"Patriotic Ambassadors: Crossing Cultures" by Leonard Hege

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome again to Strength to Strength. This is actually our final meeting that we'll have on Strength to Strength this year. And looking back over 2021, it's been an interesting year. It's been a great year. The Lord has been good. He's shown His power and His wisdom in many ways in my life, and I'm sure He has in yours as well, as a faithful father. And Strength to Strength has been an incredible blessing in my life over the past year, and I pray that it has been to yours as well. This morning we have Brother Leonard Haggie joining us from Shippensburg Fellowship, Pennsylvania. Is that right? Yes, that's right.

And he's going to be sharing on bringing the Word, the written Word, to unreached people groups.

So without further ado, let's bow our heads for prayer.

Gracious Father in Heaven, we pause before You this morning. We're so grateful to be Your children. We're so thankful that You have reached out in love and sent Your only begotten Son to live a perfect life, to live an example to each one of us on how we should live.

Thank You that He is seated at Your right hand, interceding for each one of us, our King and our Savior. We pray, Lord, that Your name would be lifted up this morning.

Be with Brother Leonard as he shares. Give us each a tent of ears for the Word that You have for us this morning. Bless this meeting. May Your presence be felt. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

My name is Leonard Haggie, and I was born and raised in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.

Yeah, it's where my parents or my dad grew up. My mom was from Virginia, so my roots are in this area. Back in 2019—I'm sorry, not 2019, 2015—I joined All Nations Bible Translation, and after several years of preparation, my wife and I left for Mexico in—that was 2019. So we've been down there for two years. We joined a family that had been serving there already for a good four years when we arrived, and a third family moved down right about the same time we did. So we live there in southern Mexico, and our goal in being there is Bible translation and church planting.

So my presentation this morning is titled "Patriotic Ambassadors Crossing Cultures." When we look at the Bible, we see examples of great teachers such as Jesus and Paul in their teaching, demonstrating an intimate knowledge of the culture of the people that they're speaking to.

And of course, that's true when they are speaking in their home culture, such as Jesus speaking to the Pharisees, Paul speaking to the Sanhedrin, the council. And there's many examples of that. But we also see that when Jesus and Paul are speaking to people from other cultures, such as Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, or Paul speaking to the Athenians on Mars Hill, they knew that culture that they were speaking to, and their message reflected that, or the way they presented the message. Obviously, truth is constant across cultures, but sometimes the presentation or the living out of that truth will look different. And we see that in Jesus' and Paul's message.

So as they knew their culture, knew the culture they were speaking to well, and tailored their message for that, so we, I believe, should do the same thing. Now, when we are speaking to our host culture, or our home culture, rather, the culture that we grew up in, we absorb that knowledge of that culture as we grow up.

And our message easily reflects that. We really don't have to do anything because we assume the people we are speaking to have the same basic understandings of how the world works, probably believe about the same as we do. But when we shift to a completely different culture, it necessitates learning to know that culture so you can teach them well, teach them understanding where they are coming from, how it is different from where you came from. And your message may need to be tailored to that reality and make certain emphases in order to correct errors in truth in that culture, or you can build upon truth that does exist there.

So I would like to do basically a case study of cultural exploration based on the people group that we are working with. So my wife and I have just been living with these people for a year. Our teammates have been there much longer.

So the stories I'm going to be sharing, the knowledge of that culture, that society that I'm going to be sharing is pulled from both of our experiences. Actually, our teammates very intentionally kept what they called a cultural diary for their first couple of years living back there and just wrote down stories of especially instances that left them confused, like, "Wow, that people interaction just did not make sense. What was said there did not make sense. We do not know what's going on there. Let's write that down." And in the future, as we get to know these people better, we can maybe go back to ask for explanations, or as we see or as we collect these stories and read them as a whole, a fuller picture of what they believe will emerge.

So I've drawn some from that in some of the stories I'm going to be sharing this morning. I'll try to give credit where it's due when we get there. So just for privacy purposes and because this will be publicized, I'm going to try to avoid sharing the name of the people group.

But I will refer to them as like this people or they, and I'll try to be clear in that. So knowing a people often begins with knowing something about their history. So these people live in Mexico that was conquered by the Spanish almost exactly 500 years ago.

And the influence of their interaction with the Spanish conquistadors is still felt today. So the Spanish came in, forcibly proselytized the people, or brought Catholicism, basically converted them at gunpoint or sword point. So they brought religion. They took gold. And as I said, that interaction, the influences of that are still felt today.

When we arrived there, we were treated with some suspicion. Why are you here? The only reason outsiders come is to take advantage of us. And it's taken time to gain access and build trust with these people. And still today, especially with our teammates in the village where they live—we live in two different villages—they're slightly more isolated, a little more backwards in their thought. And there's rumors to this day that circulate that Ethan has an apparatus that can find gold, and so-and-so saw him out the other night searching for gold, and maybe he's found it. And thankfully, there has not been any major damage done by those rumors. They've never been proven, of course. But things like that still happen today as a result of bad interactions in the past.

They are people who are suspicious of outsiders. As far as their religion, they practice folk Catholicism. So I mentioned the Spanish forcibly converted them. They converted them in practice, but not so much in thought. So on the outside, they may appear to be Catholic by attending Mass once in a while and venerating the saints. But how they go about these practices is quite inconsistent with traditional Catholic teaching.

So they've veneered their traditional spiritual practices or animism with Catholicism, creating a rather strange mix. So they live in fear of the spirits that inhabit the world around them, typical of animists. Some of the spirits, they believe, are nature spirits, and some are spirits of the dead. And these may be especially feared depending on the deceased individual's character while they lived or the circumstances under which they died. So these spirits are to be respected, at times feared.

And these spirits can also be manipulated in the sense of these spirits control weather events, life events. So if we want things to turn out well for us, we need to convince these spirits to treat us well. Or if we want to place a curse on somebody, then we, again, go to these spirits, manipulate them through sacrifices, incantations, ceremonies, whatever, to cause things to go bad for that other person.

That's very typical of animists. Another interesting thing they believe is that I quote from a worldview write-up that our teammate did. It is believed that people are possessed by an animal alter ego spirit. In times of sickness or crisis, people turn to a shaman to help them determine what their animal spirit is suffering and what needs to be done for the cure.

And then as Catholics, they believe that they possess God's Holy Spirit at baptism.

So you may be chuckling after that paragraph. They believe they're possessed by an animal alter ego spirit.

And they turn to their traditional healers for help with that. But then they go to the Catholic Church and believe that they received God's Holy Spirit, or they've been taught that. And they do not see possessing those two spirits at the same time as a problem.

So a strange mix. Recently, they had an event a couple of months ago, the Fiesta de San Miguel. In English, we would say like the Festival of Saint Michael. So just given the title, you would expect that to be a festival venerating a Catholic saint. And it is kind of. There's Catholic Masses held in conjunction with that. But other activities that go on are just so far from traditional Catholic practice, as in what the Pope, the Vatican, would teach.

Along with this festival, there was a group of dancers, young men dressed up in animal costumes, like dogs, donkeys, jaguars, and then a couple of masks, I think, representing spirits. And preceded by a band, a couple of times a day, this group would, in procession, kind of dancing and chanting along the way, they would make their way up to the top of a nearby hill where they would pray to the rain god, kind of the traditional head god of the Mixtec people. They would pray to the rain god for good rains, not where there wasn't much thunder or torrential rains, just good rains for their crop to grow. So they'd go up there and then they'd come back.

I mean, they'd leave like 4 o'clock in the morning, wake us up as they went right by our house. So that's their religion.

At heart, they are animists, but on the outside, they are Catholics. I'm quite sure if you would go read the country of Mexico's statistics on religion, they would be included in the Catholic under the Catholic percentage. And when you go back and you see the church that they're building and the resident priest and all that, I mean, you could affirm that. But when you get to know them, you realize that is not the case. That is not where they are coming from.

In addition to their religion, I'm just going to describe kind of a few interesting aspects of their culture. And then in the end, I'm going to look at a couple of points that we've identified as being specific barriers to understanding the gospel or aspects of their culture that feel stand in direct opposition to certain Bible truths and see how maybe we could tailor the message or what we should think about in confronting that error.

So first, a couple of kind of unique aspects of this people's culture. So one of these is a poor us attitude. So past exploitation, beginning with the Spanish, and then subsequent attempts by the government to remedy that past exploitation or to compensate for it have led these people to believe that they are poor and incapable, and the government should help them to get ahead.

So here's a story from our teammate's cultural diary. Here I quote, "A few ladies stopped by for help filling out a government questionnaire in Spanish. The biggest kick I got out of it was how they answered the question, 'The president of Mexico.' And they answered it, 'Tell him to give us a lot of money.' And they said it in all seriousness." Can you imagine how different the response would be if we asked the average American what they would say to their president? To this people, the government stands for one thing: money. The other day, Alex even asked us if we could solicit some money from President Trump so that they could build a bridge over a bad spot in their road.

And end of quote. So there's an example. They see themselves as poor, not being able really to remedy problems in their own lives, but rather look to the government for aid in that so they can get ahead. Here's another story. I quote, "From what we have observed, this people's first reaction to a problem is there's no solution. For example, on our way through Yolo, which is a nearby town, we came up to a gathering on the street with a band playing and men sitting around in chairs. The road was completely blocked off. But knowing that there was no other way around, we had to get through in order to get to the village. However, we asked a couple of people what to do, and they just said, 'There's no way through.'

A few minutes later, though, after conferring with the other men, they realized that there was actually a way through. Move a few chairs so our truck could go past. It probably stems from their poor me attitude and the fact that the future is predetermined and there's nothing one can do to change it. After some time, they realize that there might indeed be a solution, but the first response is to assume that there's not."

End of quote. So they're fatalists, assuming that their future is predetermined. What is going to happen is going to happen, and there's really nothing I can do to determine my future, my destiny.

Something I hear quite often in our village is, "Oh, there's no employment here. There's no employment here." They groan about the poor houses they have, which are adobe, which is actually a very nice form of construction. It's cool in the heat and warmer in the cool.

But no, if they want to build a house, which they think of as a concrete house like the wider society would build, just poor us, poor us. They feel like to get ahead, they need to go work outside the village, or at least many of them. So I actually have friends who are working on work contracts in the States at this moment because they don't see themselves as being able to get ahead where they are.

So the poor us attitude, that's one feature of their culture. Another one is envy.

Kind of the basis of this envy is this people's concept of limited good. So they believe that there are only so many resources that are available to them as a people group. And those resources are divided up among the individuals. There no more can be added to the whole of the good. Therefore, if somebody else is getting ahead, they are doing it at my expense. They are taking away good that should be shared with me in order to be fair.

And that leads to some interesting outcomes. There's no concept of productivity coming as a result of harder work. Maybe if we grow more corn or plant more coffee trees, we can increase the good that is available to us as a people, and we all can get ahead. No, it's like if that person is getting ahead, then yeah, we need to do something to remedy the problem, to level the playing field again. And this envy even leads to property destruction of people that are getting ahead financially. In one case, one man bought a truck, and his neighbors were quite resentful of that, and they ended up burning it. In another case, someone planted some trees.

Not sure if they were coffee or what, but they were pulled up by his neighbors out of envy.

And because of that, any progress is stifled because those who, at least economic progress, that's stifled because if people want to get ahead, if there is a motivated individual, they're scared to because they know reparations for that could come from their neighbors.

So here's another story from our teammates. Later, Ethan and Alex were talking. So Ethan is my teammate. Alex is a friend of his. And Alex said his wife doesn't want him to learn to drive for fear of other people's envy. He said that he isn't allowed to practice with the village truck anymore, a new rule to keep him from getting ahead, and that people are really envying him ever since he has been learning.

And that's the end of the quote. But the learning that is referenced there is Ethan and Alex working together. Ethan was teaching Alex how to use a computer, learn to read, and working with him in doing translation work. And people looking on were envious of that because Alex is now learning things that we don't know. He's getting ahead. Now he's learning to drive. We don't want him to get any further ahead. So let's make a rule that he can't use the village truck to learn to drive anymore.

So just suppressing progress all around.

Another story. I quote, "Ethan showed his phones to a group of men that is phones for sale. They all oohed and ahed over them, but all ended up saying, 'There's no money.' However, as Ethan walked home, one of the men that had been in the group caught up with him and told him to come to his house, where he was all excited and ended up buying the phone. It's very important to give the appearance of not having money." End of quote.

So that there's not having money. It's a very common phrase that you hear. Others know money. And sometimes it's true. But then those who do have money are afraid to advertise the fact. And it's better to say, "Oh, I don't have any money either." And then we can clandestinely pursue our ways of spending that money. So limited good and envy, another key feature of their culture.

Another one, knowledge is power. So these people believe that the more knowledge somebody has of you, the more power they have over you. So that knowledge is power is a phrase known in our culture, but for different reasons.

We Americans see education as a way of getting ahead, of bettering our lives, of getting a better job. And so knowledge is power for us in that respect. For these people, it's if I know something about a person, they have power, or I have power over them. If they know something about me, they have power over me.

And this is consistent with their animistic worldview, where they can manipulate the spirits to do bad to someone else. And that leads to people giving names that are not their own if they're asked or things like that. Even just knowledge of random things. You look on and you're like, "Well, why in the world does me knowing that make any difference to you?"

But they're hesitant to share knowledge.

Here's a story again from our teammates. I stopped at our neighbor's house on our way past. And for lack of things to say, I asked where Wilder, that is their son, was. Sophia hesitates a split second and says, "He's sleeping."

A couple of minutes later, I walk past Sophia's mother's house and see the boy outside playing. I am baffled as to the reason for that lie since we often ask where each other's children are, and it has never seemed to threaten them. Like Ethan said, maybe it's just that any knowledge another person has about you can potentially be used against you.

End of that quote. And I'll go ahead and read another one. The neighbors stuck a crate in their cactus tree and lit it on fire. And all the while, Sophia and the boy stood nervously out by our house, obviously to stay out of the area for a bit. I asked her what they were doing, and she said, "They aren't doing anything."

And then I wonder why we know next to nothing about these people's religious beliefs. Ironic or sarcastic statement at the end, but pretty typical response. "Uh, yeah, nothing. No, nothing's going on." I had a similar experience not too long ago. I was trying to track down a young man that had visited at our house a couple of weeks prior. I didn't know where he lived. So I went to another house where I knew that some of his family members lived there.

And I asked about this young man. I said, "Where does—" no, I didn't ask where he lived. I said, "Is he a family member of yours?" And the lady I was asking just hesitated. And then she's like, "I don't know."

It's like, "Oh, come on. You know whether he's your family member or not. It was just so obvious that she didn't want to tell me. She felt it was better if I did not have the information."

Another example of knowledge being power. So my teammate, Ethan, over in the next village has taught the town secretaries how to use the computer. So I think the town government came into possession of a computer after Ethan had moved into the village. They elect a new secretary every year. So the first one, Ethan taught him how to use a computer, how to type, I don't know, basic document processing. I don't know what the extent of that was. And then he said, "Hey, now that you know, you can go on to teach the next secretary."

Well, no, that wasn't going to work. The next time a new secretary is elected and enters a position, they call on Ethan to teach him how to use the computer. "Well, why can't you learn from the one before?" "Ah, no, you teach this guy, please." And this is just consistent. Every year, Ethan is called upon to teach the new secretary how to use the computer. They see that knowledge as being power and connected with their envy. They don't want to share that knowledge with their successor in the secretary position.

So knowledge is power, another tenet of this people's worldview.

And here's just a couple of random stories that I found interesting in reading over my teammate's cultural diary. And these are some—it's like, "Wow, you don't know how to classify them," but it's just interesting, reflects something about how they believe.

And we might not be quite sure what it is yet.

So

maybe I'll just paraphrase this story because it kind of spans some time. Ethan and Lene were in their village. A couple of children knocked on their door in the evening. And when they opened it, they were surprised to see that these children had brought them fresh tamales.

And they're like, "We don't even know who their parents are. Why are they sending us tamales?" But okay, they ate down the tamales.

They were later talking to some friends in another village who also had or had some history with living with these people, learning their ways. And Ethan learned that these people will sometimes place a curse on food and then give that food to somebody they are trying to get back at or cause harm to.

And they thought back to the tamales and was like, "Ah, maybe."

So sometime later, they had this interaction, and I'll just read this. "We turned down a request to haul some firewood for a neighbor. And later, her son showed up at our door with a big bowl of pumpkin atole. The thought crossed my mind that it was weird for her to give us a food gift after we had told her no. I remembered how they will sometimes place a curse on food and gift it to you. I prayed about it and felt no fear about eating it. And it was quite yummy. The next morning, her son was hanging around watching us and finally blurted out, 'How do you feel after eating the pumpkin?' We assured him we felt quite well and sent a little gift home with him for his mother."

So how do you relate to that? I mean, for us in our US culture, if we suspected that somebody knew what we were doing, we wouldn't do it, send in cursed food like that. And we certainly wouldn't ask about it later.

But for them, they sent the cursed food. Next day, "How are you doing? How did you feel after eating that?" And hopefully, they were impacted by the reality that what they had sent caused no harm whatsoever.

Here's a story about how they responded to a solar eclipse. So I quote, "The old mayor's wife said someone had called into the village and informed them that the sun was going to be covered in a few days, and it would be completely dark. They made an announcement over the village loudspeakers informing everyone of the upcoming danger. As she told me this, her eyes were wide, and she asked me, 'Is it true? Are we all going to die?'

Later, I asked Panfilio and his wife about it, and they said, 'Oh, yes, it's true.' I asked them if it is bad when the sun gets dark, and they heartily assured me that it is very bad. I asked them why it happened, and they said that it's because a satellite goes in front of the sun, and when it happens, everyone dies. The eclipse had just happened in the States. So I told them, 'Well, the sun just got dark in my town. Did everyone die?' they asked. And I don't know if I should have said this, but I said, 'No, over there when the sun gets dark, they have parties.'

Needless to say, they were amazed. Then there's some cases in interacting with a new people group like this. It's like you don't know what to do. It's like that is just what's going on in this situation. I don't know how to respond. I want to be culturally sensitive, but I don't know the culture. Just Lord help me know what's best to do and take care of any negative effects that might come out of this.

Here's a little story about that, again shared from our teammates. "We ran over two of the neighbor's turkeys pulling into our house today. Children all around watched very soberly as Ethan went down to the neighbor's house to tell them, as if they expected an angry shouting match over the deal. The neighbors, of course, acted all stirred up. We wanted to be fair and do the culturally correct thing, but how when we have no idea what they would do in this situation? Ethan ended up paying them for the big turkey, which we butchered, and they took the loss for the small one, which they butchered. They seemed pleased in the end, and we hope and pray we were a good testimony to them."

So instances like this come up more frequently than comfortable. It's like, "Yeah, I don't know what to do in this situation. What is a culturally appropriate thing?" And that's the whole goal in learning about their culture is so you can respond appropriately, so you can communicate the truth of the Bible to them in a way that meets them where they're at, and also so you can act in a way that demonstrates Christlikeness. Because I might be living out the teachings of Christ in a way that is adequate, correct in my home culture, in my home society.

But there may be differences between my home culture and the new culture I'm trying to fit into that change what showing Christ love looks like. Something might may be polite in my home culture. It's extremely rude to a different one.

And that's why it's so important just to learn

your host society's culture so you can show Christ to them. So here at the end, here's a few specific barriers that our team has identified as being directly contrary to truths in the Bible, things we anticipate needing to confront with biblical truth, and knowing that the truth will be hard for them to accept because it just runs contrary to what they have grown up believing.

So I already explained about good being limited. How do you communicate the boundless riches available in Christ in this context? There's that verse—oh, no, I can't remember where it is—but where Paul says, "But my God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, having all sufficiency in all things, may abound unto every good work." Not sure I quoted that quite correctly, but that's the gist of it. The grace of God is boundless. That's directly contrary to what these people believe about goodness, good in their society. They believe good is limited. That is not the case with the grace of God. The riches that we have in Christ are unlimited. God gives grace according to the situation that we are in.

The more difficult our situation, the more grace He gives us, boundless riches. So this is an error in their culture that will need to be confronted with the truth of the Bible.

A second barrier: they believe that God is distant. He definitely exists, but is not interested in my life, except maybe to punish me if I do wrong.

If I have a problem, I may pray to God or the God that exists in their minds, whether that's their traditional rain god or whether that is the God that Catholicism has taught them about. So I may pray to God, but I also try to fix the problems in other ways because I doubt God cares. I need to go to spiritual intermediaries like Catholic saints or nature spirits because they have the real power or the real access to God. So from our perspective now, how can you introduce an omnipotent God who cares and loves each individual? We will need to emphasize the relational side of God in this culture. God loves us, and He alone has the power to bring about good changes in our lives.

So these people do have a concept of God. He is distant. The ones that we need to worry about are the spirits that inhabit the world around us. They have no concept of God being personally interested in my life and working it out for my good. We feel we will need to emphasize the relational side of God, a God that loves each individual and is interested in working their lives out for their good and His glory.

In the United States, we have maybe the flip side of that. God is seen only, perhaps, as a relational individual. And people talk about the man upstairs without having a right concept of the holiness of God and the wrath of God against sin.

The mixed-tack people, it's exactly the opposite. Yes, they have a concept of the wrath of God against sin. The only reason God would intervene in our lives is to punish us for wrong we have done. But God is distant. He's different from us. He's not interested in personal interaction with us. So that's an error in their worldview.

And we're going to need to confront that with the truth of the gospel that says, "God loves you. God is interested in you personally. He knows you by name. He has the hairs on your head numbered."

A third barrier that we see is their people having this concept that this is our way of life. You may have a different way of life, and it may work for you, but it will never work for us.

And they apply that to religious thought as well. So what does that mean when we are bringing the gospel to them? They could easily or do look at the word of God and say, "That's great. That's great. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for us.

This is our way of life. That's your way of life, and your teaching is good for you. And I wish that it could maybe be good for us too, but that's not the case. It's foreign to us."

So we will need to make an emphasis on how the gospel is good news for all people. As the angel who announced Jesus' birth said, "The news that I bring you will cause great joy for all people because Jesus was born in Bethlehem."

These people do not have a concept of that. Okay, Jesus might have been born in Bethlehem. That's great. But how is it relevant to us? So we're going to need to present that truth of the gospel, that this message is for all people, and have that confront the error that exists in their worldview.

So I've mentioned several times us confronting the error that exists in their culture. It's not about us. Yes, we may be the messengers, but the truth is God's, and we may have the privilege of telling it, but there's nothing we can do to convince them that the way you believe is wrong, the message I'm sharing is right. What all we can do is present the message.

This is the truth. This is what God says. This is who God is, and that's why you should believe it. And then left the rest up to God's spirit. And we are looking forward to seeing God enter into this society in big ways and transform it with the gospel.

That's all I have to share. I believe that there's a question and answer period now, but I'll hand it back over to you, Sam. Sounds good. Thank you, Brother Leonard.

Very engaging stories you shared. I really appreciate that idea of going into a people group and learning to understand them from their history to their worldview, even every aspect of how they relate to each other socially and things like that. And I couldn't help but think about bringing that aspect. I guess my thought was we grow up in the culture we grow up in here in North America. Canada is probably a little different than the United States. And there are subcultures in the communities that we live in.

The question I had is, what would happen if we brought that kind of analysis to the culture that we live in? I guess we presume we understand the culture around us. Maybe you all are doing that, and I'm the one that's not. I'm not sure. But to learn the history of the culture that I live in, the subcultures that might be there as well, and think about spreading the word of God to these people based on that information.

That's the thing that I've been thinking about in listening to you talk about, reading those stories about your experiences with those people, and then looking at it as, how can we use this to bring the gospel to them? I guess there wasn't really a question in that. The question I have for you is, what has brought you into this type of work?

As in, how did I get involved? Yeah, that's right. What was my journey? Yeah.

Ever since I was a child, I had an interest in cross-cultural missions. Grew up reading a lot of missionary biographies, things like that. And it was just always the way I thought was that I was going to end up living outside the United States. I never really considered a future where I was just going to settle down and live always where I had grown up.

Didn't know when I was young where that was going to lead me. But when I was maybe 16, I think it was, when ABT, All Nations Bible Translation, got started, they came to our church and did a presentation, I think, in the year following their founding. And Joe Martin did that presentation. And as part of his visualization of what a Bible translation team could look like, he had people standing up in front holding signs.

And he pulled me up there to hold the Old Testament Bible translator sign. So it's interesting looking at that in retrospect. Here I am, an Old Testament Bible translator. So that presentation started an interest. And a couple of years later, I got to know Joe Bryant, Aaron Kreider, Ernest Eby, Austin State College on a more personal level, and started dialoguing with them about joining ABT.

So I joined—let's see, what year did I say that was? 2015? I believe I was 19 years old. So kind of got into it at a young age. Praise the Lord.

God bless you as you move ahead with it and for your desire to serve. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Brother Leonard?

Well, I had the privilege of having a little more of an inside scoop on your work there, Leonard. And of course, your teammates as well. And you were referencing their journal. And my hat's off to the work of your teammates who labored there for four or five years by themselves in a group that was very suspicious of them. And just beautiful examples of the incarnation of Christ to people.

And then also your journey too and just another village close, working together, but yet with a different group of people. And just the time it takes to learn their language, learn their culture, make those friends, and understand them. And yeah, as I listened to you, it just stood out to me, John Dee, who's on here, says that sin can be described in one word, and that is selfishness.

And just hearing you talk about that, it sounds like what I want to go to just so easily, this idea of containing information. And of course, it's rampant in the United States as well. I mean, it works against every aspect of a flourishing community, of a flourishing world, is that. But we don't think so. We're selfish. We try to contain that so we can raise ourselves up with this information that's privy just to me. And it's rampant here. I mean, it's human.

But just maybe you just see it in such blatant fashion. Here we disguise it. And sadly, it's right. It's within me who says I'm a disciple of Christ and struggle with it in church life. And Lord help us to have an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. And that's just the epitome of those people. But our hearts just so quickly go there.

But yeah, thank you for sharing those stories. I just find it incredible. Would you mind kind of talking about maybe a little bit of the steps of obviously, you were in training for four or five years there. But now that you're kind of on the field there, maybe just kind of the steps that have been taken beforehand by your other teammates. And then as you kind of see this thing unfolding, a little bit of a 30,000-foot view there of the project.

Yeah. So the first task upon entering a society like this is to learn their language and their culture simultaneously. And sometimes those things, one can't happen until the other is completed.

For instance, these people, they have their core religious beliefs, and we can see the outworking of that. But they will not talk about those beliefs or will only talk about them in a very limited fashion in the Spanish language, which many of them do speak to some extent.

So because they won't talk about them in Spanish, it's an absolute necessity to learn their language and become fluent in it. So you can just get to learn that part of them, what they believe.

So learning their language, learning their culture, how they think is the first step.

My teammates, Ethan and Lenae, are more or less past that, or at least past the initial grind. My wife and I are in the middle of it right now. So as our teammates have moved past that, they started doing some translation. They first started out with a little bit of Bible translation, working on the New Testament. But before long, they shifted to translating a teaching curriculum that starts out at creation or prior to creation with the nature of God and the spiritual world that the Bible teaches about, then moves into the creation of the world, God's interaction with people down through history, and the culmination of that with Jesus Christ and his teachings, death, resurrection.

Just like a 70-lesson curriculum that they've been translating with hundreds of pages of content. And in addition to the teaching material, they've been translating Bible passages to accompany each of those lessons. So that in itself is a big task.

And they are getting very close to the end now. So what we're thinking about now is, what's the best strategy for beginning to teach this? Over in the village where Ethan's are, there's no Christians.

Or maybe one. The translation helper that has been working with Ethan has made some significant changes to his life in response to what he's learned. He said he doesn't feel quite ready to make a final commitment, but we are praying that that will happen very soon.

So there's no church that exists in that village. Should the Bible teaching be presented there first? Or over where my wife and I are, it's a larger village. There is a Christian group that meets there, kind of with a Pentecostal flavor.

So maybe we should do the teaching there, get their feedback on it. Without question, they would benefit from a comprehensive teaching on the Bible rather than the limited bits and pieces they're able to pick up from accessing the Spanish Bible.

But regardless of where we do that, the Bible teaching is what we see as a next big step. And then another focus on Bible translation. Lord willing, as the Lord will, moves people in response to the Bible teaching, and they come to a full knowledge of him, then they will be able to take that teaching and move on, carry it to other villages, spread it throughout their home villages.

And we can pivot to focus on full-on Bible translation.

And yeah, the eventual goal is to work ourselves out of a job, to have an indigenous church that grows up to be self-governing, self-sustaining, self-propagating. So just to give a timeline, the 30,000-foot view that Bryant referenced, it begins with training in the States, then you gain access to that culture, spend time in language and culture learning, getting to know them, presenting the gospel through the teaching of the Bible story, and then Bible translation so that they are left with the entire scriptures, not just selected portions for teaching, but the entire scriptures that they can go on to study, use, and teach for years to come.

Thanks for sharing that, Leonard. Just real quick, though. So many times, people think that Bible translators are a very unique group of people. And they are an amazing group. But they're just hardworking people, like anyone on here. And I know that it's not like your IQ is going to be to the roof and all that stuff. That's just not the case.

But one thing this group might really enjoy hearing, too, is the vision for community development, which is maybe the physical part that you as a team care about. So many times, is following Jesus just kind of spiritual? Or how does that work out?

Which is spiritual too, right? So maybe kind of talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So I have not referenced much the third family that is a part of our team. They're still kind of in preparation, still wrapping up some Spanish study before transitioning to learning a third language, the indigenous language. But their focus is going to be community development.

So we're not quite sure what all that's going to entail. It could be working with educational stuff, like teaching literacy. In fact, that will almost certainly be a part of it.

It could be health-related, trying to improve the health of these people, maybe through diet changes, maybe through other sanitary habits. Or it's almost certainly going to involve economic development. So I mentioned how in our village, they say, "Oh, there's no employment. They see no economic future, and so they travel outside to work." We look at that and we say, "These people are going to be followers of God. This practice of heading outside the village to work, it just divides families for long periods of time. This is not ideal. What can we do to help them develop the opportunities available or the opportunities that can be developed in this area?" So they're largely subsistence farmers.

They live on the corn and beans they grow. But they do have some cash crops. Coffee is a main one. And recently, we've been thinking what we can do to develop that or develop the economic potential of that. Where they sell it currently is locally, very low prices.

And we are quite sure that if we develop the right connections and help the farmers grow a high-quality product, that they could get a much better price for their coffee. And they could begin to see that as an actual way of producing or way of making an actual livelihood.