In this sermon, the speaker shares their experience of being involved in the refugee crisis in Europe. They talk about how God's hand is moving in the midst of this crisis and how they felt called to be a part of it. The speaker emphasizes the importance of Christians being present to love and minister to the refugees, as well as the need for churches to catch a vision of what God is doing and get involved. They also highlight the humbling realization of their own selfishness and the challenge for Christians in a wealthy land to use their resources for the Kingdom of God.

Blessings to you all. Welcome here. Jesus came into the temple, and He threw out the money changers and those that sold in the temple there, and He said, take these things out, you've made it a house of debt and robbers. He said, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. And so as we begin here, I'd like for us to stand together and pray. I wonder what your thoughts are about that Jesus said, My house shall be called a house of prayer of all people. And when people look at this church, what do they say about it? And when you think about coming to church, what do you think about doing? Is it a house of fellowship? Or is it a house of fun and games? And what is it? And when people go to visit there, they talk about when they want to go there, they'll say, oh, that's where we go to do... But this is so clearly, it should be that when people think about it, that they would say, oh, that's where people pray. It's a house of prayer. It's a place where people worship. One of the things that made it easy for us when we changed from the Amish Church to Charity Church was that there was a spirit of reverence here. We would come in in the morning and there was a blessing there. There was a spirit of reverence and honor to God. And I miss that. Sometimes I almost think it sounds like a market. I know it's good to fellowship, but Jesus said it should be called a house of prayer. Father, we come to you. We know it's your heart's desire that this place be called a house of prayer. Forgive us, Lord, where we have not brought honor to you. Teach us what it means to come to the house of prayer. And Lord, make it a house of prayer for all people, all nations. A place where we pray for all people. A place where all those people can feel free to come and be a part of. And we lift up Jesus Christ here this morning and give honor and praise and worth to you, O Lord, for you are good. Your mercies endure forever. And you have reached down and you have placed your spirit into these physical human bodies and given us a part of yourself that we might walk in holiness and purity before you all the days of our life. Father, may your grace rest upon us here today. May I pray that your blessing will be upon us, Lord. I don't mean to be scolding anyone, but O God, I long that we be a house of prayer for all nations. I thank you, Father. Thank you, Lord. We can sing together that we place you in the highest place. And maybe the second time we can do the echo. Tim, could you lead us in that? We place you. We place you. Worship Him. One of the things that worship does is when we gather together, we're lining up with who God is. When we come together, we have lots of things on our minds and lots of problems and issues. But as we cast those things aside, our spirit lines up with God's spirit. And that's what worship is. Let's sing that again one more time, Tim. Lord, you. We praise you. He is holy. I hear His name. He is here. You can touch Him. You will never be the same. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Now, Father, bless Your Word into our hearts today. Quicken our hearts by Your Spirit. Give us vision. Give us dreams. As we cast aside the things of this earth and look at the things of heaven, the kingdom of God. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. It's now two years ago that in September, October, that the refugee crisis in Europe was at its height. There was up to 5,000 and 6,000 refugees crossing the sea into Turkey every day, into Greece. And nobody was prepared for it. And that's when we got involved there two years ago and have been involved there since. I don't know what to call this message, this report. But one thing that has really stood out in my heart is that when God moves His hand, we understand that God can raise up a nation and He can pull down a nation and He does those things. And when He moves His hand, something happens. And when we see such large masses of people moving, then we know that God is moving His hand. God is doing something. And that's the thing that quickened our hearts two years ago as we saw this happening. And we simply tried to avail ourselves to work with what God is doing as He moves His hand. There are so many things in my heart, I don't know where to begin. But we just got back about a week and a half ago. So, I got back a week and a half ago after three months in Greece and a week in Iraq. I'd like to turn to Isaiah chapter 11 to begin with here. This chapter generally is speaking about what happens when a rod comes out of the stem of Jesse and a branch grows out of his roots. It's a picture of the church. And so often we have, I have and maybe you have too, as we've placed this chapter into the thousand year reign or the time when peace shall rule and reign on the earth, when the lamb shall live together with the wolf and the leopard and the kid will lie down together and the cow and the bear will eat together and their young ones will be together and you have the fatling and the young calf and you have a young lion there together and so the child shall lead them. But I would like for us to think a little bit differently today that this is the results of the church. That if the church of Jesus Christ would be who she is meant to be, then this would be the effects in the lamb. It says, The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, upon this branch that grows out of Jesse, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, and the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord, and shall make him of a quick understanding in the fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears, but judge with righteousness and so on. And the result of this branch is peace. When you look in the book of Daniel, you see the he-goat and you have the ram there in Daniel chapter maybe 9 or 10, I'm not sure, or 7 or 8. And we know that the prophecies about the he-goat and the prophecies about that ram had to do with certain nations. The he-goat actually was the nation of Greece which would come and destroy, which would take over that part of the world. This he-goat would be a very quick and fast army and that's the picture of that. So we know that in that book we see these animals are depicted as nations. Have you ever looked at this passage of Scripture as maybe depicting the nations? And so we're standing over there on a mountain in Iraq. They're just a couple miles outside of Nineveh, the ancient Nineveh called Mosul. And it looks like a flat piece of land from there going. When you go into the book of Jonah, it says that he entered into Nineveh a day's journey and this was an exceeding great city of three days journey. How big do you think it was? I don't know what a day's journey was at that time, but it says a three days journey and we're probably 15 miles outside of the center of Mosul there. And I'm looking around and we're probably on the first mountain on that plain and I'm actually thinking maybe this is where Jonah sat under that vine and he waited to see what God would do. I don't know if we were in that place or not, but at least we thought about that. But at that time of Syria, the Assyrian army was the most feared and the most destructive army around. They were a horrible people. They were a horrible nation and when they captured their enemies, they did some of the most inhuman things to kill them. They were the utmost barbaric army around and everybody feared them. I don't need to tell you what they did. But that spirit is still in the land. The atrocities that ISIS did as they took control of those cities is horrible. And so if I draw this wolf and this leopard and this lion and this bear on the board and we give them names, what would we name them? We actually did this. We were there on a Sunday morning and we named them ISIS and we named them the Iraqi army and the Ashkashabis and all these types of things and then we put names on the cows and the calf and the goat and the kid. We named them like the Yazidi Christians and the Syrian Christians and the other Christians and what if God would want the church, the influence of the church in that place to dominate in such a way that these animals would all feed and lay down together. But the church is not there. The church of Jesus Christ is not there. The fact is there are dozens and dozens of camps in the surrounding area of that ancient Nineveh. Tens of thousands of people in each camp. In some places hundred thousand people in a camp and there is hardly any Christian witness there at all. One of the men that we were with, he said we could use a thousand young people to come and serve in these camps right now. In fact, he said we could use five thousand. What if there would be a thousand young people sold out to God that could go over there right now and minister and serve in those camps and would begin to pray and preach the Word of God and I believe that the wolf would then live together with the lamb and the bear would eat with the cow and the lion would eat straw and whatever. But, where are the young people? Years ago, I remember Brother David preaching a message called, Where are the Men? It was a call for the men to rise up and to be men in their homes, godly men, raise up godly families. He based it out of the Old Testament of David's mighty men who had been at war for many years and they came home and began to raise up the godly seed. That, I've never forgotten that message. And so we were over there in Greece this summer in the month of August and September. We didn't have enough help. We didn't have enough young men and young ladies to help us. And our teams got really tired. They're working 10 and 12 hour days, some of them 14, 16 hours, almost every day. And I'm thinking, Where are the young men? Where are the youth and what are they doing? And I want to bless this congregation and the youth here for having a vision and for going out. I know many of you have traveled and many of you are going. And I want to bless you for that. And I believe that almost all of you have a vision for serving in the Kingdom of God. And I want to thank God for that. As I thought of it in general, my thoughts went to 50 years ago during Vietnam War. I was about 7 years old and we made a trip one day down to Baltimore Hospital. My uncle was down there as a CO working in the hospital for two years. And we went to visit him. And that just stands out in my mind. And my parents told me why he's in the hospital. They told me that it's because he doesn't want to go to war and that the U.S. government has made an option for the Christians to serve in a hospital instead of going to war. So that left a mark in my mind. But in those days, during the draft, the U.S. government could call up the young men between the age of 18 and 25 and they were forced to go into service. And so many of the Anabaptists and the plain young people also were drafted and they also had to go. And so they had the option of serving in the CO camps, nonviolent, noncombatant places for the government. And they very gladly gave two years of free service to the U.S. government. They left their homes, their jobs, their wives, their friends, their girlfriends, and they went and gave two years for the U.S. government. Now let me ask you, what are the young men doing today? We have approximately 35,000 Amish in Lancaster County. If you take about 14 percent of them into the age bracket between 18 and 25, you come up with about 5,000 young people who will be eligible for the draft. What do you think they're doing? If we look at the Mennonites in the U.S. alone, in 2013 it was 350,000. Take about 14 percent of that and you come up with 50,000 young people in this age bracket. Now let me ask you, what are the young men doing? Jesus said in Luke 16.8, He said the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And when those young men are drafted in the U.S. Army, they get several weeks of training, or a month or two maybe, and then they are sent wherever their boss tells them to go. And they're to do whatever they're told to do. No questions asked. They endure all kinds of hardship. They're actually trained to lay down their lives for their country. And they're not afraid to do it. What are young men doing today? I believe the majority are living at home with their parents if they're not married. A large percent of them are earning a high wage, own at least one or two vehicles, anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000. What is their goal? What are they living for? Maybe get married. Probably have a successful business. Oh yeah, and want to be part of a good church. We're living in a realm where time is money and money is power. Should we blame the young men? They're doing what they've seen others do. They're doing that which is the norm. They're doing that which is expected of them. Maybe we fathers, church leaders, if there's anybody going to do something about it, it's up to us. Maybe we should make a way for them. Maybe we should chart a course for them. What if we would have vision for a two-year track for our young men and young ladies? You sign your name with a dotted line and we'll tell you what to do for two years. We'll take you and the U.S. Army has a goal to brainwash the people. They take you all apart and then they put you together the way they want you to be put together and you become a killing machine. That's what it is. What if we'd have a two-year track where we would have some good training, a month or two of good training, three months in Greece, give you another week or two of training, send you three months to Iraq, another week or two of training, bring you back to Greece for three months and we just put you wherever we want you to be. Maybe we send you over to right now there's a need in Yemen. There's a war there. Lots of people are starving. There's a need in Bangladesh. The 400,000 Rohingya have been driven out of their land. Nobody wants them. And somebody should go there and minister to them. What would God have us to do in that area? That's one of the burdens in my heart. Well, let me go back a little bit more about the work in Greece. Thank you all for your support there in prayer and in encouragement We were there last year about six months and God was doing amazing things there. But we had to go home and so we came home in November of last year and I left there. I left the island there and God was doing amazing things. In those three months we had just started having church before we got there and we had a church building probably not quite half this size. A bench side up here probably. That's about how big it is. And we had started having church on Sunday morning there and we had about 20 people there and when we got there, but in three months time that place totally packed out of people of many nations. And it was very, very hard to leave. God was doing wonderful things. People were getting saved. People were getting baptized. Muslims were coming to Christ. And God was doing marvelous things. But we had to leave and so I left there in November of last year. And seven months later this past June we went back. And I was wondering what's the church going to be like when I get back? Will they still be alive? When we get back there on the first Sunday I went to church there and the church house filled up with many nationalities. Probably between 10 and 20 different people groups, languages, kindreds, people and nations. And they packed this whole place out sitting on the floor. They're sitting there waiting for the service to begin. And when we had left seven months earlier we were struggling with languages and they didn't know English very well and the singing was very poor and seven months later they had learned songs and had learned some English and they began to sing Amazing Grace. And I sat there just bawling because I knew that God was in control. They had three or four different pastors since I had been there who had led the church, but God was there. That was so exciting, so exhilarating, but yet it's also very humiliating or very humbling to realize that God was there. When God had given us a vision two years ago the vision had become very clear to our hearts that we were to minister to these refugees by sending teams over there. We would be the hands and feet of Jesus. We would be there to minister to them when they came. There needed to be Christians there who would love them. There needed to be a witness of God's grace. The church needed to be there when these people come. And so we jumped in and we filled that need there. Even though we can't speak their language, we can love on them. And sometimes we wish that we would have tongues and we could speak their language and if we could just speak their language it would be so much more effective. And I think that is true but in Corinthians 13 it says, Though I would speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love I would be an astounding grass or tingling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy or understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not this love of God I would be as nothing. And so we began to understand, especially this summer, that the very most important thing is love. The couple that was there, Hamid and Kiniku, he's Iranian, has been in Greece now for about 12 or 13 years, 14 years maybe, married to a Japanese lady. Just a lovely couple. They came and spent three months with us there, the time that we were there. And he did the Bible study for the Iranians, the Farsi speaking group. And we worked together a lot and over and over again he would say things about that love is very important. One day he came to us and he said that there's this Iranian couple that just arrived on the island. He said there are new arrivals but he said the lady's in the hospital and he said you should go visit them. He said it's very important that you go visit them. So we went one day, my wife and I and him and his wife went to the hospital there, found them in there and this lady's laying there. She had a cyst or something, had an operation in her stomach and she was not well. But we went there and we just simply ministered to them. Maybe 20 minutes or so and then we left. But he said that that means so much to them, that it's so important. And I began to realize that here are so many of these people. They have left their homeland. They have forsaken everything that they have. Most of them had nice houses and they had nice jobs. They had a nice place to live. They had family around them. But because of the pressure from their government in Iran, they have forsaken all those things and have fled. And they leave their country. They travel a long distance through Turkey and they come to the shore and some of them might never have seen a body of water before and they're supposed to get into this little rubber dingy boat and they're supposed to cross over. And they get into that boat and the smugglers are packing the boats out and they're overloading the boats and there's hardly any room for anybody anymore and they keep putting more people in and then they give someone a couple minutes of training on how to drive the boat and they send them off. And they wander out into this water and they're aiming for that land over there and they don't know if they're going to make it and the sea is rough and they're on their way and no one really knows how to drive the boat and they're out there alone in this water. And they arrive over there on that shore and they're picked up by the police. They're placed under arrest and they're taken into a prison house. And what if there's nobody there to love them? But what if there is somebody there that loves them? What if the church would be there to welcome them and to love on them? And even if they're sick in the hospital, somebody actually came to see us. Somebody cared so much that they would come to the hospital to see us. When there are thousands of other people in camp they could take care of, but they came to see us. That is love to them. And they don't know what to do with it. They don't know that kind of love. A couple days later they brought this couple home from the hospital, this man and his wife. And she still had so much pain, but she so desperately wanted to tell us that she wants to become a Christian, but she had too much pain so she didn't tell us. And that night she met the Lord. She came just a day or two later. She was just all excited. She was just so happy. She had a dream. In her dream she saw this large body of water and this walkway out along the side there. And she's out there walking along this body of water. Beautiful steps. Beautiful stones she's walking on. And then in the water there beside her, this water just kind of stands up and a form of a man is there. And it was Jesus. And Jesus looked at her and He says, Do you want to be a Christian? And she says, Yes! I want to be a Christian. And Jesus says, Come. Come to me. And she said, But I can't walk on the water. And Jesus said, Yeah, you can walk. Come, you can walk on the water. She steps out there and she walks on the water to go to Jesus. And then she woke up. She was so excited. He actually wanted me. He received me. He wanted me. And I went to Him. She didn't. She'd never heard the story about Peter walking on the water. She'd never heard the story about Jesus walking on the water. We told her that story and she was just so excited. She wanted her husband to believe also. He's a lawyer. He's an analytical thinker. So, he just couldn't believe right away. About a week or two later, she had another dream. And this dream, if you understand the Muslim background people, if you leave your Muslim religion, you go and become a Christian, that means your family, sometimes they will kill you. Oftentimes they will kill you. They will ostracize you. They'll turn you into the authorities. They'll put you in prison. They'll do whatever it takes to do to get rid of the shame that one of the family would turn to Christ. About a week later, she came to us again and we had together with a meal one evening. And she said, I had another dream. And she was just so excited. She said, I saw in my dream, I saw my father, my earthly father who had died 20 years before. And my father was looking at me and my father said to me, have you become a Christian? She bowed her head and she looked up and said, yes. And her father said, I wish I would have known the Christian way when I lived. And there she had the affirmation of her, the first dream was the affirmation of her heavenly father. The second dream was the affirmation of her earthly father. Even though he had died. I don't know what all that means, but it meant a lot to them. So many opportunities there. What God is doing. So many people. It is a very, very amazing situation if you could somehow picture it. In the Middle Eastern, Middle East countries, those countries are all, except Israel, they are all very strong Islamic countries. And the spirit of Islam rules and reigns in those countries. Some of them much more even stronger than others. You have Afghanistan where they are afraid to mention the Bible or God or anything. You have in Iran, you have a generation of people who have rejected Islam. Even though they have to wear their veils and have to go to mosque to pray and all that. But they are so sick and tired of Islam, they just want to get away from it. And that's what is happening. And in Syria they are so sick and tired of the war and the fighting, which is a result of their religion also. And in Iraq the same way. And they don't know peace. One convert told us how that he grew up being trained that if somebody hits you, if a little child you are playing with hits you, you have to hit him back harder. And so they are trained to fight for their lives. And that's all they know. And they really do not know love. He said that one day one of his friends somehow through Facebook, there was a post his friend liked the post of somebody else on Facebook that then he could see on his Facebook. And in that post there was something about that if the Christian way is that if somebody hits you on the one side of the face, you turn your other side of the face and let him hit that one too. And this boy has been raised in a home where there has been a lot of fighting and animosity. His father is Shia. His mother is a Sunni. And the two families are so against each other, so much full of hatred, so much bitterness that that's all he knows. And he began to search on Facebook and he began to search out the Christian way and what about these people that would actually not strike back when somebody hits you. And through that he became a Christian. He was about 14 years old and his family saw a change in him. And they began to ask him if he's Christian. And he stopped going to the mosque to pray. And his uncle who is a militia man, he's a high up military man he came one day and was asking him and yeah he said he's a Christian. And he said this is what we're going to do to you. We're going to beat you. And so he sent his nephew which was this boy's cousin to come and beat him. And he beat him and he woke up in the hospital. And when he got back from the hospital his uncle said this is just the beginning. He said this is just the taste of what we're going to do. We're going to kill you. And so he at about 15 years of age he left his country and joined the refugee trail and he ends up in the camp. And there he finds Christians, the kind of people that he read about through Christianity. He's still afraid of his uncle. And when traumatic times came he would go into trauma and relive some of the beatings he'd been through and would just become suicidal. He wanted to get baptized. He didn't want any refugees there. He didn't want any pictures taken because he's afraid that if his uncle would find out where he is, if anything would get on the news or anything on media about that. He said his uncle would not stop. He has lots of money and he would come and find him and would kill him. There was someone who was baptized that was killed in Athens. A lady we know there, Lorne, who's been working in the camp with us. She lives in Athens and she said there was a young man who was baptized and a picture of that got on social media and his family found out about it and they hired someone to kill him. He was killed within her block. These things are still reality. There was another young man there, a very dear young man a Kurdish young man from Iraq. One of his friends gave him the movie called The Passion and he watched that movie and when he was finished he said, that man is not human. There's no human, there's no human being that can have that kind of love and he watched that movie over and over again and he decided he's going to follow this Jesus and he joined the refugee trail, ended up in camp there met our people and began to tell us his story of how he came to Christ when God moved his hand. And in this chapter 11 of Isaiah, if you go down there to verse 11, verse 10 And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse which shall stand for an ensign or a banner or a flag of the people. To it shall the Gentiles seek and his rest shall be glorious. And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time. God is going to move his hand again to recover the remnant of his people which shall be left from Assyria, Iraq Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam Shinar, Hamath and the islands of the sea He shall set up an ensign for the nations and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. He's going to take away the envy and animosity between Ephraim and Judah. They shall fly on the shoulders of the Philistines toward the west verse 15. The Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of Egyptian sea making a pathway, making a possible highway out of Egypt. And there shall be a highway for the remnant of his people which shall be left from Assyria like as it was in Israel in the day that it came up out of the land of Egypt. There's going to be a highway from Assyria like it was in the days when Israel came out of Egypt. And he says when I move my hand these things happen. When I think of the way Israel came out of Egypt, I think of them 600,000 men plus women and children and God made a highway for them. God made a way for these people these hundreds of thousands of people to move out of Egypt. There's a highway and he led them they took them out. Now he's saying a highway from Assyria. I think we're seeing a highway. I believe there's a highway there. God is moving his hand. We've had the Bible studies there with the Iranian people this summer Hamid and Kiniku did the Bible study there when we left there's about 25 or 30 of them gathering three times a week through the day for a Bible study through our Bible study and Hamid is teaching them. He knows their language. He knows their culture and it was a real great blessing. I don't know what I would have done without it but they just left. They're back in Athens now and so we don't have a dedicated teacher to take that class on. The French from Central Africa had earlier this year a lot of Africans came from many of the north countries in Africa and other countries there. I mean from dozens of different countries probably 30 countries or so from Africa represented there and many of the French from Congo had come. Congo is an upheaval and Congo they say is like 90% Christian and so many of these are Christian people and what I see happening and right now in camp there's probably maybe earlier this summer there was about 50 or 60% black people in camp. Now there's not near that many. In the last three months there's been a highway of Syrians and Iraqis showing up again and families and lots of children. We had 1,100 in August and in September I'm guessing they had more like 2,000 and in recent weeks now they've had as many as 200 per day showing up. The numbers have increased so high. So there's a lot of families there, a lot of children but the French and I was thinking about the French who were there. They are they're Christians. They're very lively Christians and it seems to me like God sent them into the camp to evangelize the camp. They are allowed to evangelize in camp and they do. They have a church service in there. They have prayer meeting in camp every morning five days a week at six in the morning six to seven or seven to eight for an hour. About 40 men and women gather together every morning and there they pray in African fashion and they'll sing and someone will preach the word of God and they will give it all their got for an hour an hour and a half and they'll go back to sleep again. Camp often doesn't wake up much until around 10 o'clock because they're up all night especially if it's hot. If it's really hot like this summer they're not out much during the day. Evenings five o'clock they come out a lot and they're up almost all night and some people they go to bed at five in the morning but these Africans they're there praying and they're preaching and Saturday they don't meet for prayer but they go evangelizing in camp and I believe God has sent them there for that purpose. We went to Athens on my way home. We stopped at Athens and spent the day there in Victoria Park met some of our convert friends there and the Congolese the French that took us up on the mountain there to pray. Middle of the day in the heat in the hot sun we sweated climbed up that hill got up on top of the hill up there on top of the center of Athens and we were up on the hill and there they met about 30 of them to pray for an hour and a half or so. They meet up there three days a week and praying over the city and they're starting churches there in Athens doing the work of evangelists. When God had given us this vision of what we could do there we would minister to the refugees. We would send teams of young people there and those young people's lives would be changed and invigorated and they'd catch a vision of the kingdom of God, the work of God and God would change their lives. That was the second part of the vision. And that has happened. I believe that like 90 more than 90% of the young people who have been there their lives have been deeply affected for the kingdom of God. They love it. They pour themselves out. Many of them don't want to go home when their time is up to go home. And over and over again during our debriefing before the teams go home we have them write out a debriefing and paper and so forth and many of the young men over and over again I've heard this, they will say, I didn't know I was so selfish. I just didn't know I was that selfish. We live in such a rich land. Oh my! God has given us so much. What are we going to do with it? Are we going to just build our own kingdoms or will we use it for the kingdom of God? That's really the question. The third part of the vision was that the churches that would catch a vision of what God is doing and would begin to get involved in the work, those churches would be changed. Those churches would be revived. Those churches would catch a vision of what God is doing and that would change the churches back home. I had the vision of what God could do with the charity churches at the time, but that hasn't worked out too well. But God's vision was much bigger than that. We've had such a joy to be able to receive young people from so many different backgrounds, from a very wide range of Mennonite and Anabaptist young people. We do have our standards and our requirements that require them to hold while they're there with us, but so many young people come that are just willing to serve and lay down their lives and give their time and their money to do it. I tell young people that if you want to come and serve, you will need to be 100% spiritual, 100% physical, 100% emotional and 100% mental. We'll be maxing your capacities out 100%. It happens. And when they get so involved and they see that God is doing something, what is more fun, what is more joyful than to be in the middle of what God is doing? Wow! Right now we have a lot of young people signing up. The winter months look good. Right now we have a lot of people over there. I think we have more than 40 volunteers there now. It puts a bigger stress load on the administrators, but they need them in camp. The UR Relief who we're working under there, they have lost their biggest donor. They lost 75% of their donors by one man. That's what they were trusting in. And so they have been without funds in a very major way. And they have looked to us to fund a lot of these things. And so we've been helping out in those areas. God has given us the power to raise money. Our people have money. We have such a large resource of people. The Anabaptists, the Mennonite people, the Amish people. Our people are so wealthy. We're so rich. Let's put it to use. Let's use it for what God has intended it to be for. Right now there's just so many needs there. They come to us for money for just the daily needs. The toiletries or the army provides food and water, but they do not provide the toiletries or the needs that they have like a toothbrush and so forth. So we have to do that. So we're just reaching into our pockets and we're just and it takes thousands of dollars. Because right now there's like 5,000 people in this prison camp which has room for like 1,800. But when I'm there and I see another bus pull up loaded with refugees, my heart rejoices because it's another opportunity to show the grace of God to these people. The week before I came home I was working in the new arrivals tent and there was lots of new arrivals every day. We would go give them a bottle of water. We'd give them food and someone would take all their names down and have to register them. And I just loved being in there meeting these people. I met a soccer team from Iraq. A very popular soccer team from Iraq that 8 of the 11 teammates came together. Showed up in camp. These 8 guys. Yeah, we're a soccer team. There they are. And yeah, they have money. But they don't want to stay in an Islamic country. And when you stop and think about it what these people are really looking for is they're looking for freedom. They might not realize it exactly, but there is a desire for freedom. And they long to be a part of the western countries of the US or Australia or Europe. Why? Those countries are pictures of freedom. And they want it. And they're coming for it. We want to present them the freedom of Christ. There's one man there about 7 children in the new arrivals tent. His wife and 7 children. He's a Muslim man dressed in a Muslim garb. And they're telling us stories about coming across the water. So what has been happening this summer is that the Turkish police are trying to stop them from coming. A year ago in March they had made an agreement with Turkey that Turkey should stop the refugee flow. That Europe would pay Turkey so many billion dollars if they would stop the refugee flow. And so Turkey tries to stop it. They have police force along the shore to stop these refugees. And Europe pays Turkey to stop them. But they continue to trickle along ever since. That's now March a year ago. And there's a constant flow of people. 100 a week or 200 a week or something like that. There's just been a constant flow. But just recently the weather's been very nice. The weather is calm in the fall like this. And it's very nice and warm. It's just before winter time. And there's been a very high upswing of people coming. Up to 200 a day. Four or five boats a day sometimes. But the Turkish police are trying to stop them. One young boy he said they tried it six times. They would go out there. They'd get in the boat. And they'd head out through there. Turkish police would find them and bring them back. One time they got caught just before they got in the boat. Next time they get caught when they're in the boat. Next time they get caught out in the water. They always get brought back. But they were determined to make it. And the sixth time they were in the boat they're heading out across there. And the Turkish police saw them and came and tried to stop them. But they continued on. The Turkish police pointed their guns at them and said stop or we'll shoot you. They kept right on going. And the Turkish boat made circles around their boat to try to swamp them. To try to upset them and dump them so that they can't go on. And then the Turkish boat draws a little bit closer and the guy grabs an oar and he starts beating on the motor to try to break it up so it stops. And one of the guys threw himself on top of the motor there like that. He holds on to the motor and the Turkish police are beating him. And they keep right on going slowly. These are those little boats. Just little engines on these boats that keep right on going. And when they get to international waters the Turkish police have to turn back. And then there's another boat there and these were the Greek police. And the Greek police said stop we'll pick you up we'll take you. No no no we're not going to stop. They weren't sure. They weren't sure if they were true Greek police or not. But they said we're going to keep on going. And they kept right on going. And they made it. This man with seven children he had tried eleven times with his family. In their countries there is such a strong Islamic spirit over those places that they are afraid to think about leaving Islam. But when they leave those Islamic countries, they leave the shores of Turkey there's that spiritual prince of Islam over that country is not over the country of Greece. And so when they come to Greece there is a certain release in the spirit from Islamic pressure and their hearts are open. Almost all those who can speak English, most of them receive Christ. If we only had young people who could speak Arabic or Farsi or even French, they're so valuable. This summer we had about two dozen Mormon young people come in there to help out. That bothered us a bit and there was a real conflicting spirit there while they were there. It was very hard for our girls. But these Mormon young people they knew French. They had numerous languages. Well, where did you learn French? Oh, I did my two years of service in Quebec. I did my two years of service somewhere else and I learned this language. Where are the young people of the church? Oh, I wished our young people would come back from two years of service somewhere and have learned another language and be able to come in the camp as Christians and serve like they did. Truly the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Oh, God help us. God has not given us direction. As we started this work two years ago people were asking, are you going to be planting churches there? I didn't really know what to say. And that's been a question all along. Well, are you going to plant churches? And I'm like, something just doesn't set right about that. I think that we here at home have an over, I don't know what to say, oversized idea about church planting. Oh, we want to be involved in church planting. Yep, we're going to do church planting out here. When Apostle Paul made his first journey, missionary journey, I don't know that he had church planting in mind. But he went and he preached the gospel in each place. And he moved on. He preached the gospel. And people came to Christ. When he came back home on that journey, maybe a year or two later, maybe two or three years later, I'm not sure, he stopped at every place. And he ordained elders in every church. What happened? He preached the gospel. And the seed, the Word of God took root in virgin soil, in the people there, in the cultures, where the people are at. And it grew up. A living organism. Alive. And that became the church. Brother Dwight, God bless you, brother. God has given you gifts in this body. They're very valuable. He sent me this file and email about a house of prayer for all people. And I read through that and hurriedly pushed it aside and went on to my many other things I needed to be doing. But when we were in Athens, just before my wife and children came home, we were there for a day. Spent the day out there with our refugee friends and others there. And the next morning we were out. We had been praying about what we should do there. We thought about starting something there. We need to start something in Athens because so many of our refugee friends are there. And they're just all kind of alone. And they need somebody. And there should be a church there or something. And we left the apartment, headed for the airport, walking down past one of these buildings. And the Lord quickened my heart about a house of prayer for all nations. And I stopped and I looked at that empty building and I said, the Lord was saying, yes, a house of prayer for all people. And that vision began to be birthed in my heart. There's been talk about planting churches there in Greece and planting churches in Europe along the refugee trail and all those things. But when I think about that, somehow it just bogs me down. It looks like such a huge thing to do. Especially I think of some Mennonite churches that want to get involved and would like to go there and plant churches. And I'm just shaking my head because I feel like something I just don't see it working out. Maybe it will. I hope it does. But talking to Hamid who has spent his last ten years there ministering to refugees there in Athens, in Greece, and they just move on. The disciples that he has made, they just move on. And they're scattered up in Europe. One of them is a pastor. Has a church up there. But he said they've not been able to plant a church in Athens. God gave me a vision of a house of prayer for all people. So I went back. I went back to the island again. Went to church on Sunday morning. And there we have a house of prayer for all people. So what if we could have a house of prayer? Let's just call it a house of prayer for all people. This is a place where the nations are gathering. The converts are coming. They're being discipled. They're being baptized. They're reading God's Word. They're studying God's Word. And they're being trained to obey Jesus. And so we're going to call this a house of prayer for all people. There should be another house of prayer for all people in the island of Chios down two hours away by boat. I don't know if there's any Christians there ministering to that camp. And the people are so depressed there, they said that one third, at one time they said one third of the people in that camp have witnessed a suicide. Such depression there. We went to visit that place. And we felt like God was saying to us as the sun is shining in Lesbos, so it shall shine in Chios. The people are without a shepherd there. But God wants to give them shepherds. And I know that the first time we visited Moria, Moria camp, there was no shepherds there. Absolute chaos. But this summer during the time of the riot there, the families, hundreds of them streaming out of the front gate and going up the road. They didn't know where they were going to go. They're leaving camp because there's a riot there and there's stones being thrown and burning things. And they're walking up the road there. And they come to a warehouse and they find a place of shade on the east side of the warehouse in the afternoon. They sit there, hundreds of them with their children, their wives and their families. And I have 58 teen comes in there with water and with food. And they cared for them. And I knew that Moria has shepherds. But there's another island down the bay, down the sea that does not have shepherds. And we'd like to go there, but we didn't have enough of people to go. We didn't have enough people to even maintain what we had. We still want to send them there. And so the vision for a house of prayer has become alive in our hearts. The French, the Congolese, they're picking up the vision. Yes. We might not want to call it a church, but we can call it a house of prayer for all nations. In this place people pray. All nations, all the people in different nations are gathered together to pray and they're praying for all nations. And we could very easily open a place in Athens there by Victoria Park and call it a house of prayer for all people. And the people that flow through there could stop there and could be discipled and could be trained and catch a vision. And what if, what if the 150 people, what if the 150 refugees who come to church there at Oasis on every Sunday morning, what if every one of them would catch a vision of a house of prayer for all people? And they'd get discipled and get trained and they'd catch a vision of what God wants to do. And wherever they go, they begin a house of prayer. When Jesus said, where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst. And they can begin to pray and see what God will do. Because God's hand is moving in that place. The window is open at this time. And I don't know how long it will be open. But their hearts are open. We need a pastor couple who could go there and be dad and mom in camp every day. They could spend every day of their lives at this time drinking tea in someone's tent, caring for the children, caring for the mothers who are sick, caring for people. It's just an incredible open door there. Thank you for your interest and your care and love. There's so many more stories I could tell, but my time is up.