A Veterinarian, a Surveyor, and a Mission Field. When “Let Me Pray About It” Becomes “Yes”-Encore Presentation 2021

 In this episode of Shady Grove Radio, I sit down with Stan and Pastor Denise Sacks at their kitchen table in Oak Ridge to talk about how a simple choir practice invitation led them into a lifetime of missions. You’ll hear how God used short-term trips to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and even Cuba to change their hearts, grow their faith, and open doors they never expected. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

Hello and welcome to Shady Grove Radio. I'm Dan Loggins, and we are talking to Stan and Denise Sachs from Shady Grove Church. Hi guys. Hey, how's it going? We're talking to we're speaking right now from a very special place. Tell tell the folks where we are. Well, we're sitting in my kitchen, Dan, here in Oak Ridge. It's an excellent place to be. It is.

SPEAKER_02: 0:26

It's a good place to finally be after a long journey getting here.

SPEAKER_01: 0:30

Yeah, you guys have been wandering around the county, haven't you? Or North Carolina at least.

SPEAKER_00: 0:34

For the last, yeah, for about the last 10 months or so. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 0:38

And you finally settled down here and you got your house built, and it's beautiful. It is beautiful here.

SPEAKER_02: 0:43

We're real blessed to be here.

SPEAKER_01: 0:45

Now, we were just talking before we came on the air about missions and how you got involved in that. You met at North Carolina State and came to Christ sometime after that, recommitted your life to Christ. And Stan, you started telling me about something that happened at choir practice at Shady Grove one time. Was that 1989?

SPEAKER_00: 1:07

No, this was more like 1999 when uh Denise was part of the choir. I was not. Um nobody wants to hear me sing per se. But she came home from choir practice and and she said, Hey, uh, they're having a mission trip to Costa Rica. And I said, Well, that's that sounds nice. And she said, Well, I think we should go. And I said, I'm sorry? She goes, I think we should go. And I said, Well, well, why? I said, Why would we what would we do there? I said, uh, you took German in high school. Do you s know any Spanish? Well, no, she said, but I still think we should go. So I gave her the answer that you know people give sometimes when they want to stop a discussion. I said, Well, let me pray about it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:53

And did you?

SPEAKER_00: 1:54

Oh, I did. And and God kept telling me that I should listen to my wife and we should go. And it was uh it was a life-changing experience uh for us as a family.

SPEAKER_01: 2:07

Well, t Denise, tell me what happened at choir practice. Wait a minute, hold it, hold it, hold it. You're not supposed to get called to missions in choir practice.

SPEAKER_02: 2:14

Well, I had heard about George Gasperson, who was there uh at Shady Grove at that time, was talking about um short-term mission trip. And I don't know what it was, but it just suddenly just started tugging at my heart. And and that's when I came home and told Stan that we should go. Um his response was not exactly what I would thought it would have been, but his response after that trip, uh, as he said for both of us was was truly life-changing.

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

What did what did you expect him to say?

SPEAKER_02: 2:44

Well, probably the the answer that he gave me is like, let me pray about it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:49

Was this was this out of character for Dan Denise at that time for her to come home and say, let's go to here's what here's where I'm going with this is knowing you guys the way I do, to hear that side of the story seems so different from the people I know.

SPEAKER_00: 3:08

But well, like I said, Dan, it was life-changing. And so, yeah, we it was uh not that Denise wouldn't suggest that we do something, but uh but I think from a missions perspective, this was our first encounter with it.

SPEAKER_02: 3:23

It was. And really, well, as he said, one of the things that um we were there for a week. We didn't know what we were gonna do exactly, weren't sure, um, but I just felt like we were supposed to go. And so the same guy who was like had his passport on him, had his exit tax in his pocket, ready to get out of there, even as we were entering the country, on our way back home after this mission trip, sitting on the plane, he is crying his eyes out.

SPEAKER_01: 3:53

That would that would be Stan.

SPEAKER_02: 3:54

That would be Stan. He's he's crying his eyes out, and I'm looking at him and I'm saying, What's wrong? He said, I'm never coming back. And I said, What do you mean you're never coming back? He said, Because it's too hard to leave. He had grown that attached to all of the people and the work, and that was God's beginning work in both of us towards missions.

SPEAKER_01: 4:16

You know, it and that was something you would have had no prior to her coming home from choir practice. If somebody said, Stan, you're gonna go on a mission trip and you're gonna be in tears when you come back because your heart's broken, you have to leave. I mean, that's only a change that God can do in a person, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00: 4:34

Absolutely, Dan. I I would not have I probably would have any anybody else that would have suggested that to me about going on a mission trip, I probably would have just blown it off.

SPEAKER_01: 4:44

So what happened after that? You guys, you came back, and obviously you did go back.

SPEAKER_00: 4:51

We we did. We went back the following the following year with uh almost the same group, but we had some additions. It was a little bit bigger team, and we were working doing construction. We were helping to build uh a church there and uh a ministry center. And uh we just we just really felt like God was calling us into a longer term of service.

SPEAKER_02: 5:16

And we came back and we were just really unsettled. Best word I know is just unsettled, and we we couldn't even hardly tell people about our experience. We would just break down and just start crying. And so we just really began praying and we began talking about maybe going for a longer term of service than a week. And we heard about these short-term um trips that could go beyond a week go net, go net volunteers. And it was anywhere from six months to eighteen months that you could go and serve. And so we we really started exploring that and praying about it, but we also knew we had businesses back here and we also had two children at the time.

SPEAKER_01: 5:53

Oh, yeah. Can we let's pause for a second. That's right, because we were talking about you each of you own a business, owned a business or ran a business then. Correct. Plus kids.

SPEAKER_02: 6:02

Correct. And and a home. And uh so we had a lot of uh responsibilities and obligations, but we still had this call on our hearts. So we um did our exploring and we actually took the kids December of 2000, and we took them for a short trip to kind of explore and see what their experience was like. We went and stayed with some friends that we had met there and that we'd become very close with. And uh that was when God gave us some confirmation, actually through our kids and some things that happened. And one of them was what I call the first miracle, and that was with Ashley. Um, one of the times that we got together with a small group in their home and we were sharing and we were having worship music and then Bible reading and afterwards fellowship time. Well, during this time where we are singing and we're praising the Lord and we're also praying, I'm praying. And I'm saying, God, if this is where you want us, then it's not just Stan and I you're calling, you're calling our kids too. So will you somehow confirm to them? Now, Ashley was first grade, right? So she was a first grader, and I'm just praying. And the Holy Spirit was definitely meeting with us in this um worship time and this gathering. And so after the worship time and we were heading outside for our fellowship and doing a little grilling out there at this home, uh, Ashley literally came up to me and she started tugging me on the sleeve and she said, Mom, I didn't understand any of that stuff in my head because it was all in Spanish. But I did understand it in my heart. And that was confirmation. The Holy Spirit had spoken to her.

SPEAKER_01: 7:39

Yeah. Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 7:40

So it was the first miracle.

SPEAKER_00: 7:43

So then so then we that was in December. So we got in touch with the folks at headquarters, went to Indianapolis for missionary training in February, where we learned something important. We were hoping to go at the end of the school year at in June of 2001. But we learned that it was going to take between six, no, six to twelve months or more to raise support to go because it you have to have all that money raised before you can go on a mission field. And so uh we were at uh a sponsor's house, I guess, there in Indianapolis, the fellow there that was uh or their family that was sheltering us while we were there, and they and I and I got up in the morning and I thought, and I was talking to him a little bit, the husband and I said, you know, I said, wait a minute, this is not my problem. This is complete I'm I'm up all night think thinking about how this is gonna happen. And and I said, This is not my problem. This is this is God, this is God's problem to work out for us. And so was it 11 weeks, eleven weeks later, all of our support had been raised. Eleven weeks. How was that raised? Well, our church, Shady Grove, supported us tremendously. Um, but there were a lot of folks uh from a lot of different denominations that that helped that helped us, that helped us. We uh Pastor Wes Brown got us some speaking engagements at different churches, at different conferences. Um we even got support from the Nazarene Church, the Methodist Church, the Catholic Church, a Quaker church that my uncle was was pastoring. They did a they did a huge fundraiser for us. And uh and so it all it all transpired in, I mean it all passed in a very quick, quick uh fashion.

SPEAKER_02: 9:32

So that was miracle number two.

SPEAKER_01: 9:34

In 11 weeks.

SPEAKER_02: 9:35

In eleven weeks versus the six to twelve months that normally it would take.

SPEAKER_01: 9:38

This was you said was that June of 2001. 2001? Well, September of 2001. Were you there then?

SPEAKER_02: 9:47

We were. We were. We were in another country when 9-11 hit here in this country.

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

So what was that day like?

SPEAKER_00: 9:58

It was unsettling.

SPEAKER_02: 10:00

Chaotic.

SPEAKER_00: 10:01

Chaotic.

SPEAKER_02: 10:02

It was our Spanish was terrible, and they're we're trying to look at the news uh that was coming on, which was giving us all kinds of conflicting reports, and of course, we're trying to interpret it. We were actually in language school at that time, and we all went out to the terrace and we're looking at the um the television scream and we're seeing these pictures, and we're, you know, like we're watching a movie. Like this is not real. This is not really happening.

SPEAKER_01: 10:27

You're hearing Spanish language.

SPEAKER_02: 10:29

We're hearing Spanish language, so we're not understanding it very well. And you know, we're hearing the White House is destroyed, the Capitals destroyed, just on and on and on were the reports we were getting. And we weren't afraid for us, but we were so concerned about our family and everybody back here.

SPEAKER_01: 10:47

Sure, sure. Yeah, and I guess you I don't want to be trivial, but that blew over. I mean, you found out eventually what was going on. We did, and you stayed there.

SPEAKER_00: 11:01

We did. We stayed, we stayed uh in Costa Rica, and uh we were working with uh with uh uh one of our churches there and uh in um with Pastor Julio and uh his wife uh Lorena and their family, and uh it was in a place called Heredia, and we actually uh uh they wanted us to teach a Sunday school class for adolescents.

SPEAKER_02: 11:31

We remember our Spanish was very rudimentary at that time. We're gonna teach.

SPEAKER_00: 11:35

So we're so we're asking them, well, do you have some materials or you what you know what what what what do you use for resources? And and you know, the answer we got was, oh brother, you know, we get our our word from God in the Bible, and so we had to come up with stuff to to teach these kids. But we did uh some well Denise did mostly but drama and mime and and other things. So we were able to do a lot of outreach and evangelism with the with the kids there in Costa Rica, and it was uh it was a lot of uh fun. But God really busts that.

SPEAKER_01: 12:09

Did you work with the kids the whole time you were there or yes?

SPEAKER_00: 12:12

That's part of what we did. The other things that we did was we worked with teams that were coming down from the states uh and that that were gonna be working at various places, and we would help them. And we by that point our Spanish was a little bit better, so we could help do some translation and things like that.

SPEAKER_01: 12:29

Did you see tell me about the lives that got changed? Tell me a story or two.

SPEAKER_02: 12:35

Um there were a lot, there were a lot of them, Dan. There were so many. Uh we could go on, but multiple mission trips. One outreach that I remember, we went to this very remote community called Copa Vega. It was, excuse me, it was somewhere about two hours down a dirt road before you get there. And we set up a point to bring this drama that we had, that the the students had learned, that we taught them. And we could teach it to them because there wasn't a lot of language involved. There was drama, and so we could teach that to them. And then Pastor Julio brought the message, an evangelistic message, and we had people that were just flocking there afterwards to receive Christ after this mime drama that was called the cage, and it was just about the freedom that Christ bring, and he brought the message that coincided, and afterwards, just a number of people just weeping and impacted by this drama and this message, and you know, praying to receive Christ. And that was just one of the events that we got to be a part of. And of course, the vacation Bible school, which always has an impact not just on the kids, but also the adults that are there.

SPEAKER_01: 13:47

To go to go to a foreign country and take your kids and all of that, I mean, that's a that's a big step. It's funny. When you said two hours down a dirt road, my mind immediately went to Guyana and Jim Jones and all of that. I think it was a two-hour dirt road ride out to to that area, but it's uh and co Costa Rica, I know is not that's not a central there, it's not a Central America unstable type.

SPEAKER_00: 14:16

No, no, no, no, it's not. It's it's not, it's not unstable. They um they are the richest country in Central America, but it but they're still a third world country.

SPEAKER_01: 14:29

Still you're there, you're not in the United States. Did you ever have a moment when you're down there with your kids and you're thinking, man, why are we here? You know, what what how's this gonna be?

SPEAKER_02: 14:40

We were too busy. We were so busy. And we did, I mean, we did prison ministry. Um we translated after, you know, we'd been there a while, like Stan said, he went with one of our full-time missionaries to Panama, and he can tell you some stories about that. I went with his wife to Nicaragua, and we were serving as translators for medical mission trips going up to Nicaragua. Nicaragua is a much different situation, very war-torn, very impoverished. And we were planning on taking um this medical mission team from Wisconsin, I believe it was. And we were planning on five days of medical missions, uh, really just going into some very remote, remote rural areas and trying to provide some basic medical care. Well, day one, um, we get there and we we see a lot of different people, and it's things like headaches and dehydration and minor infections. They don't go to the CVS and go buy the antibiotics or go buy whatever. They don't, they have no resources. Parasites. We were deworming people. I mean, I do that as a veterinarian, but they were at first time I was embarrassed to ask them. And later I was like, hey, we're gonna give you some deworming. They're like, oh, cool, that'd be great. And um, so day two, we get to this place and people have walked there. They've been waiting for hours. There are no less than a thousand people. I'm looking at our supplies laid out on the tables. And Danita, which was the missionary I was working with, looks at me and we're like, boy, we won't have enough for the rest of the trip. What are we gonna do? And I said, We need to go pray. We need to go pray like the fishes in the loaves. And we literally went in a back room and we just started praying. We said, God, you got to multiply it. There's so much need. And we've got three more days of medical missions that we've got to be doing. And we started praying, and not only did we see all thousand people there, we did have enough supplies for the following three days. But looking at the table, there's no way. God multiplied it. I know for a fact that was another miracle, and we had leftovers to leave the Nicaraguan. Oh, wow. God worked a miracle because literally there's no way we would have met the needs with the amount of material that we had.

SPEAKER_01: 16:59

So uh we're talking with Stan and Denise Sachs, Pastor Denise at Shady Grove, and Stan and Denise uh with their kids have been in Shady Grove for a good many years, but Costa Rica is not the only place that you've been. Tell me some others.

SPEAKER_00: 17:14

Well, we uh in 2009 uh we uh we went to uh we went to Ecuador on a sort of an exploratory trip to see if we could plug in there, and we did, and we took two other trips back there to help build a ministry center high in the Andes Mountains in a structure, a building. An actual building, yeah. An actual building. They were meeting in a big blue tent on a concrete slab, and uh they had a church uh group of probably uh uh maybe about 70 uh folks. Uh most of them were uh 25 and younger. They were young, it was a young congregation, a lot of a lot of youth. And so uh we were able to plug in there. We helped to get that that building constructed. Um it's interesting, uh Steve uh Gray uh and I had talked for years about the possibly going to Cuba sometime, and the doors were always always closed to us. And so I got a phone call uh in January, I think it was of 2012 from uh Rick West, who was our he was our Boston Costa Rican. He's a missionary with Global Partners, he was until he retired. And he called and he said, Hey, um, I need a a surveying instrument of some kind. And I said, Okay. I said, What are you looking for? And he said, Well, I need a transit to lay out a building with, and I said, Okay. I said, Well let me see what I can find. So I found him one and I sent it to him. And uh he and he called me uh a couple of weeks later and he said uh hey uh thanks a lot for the sending that uh instrument here. He says, but well, what I really need is I need somebody to come down here to Cuba and lay out a building for us. And I was like, okay, okay, all right. So I said, let me, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. So at Sunday school I saw Steve and I said, uh, I said, Steve, they're needing some folks to go to Cuba to help lay out a building down there. He said, when do we leave? And so uh we went, uh Steve and Tony Parsons and I went with Rick in August of 2012 uh to a youth uh Tony spoke at their youth, their national youth conference in Cuba. And where uh kids uh rode in the back of a truck for six or eight hours to get to this, uh to this youth conference, a three day conference. We were there, we helped uh we did a a rough layout on the on the building. Um there was uh a service the last night we were there, they uh they um prayed over the ground, and I remember thinking at the time, God, it's gonna take a miracle to raise. An actual building here because of the difficulty with supply chain and who controls the material. It's a communist country. And so how do you how does that even work? Even if you have the money, you can't necessarily buy it. And they certainly didn't have the money. So we we uh did a rough look uh layout of the building. Uh we left with the idea we were gonna go back uh in the uh January of 20, I guess 2013. So we did. We we went back, we sent teams, we worked with the El Camino Church down in uh High Point uh there, and uh we sent three teams back to back to back, got the foundations in, and we kept going back until uh 2016 when the project was was completed.

SPEAKER_01: 20:48

How many times have you been to Cuba?

SPEAKER_00: 20:50

Uh eight, I believe, at last count.

SPEAKER_01: 20:52

I remember my mother was attending Shady Grove and I was going to another church, and I remember her telling me, we're sending a mission team to Cuba, and I said, You're not going to Cuba. Nobody goes to Cuba. You know, if you ever get to Cuba, you're not getting out.

SPEAKER_00: 21:05

Well, it is the only country that I've ever been to where you have to go through a metal detector on your way into the country.

SPEAKER_01: 21:13

They don't want you bringing, they don't want you bringing anything in, obviously.

SPEAKER_00: 21:16

They don't want you to bring anything in. So it it was great. We've been there and were able to do uh to do a lot of not only build the construct the building, but we also were able to do ministry work there and and got connected with a lot of a lot of folks that we uh that we are still um still in contact with uh today. So the the tell me the historic part of that that you right so what we found is that uh this was the first uh the first new church that was permitted to be constructed since uh Fidel Castro took over in 1959. Um and what was I guess interesting is they got their permit, or they got approved to get a permit to build, and it took eight years to actually receive it once they were approved to actually get the permit.

SPEAKER_01: 22:14

Wow. It's not business as usual down there, is it?

SPEAKER_00: 22:18

Uh no, it's it's not.

SPEAKER_01: 22:19

But it seems like it's God as usual.

SPEAKER_00: 22:22

You know, I s God moved there in the hearts of lots and lots of people, and and um the door was open, it's not open now, but it was open for a time. And I think that uh that country won't ever be the same for the for what God has done there.

SPEAKER_01: 22:43

Now I remember all the trips and the names of the people who went. My youngest son Elijah went. Right. And when he said he was going, I didn't say this to him, but I'm thinking, why? You know, why why would why are you going to Cuba? Um it was but it was the people he was around. It was you, it was Tony Parsons, it was some of the others that went on this trip. And uh I think it was life-changing for him. He came back, it's funny, he came back with three things. He came back with coffee, cigars, and some unbelievable stories. And I think he he he's often referred uh back to that time in Cuba over the years when he and I would talk. And it sounds like it was just a it it's like confirm or deny this. It's like when you you think you're going there to help them. Oh Dan. But it's it you you have it completely backwards, maybe.

SPEAKER_00: 23:45

That's the thing that I think that is the biggest impact. This is why we're so passionate about getting people to go on a short-term mission trip, to let them see how big God is, and to let them see how um how their perspective can change. And they do, we do, we think we're gonna go and be a blessing to people, and we are. Don't get me wrong. I think that we've been a blessing to people on the trips that we've been on. But I think that we're we receive at least double portion of blessing uh back from them.

SPEAKER_02: 24:19

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 24:20

And and so uh so what I'm when we just have a few minutes left. We're gonna we're gonna have to wrap this up. And I do want to record another one with you guys, and there's uh a dozen different subjects we could cover. But what's the status now on the mission trips? Because it seems like things are shut down.

SPEAKER_02: 24:40

Well, things are shut down. We've actually had uh we were planning on going to um Cuba again, and that got, you know, that got canceled. Then we had we were gonna do a backup trip to go to Haiti, and then basically that was a no travel to Haiti. There was so much unrest there. Uh then we were planning to go to Guyana, and uh Guyana was canceled because of the whole COVID situation. And so unfortunately, now that's really where we are. We're kind of on hold. Um, but I still feel like locally there are things that we can be doing, and we have been doing, we've been partnering with a few other churches that um are doing some outreach, and so maybe those overseas trips will be on hold for a little bit, but not forever.

SPEAKER_01: 25:28

And so uh God still has work to do over in those places and in people here who who should be serving.

SPEAKER_02: 25:37

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 25:37

Now, if you're s if you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, I don't have time to do this, you guys both left businesses behind. We did. And it fell apart, right?

SPEAKER_00: 25:47

Nope. No, God bless that too.

SPEAKER_02: 25:49

He did. He we actually had somebody who said, I can't support you for the the year you're gone financially, but I can mow your grass at your house for the year you're gone.

SPEAKER_01: 25:58

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02: 25:59

Just small things like that. That was the details. God worked out every detail.

SPEAKER_01: 26:03

So every detail. Somebody doesn't have time, they it can God can work through that. What about the money?

SPEAKER_00: 26:09

The money, you know, um we uh we didn't get paid while we were gone because we needed that money to stay in the business and we weren't really doing anything.

SPEAKER_01: 26:21

So but if somebody says I don't have the money to go on, God will provide the money. That's the least of your problems.

SPEAKER_00: 26:27

That's the least that is the least of your problems. You know, the the biggest thing is is having a heart that'll say yes.

SPEAKER_01: 26:35

What about the person who would say, I'm not, I don't do construction, you know, I'm not a preacher. I there's not I there's nothing really there I could do.

SPEAKER_02: 26:44

I need to God took a veterinarian and a surveyor for a year to another country and we served in all sorts of ways that we never imagined because God enabled.

SPEAKER_00: 26:56

Yeah, we we uh when I got back from Panama on a trip when we were living in Costa Rica, I was telling Pastor Julio that I had to give a sermon while I was there in Panama. And he said, Well, you know, we were thinking that one of you should do the sermon on Easter Sunday.

SPEAKER_02: 27:17

We we told him how important Easter Sunday was here in the U.S., right? Not as much there because of the Catholic background.

SPEAKER_00: 27:24

How it should be important everywhere, but that's beside the point. But Denise, who I'm still translating in my head what he said. Now, Denise's a little faster at that than I am, and she said, Stan will be happy to do it.

SPEAKER_01: 27:37

Excellent. Yeah, and so you spoke on Easter Sunday?

SPEAKER_00: 27:41

In Spanish. In Spanish. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was the most excruciating uh experience, I think, of my life in many ways.

SPEAKER_01: 27:51

Well, following Christ and answering whatever call he gives you is never boring.

SPEAKER_00: 27:58

No, it's never boring. It's never boring.

SPEAKER_01: 28:01

Never boring. So, what's the future of of missions through Shady Grove? It's it it has been a very active, very uh dynamic thing. A lot of people participating. What's our future here?

SPEAKER_00: 28:16

I I think it's I think the future for for the mission is bright for Shady Grove because like you said, there are a lot of people that that want to serve and that and that we have we have lots of avenues that we can serve. Uh we found that out through this whole the whole pandemic thing that there were a lot of things that we could do and participate in to help to help spread God.

SPEAKER_01: 28:42

If somebody's interested in serving from Shady Grove, how do they contact you?

SPEAKER_02: 28:46

Um really through the church office, or they can actually email me, Denise at shadygrove.net, and I'd be happy to take their name. We actually are hoping to do um helping out at the Weaver House, which is part of Greensboro Urban Ministry. They are in dire need of adults, people 16 and above, actually, 18 and above, excuse me, um, to help serve meals to people who are um kind of down on their luck and really re rely on Greensboro Urban Ministry to help supplement their meals.

SPEAKER_01: 29:18

We're gonna wrap this up here.

unknown: 29:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 29:20

And usually what I do at the end is I have my guest pray regarding the subject matter that we've we've talked about. You both can pray, one of you can pray, it doesn't matter. But okay. Since you spoke at the Easter service in Panama, she beat me to it. She'll do the pray the prayer. And I think m maybe at least you should pray for people to answer the call. Because who would have fought at choir practice, you know, 1998? I mean, would would define your life today because that's the way I see you guys as missionaries.

SPEAKER_02: 29:58

We are.

SPEAKER_01: 29:59

You know, what if you had had a cold and missed that choir practice or something? You know, I don't I don't know. I mean, God maybe would have worked it out a different way, but God shows up in some of the most unusual places, and we hear a call from the most unusual situations, and you guys answered. And I just appreciate so much your witness through the years and the work you've done and the work you're continuing. You haven't retired yet, right? No, yeah. So you're absolutely not. And Denise, of course, you're a pastor and on staff, and um you're you're pursuing ordination.

SPEAKER_02: 30:36

I am. I have about eight classes left to complete prior to ordination, which was another thing. That's I just said yes, and I'm not really sure. Yeah, but uh God's got us, He's got He's got the plans. I'm just following.

SPEAKER_01: 30:51

We definitely need to talk more about that. So go ahead and lead us in prayer and we will finish up.

SPEAKER_02: 30:56

Great. Dear gracious Heavenly Father, uh, we just count it a privilege to just be in your service and to follow you. And Lord, I I pray that even as people are listening to this, that maybe those that have been on the fence about serving or getting involved or just saying yes to you, Lord, would have the opportunity to say yes and just reap the great blessings that come out of obedience. Father, thank you for allowing us to say yes. And we just pray that the future of Shady Grove will be bright and that you will just give us a vision for where we are to serve, because we know part of what we are to do is to go into all the world and share the gospel. May it be to your liking, Lord, in the way that we do that. And it's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_01: 31:42

Thank you, Stan and Denise, for having me uh here in your in your home.

SPEAKER_00: 31:47

Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Dan.

SPEAKER_01: 31:49

And Pastor Denise and Reverend Stan, because Billy Graham, I think, spoke in Los Angeles on an Easter Sunday, and he's well known for that, and you're well known for Panama Easter Sunday message there. That's fantastic. Thank you for listening. Join us next week.