Father, we do thank you for this opportunity
to reflect on what you've done there in
Seoul, Korea over these past days.
Some of us have literally just arrived.
Katrina and I, just last night, we may
not be as alert as we should be,
but God, we want to just share.
We want somehow this to be an item
of praise.
We want this to be a stimulus for
greater prayer, and we need your help.
Just guide us together as we will be
asked about this event, so that what we
receive today, as we've been exhorted to do
in 2 Timothy, we may be able to
share with others who can share with others
also.
And we just give you the praise, we
give you the glory, in Jesus' name, amen.
Well, I was on the plane preparing for
this talk, and I wrote out the word,
G-C-O-W-E.
I actually spelled it wrong.
To start with, put a G, G-E,
but it doesn't have an E.
It's just G-C-O-W-E.
And I thought I would just try to
confine my thoughts, though I'll surely go on
a few tangents, to five words, and they
start with those letters.
The first word, G, for global.
If we think about G-C-O-W
-E, we think about something that is very,
very global.
One of the things we're very aware of
in Korea, and we've been aware of also
through articles that we've been reading, is the
enormous shift of enthusiasm in missions into the
third world.
If you look at the listing of the
people which I have with me who were
there at G-C-O-W-E, you
can get the feeling of that.
Just for example, Germany had seven people in
G-C-O-W-E.
Brazil had 248.
Korea, of course, they didn't have very far
to go, but it was very select.
They ran a simultaneous pastors conference for pastors
that were not allowed to go.
Some of us had the opportunity to speak
at that, and that turned out to be
a bonanza for Operation World and Korean.
But there were 257 delegates from Korea at
G-C-O-W-E, 66 from South
Africa, 42 from Argentina, 176 from India.
One of my great concerns is that the
enthusiasm in Europe is not what it should
be.
I think there are still wonderful people in
Europe that are very, very committed to world
missions.
I spoke to one of the main leaders
of TEMA.
He was in our track, missions mobilization track,
and he just shared with me how hardly
any organization in the whole of Europe has
taken ownership of TEMA, the greatest, largest missions
conference in Europe, which could be five times
larger.
Very few even go from England, Great Britain.
The German world is the biggest participant in
TEMA, and that's coming up again soon.
Global.
Of course, the goal of AD2000 is to
see the gospel for every person, a church
for every people, so it's got to be
global.
There are quite a few critics, of course,
of this kind of conference, but I think
one of the things we need to keep
in mind, these conferences don't take place that
often.
I haven't been to a conference like this
since 1974, so the way I'm going, that's
probably it, and that was Lausanne, 1974.
For people that come from all over the
world, for many of these people, this is
a very motivating and life-changing experience.
I think we need to praise God that
it really went off so well.
I hadn't heard of anybody, any major accidents
of all these people traveling there.
Many, of course, came by air, and I
hadn't heard of any great accidents during the
Congress.
There was a lady in our track whose
father suddenly died, and we gathered around and
prayed for her, and I'm sure there are
many, many things that have happened that I
wouldn't know about.
So that's the first word I hope might
stick in your mind as you think of
the AD2000 movement.
One of the reasons I committed myself to
this is because Jokowi is not where it's
at.
Jokowi is just the mid-decade conference and
mid-decade evaluation of where we are.
This thing sort of birthed back in 89,
came somewhat out of Lausanne, came somewhat in
an unusual way out of a conference in
Singapore in 89.
But this great Jokowi event that we've just
come from is only, I feel in some
ways, a small part of all that God's
doing.
People can be very much involved in this
vision without having gone to Jokowi.
That's one of the reasons I'm doing this
tape.
We would like those of you who were
not there in Korea to be able to
sense something of this vision.
In the British delegation where there was a
tremendous debate, let me just explain that though
we were there for 10 days, quite a
bit of that time was in our tracks
and then in our national groups and then
in regional group.
European regional group mainly heard about Hope for
Europe from Stuart McAllister.
The national group which I didn't get to
so much, I heard that the British national
group, at least in the end, came up
with some degree of consensus.
Not so much about starting AD2000 in the
UK, which may not happen as a large
scale organization, but the vision, the concepts.
To me, everybody in O.M. should be
excited about this.
Naturally, there's different levels of excitement.
But never before in any major congresses has
the 1040 window or the Muslim world been
so featured.
Whatever other little things we don't particularly like,
that should surely stir our hearts.
Or do we prefer?
Do we prefer that the average person in
the body of Christ never gets the vision
of the Muslim world?
Certainly we in O.M. in 40 years
of labor have not been able to give
it to them.
We've given it to some.
In many parts of the world, O.M.
is a very, very tiny voice.
Out of the 80 nations we work in,
50 to 60 of those nations are relatively
small works where the leader would say, we're
sort of still being born.
We had Bagus there representing O.M. Indonesia.
Do you know the present size of O
.M. Indonesia, especially when you consider the size
of Indonesia as a nation?
Well, it's quite different, believe me, to be
an O.M.er in a nation with
three or four other O.M.ers and
to be an O.M.er on ICT
or Germany or India or even Pakistan and
other countries which are well developed.
So I think the global challenge of AD2000
should warm all of our hearts and that
we should be able to focus on the
1040 window.
I think one of the great highlights, again,
I wasn't at all the meetings because the
Koreans had me go in the other meetings.
And I was in the midst of a
few other things on the telephone.
But I think one of the highlights was
showing the 1040 music video that was produced
by our music department here and their partners.
To be able to show that to 3
,000 to 4,000 delegates, the evening meeting
of Jikowei, and to have copies available outside
as the people went out that they could
buy was a great answer to prayer.
And I'm convinced that little video will be
one of the key recruiting tools in the
world for the next few years.
They're wanting to put it into many languages.
I don't know how they can do that.
It's, of course, something that's powerful whether you
understand the language or not because it's so
visual.
I'm sure Bill Drake is going to get
quite a few more invitations, including Korea.
And that was exciting.
After the video, I had 11 minutes to
speak.
And believe me, at Jikowei main plenary session,
11 minutes is something that you highly esteem.
And I just somehow attempted to share, again,
the challenge of the unreached.
And I would ask you to pray that
the Lord would use that even though it's
now history because it's all, it gets into
writing, it gets into magazines, it's going to
have phenomenal coverage right across the world.
The 1040 window has been recognized.
It's absolutely amazing that something like this, which
was somebody's idea really of how to market
this part of the world, how to get
this across to the average person and across
the world, has been so relatively successful.
And we always tell people, of course, that
they can build their own window if the
1040 window doesn't cover their favorite country.
There are a number of very unreached places
that you sort of have to reach up
out of the window to get to, parts
of Central Asia, Indonesia.
And that always gets sometimes a good laugh.
The second letter, C, I've written the word
catalyst or catalytic.
I don't know if that word's in the
dictionary, but catalyst is.
And I think as I attempt to look
objectively at Jikowei, I believe it's a catalytic
atomic bomb.
That's probably the greatest single thing that will
come out of this event.
Catalyst and the church, we all desperately need
that.
So many tens of thousands of conversations going
on.
There were so many ex-OMers there, I
think if we had called an ex-OMers
meeting, we could have had a couple of
hundred people.
We got frightened away from that due to
logistics.
We did have a meeting of OMers.
That had about 50 or so because some
are so busy.
But it was exciting to meet people that
we hadn't seen for many, many years.
And I think it was a beautiful thing
for people that came from countries where they
don't get the opportunity to travel so much.
I met in a little Nepali army sort
of moving around and linked in with them
and prayed with them and had pictures taken.
That group was led by Resham Raj, ex
-OMer, known to a number of people.
These people were really challenged and really excited.
The word catalyst, I think, is a beautiful
word.
It's a ministry God has given our ships.
I always say more happens after the ship
sails away than when it's there because it's
like a catalyst bomb.
Far more will happen after Jokowi than happened
there.
At the end of the day, it's a
conference.
It doesn't mean the world is going to
all be evangelized, but it does mean that
4,000 people go from there.
If they all share with 10 their vision,
what if they all share with 100?
What if 4,000 all managed to share
out in Brazil?
That's no problem with thousands in the churches.
That can be very, very exciting.
I believe another major catalyst factor in this
is just being in Korea because it is
so clear that Korea is to be such
a major player in world missions.
It doesn't mean they're going to catch up
with the United States overnight.
Any country that thinks they're no longer needed
in the world missions challenge, you're just making
a huge mistake because the task is so
great, the task is so complex, no nation
can be left out.
We want to say that here in Britain
as this word gets around, oh well, Britain's
not such a major sending field anymore.
We got so many problems here.
Britain is still one of the top nations
in the world as far as the resources,
the manpower, the roots that the church has.
As I spend time in Britain and the
States and also places like Brazil and Korea,
I'm not going to let one be in
competition to the other.
I think that's completely ridiculous.
In fact, on the plane I was reading
one of the back issues of Ralph Winter's
amazing magazine on frontiers missions.
The magazine last year, I hope many of
you have read on the subject of money.
In that, he brings out this challenge of
American missionaries and the need to continue to
see American missionaries.
The big event that many of us will
never forget took place in this Olympic Stadium.
If I did things properly, I'd have some
slides.
It's just uncanny that in God's providence, I
was the main foreign speaker.
There were just mainly two of us that
spoke, Louise Bush for five or six minutes,
and then I had the main message of
25 minutes.
A hundred thousand did not come.
It rained.
They were aiming at a hundred thousand.
They only got eighty thousand.
What a big disappointment.
Eighty thousand for a missionary meeting.
The thing that really blessed my heart is
that when people were still talking about a
hundred thousand, the Korean leaders made it clear
that it was between seventy-five and eighty
thousand.
The most emotional moment of the stadium meeting
was when all the Jokowi delegates, three to
four thousand, they weren't all there that night,
when all the Koreans were singing.
They already had one message.
They all came in.
There was this big drama and dance going
on out on the field and all the
tremendous music.
Then all these missionaries and all these delegates
came in and were given a great, enormous
welcome.
I'm sure there were many, many tears.
Of course, it was raining.
True Korean style, as the people worked their
way into the bleachers, they were all given
rain coverings, some kind of raincoat so they
could sit in the rain.
We, of course, up on the main speaking
platform were warm and dry and comfortable.
A wonderful English missionary reminded me of that
when we met later on, that they were
being soaked as we were sitting up there,
warm and dry.
It was sort of a drizzle.
It wasn't a massive downpour.
I think at the end, it may have
actually stopped.
Another one of the great global Catholic highlights
was our mega balloon.
The whole world now knows about these balloons.
The whole world wants these balloons.
After I preached, I threw it into the
air and it bounced over the delegates and
landed somehow, carried right in the middle of
this giant Olympic stadium.
Then someone tried to pinch it, but Perry
Rickard rescued it and deflated it and brought
it back to me.
I had to present that eventually to Pastor
John Oak, the chairman of the OM board,
the pastor of one of Korea's largest churches.
I could go on and say a lot
more about the catalysts, just so many things,
from individual conversations to seminars to track meetings
to the Korean churches to the generosity.
I heard that every delegate from the emerging
countries, the poor countries, not only were all
their expenses paid apart from the airfare, I
heard they were all given a lot of
cash.
How much?
$600.
If Mei Wei is accurate.
If she isn't, then we'll forgive her.
That is amazing.
Are they Singapore dollars or American?
That's why our book table did so well,
because people seem to have money.
But what an act of generosity.
Pastor Oak shared with me that their church
put $100,000 into this effort.
Quite a challenge, quite a testimony.
The third word I've written is an O
-G-C-O.
I see all you writing this out.
I've written under that word or letter O,
overwhelming.
I find these events overwhelming.
I'm still overwhelmed.
I'm overwhelmed by the challenge of the goals
and the aims of the movement.
I'm sort of hanging on for dear life.
I find that when I express some of
those things honestly, in our track especially, and
in other places, people still love me or
accept me.
There is a place in this movement for
doubting Thomases.
Some of you who are struggling with the
goals and aims, don't let that frighten you.
In the final grand finale evening, and by
the way, God just might have used Peter
Conlon.
He was like Mr. MC.
I think Fortunato sort of wooed him in
saying, we need somebody to make announcements.
But Peter Conlon was really helping that whole
thing hold together.
Announcements, of course, in an event like this
are so important.
For those of us from OM, sometimes watching
us on video screen, one minute we're looking
at Frank Fortunato.
The next minute we're looking at Peter Conlon
and we're wondering, is this Jokowi or Love
Europe?
Then we walk out and there's Don Bellboom
flogging books with Mae White gasping for breath,
following behind, and we wonder what's happened here.
I wanted to read the Jokowi declaration.
There was some debate whether this should be
read on the final evening because it is
a little bit long, but they decided to
read it.
I believe it is a significant document that
has come out of this great event, and
I would like to read it.
I think it's more important than some of
the other things that I would say at
this point.
Jokowi 95 declaration, 82,000 and beyond movement.
We, about 4,000 Christians from 186 countries,
were graciously hosted by the Churches of Korea
in Seoul, May 17th to 25th, 1995, for
a global consultation on world evangelism.
We continue the spirit of earlier consultations committed
to the task of global evangelism or evangelization,
and I appreciate this so much, building upon
the biblical foundation and call to mission set
forth in the Lausanne Covenant and the Manila
Manifesto, as well as the statement of faith
of the World Evangelical Fellowship and inspired by
the vision articulated at Singapore 1989 consultation.
We desire to move further toward a church
for every people and the gospel for every
person by 82,000.
Our mandate, basic to our vision, our mission,
and our strategy is the incarnational model of
Jesus Christ.
I won't read all the scripture references, but
they're given, sprinkled throughout this whole declaration.
He alone is the way, the truth, and
the life.
In obedience to him, the disciples went forth
in the power of his spirit to be
his witnesses and to establish his church across
the earth.
The Lord of the harvest calls us to
follow him, to take up our cross and
to measure our lives by the priorities of
his kingdom.
By placing the emphasis on becoming like him,
Christ intended that his disciples grow not only
in holiness, but also as active participants in
his mission.
To make reproducing disciples of Christ is a
way of life.
It is the way our crucified and risen
Lord lived his life on earth, and now
the way he commands all of his disciples
to follow, our vision.
We came together around a vision created in
us by the command of Christ to make
disciples of all nations and to preach the
gospel to every creature.
Our concern is for the whole church to
take the whole gospel to the whole world.
Our primary but not exclusive focus is on
the 1040 window, the area of 10 to
40 degrees north of the equator from West
Africa to East Asia, where most of the
unreached people's groups are located.
There also we find the greatest degree of
poverty, illiteracy, disease, and suffering.
We confess a deep awareness of our failure
in the past to do all we could
have done to make Christ known throughout the
world, especially in the areas where no church
movement exists.
We also repent of our needless divisions and
competitive attitudes that have hindered the advance of
the gospel.
We resolve by our God's grace to no
longer ignore the challenge nor miss the opportunity
set before us.
This is the time for which we were
born.
We see the close of the millennium as
a unique occasion to reemphasize the urgency of
taking the gospel to the ends of the
earth.
The year 2000 can serve as a milestone
to mark the advance of the gospel both
as a focal point for intensified evangelistic work
and a transition to a new century of
missionary outreach.
Our purpose, we seek in a spirit of
servanthood to encourage, network, and motivate Christian leaders
and churches by inspiring them to obedience to
the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.
Our intent is to stimulate cooperation among existing
denominations, congregations, parachurch organizations, and missionary
societies, and service groups of all kinds in
order to work unitedly toward this objective.
The expected result is the establishment of a
mission-oriented church-planting movement among every people
in the world, both in rural areas and
urban centers.
This will ensure that everyone has a valid
opportunity to experience the love, truth, and saving
power of Jesus Christ in fellowship with other
believers.
In the face of widespread tribalism and racism,
only the gospel can bring lasting peace and
reconciliation among peoples.
Our strategies.
Our strategies are often hindered by blunders.
I had to get this water, and for
those listening to the tape, we knocked the
tape recorder off as Verwer attempted to get
some water.
Our strategies.
Satan is trying to hinder on every side.
No.
Our strategies.
With this end in view, we wait on
God in prayer and fasting.
Without heaven-sent revival, all of our efforts
will be in vain.
We yearn for an outpouring of sovereign grace
and power in a mighty spiritual awakening across
the length and breadth of the church.
The magnitude of this task is beyond our
resources, but we know that with God all
things are possible.
Our role is that of a catalyst to
arouse concern and accelerate divinely motivated initiatives.
As God enables, we will do this by
disseminating information and facilitating cooperative missionary efforts,
leadership development, compassionate care for physical needs and
social justice, and evangelistic efforts across cities, nations,
and continents.
We will endeavor to maintain accurate progress reports
of church planting efforts among the least evangelized
people, so that all might be aware of
people, groups, everywhere that have not yet heard
the redeeming word.
We recognize that these strategies need to be
worked out in specific country-by-country cooperative
plans.
We gratefully acknowledge the example of the brothers
and sisters of our host country, Korea, who
have challenged us by their creative plans such
as a one-one-one intercessory prayer movement,
every member praying for one minute at 1
p.m. every day for one non-Christian
friend, or one particular country, or one unreached
people, or one missionary friend or pastor.
A call for every Christian living in a
country whose per capita gross national product, GNP,
is more than five thousand dollars to give
at least one dollar a month to help
those in poverty, and a summons to courageously
stand for the universal upholding of human rights
and religious freedom.
Strategies, however good, should be matched by commitment
to their implementation.
And then finally, our commitment.
The tremendous potential of AD2000 and beyond movement
was vividly portrayed by the powerful Korean student
Mission 2000 event at the Olympic Stadium.
On the evening of May 20th, 1995, 80
,000 students assembled under the banner of the
cross dramatically dedicated themselves to obey the Great
Commission.
We too covenant to pray and worship as
we work together for the evangelization of the
world.
We must have the empowerment that comes from
on high.
Therefore, in total dependence upon the Holy Spirit,
we dedicate ourselves anew to Jesus Christ, who
loved us and gave himself for us.
Despite the difficulties, we look expectantly to the
day when the gospel finally will be preached
in all the world, and the redeemed of
the Lord will be gathered from every tribe
and language and people and nation to praise
him forever.
Our commandment to world evangelization directs our energy
toward this goal, to which history is moving,
and when the completed church will be presented
to the Father in all the beauty of
his holiness, and every knee shall bow and
every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord
to the glory of God.
Amen.
The 1995 Jiko-e Declaration.
We'll be making copies of this available, and
we realize that this kind of dedication is
far more meaningful for some people than for
other people.
One of my pleas, especially for those of
us who come from so-called westernized countries,
is that we may just be somehow a
godly model of self-control, of humility, as
we see new emerging mission-sending countries.
Brazil, for example, are very aware that their
first big batch of missionaries that went out
from Brazil, many returned discouraged.
They're more than aware of that, and we've
got to encourage that, encourage them that this
first wave, may have not been the very
first wave, that was researched and came up
with some discouraging statistics, that this would not
discourage them, because we know in missionary history
some of the first waves that went out,
say to Africa, they in fact were all
dead within six months, and people could have
easily become discouraged.
It seems that in mission work today, we
don't see as many people martyred or dying
of disease as much as back then, but
Satan seems to have other strategies to discourage,
to confuse, and to cause people to have
to return, and that may not have been
the Lord's plan.
Well, there's just two other letters in this
word Jiko-e.
You probably wondered what I was going to
do with the word weak, the word W,
so I put down the word weak, and
I just want to be realistic.
The 82,000 movement in some countries is
incredibly weak.
We acknowledged in our track, we had 300
attending our mission mobilization track.
We acknowledged to our people who came from
all over the world, that we as a
track are just being born.
The whole movement of Jiko-e, in some
ways, is just being born.
It is very new.
It is very recent, and in some places
in the world, especially a number of European
countries, it's very, very weak, at least outwardly,
but don't be deceived by that.
God is in this thing.
God is uniting people through this.
Our own fellowship of OM has had a
quantum leap of relationships, networking, material distribution.
I'm thinking of the literature.
Just at this Congress and related meetings, we
sold more copies of Operation World in six
days than in the previous three years, as
we ordered by faith 5,000 copies, and
so a good percentage of them sold.
We even, last minute, were able to bring
copies into the stadium.
Though we didn't have it organized enough to
sell so many, we did sell over a
thousand copies.
Some of our OM Korean workers were up
to three in the morning together with David
and others, putting them away or shunting them
to the next place, preparing for the next
last-minute entrance into some golden opportunity to
get that great book out in the Korean
language.
So pray.
Pray for Louise Bush.
Pray for Thomas Wang.
Pray for people like Roger Foster in this
country, Chris Foster, Roger's son, who's still sort
of holding the AD2000 office together in this
country.
On September 20th here in Britain, there will
be a key meeting between leaders in Britain
and the Evangelical Alliance with those who were
at Jiko-e and others to see what
is the next step forward here in Great
Britain.
I met Mr. Zaninari.
He could have been in the Distinguished Persons
track, a man from Jordan who's been linked
with us for many years, a business person,
but he stayed with the Jordanians.
He was so excited he wanted to go
back to Jordan immediately, start all this, appoint
a director, and get on with it.
It doesn't always work out that easily.
And I would appreciate your prayers for these
different national groups as they go back, and
I'll attempt to somehow keep you informed at
least to some degree.
And then the E, G-C-O-W
-E.
The most basic word I've written down is
the word evangelical.
This is another reason that people should be
committed who may be quite conservative in their
theology.
They may be nervous about some things because
definitely AD2000 represents a quantum leap in marriage
and cooperation between those from the charismatic side
of the body of Christ, many of whom
want to be called charismatic evangelicals, and the
evangelical side of the body of Christ.
And I think this is very beautiful.
This is where O.M. is.
We should be thrilled that now more than
ever across the world there is a sense
that we can work together despite our differences.
But this is an evangelical.
It's an evangelical movement.
I had somebody criticize the thing because they
heard that some Catholics were in the march
for Jesus.
Now AD2000 is not easy to understand.
It's a network.
Many things are linked in with this network.
And then things are linked in with the
things that are linked in with the network.
So of course there would be Roman Catholics
in some march for Jesus, maybe Greek Orthodox,
maybe some other major denomination.
But if you know anything about what happened
in 1989 when there was a thought of
cooperation with Roman Catholics in worldwide evangelism, the
Latin Americans walked out, a lot of other
things happened, and this clear decision was made
by Jokowi, though I'm sure they acknowledged Catholics
who love the Lord Jesus, that this is
a movement of evangelical Bible-believing Christians who
do have a similar doctrinal foundation.
This is not some kind of ecumenical trick.
Now of course there would be friends.
There was a man who was there from
Russia representing, just there as a Russian Orthodox,
even though they were not officially involved, and
he got up in front of the whole
group and repented of the Russian Orthodox persecution
of evangelicals in his country.
To me that was a very beautiful thing,
a very emotional thing, but I can imagine
someone just reading about this or hearing about
this, suddenly attacking Jokowi saying, oh well this
is just an ecumenical thing and we have
to watch out for this.
And that would be so sad.
And actually when something is this big, you
can easily find some little thing that you
may not agree with or that may miscommunicate.
But this is an evangelical movement, and it's
tied into some degree with WEF.
They will have their big event, which will
be a very small event, but it was
in Manila a couple of years ago.
It will be in Minehead in 1996, and
we will be involved there as well.
One of the leaders in the British delegation
was Tom Houston of the Lausanne Movement, and
he had some very important things to say.
So to me that's very, very important, and
I hope it will help you to convince
more people to become owners of this vision.
What's going to happen, especially in Europe, with
the actual organization of AD 2000, I don't
know.
There is a sense in Europe that the
big umbrella as far as evangelism should be
hope for Europe.
That's just also just being born under the
leadership of Stuart McAllister.
We're not interested in a lot of duplication
here in Britain, and I think it's true
in a number of other countries.
They're trying to bring this vision, these goals,
these aims into existing umbrellas, but in some
countries existing umbrellas for whatever reason don't particularly
want it, and I would ask you to
really pray for unity.
This movement, like so many things, has the
potential of being divisive.
If the brothers and all the exciting ones
from Jikohe go back to their own country
and are not sensitive to the main leaders
in their churches, in other organizations, including mission
organizations, it could be divisive, and Satan will
really try to use that.
So I would really appreciate prayer, as all
kinds of meetings are going to take place
to try in every nation in the world
to have some kind of strategy to fulfill
the goals and aims of this movement.
It's going to be messy, it's going to
be complicated, there are going to be mistakes.
I'm sure a lot of things are going
to happen as Satan will counterattack this great
movement, and I would just urge all who
are hearing this feeble tape and presentation to
be proactive, to keep the communication lines open,
and to especially read this declaration and see
if that's something you could take ownership of
and maybe carry around in your notebook.
There are many other things I would like
to say, I could get talking about the
OM book table, which to me was so
exciting and so much literature went out, some
of it only arrived last minute, the Carlisle
shipment, with all those magazines, just last minute
we thought, what a disaster, they just went
out, people were carrying boxes of them away.
The French books did arrive the day after
the entire Congress was over, and they are
being stored temporarily in a church in Korea,
together with some Portuguese books.
It seems the Spaniards were just gobbling up
our Spanish books, but the Brazilians said, we've
already seen all these books, at least that's
one of the reports that I had.
There are many, many humorous things that happened
during those days.
Some people had to travel an hour and
a half by bus to get to the
meetings from outside of Seoul.
Many of us, the British delegation, we were
in the cultural center, a beautiful place, so
some were four and five in a room
in bunks, and they had interesting experiences from
what I heard.
Fortunately I was with my wife, so we
limited ourselves, not having others in our room,
but it was an exciting time.
Pray for the church in Korea.
The potential is there, the vision is there,
the money is there, though they are not
accustomed to giving large amounts of money to
overseas missions, and they need our prayers.
There's a lot more I could say.
We had an OMers reunion, a few ex
-OMers came there, and of course Korean ex
-OMers and former ICT people seem to be
there in different places to encourage us.
Let's pray together.
Lord, I've only just really touched on what
happened there in Korea over these past ten
or so days, and I just thank you.
Thank you for the privilege of being involved.
Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to speak
to more people than I usually speak to
in six months or a year.
And thank you, God, for the opportunity to
be so involved with Fortunato and the music,
with the book displays, with so many other
OM leaders involved in different levels.
Lord, we're cast upon you as this was
such a great Catholic explosion, and now we're
trying to figure out what happens in the
fallout.
We know there'll be the positives and there'll
be the negatives.
We thank you for the prayer movement that
continues.
We thank you for the reconciliation that's going
on.
We thank you for the commitment to remain
proactive in the midst of all the complications
and all the obstacles, and especially God for
this tremendous emphasis on the part of the
world that's been so much on our hearts
all these decades.
We just give you thanks for this.
We give you thanks for the privilege of
being involved.
We ask for wisdom as to what the
next step would be and should be for
each one of us, and all the networks,
all that we are trying to follow up
right across the world in many different tracks.
We look to you, we trust you, and
we're believing you for far greater things on
a national and regional level and in the
trenches as individuals are presented the gospel and
one to you, Lord Jesus Christ, through whom
we pray.
Amen.