This sermon highlights the importance of community and missions, focusing on the impact of supporting and serving others selflessly. It shares stories of partnership with churches in Mexico, the power of collective giving to organizations like Children's Hunger Fund, and the miraculous provision and blessings experienced when prioritizing generosity and missions.

I'm excited. We got a great morning today. There's just some great news. First thing I want to do is bring up Mike Cook, and he's got some friends with him, and he will introduce them. As they're coming up, another announcement real quick is, if you haven't signed up yet, we have our golf tournament for Eternity Bible College for our students. It's kind of a fundraiser we do every year for the college, so I invite you to do that. It's on Cinco de Mayo, which fits, because we have our friends from Mexico. Isn't that a good transition? My name is Mike. This is Pastor Guillermo, his wife Alma, and his son Hector, and they have a daughter, Vanessa, who had to stay back because she had to do some schooling on Friday, but they came up to visit. We've been going down there since I think October of last year, pretty much every month, sometimes a couple times twice a month to visit them, just to do what we can. Sometimes we go down there and just hang out, stay with them. Sometimes we do some work. My wife and I, my wife Misty, and all of our kids, we go down there and just do what we can, but what I wanted to talk about was, we've been talking about community, and their church lives community every day. I mean, people are constantly, their house is adjacent to the church. They're constantly coming in, coming by, grabbing a warm meal, a conversation. The young men of the church are teaching the youth of the church music every once a week. There's young women in there that are going to school, psychology school, to come back to be able to help the children that are there that are damaged by all of the social issues down there. Their living community is so neat to see it down there. He has a few things he wants to share with you guys, just the stuff that we've been doing down there for them. I'm going to have Ed stand back here, just in case I don't know what he's saying. God bless you brothers and sisters. It's a blessing to be here at Cornerstone. And to know you. You guys have a, we know you as a church that has a lot of love. I see. In the time that he's gotten to know us, in time he's gotten to know Mike, Pastor Steve Doucette, then what? Jose Luis. Yeah, that one translates easy. It's been a real blessing to get to know all these guys. That's what I thought. And I'm the greatest. My heart is full of joy. It rejoices. He lives in a city called Loma Linda, in the area of Loma Linda and Ensenada. Where there's a ministry, where God has helped us move forward. And they're helping the kids that live on the streets. There are people who have nothing to eat. Yeah, the children, especially. It's only a hundred member church. God's helped them move forward and grow. And our church, Cornerstone, has done a great work for them. Your prayers. A few months ago, his wife got very sick. And it was cool to know that you guys were praying for her. Yeah, those tumors that she had, he gives glory to God. Because God has healed her. So, thank you. All because of your prayers. Oh, I'm going to ask for your prayers right now. So I can move forward the ministry. Continue to help the kids that are in need and don't have anything. No clue. Oh, the belly. Oh, their belly. Okay, the children just hoping that their bellies get bigger or full. Yeah, we're the opposite. I'm so confused. Okay, it's been a blessing that our church gets to continue. We'll just give you a microphone. That continues to bless them. Thank you very much, my brothers and sisters. Help us to pray. For our youth who are the missionary youth that are going to Oaxaca. Okay, this one of their kids, a couple of their kids are going to Oaxaca with no money, but they just believe that God has placed them on a mission there, so they need our prayers. He wants to be a missionary in that place. They don't have money to help them. But he said, you know what, I'm going to go anyways. And he knows that God's going to provide for him. He's a 19-year-old kid. And he wants to go to this place. His name's Alfredo, and if you guys would pray, the Spirit of God would just fall on him, and he would do a great work there. And that God would give him everything that he needs to have. Oh, God's been challenging their church to do more missions. A lot of times they don't have the funds or the money. But, oh, they don't have the funds to move the gospel forward. But I know that Cornerstone has a heart for missions as well. And yeah, it has a pastor that encourages you to work, to go do missions. I'm sorry. I invite you, brothers and sisters, to move forward with that desire in your heart. Thank you, and may God bless you. I'd like us to just pray for pastor and his wife. Why don't you pray in Spanish so he knows what we're praying? Okay. Can you do that? Pray in Spanish? Yeah. No, I won't translate. He knows what we're saying. God knows, he knows, and these guys don't matter. Okay. Okay. You know what's cool is we're bringing up one of these partnerships, but you know like Mike and Misty in their little community, in their neighborhood, a few families go down and help that church. And what's cool is this is one of several churches that different communities, like different neighborhoods have kind of adopted. And it's just kind of cool that there are all these different little partnerships going on and we want to give you one example of that. But we know many of you guys go down regularly to Mexico with some of your friends and bring supplies to some of our churches over there. And it's cool because it's just something we do together. It's not one individual doing all of this. It's just like this neighborhood from Simi Valley is going to this neighborhood in Ensenada and then another neighborhood is going to this neighborhood here in Tijuana and this one's over in Ducati. And really no one gets the glory for this except for the body of Christ. And all they know is that there's some body of Christ that you guys will never meet them. They'll never meet you, you know, these people. But they just know, you know what, God is providing for us. And we are going to support them. They got missions going on. They're a very missions-minded church. And sometimes we want to be tempted to just say, you know what, I'm going to go up to him individually and give him a check. And there's nothing wrong with that. But there's something cool about the anonymity, too. You know, like last service, people just said, you know, I'm just going to put a little extra in the offering. Can you guys give them more? And so it's just kind of body of Christ is blessing them rather than me as an individual, you as an individual. And that's kind of what we've been doing this year. I had some good news. Children's Hunger Fund, if you remember, about nine months ago, as we changed our whole philosophy on giving and money, and we said we're going to give away half of everything that comes in and let's give an extra million dollars to Children's Hunger Fund over this year. And nine months ago, we made a commitment to give Children's Hunger Fund a million dollars over the next year. And now it's nine months later and we just wrote the last check and a quarter million dollars. So it's a million dollars that we gave them. It's just good to stop and not say, OK, what are we doing next? But just go, you know what, Lord, thank you. We were able to give a million dollars in nine months, you know, and I'm going to tell you some of the things that we were able to do with that money, with that million dollars that we gave the Children's Hunger Fund. I can tell you some other good news about this, because it's been crazy. I don't know if you remember the journey on this, but every time we had to write a check for a quarter million dollars, it was amazing how God provided, you know, first time, you know, we had the funds there and we gave it. And second time we were really low on money. No one knew. But coincidentally, you know, the offering that Sunday before we're going to write our check was two hundred and fifty one thousand dollars, you know, on that one Sunday. And none of you knew about it. It just happened to be like the craziest, you know, week ever, you know. And then our next check was due around December. And we think on with the recession and everything in Christmas. But that became our biggest month of giving in the history of Cornerstone. And you guys gave a million dollars that month. Again, not knowing it's like what in the world. So this week we write our last check. Right. We write our last check and go. We did it. We were able to do the whole million dollars in nine months. And I sat down with the finance committee and I and I wanted to give you a report of where we were in our debt, because for like the last 10 years we've been trying to pay off this debt. Last 10 years, we've had about a million dollars that we've owed, you know, up and down in every year. It's like, OK, we're going to pay it off. We're going to pay it off. We're going to pay it off. And I want to tell you guys where we were because we got to do the building thing in a couple of months. And so we added up that the total debt was one point four or six million dollars that we owed. And after writing the check to Children's Hunger Fund, I said, OK, so what do we have in the bank right now? One point four, eight million dollars. Is that crazy? You guys, that is so insane. Every year we're thinking we're going to pay and we're going to pay the debt. We're going to pay it off, pay it off. Then the one year where we don't think about the one year where we go, let's just go nuts and let's just give away as much as we can. Let's give away at least half of everything that comes in. Let's just give a million dollars at Children's Hunger Fund. That year, we don't think about it. And we have one point four or six million dollars of debt that on the week that we make our last check, it just it just randomly happens to be one point four or eight left in the bank. And when they when we added up those numbers in that room, I just started crying. I literally I just couldn't. I don't like crying in front of people, but I just started bawling because I thought, God, that is that's insane. That is just that is just so far beyond what we would have thought. I mean, that doesn't make any sense. How can a healthy church have this debt for 10 years and try to pay it off and not be able to pull it off? And the one year we're not even thinking about it, we're just giving like crazy that we happen to have that exact amount, you know, plus another twenty grand left over once we pay off our debt. That's that's only God. And if you can sit here and listen to this story of how God's blessed this church over the year through the giving and you can listen to that and go, I think it's coincidence. I just have to look at you and say, shut up. You know, there is no way, you know, there's just no way, man. It has been such a great year. And I you know, a lot of us have experienced that personally. Right. You know, those years when you just say, you know, I'm going to give this, I'm going to give this. And then at the end of the year, you go, this doesn't make sense. How did everything work out? How was I able to pay for everything? But there's nothing like collectively now with these huge numbers saying we all got to experience this together and with Children's Hunger Fund. Let me just give you a snapshot of what we're able to do and understand one of the one of the things that Children's Hunger Fund does and what I love about it is they've set up these mercy networks. And how this happens is we here in America, you know, we as Cornerstone Church, we pack up boxes, you know, sometimes we say, hey, fill these boxes with supplies for people. And so that we could send them over to the churches over there and go, hey, supplies, you know, here's a here's a stupid. OK. And here's here's a bunch of boxes. And then the churches, they said this is called a mercy network where they get the churches in Cambodia or Peru and Africa. They receive these boxes and then they go to the poorest of the poor and hand deliver these boxes and let them know this is coming from the body of Christ in America. And they begin relationships with them. And I love that because overseas they never hear the name of Cornerstone. They don't hear any of your names. All they hear is the body of Christ over there in America. And so who do they have to thank? They just thank God. They don't have it. They don't write your letters to Cornerstone. They don't ever hear of us. And there's something so cool about that anonymity. Anyways, so they set up these networks and they were able to expand even in America. Understand this isn't just about overseas and caring for the poor. Children's Hunger Fund does a huge work here in America. Right now they're based in Pacoima and that's their headquarters. And we're hoping to move that onto our new property so they can expand. But they also started another distribution center in Chicago because the money that we've been given now they can help the states in that area in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio. And this year just in the U.S. programs more than 400,000 children have been fed and served through these ministries. Cornerstone funds were used to purchase 160,000 pounds of food. 160,000 pounds of food. That's a lot of food. And then turn those into food packs and they deliver it to the poor. And through that just in America there were 8,000 people who gave their lives to the Lord through these relationships. Because they're not just sharing the food, they're sharing them hope of a new life, a better life through Jesus Christ and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then overseas the international programs. And again I am just giving you little highlights because we would be here all day if we just named every little thing. So I'm breezing through this. In Peru they have this again a mercy network and we're able to feed thousands of families. But just in Peru there were 1,500 decisions for Christ and 300 home Bible studies started because of this food pack program and these mercy networks. We help supply 17 million dollars of antibiotics and medicine that will go to these Christian medical clinics out there. Because a lot of the pharmaceutical companies here have left over here in America in the year. And what we do is we put them in these containers and we're able to ship it over with the money that you guys gave. And so it really expands to where these 17 million dollars of antibiotics and everything else are distributed amongst these clinics. And you can understand this medicine saves lives. It's not here where it helps you get your cold over a little quicker or you don't have to be down with the flu as long. I mean people die from preventable diseases. That's the crazy thing in these other places. It's so easy. It's a pill, it's a shot, but they don't have access to it. And we send these meals over. CHF, this container has 240,000 individual meals. And there are these little rice packets that they boil with water and we put vitamins inside of this rice meal that they eat so that it's not just rice but it's actual nutrients. And in Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ghana, West Africa, Uganda, Rwanda. We also are sending over, not sending over, but we use the money they said they've been able to purchase oxen, agricultural tools and seeds so that they're actually planting themselves and they've got these oxen now that are actually helping plow the fields for them. In Sudan, we sent two containers of that rice meal. So 480,000 meals were distributed in Sudan in conjunction with the Jesus Film Project. In Cambodia, we supply like 5,000 orphan children with these supplemental food shipments. And recently another container of 240,000 meals over there to Cambodia with the current food crisis that's going on over there. But again, all of these things, I love it because there's anonymity. It's just we. It's just these people over there going, I don't know who gave it to us. They just say the body of Christ over there in America. And let's face it, there's something selfishly fun to do it yourself. Okay. I mean, it's kind of fun to just say, wow, I built an orphanage over there and they named it after me. Or even, I mean, wouldn't it be cool if you knew like in Uganda there was this family and you bought an ox for them. And they said, wow, we're so grateful that you bought us this ox that we named it after you. So I got this ox named Morgan, you know, and you're thinking, wow, that's pretty cool. Like I got this ox named after me because I paid for it. I bought it. You know, it's my ox. And, you know, they have a picture of me in their house, you know. He bought ox, you know. And there is something selfish to go, man, it'd be cool if I had my own, you know, high school. I can go there and know I did it. Or a city. Wouldn't that be cool? Your own city. I'm going to go visit Francis. You know, it's a town because I gave so much, you know. And that's so American of us, you know, to want the glory and want it to be about me. And yet it's so biblical for us to go, you know what, I'm just going to write a check. No one knew I wrote a check. It's just going in this big pot. And so when they're getting ready to thank someone, they don't thank me. They thank God. And say, God, you richly blessed a group of people in America. And then they blessed us. So thank you, God. And he gets the glory that people would see our good works and glorify our father.