Jamey Simmons Peru Mission Trip

Well, if we're ready, I just want to say good evening and welcome. Usually we start a little bit later.

! If I'm on South American time, though, we'd be starting in about 45 minutes. But we won't go that far. But thank you all for being here. Most of you know me. I'm Jamie Simmons.

And I had the pleasure and the honor to go on a two-week mission trip to Peru. And I want to first of all thank the church for your support. I don't know whether you know it or not.

But every time somebody goes on a mission, the church automatically supports a certain amount. So I want to thank you as a church body. It's really important that we are so missions-oriented.

It's something that I'm proud of to be a part of this body is that we support missions so wonderfully. And it speaks to the heart of us as a congregation.

Why don't we just open up with a word of prayer here. Lord, thank you for this time to talk about your work. It's very humbling to be a part of your kingdom.

Because you're so merciful to make us a part of your plan. And we are workers in your kingdom. Please help us know your heart for what you want us to do as Christians, as believers.

Because you did all the work for us spiritually. You brought us into your kingdom. Thank you for this time. And please help this be a blessing to your kingdom and your glory.

In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Well, thank you again for being here and hearing about this. So I titled this 2026 Music Mission to Peru.

And I was there for two weeks. And it says La Puerta Azul. That's the name of the ensemble that I traveled with. Most of you know I'm a trumpet player.

You're used to me standing right there. This music was a little bit different than Jerry and me and Lynn and the choir. But yet it was very special music and a very special ministry.

So first some facts about Peru. It's a country of about 33 million. We were stationed in the capital city of Lima.

We never left Lima. Lima is a city of I think 10 to 11 million somewhere in there. It's an immense city.

And they have very little interstate. It's all stoplights. And I think our record was one time we went 11 kilometers in two hours.

So that gives you just an example of the congestion and what that big city is like. You can see what the religious breakdown. As you can imagine, two years ago I went to Poland and it was similar.

Although in Poland about 90 some percent of the population is Catholic. In Peru it's about 70 some. 76 percent they say are professing Catholics.

You can see that a larger percent are evangelical. Evangelical churches about 14 percent. And then the rest, small mainline Protestant, Jehovah's Witness, who we actually met a couple of Mormons.

And 5 percent non-religious. Now if you look at the United States and what non-religious or what are called nuns, N-O-N-E-S, people who profess no religion at all in the United States, it's a huge number.

So you can see that the unique challenge of going to Peru would be that you confront cultural Catholicism a lot.

And you'll actually hear an account where a couple of us are witnessing to some women who have that. And it'll be kind of an example of what that looks like.

So you can see the per capita earnings per person. It's around $11,000 U.S. It's considered as a middle income country.

Okay. So you can imagine it's there are problems of poverty, especially in Lima. You would drive through the streets and think there are a lot of economic challenges there, which we'll talk about maybe a little bit more.

So the back story of how I got involved in this was in 2024, I went, traveled to Poland as part of a jazz group that has had as its mission to spread the gospel, share the gospel message through music and the arts.

And it's through Proclaim International Ministries. I would encourage you to go look at this ministry and see what they're up to because they are all over the world and they're doing really unique things in a way that you wouldn't think, oh, musicians.

They're not usually engaged in spreading the gospel, but these are people who really had that background and banded together to do this. It's been around since about the late 90s, early 2000s.

It's based in Florida. And if you go to look at their mission statement, it says that, oops, uh-oh. I guess I can't make that bigger, so I'll have to squint.

It has a unique way of evangelizing in that it tries to reach people with the truth in ways that capture their attention and overcome cultural barriers and traditional prejudices.

So what's interesting about this mission is that we actually played Peruvian-type music with songs that were written by our band leader, Kim Peterson.

And this was meant to kind of bypass some of those prejudices. One of the ways we did that, there was a man who stuck around for a whole performance about, you know, an hour and a half worth of music, and we went and talked to him, and he was a musician.

And he said, yeah, usually when I hear music at church, it sounds nothing like that. Well, then we got to kind of talk about, well, what did you think of the message of the music, and got to engage him on the spiritual front.

So kind of a unique ministry. So what is La Puerta Azul? La Puerta Azul is based on Jesus' account of the door, where he stands at the door and he knocks.

And he invites those who seek to come in. And what the song says is, and this is an actual song written by the band leader.

His name is Kim Peterson. And we have a lot in common in that he was a saxophone player for the Glenn Miller Orchestra. And so I played in that band maybe about 15 years later than he did.

So we had lots of stories and just traded a lot of notes about being a musician. Well, when he was on that band, he had just gotten saved, I think, shortly before that.

And someone said, hey, we should really start a church because we never go to church because we're touring musicians. And Kim said, yeah, that sounds great.

Who will preach? And they said, you will. And he said, all right, I'll do that. As long as you guys come up with the music and we'll have Sunday morning worship before we get on the bus to go to the next gig.

So that's how he got involved in Christian ministry. He later went to seminary and ended up going into missions full time in Spain and a part of Spain called Catalonia.

So he speaks to those different languages. He's fluent in Spanish. So he and a bunch of European musicians started playing music together.

And this is how Proclaim Ministries came into being through these musicians who wanted to share the gospel around Europe to non-believers in public settings.

So we were affiliated on this trip. La Puerta Azul was affiliated with a local church that kind of supported us.

And I'll tell you all about their pastor in a little bit. And it also is, you can go to their website and see what it's like. You can go to Spotify and hear their recordings, too, if you want.

So here's what the mission of the band is. Kim Peterson, he tells it like this. La Puerta reminds us of what our life's purpose is here and in Peru.

To invite listeners to accept Jesus' invitation to come to the Father through him, the door. As he said, I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and go in and out and find pasture.

Azul, which is the word for blue in Spanish as a color, might make us think of heaven. Our hope and source of who and what we are.

As we sing and play for people and share with them after concerts, we remember the color azul and can keep our eyes focused on where they need to be. As we continually look up for strength, inspiration, and guidance.

So that's kind of part of the mission of the group. And there were different songs. That was one of my trumpet parts.

So that's a tune called La Cruz, which in Spanish means the cross. So that song, Kim composed it. It's all about God's love.

And that the cross is the way that we can achieve, that we can gain salvation through what Christ did. There's no other way to God than that.

Grande. Grande. Okay, we all know that. We go through Taco Bell. But grande is what God is. It's not a taco. Right? God is truly grande.

And that song is all about that and how God wants us to humble ourselves and look to him for our needs. Another song. I could never figure out how to say this, PJ.

Maybe you can help me. By la rigue. Did I get that right? Okay. Yeah. She makes fun of my Spanish because I have a hard time with R's.

So bailarie is a song about dancing before the Lord and how the joy of the Lord should make us want to rejoice. Asumesa talks about the table, being invited to God's table where we get food for our souls.

And he talks about a restaurant in Lima where you can go and get 10 different courses all from different ecosystems in Peru.

And they charge about $1,000 per plate. And all the Hollywood ritzy people go there and powerful people. Well, he ties that into how much more can we be satisfied through Jesus by sitting at his table.

So interesting approach to songwriting. Here are some of the workers that I got to know really well and was really impressed by. These are the full-time ministry leaders that were with us.

Steve Liberti. I really, really like Steve. He is just an amazing guy. Grew up as a Jehovah's Witness. His father, I believe, left the church.

Left, well, I'm not a church. Left the group and their whole family was disowned. Grew up in a very abusive household and for years floundered in his life.

and finally Jesus got a hold of him. He told his story, his salvation story, when we went to our first performance at a juvenile center. So he's full-time, lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

Another Florida person, Todd Smalley. I stood right next to Todd. Just a wonderful heart for the Lord. Just a real gentle soul.

Knew a little bit of Spanish once in a while. I'd hang around with him and get pointers. On what different words were. He's also full-time with the ministry. So he goes on numerous trips every year and is in charge of developing the mission as well.

And here's a picture of the group. And I guess I'll just talk about several of these people. You can see there was a national involved in the band, Michael.

His Spanish was really good. But he was involved playing percussion for the group, Latin percussion. That's his wife, Fernando, a sideman. Candy Steak.

She is also from Florida and traveled as part of the videographer team. Although she knew nothing about videography. She just wanted to go and people said, can you hold an iPhone and video our performances?

They said, yes, you're in. Yeah, there you go. So just realize that if you want to serve with this ministry, you don't necessarily have to be a musician. There have been other folks like that in Poland.

These are two guys from Sacramento, California. There are guitarists right here, Stephen and Gary. Stephen grew up in a missionary family. And a Christian missionary family speaks Spanish fluently.

So he was involved in some of the outreach after concerts as well. And there were major prayer concerns about him. Because about two or three months before the trip, he had to have a toe amputated.

So he was really worried that he couldn't go on the trip. We really prayed that he could. And he made it. And he did great. Gary, another Sacramento guy, just wonderful.

These two folks here, Ann and Greg, are both from South Carolina. Greg's a studio owner and bass player. Ann is a singer for a Celtic rock band.

Who knew? They sometimes travel with Proclaim also doing performances. Again, you met Todd. This couple, Russ and Marjorie, they actually live in France.

They're missionaries over there. And they run a cable news network or satellite news network that broadcasts Christian news and stories and the gospel to North Africa.

So they have a very unique. He's the keyboard player and she was a videographer. Right back here, Zeke is a worship leader in Memphis and is really on fire for the Lord and speaks total fluent Spanish.

There I am with one of my ex-students from alums from MTSU. He played in my jazz ensemble and graduated not long ago.

He was praying for an opportunity to praise the Lord through his music. He's a very good saxophone player. And it wasn't long after that, like a day after that, that I called and said, Ben, would you be willing to go on this trip?

So that was a major answer to prayer. Sometimes the way these things work, missions end up blessing us just as much as the people that hear the gospel. So that's Ben Earl.

He's from Hendersonville. Cole and Cammy are both. He was our sound man from Florida as well, both of them.

They're married and traveled with us for technical support. This is Pastor Reno. He is great. Just a wonderful leader and kind of the host for our group and organized the mission.

So there's Pastor Reno Beretta. And he's actually kind of in partial ministry with Proclaim as the contact on the ground.

A couple weeks before we were there, he coordinated a group going to the jungle, which is another part of their ministry there in Peru. So he's also the pastor of the church we worshiped with on Sunday.

So this was my verse. They encouraged us to memorize one verse. This is Romans 10.9. You probably recognize it in English. Everybody do remember that.

It's part of the Romans road, right? I sort of memorized a different Bible version than that. But my verse was, So thank you.

Yeah, okay, it flowed a little bit better, Rebecca, last week or two weeks ago. Sort of gotten out of practice. But people, yeah, Kim said, hey, they're not going to laugh at you.

They're going to hear what you're saying, and they're going to hear the gospel. And they're going to appreciate that you worked on a little bit of the language. And so that was my verse.

It was really useful when you're witnessing. And we had little handouts, Billy Graham handouts in Spanish. And I started kind of catching on to a lot of the words.

And that was also a part of it. So it was just a fun, fun thing. So what would we do? We rehearsed a couple days, okay? And those were really intense days.

So as a musician, you might think, oh, you just stand and you play your instrument. But it's pretty taxing to rehearse for two and a half days straight.

I knew those would be the most challenging thing to do in a way. But, you know, God gives us that strength that we didn't know we had.

And he gets the glory for it. So we rehearsed at the Seminario Evangelico Lima. And then we started by traveling out to various venues in the city.

The first one, what we were asked to do, we were asked to all have our testimony ready. Had a three or four minute. They said kind of aim for two and a half minutes with the translator.

That turns into five minutes. So I had that ready and got to give my testimony on the second last concert.

We were asked to prepare a devotion. And they were really good. We did that every day after breakfast together. We prayed corporately together for the people we were evangelizing the day before and our upcoming performances.

And we prayed also for unity because there are a couple points where we had some technical problems. And we had, you know, we got a little bit tired out.

And maybe somebody was crabby one day. I don't know who that person was. But what's interesting, we had that to overcome and ask for the Holy Spirit's guidance in that.

We'd pray on the bus together. And here's a list of, yeah, the interpreters and people giving their testimonies.

That was, there were some really powerful testimonies. Here's some pictures. The first one at top, at the top, our first trip was a juvenile detention center.

And these were boys starting at the age of, I think, around 13 or 14 were the youngest ones. All the way up to a special wing where they had some adults there.

Because those young men were waiting for spots in a real, in an actual prison. It was very profound.

And I will tell you about the end of the trip because we did go back there. And it was, it even made it deeper to talk about and to think about because it was on Father's Day.

There's Ben playing. This is the performance at the juvenile detention center. There were about, I guess, around a thousand inmates.

We didn't play to all of them because we played for the, and presented to the, I guess you would call the best behaved of the group.

Okay. Kim, as he was singing, he would run across this big concrete area. And then we were playing on the other side of that. And the juveniles were on the other side.

And it kind of, so he had to run all the way around. And it was really profound. He said that he was really removed, really moved at one point as he was singing.

He just sat down with them and would sing to them. And at one point he was just kind of putting his hand, like he felt he needed to just put his hand over them.

Almost like, like he wanted to comfort them in some way. So, there's, here's an example.

We played in about five or six public squares in Lima. And you really got to see a cross section of just the population that lives around there.

It's very desert-like. So, if you look at the mountains and the hills behind the city, very arid. Not much for trees, plants, very rocky.

I like the name, can you see the name of our bus there? It's Corazon de Jesus, which means the heart of Jesus. So, every day we got out of the heart of Jesus and went and did our work.

So, there are lots of stories about those markets because it was always a real busy place. There are businesses all around. Lots of times it was very loud.

But once we started playing, we were pretty loud too. But I think what was really interesting was people really stayed.

Most of the people would stay the whole time and listen to the entire concert and presentations. So, we got a chance to play at a private school.

This is a good example of that. We had a connection there with one of the local church members teaching there.

And she has a really good rapport with the administration. And they hosted us and we got to give the gospel message at a private school.

So, now this is a good example. These pictures right here are good examples of what we do after the concert.

We would go out and engage with people. And people were really, really open to it. Really, really open to talking.

This young boy right here, his name is Liam. And he was there before we got there. And he was entertaining people in the plaza with a top.

And he could spin this thing and flip it in the air. And then it would land on his hand and it would keep spinning around. And we were just blown away by how talented he was.

So, we engaged him. And Kim, even before the concert, because we had some technical problems, he and another part of the team went and talked to Liam.

And he ended up making a commitment to Jesus. So, it was amazing. It was wonderful. He had such a gentle spirit. It's almost like he was just ready. He was what we would call the soil that was ready for the gospel.

Here is Steve and Michael, the resident of Lima, our percussionist, talking to. They got to talk to a group of about 25 different students at the juvenile center.

They loved the contact. They don't get much as far as joy, as far as smiles, as far as talking about the Lord, about good things.

Here is that musician I talked about. Here, a couple of us saw a police officer. And so, we just went up and talked to her. And it ended up that we went through the kind of the plan of salvation.

And she said, basically, oh, yeah, I believe all this. We said, yes, okay, yes, you're a sister. And so, we had a good, and by the way, ended up connecting her with a church.

Because when you do meet believers who say, yes, I'm a Christian, well, then we were encouraged to, well, let's challenge them. Challenge them to be in a church.

Because that's one of the ways, that's one of the signs that we really love Jesus is that we want to be with his people. So, I thought that was great. We did that quite often, actually.

This man down here has a colostomy. He showed us his colostomy bag. Kind of blew me away. I was like, whoa, okay.

That's different. But after that, he went on to tell us his family, he's not really in contact with his family. He has this health condition.

And it's really inoperable. And he's dying. So, we were very frank with him. And we said, right now, you need to really, you really need to make a commitment to making Jesus your Lord.

To settling your soul with God. He took a New Testament. He couldn't read it where we were. It was sort of dark. Took a New Testament with him. And Pastor Reno took him to get a meal after that.

He never did make a profession. So, those are the people we really need to pray for. Is that he would have that. That he would read it. That he would take it seriously. So, a lot of different great stories.

We met a professor outside of university. Started talking to him. And we had a lot in common. Just sharing the joy of Christ. And he said, yes, I believe that too.

And turned out we could really encourage him and his faith as well. So, here's an example of what I talked about as far as the cultural Christianity.

And, but I'll let you. Do you have any rules in your church?

Or some things that you need to follow? Well. Did you hear what? It's hard to hear it. She asked, do you have any rules at your church?

Which is an interesting question, right? Here's my answer. Do you have any rules in your church?

Or some things that you need to follow? Well, we do. But now that we have a relationship with Jesus, following the rules is a joyful thing.

They do. They do. They do. They do. They do. They do. They do. They do. They do. They do. But, following Jesus, they adapt to that rule. So, Reno is translating there.

And, basically, what I said was, well, yes, we have rules, definitely, definitely. But, we follow the rules not in order to get our way to God, but that through a relationship with Jesus, then we have an opportunity to follow those rules joyfully and to do it out of love and gratitude for what he did for us, his work that he did.

So, there's, it's an interesting, it's a little bit hard to hear on our sound system, but we walked through the gospel very, very slowly, and they nodded yes to everything, which is hard, because sometimes people do just agree, but we were joyful that we got to meet them and be, you know, be together in the kingdom, we assume.

But, we challenged them as far as we could. Here's an example. This next one is an example of kind of the music we were playing, and this is called La Puerta Azul.

It's the name of the song. So, I'll play that. .

Pasa por la puerta. Pasa. Pasa. Pasa por la puerta. Pasa. Pasa.

Pasa por la puerta. Gracias. So that's kind of an example of the music we were playing. So joyful music. But with that, he was asking, will you come through the door?

Four. He's just two, right? It means you. Pointing at people. And what's interesting about that song is sometimes people would raise their hands when he pointed at them.

So that was interesting. And when they'd raise their hands, I was focused on my music, but usually Kim would go out and engage with those people. Or the singers, because they could kind of scan for that.

So interesting. Pasa. So here's, keep praying for the supporting churches because we have had people already come to the churches that we reach through the concerts.

So that's great. Pray for the harvest. We've heard about a couple people just rejuvenating their faith. Our bus driver, David David, as he's called in Peru, he hadn't been attending church for years.

And he just started going back. He went to Reno's church, Grace and Peace Church, last weekend. So you just don't know how that's going to go. Stephen, the guy who had the toe injury, fluent in Spanish.

Guess who sat right by David the whole two weeks? Yeah, he was right up there. Got to talk to him about his faith, about attending church, about his relationship.

So it was great. I have a big list. We kept kind of a Google document of the people that we reach, the people that we have to pray for.

Here's some of the people that came to Christ. We witnessed Lisbeth. We witnessed to her. She's attending Grace and Peace Church and made a confession of faith.

Pretty awesome. Liam, the 12-year-old boy that I told you about. We have to pray because we just have to pray that the Holy Spirit moves in his heart.

Because, you know, there's no way. We just have to let the Holy Spirit trust that he's going to do that. His parents weren't there. We didn't have a connection with his parents.

So praise God that a couple of church attendees were challenged in their faith. And it was clear that they didn't know how to be saved. So, yes, there are church attenders that don't know Jesus.

So, Richard, he prayed to receive Christ on the first weekend of our performances with Russ, the French pianist. Grady, who is a veteran who is on dialysis.

He prayed to receive Christ as well. Daniel, our last night, this gentleman, same thing.

Allison, she was already an acquaintance of church members and had come with the invitation of Christian friends. So pray for these folks.

A lot of the kids in the juvenile center need prayers, okay, because it was hard to talk to all of them. And so evangelizing and performing.

Mia, a Mormon, took a New Testament, okay. Also, we witnessed to a mother. The morning we went to the juvenile center.

And she was just dropping her son off for the first time. And she was in tears and was distraught. And we got to offer her comfort, telling her of Christ's compassion.

We met an Iraqi war survivor. Did you know Peruvian troops fought with our forces in Iraq? I hadn't known that either.

We met several men who were guards at the juvenile center. One of them who was injured narrowly escaped death in some sort of a bomb or grenade attack.

So somebody talked to him. And they said, hey, did you know that George Washington escaped narrowly in the war, the French and Indian war?

They said, hey, did you know that George Washington was a crime? They said, hey, what are you doing? Guess who George Washington credited for his life? He gave glory to God.

So they were able to tie that in to his injury and got to witness to him. So lots of different things that happened. Pray for the continuing ministries.

Pray for the boys at the rehabilitation center. And continuing work there. Pray for Chaplain Fernando.

He left a career to be a chaplain at the juvenile center. And he's a good man. I was really struck by how the boys respect him and love him.

So he's doing good work. But he says it's pretty hard. It takes a toll on his family. So he prays. He asks that we pray for his family.

He asks that there would be clothing items for the boys. And that may be something that we want to think about supporting as a church.

Because they have physical needs there in that situation. He's looking for also seven new Bible study teachers for inside the center.

That he has three, but he needs ten. That would be really the perfect number. So if you're willing to go down there and teach Bible study, you could do that. But let's just, if you can't, pray for seven more.

Our home base, this is the seminary where we were based at. There's my room. A place where we ate together.

And has kind of dorms. If you would pray for the seminary also, it is in need of prayer. The scheduling and for the attraction of the seminary for new students and their program is something that we could pray about.

Okay. Can you guess what kind of food this is? It's called cooey. Can anybody know what that is?

It's not fish. Guinea pig. Guinea pig. Who said that? Yeah. Yeah. How did you know that, Terry? We had some relatives in Michigan.

Their daughter-in-law was a family from Korea. Their son loved me. Just I do not want you to try it.

Listen, I grew up eating squirrels and rabbits. My dad, you know, we hunted. And I'd rather have a squirrel. But, hey, I tried it. So, Grace and Peace Church.

Again, that's Reno's. He's pastor of that church. We joined them in worship on the Sunday. Kim preached a message. Played some music with and alongside of the other church members.

It was just a sweet, sweet time. We should pray for them because COVID did a number on their congregation. They were bigger but had to move to a different location that wasn't big enough for their church.

So, they actually split into two different groups and they're kind of rebuilding. So, these concerts were recorded. So, they're hoping to produce some songs, video and audio of these.

So, maybe in the future you'll be able to see what we did and hear the music and get an understanding of what it was. So, here's things to pray about. If you could just pray about the harvest from these concerts because they do an awful lot of things.

And it's really intense on organization and finding workers for the field. So, South Africa and Croatia are both places they're going to be in the coming months.

Major Asian country. I'm not supposed to say which but you can imagine. Big Asian country where they do more undercover language training camps.

They have a Peruvian jungle ministry and then Poland. They do that every year as well. So, that'll be next year. That already happened this year. So, harvest is plentiful.

The workers are few. Pray for believers in a Catholic nation. Right? A lot of spiritual slumber.

And pray for new Christians to be discipled through the local churches. That's something that we need to trust and pray about for the Holy Spirit. The Peruvian people are just so sweet.

They're just really cool people. Very, they're very humble. Just a lot of fruit of the spirit in general.

And I just, it really was a joy to be there and to meet so many of them. So, we need to pray for them. So, I thank God and praise him for people who have a desire and ability to reach these new people.

And, in Peru, there are still languages that need the word. So, pray that that will be a need that will be met. I met a missionary woman on the way back on the plane trip.

She and her husband do exactly that. They used to work for Wycliffe Bible Translating. And, we're involved in that. So, she was kind of interesting.

So, just I want to thank the Lord for his provision for this trip. For the energy. For the ability to not only play music. But to sharpen my faith through sharing the word.

And, I thank you all. And, thank the church, War Trace Baptist, for being faithful and supporting this kind of trip. So, God bless you.

And, thank you for this time. Are there any questions? Yeah, Rebecca. Any other missionaries? Not other than that couple that I met on the flight back.

That's a good question. Now, Pastor Reno. Get this. He taught at a private classical school in Lima, Peru.

Before he was called into the ministry. He went to seminary. And, then he comes from. He's a mime. Have you ever known a Christian mime?

Me either. I don't know any non-Christian mimes. But, he and his family do some outreach and some ministry. He did that for a while, full time. He was actually educated up in Minnesota, I think.

Where there's one of those schools. So, he has done that. Reno is pretty interesting. He has the mind of a missionary. Even though he's a local pastor.

So, that would be probably the only example. And, then our keyboard player, Russ and his wife, Marjorie, are there in France. So, those are who I encountered.

Yeah. He's in Peru right now. Mm-hmm. Oh. He's in the family. If you would put us in touch with them, that would be great.

Yeah. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Would you tell that story about when Kim was just going through motions and reading that? Oh. Yes.

Yes. So, Kim at one point. Sometimes after the performances, we're pretty beat. And, I watch him running around with the microphone and interacting with the audience.

And, he's got to be just totally wiped out after a performance. So, he, somebody came to him and said, Kim, we really need you to help translate for this person.

There's a woman who really wants to talk to us and I'm having a hard time. So, he went over and she already had the track there and he starts reading it through. Okay. Plan of salvation.

Here we go. So, you're separated from the Lord through your sin and you're hopeless without Christ. Okay. Number one, he looks at her and he says, yeah, she's not listening.

So, he reads through number two. You know, he's going through the motions. He looks up. Oh, she looks really engaged. She looks like she's listening now. Okay.

Well, let's do this. And God bless her. This woman, Candy, she had just lost her husband, was widowed, newly widowed, and was coming on this trip.

She was like a bulldog. She wanted to present the gospel to as many people as possible. And she kept us on task. And so, he kept on reading through.

By the time he got to point number three about being able to cross being the way that we can bridge the gap between God's judgment and his kingdom, she was clearly emotional.

And he confessed this to the whole group. He said, I have to remember God's word is not contingent upon my enthusiasm or my being engaged.

Does he want me to be joyful about it? Yes. But God was even working through him, through that scripture in that moment. I thought that was a really cool thing that he admitted that.

So, she ended up, that was one of the ladies, I think, that I told you about. Elisa, I think was her name.

Anyway, so, yeah. I mean, give God the glory because it wasn't his enthusiasm over it. So, God's word is powerful. Another thing I will say is we went back to the juvenile center, about five of us, and played in a small group.

We played a couple of little jazzy tunes, but we also played a hymn or two. And we went to three different age groups, and it was Father's Day.

And they asked these boys, they asked for all the fathers to come forward. And they came forward, and Fernando gave a little address.

He was speaking Spanish, so I couldn't make it out totally. But he was giving an address encouraging them that you have a chance to be a better father than your father was for you.

And you can't do that on your own. You can only do that through Jesus' power. And so it was very powerful and very poignant. At the end of that time, we took some of the music students and worked with them.

And I taught them Amazing Grace by ear. And it was an amazing, it was just really fun. And then we got them all together. And then we all played it together.

And added in some harmonies underneath them. And after that, we got to talk, oh, what's this song about? It's an American, or it's a, you know, it's a Protestant hymn.

It's a great song, but what's it about? Well, it's a slave trader wrote this after he repented. And how can you have, why is grace amazing?

And it was great we got to talk about that. And we sort of gave our short little testimonies. And I said, here's kind of what I prayed when I became a Christian.

And, you know, told them about my broken heart over my sin. And the pain I caused other people and God. And that separation I had in my need for Christ.

And so at the end, I prayed that. Todd said, well, why don't you pray what you prayed when you were a Christian, Jamie? Just so they can have an example. So we bowed our heads and prayed, and I prayed that.

And in Latin American countries, PJ, you experienced this, right? In your office with patients. When you pray, they kind of pray at the same time.

And that kind of caught me off guard. But I realize that's a cultural thing. But Reno said he was kind of praying the words after me. So we'll just let the Holy Spirit do his work as far as that's concerned.

But that was an amazing, kind of profound experience. We were pretty beat spiritually after that. It was anyway. Any other questions?

Any other questions? Well, thank you so much for letting me take this time. And I will...