Poland and Uganda Report

Good morning. We're going to set aside a loop just for today. I'm going to talk some about the trip to Poland and Uganda. And anyway, I just want to mention this glory to His name, there's in the first verse and in the chorus each, there was, there to my heart was the blood of Clyde. You know how kids sometimes don't hear things exactly as they are? My mom admitted to me at one point in time that she thought it was, there to my heart was the blood of Clyde. So, at any rate, I'm not sure quite what sense that makes, but it made sense to her for a time.

So anyway, we will be the setting aside our study of Luke today just to report on the recent trip to Poland and Uganda and So we'll talk about you know, I went from here to Poland and then down to Uganda and then back so here's Poland in the middle of Europe including Eastern Europe and You have excuse me, Germany is kind of right off to the west there from Poland and I was in this city of Słowacki.

And that's in south-central Poland in an area where there's actually quite a few people speaking Czech and German as well. So it's an interesting kind of mixture of cultures there. They even have their own language some people would speak. My translator was Janusz Kopitek, and how this got started is Janusz and I went over several different lessons and passages and things like that electronically.

He actually is from this area originally. He escaped from behind the Iron Curtain only to have the curtain lifted a few years later. And he now lives in Frankfurt, but maintains contact with these people in Poland. So he was my translator. And once I went through several different lessons with him, he says, you must come to Poland and teach these. They don't have these teachings there.

And so you may say, well, how did I get in touch with this fellow? It's from his friend of Eleszka, whom many of you have met last year, just a little over a year ago. And so at any rate, that's how the connection was made. Once there, there were several elders at the church there. This is Andrzej Kukielka. And if you can just say Andrew, that'll probably work. But at any rate, so he was one of the elders, and he, with Janusz, greeted me at the airport. This is Andrzej and Agnieszka Kukielka's home. This is their home.

It was built under communism and so it looks very drab. The outside of the home is probably not had anything done to it since back in the 50s when it was built under communism. Interestingly enough, the houses here, this one is half the responsibility of the owners inside and half the responsibility of the city. So it doesn't get any treatment. If you look across the street, however, there's a house that's nicely painted. That's 100% private owned, right? So there's the difference between communism and the private ownership.

All right, so Christoph, Golubyalski was another one of the elders that was there, and then Marek Handrysek is another one of the elders that were present, and then Tadeusz Morosek was a fellow, he's not an elder there, but he's a teacher, teaches there from time to time, and so as I talked to him, very interesting, Tadeusz Morosek remembers going to hear Ray Steadman in the late 1970s. Ray Steadman was a pastor at Peninsula Bible Church where I did most of my growing up years. That's the place where Nancy and I were married. But anyway, in the late 70s he went to Poland and actually it was amazing they had the liberty to do so, but that was still behind the Iron Curtain. So anyway, he remembered that and he had talked to several of the other elders about that.

So here is the front of the church, not fancy. It has been painted, however, which the rest of the building has not. So here's the Suero Cloizi Berea Brethren Church. And this is an old, it's converted from a butcher shop. So that's the church building. Here is inside. This is not at a time when everybody's, you know, gathered at the table during break time, which is really the only times I got a chance to go and take pictures because I was too busy teaching. But at any rate, so this is the inside.

What was real interesting is you've heard about the Syrian refugees. I actually got to meet one and talk to him and he actually spoke pretty fair English and was from the Church of the Nazarene, if you can imagine that. in Syria. So at any rate, he was there in attendance for part of this. They did have a Ryrie Study Bible there, but this on the left is your usual Bible, and it's scriptures holy. Scriptures holy is what that's saying.

So, topics and passages that we covered there. I was there speaking from Friday night until Tuesday night. I taught all day Saturday and all day Sunday. And then Friday and then Monday and Tuesday were just evening times. Identification truths is the first thing we taught. I did that Friday night and Monday night. Elders and deacons, and that was basically a Saturday. much of the day Saturday. Marriage was Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon into the evening. So many hours of time.

Sunday morning, Romans 6, 1 through 11. I went through that. Of course, everything is translated into Polish, both orally and what's in writing. That kind of slows the process down a little bit, and you've got to break at certain points in order to give some time for the translation.

Doctrinal unity in the body of Christ was the last thing that I taught on Tuesday night. So those five subjects, and what's interesting, these are all topics and passages in which there was no prior teaching in this church body before this time. So there was just nothing. on marriage.

Now, one thing, they had a tough time coming out from underneath communism. Plus, in Poland, the Roman Catholic Church is very heavily expressed there. And so, for instance, this church here is the first church in this city that is not Catholic. And it's only been there for eight years, in the entire history of the city. And it's only been there for eight years. The population in Poland is four-tenths of one percent Evangelical Christian. So a very small group of people.

Because these topics and passages were new to everyone there, I could go back and present those again with some more explanation and application and it would be good. Because while everything was well received, it was all completely brand new. There was no background in these things at all. So the identification truce looks like this, right?

So you've got the English there up top and the Polish underneath it, or in the case of the text down below, English left, Polish on the right. So I'm going, and what was really puzzling is when I would say something fairly brief, And then Janusz would go on for a paragraph, you know. And what that was is something where their language or their culture has something quite different. Example, I'll make reference to a definite article, right, talking about the, right, in English. And Polish has no articles, so they have to explain what this thing is that they don't have any of, right? So it's differences in the language.

And there's another place I'll talk about, you know, anyway, it's differences in the culture, the way it's perceived. Here is the chart that you may recognize from time to time. showing the identification truths. We've been identified with Christ as death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. Those five things. And so with the Polish in there. And what's interesting is they got the W's and Z's in there. And yes, it does sound like a W and a Z. So yeah, it's interesting to kind of hear how that comes off. Being united with Christ ends up being a whole lot longer. when it's said.

Here also, for example, is Romans 6.3 and Galatians 3.27, where we have, Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?

And then Romans 3.27, For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

And then so I went on to explain then that baptism was not just baptism like we often think of it with Christian baptism, but they had use of the word in, for example, dyeing cloth using either Murex shells, about 10,000 of them per ounce, And then a crimson worm was another alternative for dyeing. And so you would baptize the cloth in the dye. That was what they would understand as baptism. Another example that I gave was a sword being heat treated, where they'd take the sword after it's the shape they want it, they'd make it white hot and then plunge it into a vat of water in order to end up with a hardened end product.

So anyway, we explained those things and got those across. We also talked about being in Adam and what that meant, and that when Adam and Eve sinned, that we, before we believed, had Adam's history. So we went into that. We also explained that the believer was in Adam before believing, and he was separated from Christ and joined to...

Now here's where it's interesting. We talk about the sin or the sin nature, they don't have any articles, right? So you just have to drop out the article. So we talk about being joined to the sin nature, the principle of law, and the world. So now, another subject we talked about, this is on Saturday, God's word on elders.

They had never had anybody teach on what does the Bible say about elders. And of course, here's an elder-run church, but even the fellow who started that church and converted the butcher shop into a church. He'd only been a Christian less than a decade, and he'd never seen, here's how an elder-run church runs, right? He'd never seen that growing up, so this was all fresh material to them.

I also came on the heels of another larger evangelical church, that had just had a big moral failure, a youth pastor getting involved with one of the girls in the youth group. And that church was particularly prideful, apparently, until this big collapse.

So anyway, this was very welcome material, especially in view of that. On elders, this material is the material that Hal and I worked on back in 2002. and put together. We've made it available from time to time. It is a part of the Policies and Procedures Manual. It's that material.

It's basically, here's what the Bible says about, you know, elders and, to a lesser extent, deacons. So we taught on that, and the three things is character qualifications. What are the character qualifications required for an elder? What is the description of ministry of an elder? And what are the operating guidelines? That is, what are elders to do and not to do, right? So what are the operating guidelines?

Those three things, and while we present them quickly here in the bullets, it essentially took a number of pages to do that, at the end of which we also asked some questions and answered those. Now, then we also had the marriage material. And what's interesting is the identification truths and elders, we had some people come to those. The marriage seminar was packed out. And especially a lot of ladies came to that one. So that one was very well received, although I'll have to explain that. I wasn't so sure what was going on. So we had the marriage seminar, and of course some of the things were a little easier to present. Here's Nancy and I, we were married. As a matter of fact, later this month, it'll be 42 years ago. And explaining who I am, where I'm coming from.

Now, so here's Ephesians 5.21-33, and you of course can recognize that, right? Yeah.

So, at any rate, that's the way it's presented. That's the passage that we first looked at here. And, of course, we want to keep everybody's sense of humor going, so we said, you know, men are represented in an electrical panel like this, right? And, of course, you see that label on there, men, right? But, however, women in an electrical panel are represented by this. So we explained that and everybody got that.

Then we went on to explain that the first part of Ephesians 5, 18 through 22, and we kind of stepped our way through it, But the translations often break it up such that it looks like you've got a separate section, and it says, you know, wives submit to your husbands, and it looks like it's a command, when in fact it's not.

We've said that be filled is the command, and there are five actions that happen in the body of Christ as a result of being filled. And one is speaking to one another, psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, like we just did, right? Next, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord, and then giving thanks, and the last one is in being subject to one another in the fear of Christ, wives to your own husbands, as to the Lord. This is the structure of the Greek, and then we carry that across in parallel with the Polish.

Then you can see, of course, that this is the four kinds of love that Ephesians 5, 25-32 describes. And verse 25 then, it talks about sacrificial love. And then verses 26 and 27, sanctifying love, a spiritual care of the husband for the wife. And then a caring love, caring for physical and emotional needs is verses 28 to 30. And then 31 and 32 is bonded love, physical intimacy. So these are the four kinds of love that we presented there. And so again, this is all brand new stuff.

These people are just kind of blinking. Marriages in general in Poland are in a bad way. And here's one of the reasons why. With Roman Catholicism being so prominent, the tendency then is to have a matriarchal home. And so the women are actually leading and directing the home. And so to have a man come and say, no, the man's going to lead, there's no example for how to do that easily. And so a lot of marriages are quite strained. And to try to do things differently than the general culture is also difficult.

Nonetheless, we presented this. We even gave the example of the relationship between Christ and the Church as the model for the husband and wife, which is used throughout that passage in Ephesians 5. And we explained this from our marriage seminar material. Biblical marriage places a high value on spiritual intimacy, and first the husband and wife have their relationship with the Lord as number one, and then their intimacy with one another, and then the children outside that, and then work, church, and other is outside of that.

And getting these things mixed up is not a good idea, right? It's to keep them in their properly biblical order. Then we switched, and this was on Sunday afternoon, to going through 1 Peter 3, 1 through 4, and verse 7. Peter's very interesting in that whereas Paul has most of his focus on the husband and what the husband does, Peter, on the other hand, has most of the focus on the wife. So they're good complementary passages. And one of the things we said, of course, is understanding women can be, you know, a bit of a challenge. But we said, there's comfort.

You only have to understand one woman, right? Just one, right? So 1 Peter 3, 7, there we said, you only have to understand that one woman, just her, and what the Bible says about the marriage relationship. Those two things. Now, I use the example of Hassan and Juliet because we went through with Hassan and Juliet, which I'll be talking about more in a minute, and Hassan and Juliet, as we're going through the pre-marriage counseling, You know, it's a standard American joke, you know, who can understand a woman he said they laughed They said we say that over here who can understand a woman, you know, I said doesn't matter what the culture is It's just that that's the way it is So anyway, we'll be talking more about us on and Juliet in a little bit here Sunday morning I taught on Romans 6 1 through 11 and And then they had their worship team. This is the worship team. They started with In Christ Alone. So that's one that we'd be familiar with.

They included Amazing Grace, about the second or third song in. Then there were several I didn't recognize, but they finished off with My Life is in You, Lord. Of course, it was all in Polish, so I couldn't sing along without causing confusion, right? So I just hummed.

So anyway, Yanush and I went through Romans 6, 1-11 and talked through that. Let's reuse this kind of graphic to help demonstrate the point of being in Adam and in Christ and the contrasts and differences there. We went through and presented the identification truths again because there were those who were there that Sunday morning who had not been at earlier sessions. Now, we finished up there in Poland with doctrinal unity in the body of Christ, and so it went like this. We had the English, and I'd read a little portion of it, maybe make some comments and whatnot, and then Janusz would then go through with the Polish, and so we started off in that one with Romans 15, 5, and 6, and of course he presented that in Polish.

Now, so anyway, this was, I think, a very useful time when I was at the Katowice Airport, which is a nearby airport, and Andrew was saying goodbye. He said, thank you for coming, and please come again. So now here's one of the things we'll talk about in a little bit. Every time at the end of a teaching session, I would say, any questions? You know how many hands I got raised? Zero. Absolutely none. And I thought, oh no. But it's in their culture, you just don't ask questions. So I shouldn't even ask, right? You don't ask questions. Because that makes you look stupid, I guess.

Anyway, it was very well received and he invited me back again. Interesting, I had a stopover going from there to Uganda at Doha, Qatar. I met Ron and Ellen Ritchie, missionaries to Indonesia. I got talking to them, so that was very interesting. Indonesia is a largely Muslim country, and it can be very difficult to be a Christian there. That's a place where they burn churches.

So anyway, I went then to Uganda, here in the heart of East Africa, and Entebbe is the airport there, so landed there, and then went through Kampala, which by the way, the traffic there is getting incredible. It just was phenomenally more backed up and congested than it was even four years ago when I was over there.

Went from there along Lake Victoria, and then went out into the wilds, you know. By the way, I never saw any wild animals like that, but anyway, especially none on stilts. But then I ended up in M'Bale, okay? And by the way, it's M'Bale, not M'Bale. That's something else. Something about women's underwear or something. So anyway, it's M'Bale, okay?

And then, so I ended up there, and then it's a, In the area that I've been to several times before, out in the villages and whatnot, I stayed at the Mount Elgon Hotel. Last visit I stayed at a house, but this time worked out I needed to stay at the Mount Elgon Hotel. And nonetheless, had contact with Ida and Morris Ogenga. Some of you may remember Ida stayed with Nancy and myself. And initially, we were just moving into our house. So Phil and Sue Ellen helped out with Ida and their daughter Winnie. Daughter Winnie, by the way, is going through nursing school.

And then I spent a lot of time with Glenn Sandy. Glenn Sandy is a friend of Hassan. We're trying to get it so that he can come over here to the U.S., similar to what Hassan did. And anyway, he and Hassan have known each other for at least a decade and a half, and they're good friends.

I also, and this was a nice surprise, ran into Peter and Rosemary Palermo. They've been there in Uganda for the last six months. I think by this last week they've gone. So he's been just kind of checking out a lot of different things and giving them some recommendations on how to do things. So there are lots of changes in the way things are being done. largely as a result of his and her efforts. Now I also saw Hassan shortly after arriving, and this is Hassan out in his village. We'll take a look at that shortly here.

And then Sunday morning, I taught and boy was it something. Sunday morning I taught and it was, let's see here, yeah there we go. This was the same church where Hassan and Juliet were married. By the way, Hassan and Juliet's wedding ceremony is three hours long. Woo! At any rate, so the same place.

I taught two services to a packed out church each time. Previously, when I was over there, it was only one service. Now it's two, and they're both just packed out full. I taught the first one starting at 8 o'clock, Galatians 5, 16 through 18. That was all in English, so the whole service is in English.

And then at 10 a.m., I taught just Galatians 5.16 in English because I couldn't teach the whole thing because it was translated into Luganda. So every time I said something, it had to be, you know, I had to stop and have it translated. So I ended up teaching from 8 a.m. to a little afternoon most of that time.

So it was really something. So then, We went over to Morris and Ida's house, and here is Hassan and Juliet, who have now been married for four years and some months, with their kids Anita, Adrian, and Alvy. So if you like names that start with A, you've got it, right? So at any rate, and they're doing, by the way, very well.

Now, then after lunch, we went up to see Hassan's village. This is where Hassan was raised. He grew up and where he and his family have lived for the last couple of years. So this is on the way to Naujo. This is the business district right here. When we got up there, here is Hassan's motorcycle. given as a gift from Holly Hills that he used to go to towns and villages in the area to teach people what he learned while at Holly Hills. He's currently teaching our material to about 45 different people and distributed throughout surrounding towns and villages. So he's teaching them, meeting with them weekly and teaching them.

Now, I have this up here because Hassan and Juliet together have another ministry aside from Hassan going around and teaching different ones. This is because we went through our pre-marriage counseling material with Hassan and Juliet and so Hassan and Juliet are now the designated couple to do all the pre-marriage counseling for all the churches in that circle of churches. And the way they do it is they get to be the best man and the maid of honor at every wedding. And so this Sunday afternoon, Hassan took me out to this village and he says, I've got to take you back because I have to come back and we have three appointments for pre-marriage counseling this evening. So anyway, they are busy with this, and at times they'll have things right on top of one another. We've got to go from this wedding to this wedding to that kind of thing. So between the two, they're very busy. But you see that smile on Juliet? I never saw it otherwise. She is very happy.

Now, so here's Hassan in front of the children's ministry building. Does that look like a children's ministry building? That's what it is. There's a children's ministry building the church just constructed. Hassan's house is right behind that building. That's where he lives. It's right on the church property.

Here's Hassan and his father and sorry the glare on the Sun makes it look like his father's missing part of his head so Apologize for that, but here's Hassan and his father Adrian and Anita Then Hassan took me over to the church building which is only a very short stroll Inside and so here's a shot inside.

Here's Hassan who is a deacon at the Naujo Bible Church there and Adrian, his son, then Dr. Isaac, who is an elder, he's a medical doctor, and so right in the middle of our meeting he gets this call and he says, sorry, I gotta run, you know. So at any rate, and then there's Hankson, who is a deacon, who I got to see over the next several days, and then Dixon, who is a deacon, and Hassan's brother is over on the right there. So in This church, they have four elders, and you see one of them there, one who came later, but I didn't get a photo of his guy by the name of Titus. So I met two of the elders there. And then Hassan and his brother are two of the four deacons. There's also a pastor who I met later named Willis. So they've got, you know, the pastor and four elders and the four deacons.

Now, so here's another shot in front of Hassan's house. So here's Annette, the wife of Dixon, Hassan's brother, and then Dixon, Hassan's brother, right? And then Juliet, and always smiling, just always smiling. Anyway, and then Juliet and Zita, the wife of Dr. Isaac, and there's a child whose name is unknown. Grace is holding Alvi, their youngest one, and then Anita and Adrian in front of Hassan.

And so anyway, and that's their house. Now I show this picture here, because it's about the best I've got. This is in Naujo, and you see the little mud brick walls there. But there's something below the picture, and that's when it was time for Hassan to take me back.

He first was going to go and just take me, and his two older kids, Adrian and Anita, just melted. The thought that they would go without being between Daddy and the Muzungu was just more than they could handle. And so to sit between Daddy and the Muzungu, that was just very special.

So anyway, they were exceedingly happy when they were told, yes, you can come. So then the next day, I taught at Covenant Bible Institute of Theology. We started at 8 o'clock. And I was at the invitation of Boaz Mungau. He and his wife are up there. Boaz is the head. I mentioned earlier Glenn Sandy. Glenn Sandy is the registrar, works with and works under Boaz.

And then the door off to the left side there, that's the entrance into the room that we were in there for our time of Monday and Tuesday going through things. So here's inside as the students are filing in. This is not with everybody present at all. The room was a lot more full than this, but at least gives you an idea of what that's like inside.

So once everybody's in, Hasan then gets up to ask the CBIT students if it's okay, do they give permission for him to bring the people in that he has invited. He invited the elders and the deacons of his church and a number of those 45 people that he has been teaching to come in and listen in along with the students that are at that school.

And one of the things we would do is we'd start every session with a hymn. We'd go through different hymns, and of course Amazing Grace was one of them, different hymns. And so we'd start it with a hymn, and that did several good things. One is it let everybody know we're getting started, and it was a good way to just kind of get focused together and also just kind of enjoy fellowship and worship together and not just have a, here's another lecture, right?

So they asked me to go through how we got the Bible. I actually gave Boaz nine different choices for things I could teach. Which one would you like? So how we got the Bible was one of the subjects that we went through that had been used out of our church history material and even out of our defense of the faith material. We said that there are four links from God to us, inspiration, canonization, that is recognizing those books that are inspired, the transmission, to have the documents transmitted and preserved, and then finally the translation.

Something interesting, I explained to him how a lot of the New Testament letters were written on papyrus. Well, in Uganda they grow papyrus. And so this picture is actually from Uganda, where they'll grow whole fields full of this papyrus. So when you talk about it, they know exactly what you're talking about. And that was another point that I made with them. There are lots of things in Uganda that they can relate to, to the biblical account, example. They care about tribes. What tribe are you from? That matters to them. That mattered to the Jews.

Also, who carries the water? The women carry the water. So when Jesus had the disciples identify the place where they were going to have the last supper, he said, look for a man carrying water. Because you never see that, right? or rarely see that. So you find a man carrying water, he's the guy that's going to show you we're going to have the last supper, right? So there were things like that, including this papyrus, where I could say, you know, this relates to your culture. Take advantage of that as you teach.

And so we went through that. I was also asked to talk about elders and the qualifications for elders. And so we went through that. We spent quite a bit of time in that. And then the thing was, boy, there were lots of questions. So we went through the same kinds of things we went through with the people in Poland. I also went through the slides of our trip to Israel earlier this year, and they found that real interesting because the chance for any of them to go to Israel is pretty slim, but to actually have close-up pictures and talk about how it fits with the Bible was a really great thing with them. Here's, for example, the Garden of Gethsemane. This is the place. This is exactly where it is. Now, some interesting comparisons and contrasts.

Both in Uganda and Poland, there was a great need for teaching on marriage. In the past, the last three times I've been there, I've taught on marriage. I didn't teach on marriage this time, but fortunately, Hasan is able to do that. So that's an area where there's great need.

Imagine a culture in which the girls can get married as young as age 12, Imagine a culture where it's okay, it's legal, to have up to four wives. Juliet, Hassan's wife, is from a three-wife household. She is one of more than 30 siblings, only she's lost count. So to give you some idea, in that kind of a culture, teaching on marriage is critical, and you've got to look at what's biblical, because what the culture does is pretty crazy.

It's pretty nuts. In both places, they ask for some intensive teachings on elders and deacons. In both places, even if you have elders, They don't really have any background on it. They don't have any teaching on it. In Uganda particularly, here's the way a church gets started up. You go in and you build this building, which is usually funded by the Mzungus, the whites.

And so you build the building. You bring in a pastor who's been trained at this pastor school I was teaching at. And then you have an evangelistic campaign in that little village and surrounding villages. And then from those, you pick elders and deacons. So they're all brand new. They're all new believers. And so that's the typical way churches are started up.

So to have some intensive teaching is really helpful. They haven't had that at all. And so, a previous time when I taught on elders and deacons, I had a guy stop me in the street and said, you taught us about elders, and you taught us, and he went down the line and he had it all memorized. And so when they do get some teaching and you go through it, they know it. This visit, I went to teach at the church and I went outside for just a minute and there was a guy there that I saw and I said, hey, you taught us about the four kinds of love in Ephesians 5. And I hadn't seen him for four years. So really amazing. They do remember this stuff. While there are lots of differences between the saints in Poland and Uganda, in Poland, when we ask if there are any questions, none. In Uganda, the questions keep coming and coming and coming and coming and coming.

I had one question and answer session that went on for two hours, just solid, with questions like, what do you do if he wants to cut the head off of chickens and she's a believer? Weird questions like that. They cut the heads off of chickens in the pagan culture to stimulate the spirits to give them a baby name. which is a pagan custom. So questions like that for two hours. What if a man doesn't want to love all of his wives? Things like that. So the questions keep coming.

So it's an amazing difference between the two cultures, but well-received in both places. Now here are some things I could ask for you to pray about. One is praying for wisdom about further involvement with these churches. What and when. The needs are great. The door is open. You know, I live in Aurora, you know. So anyway, it's one of those things where there's more than you can really take on. Pray for the elders of the church at Suero Cluetzi and for their marriages.

In one case, the wife, who has a full-time job, The wife didn't come to the first study, and in fact I didn't meet her until the weekend came when she had a day off. We went over to their house to have lunch and dinner every day, and at lunchtime I said, thank you, that was very good. She was at every study after that and she went and cancelled her work days the next two days of the time I was there because men just don't do that in Poland. To say thank you and that was very good was just mind-boggling to her. So it gives you an idea.

There's a lot of need there. Pray for Janusz Kopitek as he goes to Szwedowice, Poland. He's been invited to go back there and teach maybe about once every couple of months. They don't really have anybody full-time that's committed to it, so the teaching kind of gets rotated. So pray for Janusz, he was phenomenal and he actually he worked really really really hard more than I did during this time because he was doing all the written translation, you've seen some samples of it, all the written translation and then doing all the oral translation as I was teaching. So he was busy just constantly and even staying up late at night in order to do a lot of the material translation, that kind of thing. So, pray for Janusz. There's some opportunity there, as well as some stressors. And also, he lives in Germany, and so it's a matter of him traveling there to go do that.

Pray for Hassan and Juliet as he teaches what we taught him when he was here. And they counsel together with couples. This pre-marriage counseling actually gets fairly intense at times, because you'll have kind of a cluster of couples who need to be counseled, and then their role as best man and maid of honor. So, at any rate, if you can pray for them as well.

And also pray for Glenn Sandy. On Tuesday, he's got a third appointment to get his U.S. visa to come here as Hassan did. So, he's been turned down twice. So, anyway, we'll be praying for that. So, with that, let's pray. Lord, we thank you just for the opportunities you graciously laid before us and we do pray for the elders at the church at Sveta Kloitsi and we pray for their marriages. We do also bring before you Hassan and Juliet and the ministry that you've given him and them with couples in their circle of churches. We pray for Janusz as he goes to Sveta Kloitsi at intervals to teach. And we pray for Glen Sandy and his appointment at the U.S. Embassy there in Uganda. And we look to you in these things and entrust them to you. We just give you thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.