blessings of god in your life i know that god is a blessing and that he wants to bless you more than ever before if you hearken to his voice heaven and let his blessings you this is the day that the lord has made them we should rejoice and be glad that they're in so i'm giving god glory and i'm giving praise because i know that he lives in praises today for he is alive god is not there he's alive how do i know he's alive because he's alive in my heart and i can feel him in the atmosphere and i could feel him right now so i know that god is moving and god is drawing us pressure work among his people today i certainly thank god for my special gas missionary  governor's proclamation he is a recipient of a mayor of pittsburgh a proclamation and we certainly appreciate him he's one of the  heroes who have made a difference in this community and around the world i thank god because he caught the vision to participate when the disaster make occur you will be prepared to deal with any disaster and you have the resilience to deal with anything and to go further after the disaster so we want to stay a connection to what the marriage is doing and so we have a conference and that conference when all very well and we have a banquet and we on the on song are heroes who are making a difference and my guess is really making a difference today so i like to welcome you to the highway and haters out here too scared to be with you today i noticed that the other night there was a gentleman who participated and he said some heart moving in the woods about you how long have you been involved in a mission where men vala mission work for about thirty years that connects with my heart you were highly recommended thank you and recommended by some heavy hitters in the christian understand ministry and your labor has not been in vain you have done a tremendous job what would you consider you accomplishments within the last thirty years of the last thirty years the lord's allow me to be involved with a number of disasters starting way back with hurricane andrew i was at us first married and we were down in florida rebuilding homes you know involved with us lately the latest earthquake and the paul you were helping rebuild homes rebuilding whole communities you know and as a lot of us know about hurricane katrina i was blessed to be down there before half years helping with debris voting of homes churches and you know we got to work on about six hundred homes and rebuilt about a half a dozen churches so we have some great times  who had the heart to do what you do so how long have you been have you been with us south asian prayer sin the how long have you been with that i've been with them in a relationship and affiliation since about one thousand nine hundred seventy but the founder mark up or to he took me on my first missions trip to guatemala when i was fifteen years old so i've known  a very long time right right wow that must have been a life changing experience it was we were actually in a garbage dump building a church and we were i remember digging the foundation in the back corner of the church at that time and then we were using pick axes digging down through the hit area that was loaded with leather so i had to dig down through three feet a leather just to set the foundation and as i was digging through the leather and some of it you had to dig how long you've been married i've been married twenty six years so i have she in law in foreign missions like ok we have a funny story about a relationship i actually met my wife in hong kong but my wife's from western pennsylvania and she went to my same home church but i never knew or because she's a couple years older than myself so i was over there working with the church in hong kong and also in china and the lord just put hearts together and i was still serving there i came back on furlough proposed and we ended up getting married about a year later and we've been married since now we moved do you spend most of your mission work in areas like hawaii oh actually i've and we were you know we were blessed to be with hundreds of people and helping them out well what are some of the partners that have  developed into the years who have really made a difference some good partnerships with out world vision people familiar with the pittsburgh leadership foundation serve with them world relief convoy hopes another organization we've done a lot of disaster relief  lately been we've been partnering with samaritan's purse and we've been doing some work with them in nigeria a couple years ago with helping to rebuild a hospital in some areas there because most of your mission w deal with building homes or building they were doing both building and relief and also counseling and some people might decide the picture up on the screen there's a team from pittsburgh doing distribution in the paul the pictures up of there now  of the shoes in front of that that's a chicken coop that the church actually fell down during the earthquake and the only building that was left standing in the village was a chicken coop so they cleaned it out and are having church services within a chicken coop and i don't know if to make the churches in pittsburgh that would go to a chicken coop church but that's part of what the lord's doing that way the next picture of some people might be saying is in india and that it that's right after there was some major flooding in the northern india as picture now so folks much you're seeing people doing relief in the  these people are receiving blankets kitchen equipment just temporary supplies while they're rebuilding their homes wow and this a lot of people talk about the syrian refugees in the refugees from the islamic world but this is a family  of christians and they are actually from northern india inert their home and there are schools that they had was burned down by muslim extremists and today their own apartment and we're helping rebuild their home rebuild your school you know we forget about different people around the world who have gone through more than just the hurricane or an earthquake you know sometimes they go through a major crisis and it was what has been the most dangerous experience to pay it overseas well actually the most dangerous  well actually western china on the tibet and border and we were up in the mountains visiting people who had heart surgeries the organization southeast asia person or we work with had had heart projects for many years up in that area so we're going visiting patients we came on a mountain road it was  dark we came around the bend and our driver was doing about forty fifty miles an hour in a mountain road and as he came around a mountain road he had a large patch of ice and as he hit the ice our van spun around and ended up running into a jersey barrier it just happened that was the only section of road that had jersey barriers on it for protection other than should one of our mountain cliff right ok ok so our driver was so shaken up that you know it's like he didn't want to drive down but we were we're ten almost ten hours away from the main town that we needed to get to that day as a driver sitting there shaking and said ok i live in pittsburgh we know how to drive in the snow in the eye so i drove down the rest of the way down the mountain as we got up on of the mt there was a police checkpoint in the road to close we were there with there was a scuffle small local churches that were there were helping with the after the hour flooding that happened were helping bring relief and while we were there there was a riot broke out right near the hotel that small there were guest house we're staying at and the police were shooting long gun battle back and forth and her shooting flash bangs in front of our hotel we were at we were looking out the window at it and it actually blew out the windows it was we were standing there so i mean we saw the rocks flying the guys the machine guns running back and forth and they were just and even in the foreign country cursed persecution of the church is it as strong as the news c b s now you've  large christian mission school has about three hundred students which are about ninety five percent of students are muslim students it's a it's a basically a school for muslim children and they burn to the ground because one man burn a qur'an they burn down the whole school for three hundred  areas are pretty pretty heavy have have the you been able to mentor men and women who want to embrace the missionary field yes that's one thing i have a blessing in my life we get to have influence i mean a lot of young people coming up our organization over the last couple years have been bringing cambodians over and different students from southeast asia interns so we've been working for this them for three months at a time so they go back to their countries as leaders and help with different programs that we do in those countries that we have some blessing in that area right because if th i think he was being antagonizing but we forget that you know the bible talks about the good samaritan in g s ask who is your friend who is your neighbor and if that man really thought about ok if muslims are truly my neighbor how do i show love to them i don't take something they hold precious and destroy it right even better off that sense of relief supplies you know sense of a couple bags of flour just to reach out and love versus reach out in anger look this is nothing but to them it's nothing you know even a look at our bible you know it's a look at the name of jesus as a holy name right right right so the persecution is really heavy in certain areas president and it's good to be mentored on t let me ask you this do do you find racism among the organizations are do you find strife among the organization the man mandatory in organizations i think among humanitarian organizations not so much because you know our hearts are to help the most needy you know i have good friends who are part of s world vision you know we embrace people i mean there's no difference you know you come to my house i have to my own sons to big tall white guys but i also have an adopted daughter from ethiopia and i have a chinese son who does so my house is heart love equally i mean people are sometimes born prejudice you know i grew up in a white house in a white neighborhood you know we looked at black people in a different way but in my heart it's like a place the same  ground you know that's one glorious thing about being christians because we're all brothers and sisters in the lord right well do you find that in the formation are you find it more in the united states i think sometimes overseas as well you know sometimes even in cultures you know rich people or you know look i'm poor people and people are lighter skinned darker skinned they lay down that way meters race and racism or just you know distinction between rich and poor you know sometimes people have nothing in they like to push down people who even have less than them so you know it's that's one nice thing about the gospel of jesus christ it brings us if we love one another as christ loves us at the levels everything wow do a particular type of music that you have an appreciation for oh i love afghan good praise and worship music you know that's part of my heart is you know that's who i grew up in a christian purpose of the conference was to he quip correct clergy to prepare their hearts and prepared with knowledge that they can make some decisions about moving into the   to move in that direction on the problem what i think that one of the share at the conference specially during the small group session was how local churches can get involved in disaster relief a lot of people don't think they can because they just don't know how to start that's  that's part of my heart is to say to a local church to a pastor you don't have to do all the planning you just have some willing people to go well there's people who do the logistical part of it they do the facilitation that's part of my heart i love this facilitate people to go and do you know i find my great joy in missions by seeing local church people who want to help but they don't know how and just open that door so they can go to louisiana they can go in some nice house and spend a week there helping got it out helps hang the dry wall and at the same time the people are there praying with them show them the love of christ and show them how much god cares about them you know during our katrina one of my favorite stories from down there was one of the pastors he had a good sized church and after the hurricane a church went from three thousand to about thirty people and one of the people in that church was his father in law his father in law hated god he was mad that his daughter married a pastor they hated the whole thing about it and as we were working on that pastor's house the father in law would watch our teams with smiles work hard get the house done and if he went back to pennsylvania about a month later we i just went back to visit that pastor and his father in law was he to all changed he was a new man and the pastor said that he saw that the love that we had for him traveling all the way down from pittsburgh to louisiana and doing it for nothing just doing it out of love just broke his heart you know now you main comes to church he's an elder in the church he just loves the lord and it was just because of the love people had for him we didn't do it we didn't even interact with him that he just saw love and i think that's a big part that most christians and churches can do they can show love they just don't know how to show it sometimes you know they may think oh i don't have anything i can't do anything but i can take you know i take it came a youth we do a drywall workshop with him teach him how to hang drywall go down and i'll spend a weekend in drywall who never even touched a hammer or a drill before but they're able to show love they could speak with some senior citizens correct what they want to accomplish and and communicate that with some other experienced people that's correct like you are you or your organization is correct to say this is doable it's all very do a lot of people think it costs so much you know what you're flying to africa and a lot of people noticed that buying a ticket to africa is like twenty five hundred dollars to three thousand dollars and takes a lot of money to get there but when the hurricane hit say for example hurricane sandy we were taken teams out to work on homes be willing to conduct workshops correct in this particular area for for now the clergy but for the congregation and for any other faith based organizations correct that we just for example we just hosted a workshop at covenant church of pittsburgh we did a it was a two saturday workshop first saturday we talked about the disaster relief counseling and crisis management  lot of people going through disaster there and then all crisis what do you do next is a big question so we work through a whole day of that and then the second day we get practical you know how to get out a house how to model houses and flooded you know very practical things that people can do that's a simple workshop and we do that all the time and we're willing to do it anywhere for anybody highlights of my time in disaster relief is down and st bernard parish and there was a church hosting a medical clinic and i had mike i had a team of about twenty people and they were all working on different homes in a call was out for we need a pastor or counselor to come and pray with people during the day who are going to the clinic and they just need somebody to talk to or pray with i was my post last time i actually spoke every day not to spend time with one hundred people a day just praying with i'm talking with them discounting with them you know it's local church or within the local church we try to work with the leadership of the church you know as a leadership a church as they were left and get involved with a disaster how do we go so i mean i'll just basically come alongside and walk hand in hand with the pastor and or whoever's leading that team put him and get him all together get him there get him back and let him walk back with a good story of a right so all of the facilitation in terms of logistics  floors in a church you know we would wake up in the morning go do got our houses you know ninety five degree while they were hauling out dirt and mud and all kind of things but it wasn't that local church at hosted us they would make wonderful dinners and people would just eat that dinner and be happy  missions local city missions and international city missions i know that the feedback from that event monday night  tremendous they hadn't seen it on that particular morning we had a couple missions local missions that were there correct and they said they sent their representative there to see what we were doing locally based here in pittsburgh so we're pittsburghers and you know we just love what god's doing in the city of pittsburgh as well as around the world right well again we're coming to the finality of are fathers want to thank you for today lord thank you for allowing us to have a part in what you're doing around the world and missions lord father especially disturbed people's hearts who are watching this program today let them get that excitement in their hearts for what you're doing and they could have a part in that lord