"Walk the Talk 6: Spotlight on Kingdom Work" by four brothers

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

This is Strength to Strength, and we welcome you back here today for another talk. We're excited today to have four different brothers representing four different organizations to talk to us about what is happening in their world right now. Two of those will be focused more on the discipleship ministry, and two others on the work with Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and the surrounding area. So welcome here.

Our description for this talk, we do two of these a year, and goods like this, the unsung heroes of Jesus' kingdom are the faithful disciples who serve their Lord without fanfare or applause. Whether you are a warrior in secret prayer, a woody who casts in the last two mites, or a worker advancing the bleeding edge of the kingdom, you can rest assured that deeds of service do not escape the eye of our benevolent King.

And then we end this description with a quote from Aristotle that says this: "Where your talents and needs of the world cross, there lies your vacation." As somebody, another quote that I really love goes like this: "A vision without a task is a dream.

A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision and a task is the hope of the world." And as you know, we have an incredible vision to chase as Christians, and that is our King Jesus being His hands and feet, being His ambassadors for His kingdom, His nation, bringing that to earth. And I'm always thankful to and inspired to be to hear just little snippets of what's happening in different ministries and businesses and works around the world with these talks. And these talks aren't about lifting up a person, but just making an organization, but just making awareness, raising awareness of the ways that you can partner or ways that you can take maybe an idea and implement it in your town, in your area.

So we think about that. Don't be thinking that it's always happening out there. Think about maybe how can you do maybe some of these things in your place. So before we jump in, let's just bow our heads for prayer. And Brother John D, it's good to have you here this morning. Would you lead us in an opening prayer, please? Your mute is on. I would love to hear you pray.

So we would love that. There we go. Thank you. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to see what you are doing in various places in your kingdom. We thank you, Lord, that we can be part of a kingdom that will give us all the resources we need and will guarantee our success as we submit it to the King. And I pray bless these brethren, give them clarity of thought and readiness of speech. And Lord, I pray speak to each of our hearts this morning and change us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Brother John. And Sean, we will look to you. Sean is here representing the LifeQuest community, a discipleship ministry here in State College. I'll let him introduce more about it. I do have the privilege of being part of the same congregation as Sean, the Fathers of Jesus congregation here in State College, he and his wife Amy and their daughter Michaela. And they're also anticipating another arrival of another child in the future here. So it's good to have you with us, Sean. And you can go ahead.

All right. Let me share my screen here. Thank you so much for the opportunity of being here and sharing on Strength to Strength. It's a privilege to be here with you all virtually this morning. So this morning, I want to talk briefly about LifeQuest community. LifeQuest is a discipleship community based in State College, Pennsylvania. It is a ministry mostly focused on college students. And so a lot of the students that we interact with are international students, but we interact with any students that are interested in interacting with us. So here is our logo for LifeQuest. It's a place for honest questions, discovery, and disciple making. And at the top, you see it says Ask, and that stands for ask, seek, and knock.

And so I want to talk a little bit about LifeQuest this morning. So the purpose, here's our purpose statement in two sentences. It is to help both the young and the old learn to know God and how to follow Him, then disciple and equip them to contribute to the work God is doing in the world.

So it is very focused on discipleship. And we are located here in State College, Pennsylvania. The nickname of the valley is Happy Valley. And you are welcome to come and visit us sometime. So LifeQuest has four main focuses. The first focus is campus ministry, where we use our homes and Penn State buildings at Penn State University.

Another focus is resources and training. Third, City Study Center next to Penn State. And then fourthly, discipling community about 10 to 20 minutes from campus. Now, all our energy is going into the campus ministry currently. We would love to focus on the other three, but we don't have the finances or the personnel to help us expand into these other three. So currently, we are only focusing on the campus ministry, where we use our homes and Penn State buildings.

So we, with the Holy Spirit, want to be a bridge. There is a huge gulf between what people know before they come to State College and who we hope they know when they leave State College. And these people need a bridge to Jesus. We want to point them to Him. The majority of the people that we interact with have never been to a Christian Bible study or worship service. Most people who have not grown up going to church need a mentor who can be that bridge in introducing them to Jesus and the Christian church.

So normally, we think of the local church as where we evangelize and make disciples and where disciple making should take place. And I think that all churches should have that as part of their normal work. LifeQuest is intended to be a discipleship center, which helps channel people into the church. And what we really care about is seeing people come to know God. LifeQuest is simply a tool that helps us accomplish the task of planting seed, watering plants, and bringing in the spiritual harvest. And we look to God for the increase. So LifeQuest is a local ministry with a worldwide reach. This is a world map that my wife and I hung up on our living room wall soon after we got married.

And friends who come to our house can put a pin on the map where they're from and then a string to their name. And we get to interact with people from all over the world. At any given time in the United States, there are over 1 million international students studying in the United States. This is a wide open door for Christians. But the problem is we only have a very short window of time to influence these people for the kingdom of God because usually they're only here for several years and then move on.

So talking a little bit about the beginnings of LifeQuest, Ernest and Kathy Eby and their family moved to State College about 11 years ago with a vision of reaching the local community. And over the years, they as a family have been very interested in outreach to the local community, primarily Penn State University students. However, it came to a point where they felt they needed more help. And that's when LifeQuest was started several years ago, where they could expand the ministry and include more people, recruit more people to help them in reaching out to college students. We have a very small staff right now, and most of us work on a volunteer basis. Our goal as a team is to be the hands and feet of Jesus as we introduce people to a way of thinking that is very strange and very upside down from everything they have ever heard or known.

So a lot of our work happens here at Penn State University. It's a very beautiful campus. So if you are ever interested in a tour, feel free to reach out to us. And we have contact information on the website on Strength to Strength.

So a little bit about Penn State University. There's more than 300 buildings on campus, and it covers about 8,500 acres. And there are around 50,000 students and visiting scholars. Out of those 50,000 students, there are over 7,000 international students from about 50 different countries at any given time. So plenty of opportunities to reach out to people from all over the world. There's also about 22,000 employees working for Penn State here in State College.

So one of the ways that we have access to Penn State University is through a student organization. In order to be on campus and use the Penn State University rooms free of charge, we needed to have a student organization that is recognized by Penn State University.

And the name of our student organization on campus is Happy Valley Christian Community. And through this organization, which is recognized by Penn State, we can do pretty much whatever we want to on campus, including setting up booths, handing out literature, and reserving rooms.

So here are some of the current activities that we are doing. We do offer English classes on campus, group friendship or conversational English. We offer friendship partners, cooking classes, picnics, meals in homes, camping, involvement in all of life, Bible literacy classes, and small group Bible studies.

And I have a few pictures to go with some of these here. So English classes, we have a lady by the name of Tara Foster who is from a River Brethren church. And she is very engaging with students, and the students love her. And it's very fascinating how she does not necessarily have a college education, and yet she's teaching students, including PhD students, better English. She connects well with students on a very personal level.

And in turn, they are constantly reaching out to her with questions, which is exactly what we want to happen. We also have friendship partners. There are many people on campus who know English well and aren't necessarily interested in learning more English. However, they're lonely and they long for friendship. And so this is an amazing place where many people, an amazing opportunity where we can reach out to people who are lonely and be their friend.

We do offer a lot of, we do host a lot of picnics throughout the summer as much as we can. And this has been a very good way of making connections with people. Now, after the picnics, occasionally we will have a, in the past, we've had a literature table where people can get free Bibles and various other literature. And this is one of my favorite pictures right here. So this is after one of the picnics, there was a literature table set up. And a lot of these are Chinese people that are holding a Bible for the very first time. Now, I think that's phenomenal that we are in Central Pennsylvania and are able to give some people a Bible for the very first time.

And you can just see how very interested they are in it.

We also try to do a camping once a year where we can try to interact with people on more of a casual level. And one thing that we focus a lot on is inviting people into our homes for meals. And we have learned a lot of cultural things from having people in our homes from all over the world. And it provides a good opportunity to connect at a deeper level with them. And then involvement in all of life, inviting them over to split firewood or plant a garden or whatever else it may be. These are not necessarily spiritual activities, but they are the stitches in the relationships. And it allows us to share life with them.

And they can observe how we live life. Ultimately, everything that we do here at LifeQuest is focused on eventually bringing people into our Bible studies and disciple them. So one of the things that we do is we teach English through Bible literacy classes. So Tara Foster teaches English by reading a simple version of the Bible together with her students. And this opens up the door to their spiritual lives. It also allows her to see who the ones are that are truly interested in spiritual things and could benefit from attending a small group Bible study.

And then we also have Bible studies in our homes. Currently, we have a Wednesday evening Bible study in our home. And Ernest and Kathy Eby have Bible studies on Sunday at their house. We have been interacting with a lot of people from all over the world that are interested in knowing a little bit more about Jesus.

Some of our future visions that we are not accomplishing yet, but we'd love to accomplish in the future is a Christian study center right close to campus where students could come in and we could interact with them throughout the day.

But again, places like this close to campus are extremely expensive, and we have not been able to pursue that at this time. And then eventually, we would dream of having a discipleship community about 10 to 20 minutes from campus where students could retreat from their studies and focus on learning more about God and the Bible.

Okay. Currently, one of the things that we are looking for is an administrative assistant. This would be someone who would coordinate weekly lunches, run errands, provide rides for students, do some office work and accounting, helping with coordinating picnics and camping. So if you are interested in this or you know of someone who may be interested in this, feel free to reach out to Ernest Eby. His information is listed here. And it will also be listed on the website on Strength to Strength.

Also, if you are interested in more information, feel free to contact us for a presentation at your church. We are very happy to come and give a more in-depth presentation of LifeQuest at your church if you are interested. And that is all I have to share.

Thank you so much, Sean. I enjoyed seeing that. I get the privilege of seeing Tara at our cafe quite often. Just yesterday, she was there with a student from Japan, I believe. Tara also recently said that she's had people from over 36 different countries in her classes, I believe. So a place like LifeQuest can have an international impact. So thank you, Sean, for sharing that. What we're going to do is we're going to keep a time for Q&A at the end. So just keep these in mind as we go along here. And at the end, we can open it up and you can ask any one of these brothers for questions. So thanks again, Sean.

Now, next, we're going to turn to Berlin Eby. Berlin Eby is with Christian Aid Ministries representing the work with the hurricanes in the South. Berlin, go ahead. All right. Good morning. I'm going to see if I can share my screen here. All right. Can you see that all right?

Yes, we can. All right. Well, first off, I want to thank Strength to Strength for having me on this morning. I take it as a privilege and an honor to be on and share about the work that's going on.

Yeah. Christian Aid Ministry's main purpose is to glorify God in all we do and enlarge the kingdom as we connect people who want to help with people who need help. So yeah, my prayer is, as we share this morning, that it'll be an encouragement to each one that listens and bring practical ways to our attention that we as Christians can shine and are shining in this time we're living in.

So as we all know, Hurricane Helene came through and did a lot of damage from Florida all the way up into the Carolinas. And one of the stories that touched my heart, and I was just reminded again of the power of God, the God that we serve.

A man in Lake Lure was telling us that his daughter and several of his grandchildren were trying to leave in the rising floodwaters. They were trapped and could not get out of the housewell. And some of the children started making their own escape through the chest-deep water to safety. As they were doing so, their eight-year-old daughter was swept downstream. And as she was whirled through the water, a man they did not even recognize reached, pulled her out to safety, and returned her to the family. The family did not have any close neighbors and didn't hear from the man since it happened. They feel it was God's protecting angel.

Now, September 26th and the days following, there was a lot of chaos and devastation that happened as Helene traveled from Florida north. And there are many stories of God's protecting hand in the midst of this destruction and chaos. And it's just a wonderful reminder to see God in control of these situations. So starting in Florida, 11:10 p.m., Hurricane Helene struck the Big Bend region and landed very close to where Idalia landed a year ago.

Now, Helene was significantly larger and had a storm surge of around 20 feet. Now, Idalia hit this house a year ago, and it had five feet of water. And this past season, our disaster response team actually fixed this home up and got it livable again. This time, there was 18 inches in the second story.

So as you can imagine, the family just getting back on their feet, you would say, to have their whole lower level destroyed again. So in this case, we were able to set up our rapid response teams in the same area and quickly get to work cleaning up this house again and then many others in the area.

Traveling north, the hurricane downgraded to a category one, which basically means the wind backed off some. Obviously, as you can see in this picture, there was still a lot of tree damage. And in Georgia, especially, it seems like there was a lot of damage in the tree end of things. Not so much flooding, but many, many trees fell over. So we have a rapid response team in Valdosta, Georgia, and are actively cleaning up homes and removing tree debris and such like.

Moving to Waynesboro, October 1, volunteers started working in this area. And this is actually one of the first jobs completed. If you notice, they have blue tarpaulin part of the roof. So the goal of our rapid response is to basically seal off homes. If they have a hole in the roof, fix that as best we can.

Clean up the debris in the yard. Gut the house. If there's water damage, strip that out and then pile it out by the road, typically for removal. Here's a picture of the base there in Waynesboro. And what has been amazing, not just in this location, but in every location that we have rapid response, is the local churches just open their arms and put themselves into the needs. Now, there's many different ways that that happened.

Some, like Ashley, left their homes and came and volunteered short notice until we could schedule staffing from Ohio. But in this congregation, they're actually serving the food even after the rapid response team has been there now for over a week and providing the meals needed for this work to continue. So tremendous blessing to work alongside churches.

They can have that personal connection with people that they meet and, yeah, be a shining light that way. There's hundreds of jobs just at this location that are happening. This is a picture inside the gym where the volunteers are relaxing after a day of work, debriefing, whatever you want to call it, just having a meal and taking it easy.

So when the storm entered the Carolinas, it slowed down. And at that point, dumped inches of rain, estimated 11 to 20 inches, some say as high as 30. I'm not sure how you know for sure how much different areas got. Either way, as we know with mountains, the water finds the lowest level. Now, one of the things that really made this devastating was the week previous to the storm. There was inches of rain, and the ground was already saturated. And that calculated into the effects of Helene.

Now, obviously, when you don't have a very wide area of water spread out like you do in the Appalachian Mountains, houses along the side quickly get swept downstream, as would happen with this home. The banks get wide, houses are swept downstream, roads are eroded, and short order bridges are destroyed.

And it doesn't take long, at least in some of these areas, it was a matter of minutes that the water went up to crisis level. Starting Monday, September 30, around 30 of our search and rescue team members were on ground in Jonesboro, Tennessee. And here, they searched debris fields like you see in this picture, or maybe it was mounds, piles, going through and looking for bodies.

Yeah. And then they ended up doing some water searching as well. And when they started this search, there was around 30 people that were missing, several dozen, in this county. And when they left, it was down to two people. So we praise God for helping them find people and that there's not that many lives lost there in Tennessee.

I should also mention we do have a rapid response team in Jonesboro working. Actually, no, it would be Greenville. I'm sorry. And the Greenville, they're setting up with local churches and serving. Damascus, Virginia, is another place that we have a rapid response base set up. And here again, a lot of this has happened initially from volunteers from local churches flooding in to help clean up after the devastation. It's just been a beautiful thing to watch.

Here you can see gutting a house out that was flooded, cleaning out the drywall, and trying to get it ready to fix back up.

Lake Lure, North Carolina, is where I ended up. I was down there last week just to help get things established, make contact with the people, the homeowners in the area. This home in this picture was a home that I was driving by. And it so happened that the homeowners were at this location checking out the damage of their home.

And I stopped and got out, and I asked them. I said, "Hey, how are you doing? I see you survived the storm. Were you here? Did you evacuate? How are you doing?" And 75-year-old Mike proceeded to tell me that no, they hadn't evacuated. They were in their house, and they thought the water would never get up as high to flood their house until the water busted their door and then flooded their home. With a matter of minutes, he said, the water was up waist to chest high. And their refrigerator started floating in their kitchen, and they started getting scared.

So you see in this picture, there's a little window above the air conditioner unit. They crawled out this window. He's a 75-year-old man, and his wife is maybe a little bit younger. They crawled out this window on what would be the lee side or the downstream side. So the current wasn't as strong. And there was a little boat there that they were able to grab a hold. I believe it was the hand of God that floated that thing and held it there for them. They were able to crawl out and grab this boat. And by holding on with both hands, they were able to somewhat float.

He said sometimes their feet touched the ground, but they drifted downstream. Now, thankfully, it wasn't in the main current, or I believe they would have been swept to likely death. But they were swept down to their neighbor's house, you can see in the distant picture here.

There they grabbed hold of the porch railing. And apparently, the porch was a higher elevation, and they were able to safely abide there until the water went down. So as you can imagine, they were experiencing extreme relief that they weren't hurt.

And yet, as a 75-year-old man, to now have a home that is unlivable, messed up, is very overwhelming. So we pray that, yeah, they can be blessed. And yeah, it was a good interaction just to shine Jesus and tell him that we care and that we want to do what we can to help.

Here's a picture of the base we set up at the Ingles Market in Lake Lure. This base at this point was typically wholly set up to staff members for Lowe's and Fish's kitchen. So we brought some bunk trailers in, a shower trailer. Obviously, when you don't have electricity and you don't have water, showers are hard to come by. And the water at this point in the river wouldn't be fit, of course. And so this was a wonderful option for the local people to use.

In the days I was there last week, people were coming out from their homes for the first time in five to seven days and connecting to our Wi-Fi, were calling home and telling people they were okay.

I cannot imagine what that was like, but it was very just, yeah, opened my eyes to the pain and trauma that they had been through to see that interaction happening. The joy that they had that they're okay and they're obviously happy to tell their family that. But then, on the other hand, to realize that their whole community is wiped out, many homes damaged, yeah, a lot of emotions going on there.

The one man that I met, he said that it took him five days to cut the trees in his lane to get out and come to town. And he said, "Trust me, five days of using wet wipes to take a bath is not sufficient." And so he was extremely grateful for the shower and then the warm meal that we were able to offer him.

Here you can see people going through the line to get food. Our Lowe's and Fish's team serve meals from 11:30 to 1:00 for a noon meal. And then from 5:00 to 6:30, they serve another meal. Some of the workers that come through would be working on power lines, clearing roads. They might grab a meal, rush back off to work. Others might pick up for their family to take back to their home. Probably half, I would say, actually stayed and sat down and ate their meal at tables we had set up. And this was a wonderful opportunity for me, various of the other people to just sit down and mingle, ask them, "How are you doing?"

And there's also an opportunity for the neighbors, or maybe they didn't know each other, to sit down and just talk about their experiences, sharing stories and tears. I was blessed to actually hear some laughter. And I believe that this communal event is an important step in the healing process. We, as humans, need to talk about this, share those tears, share hugs. And that is a great step in the healing process from this trauma that they experienced.

Eddie and Lisa said, "I just want to say how grateful we are that y'all came to help us. You have truly blessed us. We are very blessed to have met you and have you serve us food that we did not have. I hope God blesses you for your kindness. We love you and many thanks. Have a safe trip back to your homes."

Notes like this and words of thanks are extremely encouraging and, yeah, kind of fuel the fire to keep doing the work that is going on. This would not be possible if it wasn't for volunteers, Christians giving of their time, resources to help a stranger. And truly, it's a blessing to be a small part of that. This shines Jesus in many, many different ways.

So I'd like to mention three ways that we can help. Everyone can help.

Maybe depending on where you're at in life, volunteering would be a good option. And basically, that's our source. That's the way we get things done. If you are interested, you can call this number, 330-893-4842. And then that will connect you to our disaster response secretaries.

Of course, as everyone knows, operations like this cost a lot of money. And there's three ways you can donate. That would be the Ohio office at 330-893-2428. Or you can send money to the address listed, PO Box 360, Berlin, Ohio.

And maybe the easiest is the website. You can go online, and there we try to keep updates of what's happening with Helene and the needs there, what's being done in different areas. So feel free to check that website out. Now, lastly, I'm listing prayer. And I think it should be number one, but I'm listing it last because I think it is the most important. And something that everyone, whether it's a young child, my boys, try to teach them to pray about needs like this, or the oldest person, is something we all can do and I believe that we should avail ourselves of. Ephesians 6:18 says, "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching therein too with all perseverance and supplication for all saints."

We are supposed to be a people of prayer. And I think it's James that says the prayer of the faith will heal the sick. We should be praying for these people that are in desperate situations. That's all I have. Thank you for your support. And we appreciate the prayers of everyone and the support and seeing everyone come together. It's been a beautiful thing seeing church communities from all over the US flocking to help these people in need. Thanks again, and God bless.

Berlin, thank you so much for sharing those pictures and those needs and some of the responses there on the ground that is touching. I thought of there's a verse there in 1 Timothy 6 that talks about rich people and what they should do. It says they are to do good, be rich in good works, be generous and ready to share.

And truly, we are the wealthy, and they are the disadvantaged ones in this situation for sure. Also, just thought of all the logistics behind the scene to pull off something like that. I know there's just a lot of preparation ahead of time.

And then when the disaster happens, you put it to work. And that's exciting with a lot of willing hands. It's amazing when we all work together. It's amazing what we can do. And I'm sure that's inspiring just to see it happen there on the ground. All the different churches coming together. What a blessing. And yeah, thank you for sharing those needs. And as mentioned, we'll open it up here towards the end for any questions or at the end after all these brothers have shared. So next, we have Joel and Summers representing Soldiers of the Cross, a discipleship youth ministry or Bible school type platform out of Ohio. So Joelen, all yours.

Yes. Thank you for the two brothers that shared so far. It was interesting to hear what God is doing in your part of the world. And also to Strength to Strength, thanks for the opportunity to join the platform here and share about Soldiers of the Cross.

So just a short update. I don't have a PowerPoint presentation or anything. I have benefited from Soldiers of the Cross personally as a student. I was there two years as a student. And I would say it was one of the more transformative things in my life, events in my life, and helped to shape in me more of a burden for the lost right around us. So just sharing a little bit of the background, how Soldiers of the Cross started.

It started in 2012, I believe, was the first year that they had the event. And it started with the vision of several people who were serving together at Faith Mission Home with the desire to make teaching and opportunities available to others, teaching for how to go out and share our faith.

The focus of soldiers is to learn to be followers of Jesus, first of all, and as part of that, to learn to bring others into that discipleship.

Since 2012, it has been held annually here in Holmes County, Ohio, except for 2020 when we know that a lot of other things were also shut down. We did not have the event that year. So you might think, why another Bible school, another training event like this?

As I mentioned, the focus of this event, and you could call it a Bible school with an evangelism focus, there's probably a lot of reasons that we don't generally, as Anabaptists here in North America, why we don't do very well with sharing our faith. Possibly, it's just a lack of desire. I've come to see three primary reasons, and I'll list some of the ones that I came up with. One is a lack of burden for the lost. And I see this in myself so much with just because of the busyness and wealth that we have and pleasure seeking.

As Jesus said, that can create an unfruitful life. Another one is fear. And I think this one is big, especially for young people who want to share their faith but are simply afraid. The third reason is a lack of teaching and training on things such as apologetics and how God's word is, in fact, the answer to today's problem.

And as I mentioned, part of the goal of Soldiers of the Cross is to address some of these issues and to equip students with tools to give them a little nudge to joyfully evangelize and make disciples as a part of their everyday life.

So going to kind of the nuts and bolts of Soldiers of the Cross, Soldiers of the Cross is a 10-day evangelism teaching and training event that guides and gives students the chance to go out into the community and practice sharing the good news of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

It's held at a camp. The students stay on site there. And then where we evangelize, we go out into local towns. The camp is kind of in a central location. And we'll split up and go out into various different towns here close by.

The event is 10 days long. However, it's strategically planned at a time of the year when most of us would only need to take four days off of work. So this next year, the dates, Lord willing, will be May 20—just make sure I get this straight here—May 23rd to June 1st. It begins on a Friday evening of Memorial Day weekend and then runs through the following Sunday. So just a tip here for you, if you're considering coming as a student, it doesn't take necessarily 10 days off of work because of the time of the year it's held. On Saturday and Sunday, the first weekend, we have an evangelist come in and share a series of sermons.

Those are usually more revival-focused. And then on Monday through Friday of the following week, we have three classes each day. The three classes that we have are personal discipleship, which is a class whose focus of the class is to instill in students what it means to be followers of Jesus ourselves.

The second class is evangelism and discipling. And this class's focus is to teach students how to lead others to become followers of Jesus. And the third class is Christian apologetics, which is a class to equip students with reasons to buoy their own faith in the face of challenges, as well as to provide answers to help lead seekers or skeptics toward trust and belief in Jesus.

After the classes in the evenings, the students go out and have a chance to use some of the things that they've been learning in class. They'll go out into their community also on Saturday and help with various work projects that we line up for Saturday.

While the teaching can be heavy at times, it can feel like an overwhelming information overload kind of schedule. However, one of the things that I personally really loved about the schedule is the opportunity that's built in for personal time. Each day, there's several hours dedicated to giving the students just time to focus on their own relationship with God, which ultimately is the way that we become effective in sharing the gospel.

Another meaningful part of Soldiers of the Cross is the small groups where students will spend time together in prayer and have an opportunity to share on a more personal level how God is working in their lives. It's also a time of debriefing from the day.

So I'd like to close with the words of Jesus from John 4:35 and 36. He says, "Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest. And he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life. That both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together."

So we have a small group of students that usually comes. We have a limit of 30 per year. And I would say we especially tend to be low on young men to take the challenge and come and learn and share their faith. So if you're interested in this, there's a link to the website, Soldiers of the Cross site, on the Strength to Strength website, I believe. And you can also access some photos and some snippets of recordings on that site. So feel free to check that out. There's contact information there as well.

Joelen, thank you so much for sharing about that work. If I was a young man, I would love to come. And I'm even an older man, and I would still love to come. So do you take families? Can families come to that?

Yeah. We are not only serving youth. It's open to others as well. We're willing to make adjustments and see what we can do to accommodate whoever wants to come. Okay. Sounds good. All right. Thank you again for sharing. And now we're going to turn to Merle Weaver with the Upper Way Response, another disaster response organization that is working also in the South here. So all right, Merle, all yours.

Good morning. Thank you, Bryant, for having me on here. And I would like to say us on here because I'm just a voice for a whole network of people working together. And so it's a privilege to be that voice, and I hope I can do a good job.

All right. So start with just a few personal words of introduction. As I already shared, my name is Merle. And one of the important things in my life is I have seen both through history and also studying my own life that nothing's done but it's first done through prayer. And that even applies to disaster response and responding to emergencies. And so a reminder for all of us to precede, to precipitate, to bathe, and immerse all of what we do in communication with our Father. And also a very important part of my life is a love relationship with Jesus Christ and looking forward and hastening the day of his return. And again, whatever we do, we can do a lot of things, needs to come out of who we are and our relationship with the Lord.

And so even when you're navigating very dirty and mucky and nasty things like disasters, we need to be in a place of worship. And another important part, I like the term Joelen talked about, Soldiers of the Cross. The cross is a key to unlocking the power of the gospel. And just as Christ came and bore hardship, bore things for others, so we go into the world as he did, bearing hardships so that others can live and experience the life of Christ. And I do believe that responding to disasters can and should be an element of bearing the cross. The cross is not when I get sick or if I'm backed in the corner because of some circumstance in life.

The cross is something I voluntarily pick up and embrace for the sake of others. And it's a good thing to just a little reminder here at the beginning. Following those above things, my first priority in life is my family, first starting with my wife. And so just a word about them because they really have empowered me and helped me to be able to be involved in things like this. And that's exciting.

There's a picture of my family. And I also have a real passion for leadership development. And so here's the next generation of serving leaders that I'm working on raising up and developing. So moving on from a personal introduction, the Upper Way Committee is a loosely organized disaster response organization to facilitate the response of God's people to major disasters, both domestic and internationally. Leadership team consists of Jason Weaver from Flat Rock, Illinois. That's the upper right. He's the chairman. Benjamin Smith from Halsey, Oregon, upper left.

Matt Lehman from South Dakota, lower left. And then our treasurer, Samuel Stalls, who's from just over the line here in Southeast PA in Berks County. And then it's overseen by the leadership of Lancaster County House Church Network with our local district in Bevansville overseeing the funds. Recently, we got involved with responses to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton and are currently involved in recovery efforts in Black Mountain, North Carolina, just east of Asheville, working under the umbrella of Plan Compassion Crisis Response while sending our own teams. And Burton Salthouse, one of the leaders here in Lancaster, is overseeing that work at the moment.

Upper Way Response in collaboration with other crisis response organizations responded under the umbrella of Plan Compassion Crisis Response on Saturday, September 28, and Sunday, September 29. You already heard about a lot of those details from Verlin. I feel like Verlin helped me out in introducing what was going on. Initial activities included searches, extractions, and aid delivery, including aerial operations. We collaborated with JARS and did a lot of fixed-wing and helicopter aid deliveries and checking on people, blocked hollows up and down, especially in the Mitchell and Avery County areas of western North Carolina. And one of the great joys of this response was setting up a unified command between a number of mission agencies.

And I really got to see in this disaster working together God's people. Verlin already talked about the different churches working on things, but this was at a higher level among different organizations. And also saw the wall between government and nonprofit and public sector breakdown. Normally, that's pretty stiff and strong, but it was really a joy to see even FEMA directors accounting for the resources of the church, of things we were bringing, putting them on the list, working together. And when things like this happen, the people that benefit the most are the citizens of the country that's damaged because instead of things clumping up on a pile or being wasted, they're moved out the fingers of the network to those who really need it.

So that was a great joy watching that move forward. And moving on, some more pictures of the damage. For many of us, this was the most devastating natural disaster we had ever witnessed or been involved with. And one of the reasons was it was a combination of two disasters. One, of course, being the hurricane felling the trees and the normal damage from wind. But the other being, in fact, the damage from extreme flooding, as Verlin already mentioned, 25 to 34 inches of rain, various parts in western North Carolina funneled down the canyons by the mountain country and actually seeing floodwaters 20 and 30 feet above the riverbank was just incredibly devastating.

So we did, like I said, have some air operations, coordinated that. I'm going to show a couple of video clips to just demonstrate what we did there.

So we're here at this little airport up here in the Smoky Mountains. And we are getting ready to work at distributing food and supplies back hollows and work with JARS here. So this is going to be an interesting operation. We're leaving this airport to go for a 4 o'clock meeting with the local fire department to determine how we can all work together. Just miles and miles of people. A lot of people still trapped or confined back there. They can't get out of their places back in hollows.

And right now, one of Kavach's rescue team is going into a group of elderly people, 60 of them, to see if they can rescue them. So that's what's going on here today.

Transferring from the plains to the choppers to the remote areas.

Flying water in, flying essentials in.