Jesus 4 Asia Now

The Work in Assam, India

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Jon & Natalie Wood

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Series Code: JFAN

Program Code: JFAN000028A


00:21 Hello, and welcome to Jesus for Asia Now.
00:24 I'm Natalie Wood and I have my husband Jon
00:26 here with me today.
00:27 Hello, love. Hi, darling, how are you?
00:29 Doing great.
00:30 Today we want to talk about your recent trip
00:32 to Assam state in India.
00:35 It's an amazing state.
00:36 We've had Bible workers there for over seven years
00:39 and yet I've never visited
00:41 because it's just so far out of the way.
00:43 And so we went up there
00:44 and visited some of our Bible workers,
00:46 not all of them could get there because it's such a large state
00:49 and it's not just a big state geographically
00:52 but getting from one place to another takes a lot of time.
00:56 Some of the Bible workers that came and visited us
00:58 and you'll see their pictures later,
00:59 they traveled 12 hours and they were the closer ones.
01:05 Let's show our viewers the map,
01:06 so they get an idea of what you're talking about.
01:08 Yeah, in this map we're looking at the big picture of the globe
01:11 on this side of the world, there's India in the center,
01:14 Southeast Asia on the right, Africa, Arabia on the left.
01:18 And as we zoom in, you'll notice,
01:20 India is kind of unique in that
01:21 one little piece goes up and over Bangladesh
01:24 and it's very narrow in certain parts there
01:27 but you go past Bangladesh
01:29 and you've got several states over there,
01:31 like seven states
01:32 and Assam is this big state in the middle.
01:35 And, but it's a big state
01:37 and not only is it big geographically
01:39 but it has, it takes a long time
01:40 to travel from one place to the other
01:42 because the transportation is slow.
01:45 And so some of our Bible... And are roads not good either?
01:48 Roads aren't very good, the trains are slow.
01:50 So some of our Bible workers, it took 12 hours to come
01:53 to the central place to have the meeting.
01:55 Then we flew into a town called Guwahati.
01:57 Okay. Say that again?
01:58 Guwahati.
01:59 Very good, you got a talent with languages,
02:03 but it took me a while to figure out
02:05 Guwaha, Guwaha what?
02:07 Yeah.
02:08 So that's the capital of Assam.
02:10 In that capital we have the headquarters
02:12 of the work for that state.
02:14 Okay, so let's do some statistics real quick.
02:16 Okay.
02:17 'Cause I know they're kind of overwhelming.
02:19 Yes.
02:20 And so then we'll talk about other things,
02:22 but how many people live in Assam total?
02:25 I am told 32.8 million people.
02:29 Okay.
02:30 So it's about 10% of the United States.
02:33 Population size. In population size, yes.
02:35 Okay.
02:36 And how many Adventist pastors are there?
02:39 There are four.
02:42 Four pastors? Four pastors.
02:44 Okay, so four pastors?
02:45 Yeah, and if we had the same number of pastors per capita
02:49 as we do in the States they should have 400 pastors
02:53 but right now they have four.
02:54 They have one in upper Assam,
02:57 two in the middle in the central Assam,
02:59 one of them is the ministerial secretary
03:01 and then one in lower Assam.
03:04 Okay.
03:05 So there's four and then...
03:07 Four pastors and there is a secretary,
03:10 office secretary and that's it.
03:14 Thankfully some ministries have stepped in
03:16 and have provided some more Bible workers for them.
03:20 Okay. JFA has 33 Bible workers.
03:22 Okay.
03:23 Other ministries provide 21 Bible workers.
03:26 So between JFA's Bible workers
03:29 and other ministries Bible workers,
03:30 so it's 53 Bible workers,
03:33 four pastors for 33 million people.
03:37 That's not a very good ratio.
03:39 It's hard not to cry
03:41 when I talk about those numbers.
03:44 Yeah and thinking that, you know, those are numbers,
03:46 but they're real people.
03:48 Real people with real names and God is living with them,
03:52 He woke up, I mean, He saw them wake up this morning,
03:55 He sees them go to sleep tonight,
03:57 He walks with them,
03:58 carries their burdens with them,
04:01 and He looks across the world looking for His kids
04:06 who have all the light, and all the knowledge,
04:07 and all the truth, and they're not there.
04:13 They're not there with those people
04:14 that they don't even know that the truth exists.
04:17 They don't even know that good news exists in the world.
04:21 Then the flipside of that
04:23 is that this is a huge opportunity.
04:25 Right and that's where we're gonna go from here.
04:27 Yes.
04:28 We want to talk about the opportunity,
04:30 and we want to share a little bit about
04:32 what's being done right now.
04:33 Yeah.
04:34 So let's start out with bananas.
04:38 We're talking about Bible workers today
04:40 and you give me a picture of bananas.
04:42 Well, a lot of times we kind of forget that
04:44 this is a physical world that we live in and we travel.
04:47 As we travel we deal with new things,
04:50 and exciting things, and challenging things...
04:52 Different things.
04:53 You know, it's not just pushup button
04:55 and make this work, there's effort involved,
04:58 there's sacrifice involved, and there's pleasures involved.
05:01 And one of the pleasures is these ugly bananas.
05:04 Ugly bananas, okay.
05:06 The ugliest, most hideous bananas I've ever seen.
05:08 They are really sweet. Yeah, they look like...
05:09 They got eaten by something.
05:11 Yeah, but you open them up
05:12 and they're just really wonderful bananas,
05:14 great flavor. Okay.
05:16 I'm not going to say they're my most
05:17 favorite bananas in the world, but they come close.
05:19 Okay, that's good to know.
05:20 By the time I got, you know, used to,
05:22 you know, seeing that skin I was like,
05:25 "Oh can I have some..."
05:26 I eat three or four in a meal. Okay.
05:29 And the next picture
05:30 is the Assam region office sign.
05:33 Yeah, so this is the sign right in front of the offices,
05:36 and the next picture will be the offices.
05:38 As you can see on the left, we've got the offices
05:41 and straight ahead the yellowish building
05:43 that's the church and then in the back
05:45 there's the living quarters
05:47 for the ministerial secretary and his family.
05:49 Okay.
05:51 This is the group they came to meet us the first day
05:54 and this isn't all of our Bible workers,
05:56 these are the ones that are closest.
05:59 But the ministerial secretary is on my right,
06:02 so the viewers left in the blue shirt
06:04 sitting next to him is his wife in the pink shirt.
06:07 And then to my left,
06:09 to the viewer's right is Israel Prasad,
06:10 our JFA India director,
06:13 and next to him is the office secretary.
06:15 We got to know them pretty well,
06:17 just loved the food, loved the people,
06:19 really enjoyed it up there.
06:21 Planning to go back.
06:22 In fact one of my dreams is to buy some motorcycles
06:25 and travel around Assam
06:27 because Assam is a beautiful place,
06:28 and you'll see this coming up in some of these pictures
06:30 as we travel through the countryside.
06:32 The first day though we spent,
06:35 had a meeting with the Bible workers,
06:36 encouraged them and also gave out some books.
06:39 Okay.
06:40 And we've got a video about that.
06:41 Yes. Shall we roll that now?
06:43 Absolutely. All right. Here we go.
07:00 This is Acts of the Apostles.
07:12 Today, we're in the northeast corner of India
07:15 in a little state called Assam,
07:17 and we have 33 Bible workers in the state,
07:20 and we've called several of them here.
07:23 Several of them had to come five hours on a train,
07:26 but the good news is that today we get to give out books.
07:33 It's not often that we come to a place
07:35 that has a bunch of books in stock
07:37 and we're excited about this.
07:39 This is the steps to Christ in Assamese.
07:44 And then this is Voice of Prophecy
07:48 study lessons,
07:50 so they can give these out to their study interest.
07:53 This is the Desire of Ages, you know the Desire of Ages,
07:56 look how thick this is.
08:00 I can't tell how many pages there are,
08:01 but it's over a thousand pages,
08:04 can't read it, it's in Assamese.
08:06 This one is a really good book.
08:11 I think it's the devotional,
08:15 daily devotional book from Mrs. White.
08:18 This one is Patriarchs and Prophets,
08:21 really awesome book for people
08:23 to learn about creation of the world
08:25 and everything and The Great Controversy.
08:28 So these books, each one of our Bible workers
08:30 is gonna ten of each of these books.
08:33 So they're gonna go home with the whole,
08:35 I don't know how they're gonna get it home honestly,
08:36 but when we asked them if they wanted to,
08:38 they were really excited.
08:40 I'm sure that these are, these books are hard to find.
08:42 I know many, many pastors that are asking for one,
08:46 our Bible workers, they're asking
08:47 for just one book,
08:48 and thank you to a donor who made this possible,
08:52 and we're gonna do this throughout all of India
08:55 and we're really excited.
08:56 If you want to get aboard and join,
08:58 there's other countries that need these books as well.
09:00 Some languages they're just now starting to translate
09:04 and print some of these books,
09:05 and many of the Ellen White books
09:06 are not in the local languages
09:09 and so there's a lot of work
09:10 to be done on the side of the book,
09:12 the book they're printing, publishing,
09:14 and this is really exciting
09:15 because this is gonna be source material
09:18 to go into their sermons, to go into their Bible studies,
09:20 to go into their understanding of who Christ is.
09:22 So we praise God today here in Assam
09:26 in Northeast corner of India.
10:55 Our Bible workers just left with all their books.
10:59 Many of them have six hours, some of them have
11:02 overnight travel to get back home
11:05 where they're supposed to be.
11:06 And then on Thursday we've got more Bible workers coming,
11:10 we're gonna give them more books.
11:15 Wow, they looked burdened, but they also looked happy...
11:19 Yeah.
11:20 That they would now have more materials to share.
11:22 Yes, that's right. So...
11:24 And so, it's amazing to see the kind of effort
11:26 that they put into carrying these books,
11:28 'cause a lot of them had many hours to go,
11:32 getting on the bus and however else they travel,
11:34 I don't know, train, whatever but it's not,
11:37 it wasn't an easy task for them to do.
11:39 Yeah. But they did it.
11:40 So then the next day you got to go traveling,
11:44 but there was a little bit of a mishap
11:47 at the beginning of the day.
11:48 Well, we were supposed to get going about
11:50 5 o'clock in the morning,
11:51 and so we got up and we took cold showers
11:53 and went downstairs,
11:56 and they had one of these sliding doors,
11:58 you know, like the garage doors that roll up
12:01 and they paddle locked it from the outside
12:04 so we were stuck in our hotel, we couldn't leave.
12:07 So we made all kinds of noise and finally the guy woke up
12:10 and he came over and unlocked and let us out.
12:13 And we were going to the nearest,
12:15 the absolute nearest Bible worker
12:16 that we could get to and that was like
12:18 three hours drive.
12:19 Wow. Three or four hours drive.
12:21 So we have to... How many miles was that?
12:23 It's only like a 120 kilometers,
12:24 so like 70 miles.
12:26 It just took a long time because we had to drive slow
12:29 because of the roads and the different things
12:31 that you see out on the roads and stuff like that.
12:33 Sometimes you run in,
12:34 like for instance here's the taxi stand...
12:37 Okay.
12:38 This is a bunch of taxis
12:39 waiting to take people on their rides.
12:41 You can see they're not gonna move real fast.
12:42 Where is the engine? The engine is absent right now.
12:45 It's a front engine vehicle.
12:48 We ran into heavy traffic.
12:50 Elephant.
12:53 Yeah. That is quite heavy actually.
12:55 Heavy foot traffic,
12:57 but as we go through the country
12:59 we see different things like this picture here.
13:02 I don't know what that is standing up,
13:03 it's either really tall weed
13:05 or maybe bamboo or sorghum, I don't know...
13:09 Yeah some... Tapioca...
13:10 Some sort of grain it looks like.
13:11 Yeah, maybe.
13:12 Maybe it's like hay bales, I don't know.
13:14 You know, what this does to me
13:15 is it makes me want to come back,
13:17 figure out... To find out more.
13:18 There's things in the world that I don't understand,
13:22 and so that traveling kind of puts that bug
13:25 in me to come back
13:26 and especially when we have people that are,
13:30 you know, committed to Christ.
13:32 Wherever you go, there's that bond,
13:34 there's that connection and so we have family.
13:36 And our viewing audience that are believers
13:39 has family on the other side of the world.
13:42 I just don't know them yet.
13:43 Not yet. Right.
13:45 That's one of the reasons we're such advocates
13:47 for foreign missions because it is our family,
13:50 you know, there's a scripture that says,
13:52 our own flesh is the term
13:54 that's used our own flesh and that's...
13:55 It's Isaiah 58.
13:56 Right, and that's the connection.
14:00 Yes.
14:00 You know, it doesn't matter who they are,
14:02 they are our own flesh.
14:03 Yeah.
14:05 There's one statement that I saw recently that said
14:07 that travel is dangerous to narrow mindedness,
14:12 selfishness, you know, greed, all these things,
14:16 and that's what we have seen when people come
14:19 and see other parts of the world.
14:22 You get a bigger picture, and can you imagine
14:25 how Christ must feel being,
14:28 you know, He wakes up with these people,
14:30 He, but He doesn't sleep
14:32 but He sees them wake up every day,
14:35 He sees them go through their day,
14:37 He sees them go to bed at night,
14:38 and He sees them living in darkness,
14:42 living without any concept that there is a loving
14:45 that they have a loving father that cares for them, no clue.
14:50 And then He, God looks over the corner
14:52 over the curve of the earth and sees
14:55 people that are, you know,
14:57 imbued and surrounded with the truth and light...
15:02 The light and truth.
15:03 The gospel, and so He sees these people here
15:06 and those people there,
15:07 and He's like if I could just get them together,
15:10 if I could just bring them over here, so these people...
15:11 So ones that know share.
15:13 Yeah, and there's another, you know, in the past
15:16 we used to put bumper stickers on our cars
15:18 but now we put like names,
15:20 bumper sticker on our Facebook page...
15:22 Yeah.
15:23 Yeah, and one of them said God,
15:26 God's, we are God's plan A for reaching the world,
15:31 He has no plan B. And that's true.
15:35 God's plan, His only plan for reaching the world is
15:38 through His Church and people say,
15:40 "Well, God's gonna, if we don't do it
15:41 then God will have another way."
15:44 And I don't, I mean that may be true in the long run
15:49 in the very end, God may bring in angels,
15:51 it's not prophesied that He's going to bring in angels,
15:53 it's prophesied that He's gonna have a people
15:55 that follow Him whithersoever the Lamb take it them.
15:58 Yeah, wherever the Lamb goes.
16:00 In other words, they're not going to be tied down
16:01 to anything, any personal considerations like
16:06 maybe they have a good job.
16:09 Well, I can't leave my good job, you know,
16:11 who will support, no, that's not a consideration anymore.
16:13 The only consideration
16:14 they have is where's the Lamb going.
16:17 Where does God want me? Exactly.
16:19 And you know God wants people where the need is the greatest,
16:23 that's where God is.
16:24 That's where He's feeling the most pain, you know,
16:27 because if it's not, we have this like cushion between us
16:31 and the people that are suffering in silence.
16:35 The people that, you know,
16:36 don't know that they have a heavenly Father,
16:38 there's a cushion because we don't see them every day.
16:40 There's no cushion between them and Christ.
16:42 Christ feels their pain,
16:44 and He longs to relieve that pain,
16:47 and He's happy when His kids help Him.
16:49 Right.
16:50 'Cause relieving those kids' pain,
16:53 relieves His pain.
16:55 Yeah, so as we travel we see more and more of God's kids
16:59 and our heart breaks for all these kids.
17:03 You know, like we said earlier, 32.8 million people,
17:08 four pastors.
17:09 Yeah. Thirty three JFA Bible workers.
17:11 And most of those people haven't had the opportunity
17:13 to hear the gospel yet.
17:14 Oh, no, no. Absolutely no.
17:16 So they're like unripe harvest and...
17:20 Yeah, it's awesome. Right.
17:22 So let's get back to your trip. Okay.
17:24 It's a beautiful country.
17:26 So it's very green and tropical there.
17:27 Yes.
17:28 Other parts of India are not like that.
17:30 No, not in the south, it's very desert.
17:33 But up here it's very tropical, very beautiful.
17:34 Okay.
17:36 And we had a little bit of a spy.
17:41 All right, so the next picture.
17:43 Beautiful flowers again, tropical paradise up there,
17:46 beautiful scenery, here's a river.
17:49 Now the vegetation blew me away.
17:51 This leaf, this is a really big leaf.
17:53 Yeah.
17:54 I don't know if it's edible,
17:55 but that would feed several people
17:57 but if it's not, you can still stand under it during a...
18:00 You know, use it for an umbrella.
18:01 Yeah.
18:03 And then we found a church out there,
18:05 one of our Bible workers is taking care of this church.
18:08 Then we kept going
18:09 and came to one of our Bible worker's houses.
18:11 There's two buildings there, the closest building,
18:13 the green one is the church.
18:14 And the one behind it is his house.
18:18 Okay. He has a special story on this.
18:20 This is our Bible worker who owns that property.
18:23 Many years ago he was part of a faith community,
18:25 they worshipped on Sunday and in a different town,
18:29 and for some reason somehow he got a hold of a tract
18:33 that talked about the seventh day
18:35 being on Sabbath.
18:36 Oh, okay.
18:37 Or the Sabbath being on the seventh day, Saturday.
18:39 And so he did went through the Bible study
18:42 that was in that tract and he accepted that truth.
18:45 And then when he started to share with his community,
18:48 the town and the pastor there, they got very upset with him
18:53 and they got very angry with him
18:55 and he wouldn't give it up,
18:57 he wouldn't give up this truth that he was holding on to,
19:00 and so they beat him up, and they beat up his wife,
19:04 and they beat up his kids,
19:05 and then they kicked him out of his own house.
19:07 Wow.
19:08 And told him you can't live in this town anymore.
19:10 So they chased him away from his town.
19:15 And he could have just given up the Sabbath
19:17 and come back to his house, come back to his town,
19:19 but he hung on to that truth.
19:21 Right.
19:22 And so he was excommunicated
19:24 so to speak from his own village.
19:27 Thankfully the nice thing, the only nice thing
19:29 they did was they let him sell his house.
19:31 So he took the money from the sale of his house,
19:33 and he purchased this property and built that house,
19:36 and then provided the space on the side of his property
19:39 for this church to be built.
19:40 Okay. Wow.
19:43 The things some people go through to hold on to truth.
19:46 Yeah. You know, we have it so easy.
19:48 Yeah, oftentimes we do. Yeah.
19:50 And so this guy is really hanging on to the truth
19:52 and so he's a full time Bible worker now.
19:55 His wife took a picture of him giving a Bible study,
19:57 and these are some of the people
19:59 that actually drove him from his town in the beginning.
20:05 And so they saw how he didn't hold bitterness
20:07 or a grudge against them.
20:09 He had Christ like love towards them.
20:11 He stayed in contact with them.
20:13 And after many years they started to soften,
20:16 and so they started to be curious about
20:17 what he believes.
20:19 And so now he's giving Bible studies to the very people
20:22 that kicked him out for holding the faith that he has.
20:25 Wow. That's awesome.
20:28 Yeah, but you notice a thing
20:29 that's hanging on the porch right there.
20:32 Yeah. There's a closer up picture.
20:34 This is, this is like filled with pictures and it's printed
20:39 but look at the material.
20:41 Yeah, it's cloth. Yeah, this is printed on cloth.
20:45 Do you ever seen a picture roll,
20:47 or something like this, a chart printed on cloth?
20:50 No.
20:51 I've never seen that but down in the corner,
20:54 check this out, copyright 1908.
20:56 1908.
20:57 Review and Herald Publishing Association.
21:00 Wow.
21:02 This is the tool he uses to do Bible studies with.
21:04 Wow.
21:05 And he says, "Do you have any more of these?"
21:09 We've never see this. I've never seen on.
21:10 And he's like, "Do you have any friends that have these?
21:12 Can you buy these anymore?"
21:13 I'm like...
21:15 No. I'll look.
21:16 So if there's anybody in our viewing audience
21:18 that has any of these,
21:20 there's some Bible workers in Assam
21:22 that would love to get some more copies.
21:24 Yeah.
21:25 His is getting a little tattered
21:26 'cause he's been using it so much.
21:28 Wow. From 1908...
21:30 That's over a 100 years old. Wow.
21:32 And he's using it out there. Wow.
21:34 So what he's got?
21:35 Hope nobody takes it and puts it in museum.
21:38 Exactly, exactly.
21:41 So this is a gathering of some men.
21:43 One of these guys is the pastor
21:45 that actually kicked him out of his house and town.
21:47 Wow.
21:48 And that beat him,
21:49 and now they're doing Bible studies together.
21:51 Wow.
21:52 God is good, He brings things full circle.
21:54 Well, this is, this is what,
21:56 this is how the gospel goes forward often is the God
22:00 allows persecution to happen to people
22:03 so that His truth
22:05 and His character will shine forth.
22:08 And there becomes a testimony. Exactly.
22:10 And there becomes an example. Exactly.
22:12 And this shows the reality of God's presence
22:16 and His blessing on those that take hold of His truth
22:19 and value that more than family, kindred, houses...
22:23 Friends... Whatever, yeah. All these things...
22:25 Yeah, so that's a beautiful testimony.
22:27 Right.
22:29 So you didn't get to witness
22:30 these next pictures firsthand either,
22:32 but they shared them with you
22:33 because they wanted you to know what they'd been doing.
22:35 Yeah.
22:36 And so what are these pictures of?
22:38 Some of the young people that came to get the books
22:40 that was in the last video,
22:42 they gave me some pictures off of their flash drive,
22:45 and you can see they're really into evangelism.
22:49 So there's a lot of pictures of them doing evangelism,
22:51 different groups, day, night, check this out,
22:55 okay, it's raining there, you can barely see the rain
22:58 in the picture but they're under umbrellas.
23:00 Instead of going home,
23:02 they just pop out their umbrellas
23:03 and sit in the rain listening to an evangelistic series.
23:07 Wow.
23:08 And he's standing there with a microphone in his hand.
23:10 And a powered speaker. Oh.
23:13 That speaker might be powered by battery but it looks like...
23:16 But still, it's still power.
23:18 Yeah, so... He could still get a zap.
23:20 Yeah, so this group, they are on the lower Assam,
23:23 and they say that there's a lot of interest
23:25 compared to other places
23:27 and so they're just going like gangbusters.
23:28 These are the Bible workers
23:29 that have requested a projector.
23:32 Okay. Okay, so that they could show.
23:34 As you can see they're also sharing
23:36 the sanctuary message...
23:38 Right using the felt set. Yeah.
23:40 Which is nice.
23:41 And here's the team, this is a lot of the Bible workers
23:44 from different districts all gathering together
23:46 to do this evangelistic series and check out that guitar,
23:48 it's massive.
23:49 That's really big, really big.
23:52 Yeah, looks like a guitar from the Mariachi band or something.
23:55 Yeah, but at least they had music.
23:56 Yes. That's really nice.
23:58 And then, of course, the baptisms.
24:00 Right. Yeah, beautiful baptisms.
24:02 The president is the man on the left,
24:04 far left with his hand up raised.
24:06 Okay.
24:07 They are four, remember they got four pastors
24:09 in all of Assam.
24:10 The president is the man in the white shirt
24:12 in the very center.
24:14 His wife is at his left side, and all the baptismal people
24:18 that were baptized are standing behind him.
24:21 Okay, that's really neat. Yeah, just some more baptisms.
24:25 There's a lot of pictures of baptisms
24:27 with that these guys gave me, I only put a couple in here,
24:30 but with this final slide, the sunset,
24:34 you can see out across the field,
24:36 you can just barely make out the outlines of the Himalayas.
24:39 You know, this is in the north, just right next to Bhutan,
24:42 right next to Sikkim,
24:43 right across from Bhutan is China.
24:46 So we're right up there in an area
24:48 that is very resistant to the gospel.
24:51 And the more we can do in this state,
24:55 then it starts to spread,
24:57 and so our goal for Assam
24:59 is to double our work force this year.
25:02 At least. Right. At least double our workforce.
25:04 Now, it costs about $90, it used to cost $50
25:08 when we first started Jesus for Asia.
25:10 Fifty dollars a month for a Bible worker.
25:12 Right. But the cost...
25:13 And then it was $60. Yeah.
25:15 The cost of living has increased so much...
25:17 And the exchange rate has gone down.
25:20 Now it's up to $90 but still,
25:21 can you imagine living your whole family on $90 a month?
25:25 No.
25:26 I don't even know how they do it over there
25:29 but they do,
25:30 and so they for $90 a month, you can sponsor,
25:34 anybody can sponsor a full time Bible worker.
25:36 Wow. Yeah.
25:38 That's awesome. Yeah.
25:39 It's a real privilege. Right.
25:41 But not everybody can afford $90 a month.
25:43 Right. So what do they do then?
25:45 Well, if they can afford $10, then they give $10
25:48 and that adds with someone else's
25:50 $5 or $10 or whatever, and the Lord adds it up,
25:53 and it becomes $90 to sponsor one worker.
25:56 Yeah.
25:58 Now we don't actually give like,
26:00 some people when they sponsor a Bible worker
26:02 in some other ministries,
26:04 they get a picture and name
26:05 and a bio and all that kind of stuff.
26:07 Right.
26:08 We haven't chosen to do that
26:09 because of the administrative requirements
26:12 because it would make the cost of having
26:14 a Bible worker increase
26:15 so much to pay someone to keep track of them
26:18 and other people to take pictures
26:20 and whatever to get the stories and everything.
26:24 So we've chosen not to do that at this point
26:26 because of the cost increase it would cause
26:29 but 100% if someone does give $90
26:32 or when there is $90 to send,
26:34 it all goes to the Bible workers,
26:36 nothing is taken out here for administrative and...
26:40 So all the $90 if somebody gives,
26:42 none of it goes to administration.
26:44 No, not here. Not in India.
26:45 Yeah, 100% goes directly to their salary.
26:48 Right. Right. That's a good deal.
26:51 Yeah, it's awesome, and it's great to see
26:55 to be able to pay them every month, it's so awesome.
26:58 Yeah. Absolutely. I love it.
26:59 We've had many times
27:00 where we couldn't pay them full salary.
27:02 Yeah, and I thought they would leave.
27:04 And it's so heartbreaking.
27:05 Yeah, there were several years
27:07 that they were getting two-thirds of a salary
27:09 or half salary from time, it would fluctuate...
27:10 And it wasn't even a $90 salary.
27:12 Right. It was 60 at that point.
27:14 Yeah, but they stayed there
27:15 and I've asked them several times,
27:17 why did you stay?
27:19 And they said, "God first, money second."
27:22 So they got their priority straight.
27:24 Right, and God blesses them and He works with them.
27:27 Yeah. And He helps them.
27:28 Yeah. That's awesome.
27:30 It is. It is. It is beautiful.
27:33 Well, I would like to invite you...
27:35 Actually I'd like to challenge you
27:36 to be a part of their ministry by praying for them.
27:40 And if you would like to be a part financially also
27:42 of spreading the gospel through native Bible workers,
27:45 please send your tax deductible love gift to Jesus for Asia,
27:49 PO Box 1221, Collegedale, Tennessee 37315.
27:56 Call us at 423-413-7321,
28:01 or checkout our website at Jesus4asia.org.
28:05 Thank you for joining us for Jesus for Asia Now.
28:08 May God richly bless you as we work together
28:11 to prepare for Jesus' soon coming.


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Revised 2017-10-16