157: Summer Recap and Encouragement

Christ the King and the Necessity of the Local Church

To the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy.

Christ is king. You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Well, if you have been listening to the Ruled Church Podcast, it's been a while since you've heard anything other than sermons. We have taken a break. I've taken a break this summer, and I'm gonna explain more of that in this episode, but basically, the whole summer was playing sermons.

I'm encouraged that they were listened to, and I've got some feedback on that and seen the stats, so that's encouraging. Hope you found those helpful and a blessing, and if you haven't listened to them, maybe you can go back and check those out.

It's not just by me. It's our other elder, Pastor Jacob, and then a couple other brothers, faithful brothers, preaching, so hope you found that edifying. Welcome, though, today to the Ruled Church Podcast.

I'm your host, Alan Nelson. I am one of the pastors in Perryville, Arkansas at Providence Baptist Church, and we are a confessionally-reformed Baptist church, and we're just outside the big metropolis of Toadsock, so no, not really.

I mean, we really are, but you wouldn't know where Toadsock is, so what I wanna do today in this episode, hopefully it's not boring for some of you, but I want to show, or I guess I can't show you, we're on a podcast.

I want to talk about some of the things that I've been into this summer and how the Lord has blessed. It's been very encouraging, busy. I guess just I've known what the summer's gonna be like or anticipated what the summer's gonna be like for a while, but it's one of those things when you're at the end of it and you reflect on it, you're like, okay, wow, that was a really busy time.

A Summer of Travel, Ministry, and Milestones

So from June 1st to July 31st, if my calculations are correct, I spent 30 nights away from home, so basically an average of every other night I was not at home, so the trips, and I'll walk through these trips here in just a minute, but we went to El Pechote, Mexico, a little bitty town not far from Cordoba in Veracruz, the state of Veracruz, Mexico.

Then I was on vacation with my family. Then I came back and went to Chiapas, to Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas in Mexico. We traveled by car after being in Chiapas for a few days to Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico.

Then I got back from that on a Wednesday night late and turned around and the following Monday went to church camp for three nights just outside of Conway, Arkansas. So that's it, 30 nights away from home in 61 days.

That total time preached or taught, so I'm counting some of the times I taught, some of the devotions I did, a couple of Q &A sessions, but total in those 61 days I did 39 messages. I'll also count some messages I did here in Perryville.

If the calculations are correct, I traveled some 10 ,000 plus miles between Mexico and our vacation. So one thing that happened when I went to El Pechote is I got back into running a little bit better.

So in those 61 days, I ran 104 miles, ran in all sorts of places, El Pechote, Perryville, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Sturgis, South Dakota, Tensleep, Wyoming, Worland, Wyoming, Riverton, Wyoming, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico, and then ran some at Cold Springs and Conway.

So yeah, that's just a highlight. What a whirlwind. But I wanna walk through these trips and I mean, some of you listen, if you wanna just know how you can continue to pray about some of the things we have going on personally and then as a church and then some of the things I hope will be encouraging about missions and then there's some things I wanna tell you about vacation that I hope you find encouraging and maybe will result in you going out west sometime yourself.

So I'll start with, oh, and also in the midst of all that, I turned 40 years old. So I turned 40, celebrated 10 years as pastor at Providence Baptist Church and then also celebrated 20 years of ministry.

So, oh, yeah, and then on top of all that, when I got home from camp, July 31st, the next day, August, wait, was that right? Yeah, the next day, August 1st, my oldest son proposed to this young lady he's been courting and so now they are planning to get married and that will be in November.

Lord willing, Godly young lady, the daughter of a pastor friend, Mike Montgomery. I need to get Mike on the podcast. I know he listens, so if you're listening, Mike, it's your fault, he'll know what I mean.

But love you, brother, we're encouraged, but yeah, I need to get him on sometime. So let's just walk through the trips. In June, June 1st was a Monday, if I've got that right in my mind, and we traveled to Veracruz.

So one of the cool things about that flight is now there's a direct flight from Dallas to Veracruz. So we flew, or I flew from, no, sorry, Houston to Veracruz. I flew from Little Rock to Houston to Veracruz and then we drove, oh, that's maybe a couple hours from Veracruz to El Pechote.

Investing in Healthy Churches Through Missions

What we're doing there is we've been working with this church, or the organization firm, Fellowship of International Reform Missions, which consists of three churches in the U .S., Providence Baptist Church here in Prairieville, Trinity Baptist Church in Port Arthur, Texas, and, by the word, Baptist Church in Azle.

And so our, the three pastors from those churches, or three of the pastors, I should say, they're all led by a plurality of elders, went to do a conference in El Pechote. It was on the kingdom. And so what we do at these conferences is, a lot of times, I know people have, and you've heard me talk about this in the podcast before, but people have different philosophies on missions and those sorts of things, but we're not going down there digging any wells or building anything or medical missions, not saying that those things are wrong per se, but this is long-term investment in the church.

So we believe that the mission of the church is planting and investing in healthy churches. And so we've been working, the firm has been working with the churches for a long time, maybe like five years, this particular church.

I've been involved for the last four years, so this is my 10th trip down to Mexico. And so we did the conference. Dear brother, Brother Christian Martinez, he and his father are the elders at that church, and man, I just, there's not enough good I can say about Christian, Godly man, a few years younger than me.

He's actually been on the podcast. This has been about four years ago, I guess he was on the podcast. But also we, so in connection with that church, we did some, other pastors came, and so we got not to just preach to that church, but also to preach to other pastors and make connections.

And there was a group that came from another state, Oaxaca, that we got to meet and kind of make some investment in. And so it's always good, not just investing in the churches that we are planning to and the people, but also reaching out, making new connections.

And a lot of times I think about the Mexico trips that they are, they're like the end of Paul's letters. At the end of Paul's letters, he's always like, say, tell hi to these people. And you're like, what is he doing?

And you're like, who are all these people? But that's the feeling I get when we go down to Mexico. This is a long-term, regular investment in these churches, and we're seeking to help make healthy churches, healthy pastors, and so it's just great to get to see these people on the regular.

And so at least once a year, I'm seeing some of these people, some of them twice, because they come to the Chiapas Conference, but it's very, very, very encouraging. And then, of course, for the pastors, the other thing we do is we do weekly Zoom meetings.

If you wanna know more about that, you can reach out. You can email me about any of this, QuatroNelson at gmail .com. That's C-U-A-T-R-O-N-E-L-S-O-N at gmail .com. And so what we're doing is we're carrying forth the banner of Christ as we think we ought to.

This is our church's mission. Sometimes people do shotgun approach, and they're gonna try to give a little bit to a lot of things. And we've kind of consolidated our efforts right now, and we're all in on Mexico.

So that was a great trip. Another church down there, oh, and this was a cool thing, too. Another church down there is Berit Baptist in Córdoba, and Pastor Daniel there. And we got to do kind of a mini-conference there, and then I got to preach for them on Sunday, and they knew it was my birthday coming up in June, and so they made me a tres leches cake, and we celebrated.

It was really encouraging. It was really a blessing. But that's a church. It's starting to get to know that better. Been preaching on that one for a few years now, and they're having reformation. And here's something that you'll need to know about churches, and ooh, maybe it's an indictment to pastors a little bit in the U .S., but it's like, these churches are undergoing reformation, and it's costly.

They lose members. Sometimes they lose reputation, maybe in their area, or they get called names or whatever, and it's like, sometimes pastors that I know reformation is not worth the cost. And so it's something to consider, counting the cost of whether or not Christ is worthy of a healthy church.

Reformation is costly. It's not easy. Pastoring faithfully is not easy. Having a healthy church is not easy, but I can promise you this, it's worth it. So that was our trip to Veracruz, and we came back, or I say we, it's me, it was just me, this trip, but I came back on a Monday, and then, actually, this happens sometimes.

I was a little bit sick on Tuesday, but that was short, short-lasting. And then that Saturday, my wife threw a surprise party for me, and so that was encouraging. A lot of folks from the church, we did a Christmas theme, and that was great.

Family Vacation and the Gift of Christian Fellowship

Then I had another full week together, and then the day after Father's Day, which would have been, let's see, the 22nd, is that right, June 22nd, my family and I took a two-week vacation out west. And as frustrating as social media and stuff can be, sometimes I wanna give a shout-out to my friend Nate Douglas, so, I don't know, a year ago or something, I don't remember, 18 months ago, at some point, well, now, let's see, now we're in August, so this is probably, maybe a year and a half ago or something, but I got connected with a dear brother on X, whose name is Nate Douglas, and Nate had kinda kicked around the idea, hey, brother, if you're ever gonna come out west, let me know, well, this summer, or May, I forgot to mention this earlier, but my oldest son, the one that proposed, he graduated from homeschool, and so we were planning, around the first year, we talked about, hey, let's take a trip, we need to take a trip, I've been at the church 10 years, been a couple years since we've taken a good family vacation, Brayden's graduating, what are we gonna do?

So we took this trip, we planned this trip, I hollered at Nate, this was crazy, we didn't know each other, and Nate was like, you should come on out, and Nate was like, in fact, my daughter's getting married in June, if you want to, you could come on this date, and you guys could stay with us at this camp.

And I was excited, because I didn't think about all the ramifications, like, oh, that'd be great, and I talked to my wife, and she's like, look, that's great, but you need to make sure they're sure, because that's kind of an invasive thing for an unknown family of eight to come crash a wedding, and I was like, oh, yeah, you're right, babe, so got back with Nate, we talked it all out, and prayed about it, and then we got back together, and we're like, let's do it, and so the trip is gonna center around us making it to this wedding, so here was the plan, on Monday, so we need to be at the wedding venue on Thursday, and the wedding was gonna be on Friday, so the plan was, hey, let's leave Monday, let's kind of take a longer route, and we'll go through South Dakota, and we'll see Mount Rushmore, so first day, we went up to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which is like on the east side, that was kind of an underrated town, great little time together, it's a family, fun road trip, it was great, because nothing was pressed, it wasn't like, oh, we've just gotta go somewhere, you know, we had time, so we just chilled, enjoyed it, laughed, listened to music, always gonna be a little bit of fighting with the siblings, but you know, it was great, great time, so the next day, that was Monday, so the next day's Tuesday, which kind of milled around the town a little bit, Sioux Falls, and we're like, all right, let's head west, and the goal was, we'll see Mount Rushmore in the evening, so we head west, and we'd already heard a couple different times, and we heard it from people while we were traveling, like, hey, if you're going to Mount Rushmore, you gotta see the Badlands, you know, do the little scenic loop, or whatever, so we're looking, we're like, okay, let's do it, so again, just kind of spur of the moment, didn't have to be anywhere, so let's do this loop, so we do the Badlands loop, and wow, that, I'm not sure that we would ever drive to say, let's vacation based on the Badlands, but I'm so glad, like, I think everybody should see it, it's like, I forgot how somebody said it when we were talking about it, but it's something like the most fascinating, interesting, like, beautiful's not the right word, because it's just, it's not beautiful, like Yellowstone beautiful, but it is, it's fascinating, and so we went, we saw, what all did we see, prairie dogs, and we saw a buffalo, that was like, you could almost reach out and touch from the van, we saw antelope, I mean, it was just a great time doing this scenic loop, highly recommend.

That took us a couple hours, because we stopped a few times, got out, we walked a little bit, oh, we saw a rattlesnake on one of our walks, it was just, wow, so great. So, I'm not, probably most people listening don't care about this, so I'm just reflecting and giving God the glory for the time I had, but we got through with that, I'm gonna cut out some of the details, we went on to Mount Rushmore, again, highly recommend.

Here's a problem I have with Mount Rushmore, a lot of people are like, nah, it's no big deal, well, but man, my patriotic blood was pumping, you know, 250 years as a nation, praise God for his mercy. If you go, you have to have the right expectations, so if you go to Mount Rushmore and you're like, I'm gonna spend all day there, well, like, no, don't have that, but if you can make it part of something else like we did, I think it's an excellent stop and every American should see it.

We loved it, it was great, plus the weather was cool, I mean, it was amazing, we were wearing hoodies, got to see the sculpture, I mean, I think if you have the right expectation, it's a wonderful, wonderful stop.

So, that night we wound up in Sturgis, it's where we had an Airbnb, we stayed there two nights. Now, I will say this, Sturgis, kind of a, at the very least, PG -13 sort of rated town, so maybe should have stayed in Rapid City, but it was good, the Airbnb was good, we actually did another little excursion on Spearfish Canyon, this was another thing that we just had to look up, we're like, ah, well, this looks cool, so we did it, and we saw a mountain goat, we just enjoyed that scenery, really beautiful, you know, a lot of people are like, South Dakota, not beautiful, but you get over there to the Black Hills area, wow, really, really beautiful.

So, that gets us to going to Wyoming on Thursday. So, we made the trip and the camp was in Tensleep, Wyoming, and so we come over the Bighorn Mountains, those are underrated, that's underrated mountain range, some people don't even know where they are, I was talking to a guy when we were doing a whitewater rafting and told him we'd went over the Bighorn Mountains, he's like, where's that, you know?

But they were great, like, we didn't see any moose, but you can see moose up there, elk, I mean, it got almost snowed on us. So, we got to the wedding venue in Tensleep, the Circle J Camp, we met these people for the first time, my boys didn't realize it, but I met Nate and Pastor Paul Thomas, Sovereign Grace Bible Church in Worland, several people, Dan, kids called him Dan the Man, this great brother, we had a great time and I told the boys, hey, I finally met Nate Douglas face to face, they're like, what, you just met this guy?

So, now they're all saying we're gonna find ourselves on a Netflix documentary or something, but it was just funny, that's just how Christians are, I'll just maybe make a plug for Christian Fellowship, it's like true believers can just have a kindred spirit immediately, and that's how it was with Nate, online, but then meeting him in person, man, it was so great, so encouraging, his wife, Bobbi, so hospitable, such a godly couple, and evidence of the grace and mercy of God, and man, we made lifelong friends, so it was great.

So, the camp was beautiful, the next day is the wedding, but it's not till the afternoon, so part of the family goes in town, part of us do like this three mile hike, we're hiking around, I mean, it's great, the weather's great, the scenery's great, there's a little creek coming through the camp, I mean, it's just amazing.

The Beauty of Christian Fellowship in Worship

The wedding was great, just kind of fast forward into Saturday, so the wedding went fine, my kids all played and partied, there was dancing and ultimate frisbee and a thumb war tournament and all these things, and my kids just jumped in and the church, because a lot of it was from the church family, they just accepted our family, embraced us, it was so cool, and it's so encouraging.

Saturday, I didn't mention this, but Saturday, we drove to Cody Wallamine to pick up, which is our future daughter-in-law, Maddie Mae, and she flew in to spend the second week with us, so the first week, all of us together, second week, Maddie Mae would be with us, Saturday evening, we go into Warland, which is not far from Tensleep, and Warland is where the church is, so they had asked me to preach, Saturday, we hang out, we get to do family worship all together with everybody, that was so cool, it was encouraging.

Next day, get up, able to go to church, and wow, the church was a blessing, Pastor Paul Thomas, his wife Krista, the girls, the family, such a blessing, we got to eat with them Sunday night, got to have moose burgers, just a great time of fellowship, and it was like, I've known these people my whole life, you know, I just met them, and it's just a beauty of Christian fellowship together, so a great time, got to preach for them that morning, and in the afternoon, we went to a boys' home, boys' school, almost kind of borderline juvenile penitentiary, but not that far, I don't know how to describe it, hopefully that gives you an idea, some boys who have been in trouble, but I got to preach, I just preached on the gospel and justification by faith alone, it was a great time, and then the next day, Monday, so we had to bid our farewell to the Douglas family and their great hospitality, and then we headed toward Yellowstone, so we were going to stay in Red Lodge, right, Red Lodge, Montana, so we go, and we kind of take this, oh, I can't remember, what is it, Chief Joseph, I think, Scenic Byway, so that's our plan, we're gonna take St. Joseph's Scenic Byway, which we do, and then we're going to, I don't have everything in front of me, but we're gonna go over the Beartooth Highway, and we're gonna get into Red Lodge, so we take the scenic route, and then we go to Beartooth Highway, and there's a sign, road closed because of snow in 17 miles, well, this hick, Arkansan, saw some other people going that way, I was like, ah, let's just drive it anyway, so we drive it, and I'm like, I don't know, I really didn't, we had no service, wasn't sure of my distance, and I thought, well, maybe, maybe once I get up there, maybe there's another way to get around, something, I didn't know, rookie mistake, but I'm so glad I'd made it, because we get up, we're going up Beartooth Highway, and it starts snowing, and we stop, and we pull out, we play in the snow, we throw snowballs, we got pictures of us in shorts while we're playing in the snow, it's crazy, and we get up there, and sure enough, yep, road's closed, nowhere else to go, I gotta turn around, on my way back down the mountain, there's a couple of cars stopped, and I'm like, what are these guys doing, and there's a grizzly bear, like, right there, like, from the first car, it was like, five yards, 10 yards, from us, it was probably like, I don't know, 30 yards, a grizzly bear, here in the snowy mountains, I'm not sure if I was technically in Montana or Wyoming at that point, but anyway, it was, it was surreal, it was amazing, we were like, everybody, it was like, this is so cool, so, the bad part was, we had to go all the way around, back down St., or back down Chief Joseph Highway, and then to Red Lodge, Montana, which, Red Lodge, Montana is a cool little town, stayed the night there, they woke up in the morning, and saw a black bear, just, you know, right across from our Airbnb, just strolling along town, like, he owned the place, well, we had hoped to be able to go over Beartooth that morning, but of course, the road was still closed, so we had to go back down through St. Joseph, or, I say St. Joseph, because there's a school here, St. Joseph's, Chief Joseph's Scenic Byway, went to Cook City, went in the west, is that the west, northwest entrance of Yellowstone, oh, y 'all, if I could encourage you with one thing, make, put Yellowstone on your bucket list somewhere, and take the trip, figure out how to go, for us, it was amazing, we just took the day, seeing the scenery, seeing the animals, we saw more bears, we saw buffalo, we saw elk, we saw, oh, just, all these things, all these, we did, like, Old Faithful, all those things, I'll put it this way, it was so good, that we'd originally not planned to come back to Yellowstone, we'd just kinda do, like, one big day, you know, but we're like, okay, we're coming back again, and we kinda, if you Google all this out, we didn't really make a great plans on where we were staying, because we had one idea in mind, but we got there, and so that kinda changed, but anyway, the end of Tuesday, then, we were in west Yellowstone, ate one of the best meals we've had, it was like, I had, like, a lamb burger, someone else had bison, it was great, but anyway, we wound up in Rexburg, Idaho, which was like an hour and a half, but our goal, but we're like, hey, we're getting up, we're getting up, like, at four, and we're coming back, and that's what we did, so we got up at four, and we came back, I guess I would've went in the northeast entrance, right, because when I came back through west Yellowstone, I went in the west entrance, so then we spent another couple hours that morning in Yellowstone.

The bad thing about that was it was foggy that morning, but we still got to see some elk, and also we got to see some bear playing in the fog, that was, two bear cubs, that was pretty cool. We got to see the fishing bridge, which there's no fishing on the bridge, we all thought that was funny.

Then we get out, and it's like, all right, we're going to the Grand Tetons, and so we just press on south through Yellowstone, and we wind up in the Grand Tetons, and some people in our group would say, the Grand Tetons were better than Yellowstone, and it was amazing.

The lake there that's reflecting the Grand Tetons, amazing. We took a little hike, it was probably like a two-mile hike. That was amazing. We saw more animals, just wow. I mean, it was like, you can't even describe it, and it's like, you look at your pictures that you took, and you put them on Facebook, and you look at them, and you're like, yeah, the pictures look good, but it just doesn't capture the essence.

So then that night, we were back in Rexburg, so that was kind of like, Rexburg was really out of the way, but anyway, that was a cool place. Went back to Rexburg, got up not as early, but early again, and we did whitewater rafting on Thursday, and so that was me and my boys, so Braden, Caleb, and Hadden, and then Mattie Mae went with us, and that was one of the coolest things I've ever done.

My wife got that for me for Father's Day. I was like so, like, that was amazing. I like, I can't, I was just thinking about it now, and I'm just like overwhelmed. It was so cool. It was like level three rapids.

My kids enjoyed it. Mattie Mae enjoyed it. We enjoyed the guide. His name was Ridge. So cool, and just amazing. I've kind of accelerated, like I was gonna say, I'm taking time here, the storytelling, but we finished all that, started making our way home.

Friday was a pretty long travel day, and then we finished off the travel on Saturday, and just a great time. It was a great time away as a family. I don't, honestly, I'm just telling you, I failed at times to making vacations a priority.

Part of that is on me. Part of that's just providential circumstances, like, you know, we got a big family, and it's expensive just to eat, or to do an Airbnb, or whatever, and so it's hard, and I haven't made it as a priority, but I'm so glad I just bit the bullet and said we're doing it.

Our church was so kind. We had some members give us some very generous gifts. The church gave us a very generous 10-year anniversary gift, and so it made it all work, and it was like praise God, and this is one of those trips that I know we'll be talking about for a long, long time to come, so we got back from that, and I had a week back here in Perryville, and then I turned around the next Monday, and we, wait, was it Monday, or Tuesday?

Reforming Churches Through Costly Faithfulness

No, it was Tuesday. We headed back Tuesday, and we headed to Chiapas, and I wanna talk about that for a second, because very similar to the conference in Veracruz, but we came down, we preached through the Sermon on the Mount, 12 sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, but one of the things about these churches that we're connected with, they're confessional.

They're serious about membership. They're serious about discipline, and this church had walked through a very difficult case of church discipline. The church was hurting. Some people had left. People were wounded, and it's just, you could just kinda sense it, and it was like God had lined up these two, this trip, us, that situation, and our being there at this particular time just lined up perfectly, because we were really able to just encourage the church, challenge them to press on, encourage the pastors.

Again, we met more pastors here. One pastor and his church, some of the people in his church, drove 30 hours to be with us, and that church had started off as a general Baptist church, but this brother, I believe, had been going to Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, and he embraced the doctrines of grace, began to do the hard work, the labor, of reforming the church, and again, it's costly.

Again, I can't emphasize this enough. It's costly to seek to reform a church, and that's the thing that kinda frustrates me, is I run into these guys, and they've put their blood, sweat, and tears, as it were, into Reformation, and you get back, and you talk with people here, just too scared.

Well, we've gotta be winsome, we've gotta be wise, and obviously, you've heard the podcast enough. We wanna be wise, we want to be gracious, and patient, and all these things, but the reality is, at some point, you've got to say, all right, this is what we're doing, this is the direction we're going, and you've gotta make the hard choices, and it's gonna be costly.

You can't stretch it out for 10 years, or 20 years, and say, all right, we won't face a cost. No, if you're gonna pursue Reformation, you'll face a cost, as we see with these churches we're working with, we dealt with the church that was hurting with the church discipline case, so we met this new pastor, and some of his family, and church members, who drove, again, 30 hours to be with us, such an amazing time, and so then, after that, we went to another church.

We stacked these trips together, these two, because the church is only about 3 1⁄2 hours apart, so we drove, and I did my first driving in Mexico on this trip, but I drove the 3 1⁄2 hour trip from Chiapas, from Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, to Villa Hermosa, Tabasco, and we did, that was on Monday, and then we did, so we did the conference there the week before, and then the following Monday, went and did this other conference, and it was six sessions on the book of Jude, and it's just like, by the end of that conference, we are just running on fumes, but again, it's a little church, but encouraging time, investing in that church, investing in pastors, we're all tired, we're all wore out, but it's like, hey, this is what God is doing in the world.

Don't despise it, look, and believe, and trust that God is working through His churches, and so we just had a great time, and it was encouraging for us, and able to invest in the churches. Again, if it's just something you think you or your church may wanna be involved in, just reach out, and I will say this, we are confessional, these churches are confessional, you don't have to be a confessional to support it, or to even go with us, but just know that it comes from that mindset, so God is doing a work in Mexico, and I know that we're not the only group of churches that have seen that, I know others are experiencing that, and it's like, praise God for that, and these are my brothers and sisters in Christ, it's amazing, I talked about that kindred spirit, you know, that I got with Nate, and Bobby Douglas, and Paul, and Krista Thomas, and just not ever knowing them, but then you meeting them, and then just bound together.

Well, it's the same with these brothers and sisters in Mexico, and it's something that transcends the language barrier, and even the ethnic barrier, the cultural barrier, it's like, we're in Christ, and I have to share something with these people, stronger than even those in my own town that don't know Christ, so quite an amazing time.

So again, got back, this time, no sickness, so that was encouraging, this time, Pastor Jacob went with us to these trips, it's always a blessing, it's hard, so it's really hard for our church when both elders are gone, but it's such a blessing to us, and it's also a blessing to these churches that we're able to have both of us there, Pastor Jacob taught and preached great, and it's an encouragement, and then, so it was great just to be able to be together, to sharpen one another, encourage one another, challenge one another, and talk about church things, it's just, we don't get a lot of time, just us two, to be able to work through even things that are church, so all that was encouraging.

Teaching the Vocabulary of Christian Faith to Children

So we got back, this time, he got sick, I didn't get sick, but we got back on a Wednesday night, and then, like I said, turned around, so that was Wednesday night, and then I had Thursday and Friday at the church, and then turned around, and on Monday, headed to church camp, and I preached eight messages at church camp, the theme was words of our faith, and so we walked through justification, and well, I'll try to go in order, let's see, we walked through, first of all, regeneration, and then we dealt with, did I do justification next?

No, regeneration, conversion, justification, propitiation, adoption, and then I did the last two out of order, glorification, and sanctification, so it was a great time, it was Barrow Baptist Church in Valonia, they've been asking me to come back since 2018, and that's been encouraging, and so, you know, I'll say this about preaching to kids.

I think that sometimes we dumb down our children, or we don't put expectations, and I'm not saying that you can't, or that you can just speak above their heads and expect them to get it, you have to relate to them, speak on their level, those things, but it's okay to share the sound words of our faith with children and young people, and even the public schools expect kids to know certain words when they deal, you know, when they have to do their glossary definitions of a subject or whatever, so it's important, I think, to invest in our young people, not being afraid to say, hey, this is what regeneration is, this is what it means, and so that was a great time, I think we have a couple people, maybe even from our church, that may see some tangible fruit to that, so I'm looking forward to those conversations.

Returning to Acts and Facing Ordinary Church Problems

So then we get back, and wow, it is, it's August, 2026, we'll be finishing up the book of Acts, oh, sorry, I'm crazy, that's me still being tired, we'll be finishing up Acts chapter eight, so by the time you hear this, we'll have finished Acts chapter eight, which we've been really blessed and encouraged through the book of Acts, and then the last thing I guess I'll share is just, we've had this sewer problem at our house, crazy, over the summer, my middle son has been a hero as much as me being gone, he's gone and unclogged and all that, and finally, finally, finally, we dug up the whole sewer line, we're just like, this is ridiculous, we dug up the whole sewer line, come to find out a number of years ago, this is like three years, four years maybe, but they did, they put in new fiber optic lines in our, on our driveway, or like in our neighborhood, and so apparently when they were boring that line, they went, boom, right through our sewer line, and it didn't cause any immediate problems, but what happened is when they cracked that line, roots got in and just made a mess, terrible mess, but by God's mercy, had a church member, Nathaniel McChesney help us out, so grateful for that, and I think that we're back in business, and that was like, you know, so I got back from church camp last week, this week, I spent, you know, two days messing with that, and what a time, so yeah, but Lord willing, I'm getting back into normalcy, and that would include the podcast, if you guys have recommendations or thoughts about what to do with the podcast, would love to hear that, have some ideas, but I hope to keep it going, that's kind of the game plan, I'm pretty busy, so sometimes I try to, I try to do several episodes at once, so I can kind of get it out there, but that's where we're at, the Lord has been faithful, just kind of what would I say overall about this summer, God has been faithful, God is sovereign, God has blessed me beyond what I could ask or hope for or think, He's blessed me with a beautiful wife and children, and now a future daughter-in-law, and new friendships, and new place I love, Whirlwind, Wyoming, and the people up there, wow, amazing, and to see our country, and the blessings, our country, and all the 250 signs, you know, celebrating 1776, like, it's so encouraging, there's just a lot of things you don't see, you know, the news is talking about division, and there is division, I get it, and hostility, but there's a lot of people in our country that do seem to love the Lord and our nation, and that was so encouraging, and then just the investment with these churches in Mexico and see the mission of Christ press on, so encouraging, so I'm like wore out, I'm wrung out, I'm tired, I need to recuperate, but at the same time, it's like, I'm to good tired, it's like, I'd rather wear out than rust out, like Whitfield said, and so to God be all the glory, I'm looking forward to this fall, at Providence Baptist Church, we're praying for God to work here, we're just a little church, y 'all, just a little church in an out-of-the-way place in a small county, we don't even have a stoplight in our whole county, we're just asking God to move here and to work, to make Christ beautiful, or display Christ as beautiful, to raise the banner of Christ high, I know there's a lot of churches out there like us, they're listening to this, like, just press on, be faithful, I know as you're faithful and you stand on your convictions, sometimes you're gonna run into people, it's hard, or make fun of you, or lose friendships and those things, look, just be faithful to Christ, press on in him, it is worth it, it is worth it, it is worth it, to God be the glory, I hope that you will stay a regular listener to the podcast, and I hope to bring you maybe something, this is just kind of a recap week, but hopefully something more beneficial next week, thank you guys for listening, and I hope to see you, well, I won't see you, I hope you tune in next week to the Rural Church Podcast.