.
[00:03:12] Where you move, I'll move.
[00:03:13] I will follow.
[00:03:13] Where you love, I'll love.
[00:03:14] Where you serve, I'll serve.
[00:03:15] With this life I live, I will follow.
[00:03:27] I will look for you alone, you're the one I seek, know if I will find
[00:03:50] When you go, I'll go.
[00:03:58] When you stay, I'll stay.
[00:04:00] When you move, I'll move.
[00:04:03] I will follow.
[00:04:05] When you love, I'll love.
[00:04:07] How you serve, I'll serve.
[00:04:07] In this life I live, I will follow.
[00:04:18] In you there's life everlasting In you there's freedom for my soul In you there's joy, unending joy I will follow Where you go, I'll go Where you stay, I'll stay Where you move, I'll move
[00:04:46] In this life I live, I will follow In this life I live, I will follow In this life I live, I will follow

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]:
Amen.
[00:05:48] Try it again.
[00:05:49] Now, good morning.
[00:05:51] There we go.
[00:05:54] I get to look at you guys all pretty sitting at tables again.
[00:05:57] How about that?
[00:05:59] You just get to see the most awkward version of me when you sit like this.
[00:06:02] So luckily for me today, I'm not speaking.
[00:06:06] We have a guest speaker.
[00:06:07] Our missionary is going to speak to us today.
[00:06:08] That's not your introduction.
[00:06:09] I'm just telling them.
[00:06:11] So we do have some announcements to get through.
[00:06:15] And so how about we do that?
[00:06:17] And I'll just stop being awkward.
[00:06:19] Next!
[00:06:21] Our prayer and praise cards should be in the seat backs of your chairs if you have any prayers or praise reports you can grab one of those fill it out you can put it in the offering plate or give it to Luann or Brenda on your way out and they will get those where they need to go and every Monday our prayer team will meet and pray for those needs or rejoice with you next wow look at that we don't have any more announcements today
[00:06:50] Because I read what's on the prompter, I'm going to have our ushers get ready.
[00:06:52] I know we have at least one more.
[00:06:54] On November 23rd, that is two Sundays from now, I believe, if I'm mathing right, that will be our celebration Sunday.
[00:07:03] And so on that day, we will have at least five getting baptized.
[00:07:10] We're going to dedicate three children.
[00:07:16] and then we have some others that are going to share some video testimony of what the Lord has done and it's just going to be a fantastic day and so please make plans to come be with us on November the 23rd so instead I'm going to pray for us and we will move on in our service today let's pray together
[00:07:38] God, thank you so much for this day and for this beautiful opportunity to be in your house.
[00:07:43] I just pray that your name is lifted up and glorified today.
[00:07:46] As we prepare to go back into worship and worship you through our giving, I pray that you multiply it to fit the many needs of your kingdom here in Mooresville and beyond.
[00:07:57] And I just thank you in advance for all that you're going to do.
[00:08:00] In your name I pray.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]:
Amen.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]:
I hate it when I drop my pick.
[00:08:16] So our worship team is small today, but we are mighty.
[00:08:19] Amen?
[00:08:21] That's what we do.
[00:08:21] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:08:23] Absolutely.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]:
I the Lord of sea and sky I have heard my people cry All who dwell in dark and sin My hand will save
[00:09:01] I will make the stars of night I will make their darkness bright Who will bear my light to them?
[00:09:16] Whom shall I send?
[00:09:22] Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord?
[00:09:34] I have heard you calling in the night
[00:09:41] I will go, Lord, if you lead me I will hold your people in my heart
[00:10:01] I the Lord of wind and flame I will send the poor and lame I will set a feast for them My hand will save
[00:10:23] I will provide Till their hearts be satisfied I will give my life to them Whom shall I send
[00:10:42] Here I am, Lord.
[00:10:50] Is it I, Lord?
[00:10:52] I have heard your calling in the night.
[00:11:01] I will go Lord if you lead me I will hold your people in my heart
[00:11:19] Here I am, Lord.
[00:11:25] It is I, Lord.
[00:11:28] I have heard your calling in the night.
[00:11:37] I will go Lord if you lead me I will hold your people in my heart I will hold your people in my heart

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]:
Now I know that it's been a little while since we've done this one, but I thought today might be a good day to remind us of the Bridge Mission Statement.
[00:12:18] Years and years ago, three years ago, three years ago, Pastor Dan asked me to take our mission statement and set it to music.
[00:12:25] For those of you who don't know, this is the... Slightly altered because I had to change a few things for the music.
[00:12:33] But this is what our church's mission is.
[00:12:36] This is what we're supposed to be all about.
[00:12:38] So while we sing this one together, we're going to sing it a few times so that we can get it ingrained into your memory.
[00:12:44] Don't only sing it, but think about what it is that our mission here is and how it is that you fit into that mission.
[00:12:53] One, two, three, four...

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]:
We aspire to be obedient to making our God known We live deeply in Christ Jesus
[00:13:26] Loving to all people And devoted in fellowship to all Reaching to our words We aspire to be
[00:13:56] Obedience King of God, though we be deeply in
[00:14:12] Christ Jesus Loving to all people And devoted in fellowship to all Reaching to the world Sing with me one more time
[00:14:43] We aspire to be obedient to making our God known Rooted deeply in Christ Jesus
[00:15:05] and Loving to all people and devoted in fellowship to all reaching to the world.

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER UNKNOWN]:
Amen.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]:
Some prayer requests for you today.
[00:15:55] Some of you might have heard or read on Facebook or saw the post.
[00:16:01] Lois Williams had passed away on the 6th and her funeral will be coming up on Tuesday of this week at 11 o'clock here at the church.
[00:16:15] There will be a dinner for friends and family afterwards.
[00:16:18] I'm sure some of our ladies have gotten to you today to see about what to make for that.
[00:16:24] But to be praying for the Williams family as they're processing the loss of Lois and death's never easy.
[00:16:36] And so just lift them up in your prayers.
[00:16:39] Not just until the funeral but through it too.
[00:16:42] As the funeral is a closure, just continue to lift the family up.
[00:16:48] We also want to pray for Tina Foskey and her continual efforts.
[00:16:53] It seems like we got a surprising result this week.
[00:16:57] Yeah, so that's amazing.
[00:16:59] And so keep praying for Tina and for God's work on her life in this recovery process.
[00:17:08] And then for Stephanie Key's mom, Mary, who's back in the hospital, at this time not doing so good.
[00:17:17] Doctors aren't real sure what's happening at the moment and so you just want to lift her up to the Lord and their family as they're trying to navigate these waters as well.
[00:17:30] And then for Marissa and Kaylee, Marissa took one of our teens to Fall Retreat this weekend.
[00:17:37] It's a four-hour drive north to the Virginia Nazarene Campground.
[00:17:42] And they'll be on their way home this afternoon.
[00:17:44] The last update I got last night was I lost Kaylee in a good way.
[00:17:51] So she said she's making friends and the Lord's doing some really cool things.
[00:17:58] That's amazing.
[00:17:59] And so just to say for us to send a teen to a retreat is really cool.
[00:18:05] What we feel like is the start and a launching point of our youth ministry.
[00:18:10] And so pray for their traveling as they come home this afternoon.
[00:18:16] And last but not least, pray for our speaker today and for the Lord to be upon her and then her work as well as she goes back.
[00:18:24] And she'll tell us all about that here in a little bit.
[00:18:29] That's a lot of things to pray for and there's a lot of unspoken requests out there as well today.
[00:18:33] And so with all that information, take whatever it is on your heart and lift that to the Lord as we pray together.
[00:18:41] Let's pray.
[00:18:44] Hey God, we come to you now and you've heard these requests today, yesterday, the weeks prior.
[00:18:50] God, you already know our requests weeks ahead.
[00:18:54] So God, right now I just pray that you'd be with the Williams family as they're dealing with the loss of Lois.
[00:19:00] God, I pray for their whole family and as that loss will ripple, I pray for peace and comfort, guidance, calmness, direction.
[00:19:14] God, I pray for Tina and her family as they're continuing to navigate these waters and this road to recovery.
[00:19:23] And I just pray that you continue to guide their steps, guide the doctors, and place your healing hand on her.
[00:19:30] God, we pray for Stephanie's mom, Mary, today.
[00:19:32] Right now, in this specific moment, we just ask you to lay your hands on her, heal her, let her be responsive.
[00:19:41] God, we don't know what's happening.
[00:19:43] The doctors aren't sure.
[00:19:44] So God, I just pray that You intervene.
[00:19:47] Show Yourself in a mighty way.
[00:19:50] God, I just ask for traveling mercies for Marissa and Kaylee as they head home today.
[00:19:54] And we thank You for the work that You've done, the seeds that have been planted at this retreat this weekend, and for the catalyst that this could be.
[00:20:04] I just thank you and praise you in advance for all that you're going to do.
[00:20:08] In your name I pray.
[00:20:09] Everyone said?
[00:20:11] Amen.
[00:20:12] Alright, I need our kids to come on up.
[00:20:25] Hold on.
[00:20:27] I learned.
[00:20:27] I need to mute the...
[00:20:31] Alright, on the count of three, we're going to say missions.
[00:20:49] One, two, three, missions!

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER UNKNOWN]:
Okay.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]:
Hey, Serenity.
[00:20:50] Serenity, come here.
[00:20:55] If any of our older kids are in here and want to grab a coloring sheet and crayons, Jessica has brought some of those for you.
[00:21:13] Adults, stay sitting.
[00:21:17] But if any older kids are in here and they want to grab something, you can.
[00:21:21] I can bring it to you if you want.
[00:21:26] You can come get it.
[00:21:27] And as the kids are coming to get their stuff, I'm going to go ahead and introduce our missionary speaker today.
[00:21:35] Jessica, if you want to come on up.
[00:21:36] This is Jessica Adcock, and she is a graduate of Trevecca.
[00:21:44] I don't want to spoil all her thing in the introduction, so I'll let her do the rest.
[00:21:49] But just give her another round of applause and welcome her to the bridge.

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]:
Thank you Pastor Brandon for the introduction and I will say there are some leftovers so if there are adults or teenagers who want a coloring sheet there are more and I don't mind if people come up and grab something while I'm talking.
[00:22:14] I know it's helpful to have a fidget or something to do while you're listening.
[00:22:19] So I am so excited to be with you all this morning.
[00:22:22] North Carolina is my home district.
[00:22:24] I've grown up in a North Carolina Nazarene church my entire life.
[00:22:28] Thank you, that sounds louder.
[00:22:30] And so I'm so excited to be able to travel across North Carolina through my home state to be able to share with you all about Armenia and what God is doing there and what I am being called to do there.
[00:22:43] I invite you all to pray with me.
[00:22:47] Holy Spirit fall afresh on me.
[00:22:49] Holy Spirit fall afresh on me.
[00:22:54] Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
[00:22:59] Holy Spirit fall afresh on us.
[00:23:02] Amen.
[00:23:04] I want you to imagine with me, you're at the dentist, you're sitting in the dental chair, you've got your mouth open, the dental hygienist is doing their work, and they ask you, have you ever thought about being a missionary?
[00:23:21] That was not the question that I was expecting.
[00:23:23] I was ready for the, when's the last time you flossed question.
[00:23:28] But that was me in the dentist chair in the summer of 2017.
[00:23:32] I've been wrestling with God for almost a year at that point, trying to figure out what it was that God was calling me to, where it was that God was leading me.
[00:23:43] And when I think about call stories in the Bible, Samuel's is one that comes to mind.
[00:23:49] When he heard a voice calling him in the night, he made assumptions about who it was that was calling him.
[00:23:55] He had his life figured out.
[00:23:58] He was promised to God as a Nazirite, and he was serving and training to be a priest in a temple.
[00:24:05] But God was calling him to something more, and it was the chief priest of that temple, Eli, who helped him to understand that it was God who was calling him.
[00:24:15] So that dental hygienist in the summer of 2017 was my Eli, the person who helped to say out loud for me what I was struggling to hear from God.
[00:24:24] And it was sitting in the dentist chair that I first said, OK, God, I'm listening.
[00:24:30] and we can go to the next slide later that summer I went on a short work and witness trip and even though for a lot of that trip I felt horribly sick because of allergies and even though the group of kids that I was assigned was very chaotic and if you looked closer to that photo you could probably see the panic in my eyes it was during that trip that I said out loud for the first time that I felt a call to long-term mission
[00:24:56] And so, I was an undergrad at the time, and part of my response to that call was to transfer schools, and that's how I ended up at Tribeca, where I could study a degree focused on ministry and intercultural work.
[00:25:10] And during that time, I served as a mission intern in Ukraine for three months.
[00:25:15] And that was a significant time for me as it helped to continue to solidify that this was what God was calling me to and that I could do the work.
[00:25:23] I could spend those longer amounts of time away from home in another country.
[00:25:28] That trip also helped to confirm for me that my call still involved working with kids, and that it placed a particular connection on my heart to the former Soviet Union.
[00:25:39] So after I graduated from Trebekka, I knew that I wanted to go on a longer term trip, both to continue to assure myself that this was something I could do, because yes, I continued to struggle with doubt, even as God continued to make paths open for me and to support me.
[00:25:56] but also to kind of test my education and to see where I felt like I might need more experience or education.
[00:26:03] So I wanted to return to the former Soviet Union and eventually that led me to Armenia, a country that admittedly I had never really heard of until someone offered me the opportunity to go there as a sponsored or volunteer missionary for the Nazarene Church.
[00:26:20] And I was only supposed to be there for about a year, but through me being pretty frugal with my funds and also money miraculously appearing in my account, I was able to extend my time by six months.
[00:26:31] So I arrived in February of 2021 and left in August of 2022.
[00:26:36] So we've got the map on the screen.
[00:26:40] Can anyone name or guess what some of us will say on the map for a bit?
[00:26:43] Can anyone name the countries that border Armenia?
[00:26:46] If we can go back to the map for a second.
[00:26:49] Anyone have an idea of what countries border Armenia?
[00:26:52] I know it's hard to see on this map.
[00:26:55] Armenia is a very small country.
[00:26:57] It is smaller than Maryland, which is already one of our smallest states.
[00:27:03] Any bordering countries?
[00:27:04] Anyone want to have a guess?
[00:27:06] It does not border Russia, but it is close.
[00:27:10] It's not border Ukraine either.
[00:27:11] So the bordering countries are Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, and Iran.
[00:27:18] It's a very small border with Iran.
[00:27:21] So again, it's a very small country, but it's also a very old country.
[00:27:24] They had their own alphabet created around 405 AD, and it was the first country to claim Christianity as its national religion.
[00:27:35] So Armenians are Christians.
[00:27:37] They have their Armenian Apostolic Church and if they are born in Armenia, they see themselves as Christians and belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church.
[00:27:46] So go to the next slide now.
[00:27:47] Armenia is a beautiful country, but also with a long history.
[00:27:52] In 1915 Armenians experienced a genocide where around a million Armenians were killed and even more fled throughout the world to different countries and so the image on the top left is of the Armenian Genocide Memorial and it's kind of hard to see in this picture but in the center of all of those flowers is an eternal flame and then all around you see those flowers every year on April 24th Armenians will travel to this memorial and lay a flower down around that eternal flame
[00:28:20] But what you don't see in this memorial is that to get to this eternal flame, you have to walk on this long, winding, uphill path.
[00:28:29] And that is intentional.
[00:28:30] It is so people, as they come to this memorial, they remember the long, hard path the Armenians went on as they fled from this genocide.
[00:28:37] Armenia also continues to have a tense relationship with bordering country Azerbaijan and in 2023 around 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled from an area called Artsakh that was controlled by Azerbaijan into Armenia and I'll share more a little bit later about the Nazarene Church's response to that crisis.
[00:28:58] The image on the top right is of Mount Ararat, which in the Bible, that's the mountain that is said for Noah's Ark to have landed on.
[00:29:05] And you can kind of see really small, there's a monastery there called Chorvirap.
[00:29:11] And that monastery, the view you get of the mountain from there is like the most famous view of this mountain.
[00:29:17] It's very popular in a lot of Armenian imagery.
[00:29:19] Two of my items actually on this table have that image.
[00:29:23] The mountain itself is not in Armenia's borders, but it's a very significant part of Armenian culture and identity because you see the mountain almost anywhere within the country.
[00:29:35] I also have a picture on here.
[00:29:36] Do any of the kids who grabbed a coloring sheet recognize that bottom left image?
[00:29:41] It may not have been grabbed.
[00:29:43] Oh, I see one.
[00:29:43] Can you tell me what the middle word is, the word with a C?
[00:29:49] Cascade.
[00:29:50] So this is the Cascade, or they just pronounce it as Cascade.
[00:29:54] And it's just a really cool structure.
[00:29:55] This is in the capital city, Yerevan, and it's in the city center.
[00:29:59] And it's just this beautiful place.
[00:30:00] It has lots of artwork.
[00:30:02] There are a lot of steps to get to the top, or there's an escalator inside.
[00:30:05] And it's just a really cool space of artwork within the center of the capital city.
[00:30:11] Also on this screen, we can see the Armenian alphabet.
[00:30:15] And I think some of the kids might have a coloring sheet of that alphabet.
[00:30:19] There are 39 letters in the Armenian alphabet, which is a lot more than we have in our English alphabet, which means there are lots of sounds in it that I struggled to learn.
[00:30:30] It has two different guttural sounds, which is really fun because I already struggled to make one guttural sound.
[00:30:37] And then you asked me to make a second one that sounds different from the first, and my throat starts to hurt when I try to practice it.
[00:30:43] There are also these sounds, but there's a couple of ones that are different, and they describe it as sounds with breath and without breath.
[00:30:50] So an example is, they have a T sound that goes , they also have it without breath, so it's a , but there's also a or a D sound, and I struggle to make the difference between the two.
[00:31:01] I struggle to hear the difference between the two.
[00:31:04] They also have the same with the P sound.
[00:31:06] I was only able to have about two months of time to learn the language in a formal setting when I was in Armenia previously, but I'm really excited that when I go back as a global or long-term missionary, there will be more of an emphasis put on me to learn the language and I'll have more time to practice and study.
[00:31:31] but I have been trying to review my Armenian as I prepare to return so we are going to practice an Armenian word together and it's an important word it's the word for thank you but it also can kind of help to continue to demonstrate my struggle with learning this new language so I'm going to say the word first and then I invite you to say the word back to me and again this is the word for thank you so
[00:32:00] I hear the huh.
[00:32:02] That was me too.
[00:32:03] When I heard that word for the first time, I was like, say it again.
[00:32:06] So I'll say it again for you, and I'll try and slow it down a little bit more.
[00:32:10] Yeah, I heard something that was closer.
[00:32:18] That was better.
[00:32:18] But here is some good news.
[00:32:21] You can also just say merci.
[00:32:25] I don't know how French ended up in Armenia, that's a thing I should probably research, but people will use that especially in more informal settings.
[00:32:33] It's a lot easier and faster to say than Shnurah Galutzion.
[00:32:38] We'll go to the next slide.
[00:32:39] I want to share with you a story before I go into the work that I did in Armenia that helps to demonstrate the amazing people that I got to know and work with during my time there.
[00:32:49] So about two months into my time in Armenia, I got sick and I had to be hospitalized.
[00:32:56] And by the day I was told I had to stay for a third night, I was really struggling.
[00:33:01] I was lonely, I was still not feeling well, I was tired of being in this hospital,
[00:33:06] I was tired of being fed soup.
[00:33:08] I was so sick of eating soup.
[00:33:10] And I really wanted to take a shower, but the room I was in the first two nights didn't have a shower.
[00:33:16] And so I reached out for help, and three young women from the church responded.
[00:33:20] They brought me a crisis care kit, which maybe at some point your church has helped to pack
[00:33:24] These kits to send.
[00:33:26] They brought me a crisis care kit that had everything I needed to be able to shower.
[00:33:30] And I was moved into a room where I could have a shower.
[00:33:32] And they brought me a smoothie.
[00:33:34] And I was so excited to have this cold smoothie to drink.
[00:33:39] And after I'd showered and after they scoured the entire hospital looking for a hair dryer, they insisted on towel drying my hair for me because they didn't want me to sit with wet hair.
[00:33:50] They also had one of them sneak out and buy me a pair of socks so that I had clean socks to wear.
[00:33:56] Now, I didn't know these women very well.
[00:33:58] I'd only been in the country for two months, right?
[00:34:01] And actually, one of those women, that day was the first day I'd ever met her.
[00:34:05] But they were so ready and willing to step in to help, to come and sit with me, and they turned one of my worst days of my time in Armenia into one of my favorite memories.
[00:34:15] We'll go to the next slide.
[00:34:17] So I've mentioned already that the capital city of Armenia is Yerevan, and that is where I spent most of my time when I was in Armenia previously, and it is where I will spend most of my time when I return.
[00:34:29] But while I was there, the Nazarene Church had four churches in Armenia, so in the city of Yerevan, but also in Maralik, Akhryan, and Gyumri.
[00:34:37] And so these are just two examples of sanctuaries in Armenia and the Nazarene Church.
[00:34:42] So the one on the left is of the Yerevan Church.
[00:34:45] And you can kind of see like some plants on one of the chairs.
[00:34:48] And the person in the front is wearing a crown.
[00:34:50] So that was actually from Easter Sunday.
[00:34:52] And on Easter Sunday, it is tradition for Armenians to have crowns made out of that plant to wear as part of the Easter celebration.
[00:35:00] And the image on the right is of the sanctuary of our church in Ahrian, which is a village about a three-hour drive from Yerevan.
[00:35:08] So we'll go to the next slide.
[00:35:10] I mentioned already that I worked mostly with the Yerevan Church, and that work began with me helping with their Kids Club program.
[00:35:17] Now the Kids Club program occurs in almost every church in the Eurasia North field, which is most of the former Soviet Union.
[00:35:24] So every Nazarene church most likely will have a Kids Club program.
[00:35:28] It's often even how churches begin, is by starting with that Kids program.
[00:35:32] So in Yerevan, the program would start on Saturday mornings,
[00:35:35] Kids from the community would come, they would have worship, they would split into age groups for Bible study, and then they would rotate through different stations like crafts, games, logic puzzles, or geography.
[00:35:47] And so when I came, they asked me to help by making one of those stations an English class.
[00:35:52] So I would have 30 minutes with different age levels of kids and try to do something with English.
[00:35:58] And I knew that when they start second grade, the kids are having English class in school, and so I focused more on just having learning English be fun and getting them to speak.
[00:36:07] So we would have songs that we would sing, we'd have games that we would do, just trying to encourage them to speak English.
[00:36:13] We also did some fun programs during Kids Club.
[00:36:16] There's a picture of a Lego ministry that came in.
[00:36:18] There's a picture of a skit that we did during Advent season, and I am dressed as one of the wise men.
[00:36:24] I also learned of what is my new favorite holiday through the Kids Club program, and that is Jovanes Tumanyan's birthday.
[00:36:33] So Hovhannes Toumanian, this is a picture of him on this book.
[00:36:36] He's a very famous author in Armenia, a very significant author for the country.
[00:36:40] And so on his birthday, to celebrate, people will exchange books.
[00:36:45] I love reading, and so I was like, wait, a holiday where the whole point is giving me books?
[00:36:50] Sign me up, I'm moving here the rest of my life, I love it.
[00:36:53] So we had all the kids and volunteers were randomly given a name of someone in Kids Club and on the Saturday closest to his birthday, we exchanged books.
[00:37:02] So the kid who got my name knew the assignment and got me a book in English.
[00:37:07] But one of the teen volunteers said, I want you to get to know Hovhannes Tuminyan's work.
[00:37:12] So I was like, I would love to as well.
[00:37:14] That's great.
[00:37:14] So she gives me this book, which is a book of his poems in Armenian.
[00:37:20] and maybe in 10 more years I will be able to read this and learn of Hovhannes Tuminyan's works.
[00:37:26] So we'll go to the next slide.
[00:37:28] So I started with teaching English in Kids Club and then I began getting requests for me to teach English during the week.
[00:37:35] So these became hour-long lessons.
[00:37:37] They were a bit more intensive, more focused.
[00:37:39] and so it started with an English class for kids from the kids club program and then I began to teach teenagers from the church and I would have like a higher level English class and a lower level English class and then I began to teach adults or parents of the kids club kids and then for a while I also taught an English class for Cuban refugees who found our church
[00:37:59] Because the pastor of the Yerevan Church was from Costa Rica and spoke Spanish.
[00:38:04] And so I really enjoyed teaching these classes because it gave me opportunities to get to know these kids, teens, and adults better.
[00:38:10] And it also meant that I could have some of my teenagers practice translating.
[00:38:15] I would have those higher level teenagers come into those other classrooms and help to translate for me.
[00:38:20] So they also got experience in translation.
[00:38:23] And it also mentioned that there was a bit more crossover between Kids Club and the church.
[00:38:27] So typically there wasn't a lot of crossover between Kids Club families and families that came to church on Sunday.
[00:38:33] But through me getting to know these kids and parents better, those parents who had come to English classes, who sent their kids to Kids Club, some of them began to attend church on Sunday as well.
[00:38:43] And I want to tell one quick story about teaching English class.
[00:38:47] So I had a class one day, and one of the kids, she's trying to remember what a word means, and she puts her head in her hand and says, I'm a chicken.
[00:38:57] And I said, you're a what?
[00:39:01] She said, I'm a chicken.
[00:39:04] Why are you a chicken?
[00:39:06] She explains that in Armenian, there is a phrase, Hav Em, that literally translates to mean, I am a chicken, but they use this phrase to mean, I can't remember, I have forgotten something, sometimes to mean, I am stupid.
[00:39:20] So I then had to explain to her, in the US in English, if you call someone a chicken, there's a much different meaning, right?
[00:39:27] It means someone is afraid or a coward.
[00:39:30] And these idioms, these phrases that make absolutely no sense outside of the cultural knowledge are some of my favorite things to learn because they can be so silly.
[00:39:38] What do you mean I'm a chicken?
[00:39:40] How does that connect to not remembering something?
[00:39:43] So I completely scrapped my lesson plan for the next week and instead brought in a list of idioms or phrases in English and first had them try and figure out the literal meaning of those phrases and then try to guess and figure out what the idiom or that actual more symbolic meaning of the phrase was.
[00:39:59] They can't guess it, because again, it just does not make sense.
[00:40:02] But it was a really fun lesson and a really fun thing to learn in other languages.
[00:40:07] So we'll go to the next slide.
[00:40:08] During the summer, I had the opportunity to lead a Bible study for the teenagers in the church, as well as to offer game days for a more casual setting, and including casuals and meeting in my apartment.
[00:40:21] So that image on the left is inside of my apartment.
[00:40:25] And these are really cool because again, it helped me to get to know the teens better.
[00:40:29] We had a lot of really good conversations.
[00:40:31] You know, one time I accidentally made a kid bleed while playing a game with them because I'm competitive.
[00:40:36] But they were really great times and some of my favorite people from my time in Armenia are in these images.
[00:40:43] We'll go to the next slide.
[00:40:44] Also during the summer, we had Vacation Bible School.
[00:40:48] And I got to have four weeks of Vacation Bible School.
[00:40:53] And any of you that have ever helped to lead or volunteer with DBS know how exhausted I was at the end of four weeks of Vacation Bible School.
[00:41:01] But it was actually really great because I was traveling to each of our four churches in Armenia and helping them with their program.
[00:41:08] So I got to meet more people in our church, got to see new places in the country,
[00:41:12] and I would stay in the church building when I was outside of Yerevan.
[00:41:16] So it was a really good opportunity to get to know people because I'm just in the church building and people are just going to come in and start talking and hanging out.
[00:41:23] So I got to know people, got to practice my Armenian a little bit more and also had lots of time to just get more work done for the next day of VBS.
[00:41:32] It was also really cool to see the different ways that the churches would run their BBS program.
[00:41:37] We all had the same program that we were using, the same lessons, but churches would have different crafts that they would do, they would have different games they would play, some even had different stations they would put the kids through.
[00:41:48] So it was really cool to see how each church used the materials they had to be able to put this program on for the kids in their community.
[00:41:55] It's also awesome to see how many teen volunteers there were at every single church in Armenia.
[00:42:02] So these are also teens who began to know the church through the Kids Club program.
[00:42:07] So it's really cool to see how the kids don't just disappear after they age out of that program, but they're continuing to stay connected to the church by joining the teen program and then being really involved in the church by volunteering with things like VBS or also volunteering with the Kids Club program they just recently aged out of.
[00:42:26] So we can go to the next slide.
[00:42:28] I absolutely loved my time in Armenia.
[00:42:31] And amazing things were happening.
[00:42:32] I got to see what God was doing in the country.
[00:42:35] So while I was there, two women were ordained into the Church of the Nazarene.
[00:42:40] And as far as we know throughout history, they were the first women ever to be ordained into any church or denomination in Armenia.
[00:42:47] So I got to be there for this part of history.
[00:42:49] which is really cool and I love and adore both of those women also just a cool fun fact the general superintendent who ordained these women his name is Dr. Busick he's also the person that ordained my father so it's kind of cool to have that connection there as well I also know that at least one more woman has been ordained into the church since the time that I left
[00:43:10] But since I left Armenia, even more things are happening.
[00:43:13] So I mentioned earlier the Artsakh Armenians that fled from Azerbaijan in 2023, and the church responded.
[00:43:20] They raised funds for the Nazarene church to be able to provide crisis materials like blankets and food packs.
[00:43:26] And they also offered a tutoring program at the Yerevan Church for kids to come to be able to help them get up to the level of schooling in Yerevan.
[00:43:34] And I actually visited Armenia for a couple of weeks last year in May, so I was able to come and help with the tutoring for English for a couple of days.
[00:43:42] And it was really great to come visit and just jump back in to doing ministry with the church there.
[00:43:48] We'll go to the next slide.
[00:43:49] So I mentioned earlier that while I was in Armenia, we had four Nazarene churches.
[00:43:54] We now have five Nazarene churches in Armenia.
[00:43:58] A new church opened in a city called Sevan, which is about a 45-minute drive from Yerevan.
[00:44:05] And for a while, this church would just meet in an apartment building, and it was a pretty small group.
[00:44:10] But actually, just two weeks ago now, I think it was the last weekend in October,
[00:44:16] We first began to meet in this new building.
[00:44:20] So we have received permission to rent this old Soviet school building.
[00:44:25] And so a couple weeks ago, the teens met for the first time.
[00:44:28] They went from having two to four teens come to the apartment.
[00:44:31] They had 26 teenagers.
[00:44:33] And this is really exciting.
[00:44:44] It has taken us years to be able to officially start this church in Savan.
[00:44:49] We would have times where we would offer a kids program and it would allow us to use a school building and then years and we were refused.
[00:44:55] Thank you for watching!
[00:45:11] Church planting has been a major emphasis in the last few years for the Eurasian Northfield, which again encompasses most of the former Soviet Union.
[00:45:20] And earlier this year in the summer, leaders from across the Eurasian Northfield met in Armenia to have a church planting conference and retreat, so to talk through that work of planting churches and to support each other in that work.
[00:45:32] And so the top right image, the one that's a bit brighter, is actually on the third floor of the Yerevan Church building, and that is many of our church leaders across Eurasia Northfield.
[00:45:42] We'll go to the next slide.
[00:45:43] I am so excited that I get to return to Armenia.
[00:45:48] One of the things I'll be focused on is to help with the communications team for the Eurasia North field.
[00:45:54] And so I'll be working to gather stories from local people in each of those countries and to bring them up to be able to share with the global church what God is doing
[00:46:03] In each of those places and so the last weekend in September I actually traveled to Croatia for a long weekend to join the regional Eurasia region communications team meeting so I got to meet that entire broad team and to hear more about what God was doing across the entire Eurasia region so lots of stories of amazing things happening.
[00:46:22] I also just have a little shout out for someone that I know very well from the Yerevan Church.
[00:46:27] She is now a young adult and she wrote an article for the Eurasia region about VBS this past summer in Armenia and that was then picked up by Nazarene News which is the global
[00:46:39] I'm just really proud of her and so there's a screenshot on the screen of the article that she wrote again about VBS in Armenia.
[00:46:55] This is also my time to say a plug while we're talking about communications so that I would love to stay in contact with you so I have a couple of ways that you can do that you can first just kind of manually write your name down and your email on this piece of paper and I will add you into my mailing list or you can take one of my prayer cards there's a QR code and a link to my missionary profile page and on there there's a button follow to click and then you could just type in
[00:47:21] Your name and email.
[00:47:22] And my goal is to send monthly newsletters out.
[00:47:25] If I don't send a newsletter out for a whole month, my email is on this card and you can email me and yell at me to send an update and I might need that reminder occasionally.
[00:47:34] We'll go to the next slide.
[00:47:38] Also, sorry, I have lost my pages.
[00:47:40] Yes.
[00:47:41] So my main focus when I return to Armenia will be to work with a team to plant a second church in the city of Yerevan.
[00:47:50] So you already have a church there, but it's a very large city.
[00:47:53] It hosts one-third of the population of Armenia.
[00:47:56] and we already have church members who travel over an hour to get to church every Sunday and so the hope is that I can live in the same community or neighborhood as those church members and we work together to develop a new church community in that place and likely we'll start that work by offering things like kids club or English classes or other things that we can offer to meet the needs of that community
[00:48:18] I mentioned earlier that Armenians are Christians.
[00:48:20] They have their Armenian Apostolic Church.
[00:48:23] And so why does the Church of the Nazarene want to plant new churches?
[00:48:27] We are focused on building Christ-like disciples, people whose lives are transformed by the love of Christ and their relationship with Christ.
[00:48:35] Our Nazarene churches in Armenia are also places where people are supported by a church family that loves and cares for them.
[00:48:42] So I want to share one more story with you about someone that I got to meet in Armenia, and we'll call her Armine.
[00:48:48] She originally lived with her family in another country, but after the murder of her husband and father-in-law, she fled with her three young children into Armenia.
[00:48:56] She struggled to raise her kids in a new country while also mourning the loss of her husband, and she became depressed.
[00:49:04] A friend connected her with the Nazarene church in Yerevan, and as she connected with them and received support from them, she began to recover.
[00:49:13] She encountered Christ and felt God's presence.
[00:49:16] She began attending the church with her children and eventually began working for the church herself.
[00:49:21] She, in turn, was able to share Christ's love with others, including myself, and to tell the story of how her life was transformed by her connection to Christ through the church of the Nazarene.
[00:49:32] We believe that everyone should live in community with people that love and care for them, who will be with them through hard times.
[00:49:39] Armine's story demonstrates how the Church of the Nazarene can be that community for people as we work to live faithfully as disciples of Christ.
[00:49:47] But we can't do it alone.
[00:49:49] I can't do it alone.
[00:49:51] I'll be working with a team in Armenia, but I also need your support, people and churches like you who can partner with me in this work.
[00:49:58] Your partnership can help us build a church community where people's lives are transformed through the hope and love of Jesus.
[00:50:06] You can partner with me through prayer.
[00:50:07] For me, those I'll be working with, and for Armenia.
[00:50:11] Some of the items on my table, this poster and this wooden block, as well as this mug, have the names or faces of some of the people in Yerevan.
[00:50:18] I invite you to lay your hand over them to pray for the people that are represented by those items.
[00:50:24] I also want to invite you to consider partnering with me financially, whether through one-time giving or through monthly giving.
[00:50:30] And monthly giving, which can be done, again, through that QR code or link on my card, is really helpful for me because it can help to provide stability for me, as I hope to do this for the long term.
[00:50:41] I also recently found out that I will be North Carolina's Lynx missionary for the next two years, and so that is another way for us to continue to stay in contact and be partners in the work of this mission.
[00:50:53] Christ calls us to make disciples of all nations.
[00:50:57] That work is being done in Armenia as strong communities of faith are developed and strengthened.
[00:51:03] Your partnership helps us to continue that work as our team strives to develop a new faith community in Yerevan.
[00:51:10] Thank you for partnering with me in that work.
[00:51:13] Thank you.

[00:51:24] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]:
So what I said, and I'm not sure if you said, is you're from this district, and your dad pastors the Norwood Church.
[00:51:33] So, I mean, she's close, right?
[00:51:35] And so it was an honor when Donna Sisk, our district and my president, sent out, hey, we have a local missionary that has some dates available.
[00:51:45] I wanted to jump right on that.
[00:51:47] One, support local.
[00:51:49] But two, it is just amazing to see
[00:51:55] I've been in the church a long time.
[00:51:56] I'm young at 36 years old, but I keep hearing missionaries aren't like they used to be or there's just not as many.
[00:52:02] This is a 25 year old missionary that's given her life to the Lord to work and do amazing things.
[00:52:07] And I wanted to...
[00:52:08] Yes, yes, absolutely.
[00:52:13] And so I wanted to take this opportunity to give her the platform to say, hey, the Lord's still moving.
[00:52:20] And that's good for me to hear from missionaries, if I can be open and honest with you.
[00:52:24] Even as a pastor, sometimes I'm narrow-minded when it comes to God.
[00:52:30] I rarely think of what's happening somewhere else, if I can be completely honest with you.
[00:52:35] So it's so cool to hear her say, hey, there were four churches, now there's five.
[00:52:40] God's still doing things in places that I never even think about or know existed, right?
[00:52:46] And so I just think that's amazing.
[00:52:49] And it's a reminder to me to not just put God in the box of things that I know, but open it up and open my mind up to a bigger God.
[00:53:00] and a Greater God and a Winning God.
[00:53:04] Right?
[00:53:04] And so, as she mentioned, there are ways to support her.
[00:53:08] We're going to take a love offering today if we have any ushers that can get ready.
[00:53:14] If you write a check today, just make it out to the church and the church will then send it all in one place.
[00:53:21] So if our worship team wants to come on up,
[00:53:28] And I'll have them play and we'll do our love offering.
[00:53:32] But as they do, as our ushers are getting ready, our worship team is getting ready, I want to take this time to say a prayer for Jessica and her ministry and what the Lord's doing.
[00:53:42] So if you'll join me in praying for her.
[00:53:45] Let's pray together.
[00:53:46] Hey God, I just thank you so much for Jessica and her life and her ministry and her accepting the calling you've placed on her life.
[00:53:55] I just ask that as she goes back that she's on a mission, literally and figuratively, for you.
[00:54:03] And that everything that she does is for you and the lives that are impacted, God, may there be an eternal difference made.
[00:54:11] Thank you so much for those that are willing to step out of their comfort zone to go to places they didn't even know existed and make your name is glorified and lifted high.
[00:54:22] God, we just thank you in advance for all that you're going to do.
[00:54:26] It's your name I pray.
[00:54:27] Amen.
[00:54:29] Thank you.

[00:54:36] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_05]:
Spirit of the living God Fall fresh on me Spirit of the living God
[00:55:01] Fresh on me Melt me, mold me Fill me, use me
[00:55:23] Spirit of the living God, All flesh on Thee,
[00:55:39] Spirit of the living God, All fresh on Thee,
[00:55:55] Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me Melt me, mold me, fill me
[00:56:27] Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me.

[00:56:58] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_03]:
Don't forget, we are going to have a meal here in a moment.
[00:57:03] Jessica, we want you to go first through that of course.
[00:57:07] but after you get your plate or if you don't like to stand in lines and want to do something beforehand come check out the things on her table her card write your name down pray over these items take a look at them and and then talk to her and learn how to speak the language that's your your goals for this afternoon but we're going to pray for the meal thank you so much to those that prepared it and set it up and so let's just pray now
[00:57:35] Hey God, again we come to you now.
[00:57:36] We just thank you so much for all you've done and all you'll continue to do.
[00:57:40] I just pray that as we move to this time to eat, just pray, God, that the food just helps nourish our body, give us strength and energy.
[00:57:50] Thanks to all those that prepared it and set everything up.
[00:57:54] Again, we thank you for Jessica and her willingness to serve you.