Good morning. Very honored to be here with y'all this morning. As he said, my name is Kyle agent, and I am a member of the Gideons. I'm from the Newton County camp. I live in a small town called Little Rock. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of it, but it's small. If you blink, you'll miss it. I'm sure most of you are aware of who the Gideons are, and I want to say that it's because of churches like you that we're able to do what we do. We couldn't do the delivering the Bibles the way we do if y'all did not support us. So first of all, before I say anything else, I want to say thank you for supporting us. If anyone here doesn't know who the Gideons are, let me give you a little background on who the Gideons are. Like I said, we're an extension of the church. To be a Gideon, you have to be a member of a Bible believing church. Our goal is to fulfill the Great Commission. We want to go and spread God's word all over the world. Right now we're putting Bibles in prisons, hotels, military hospitals, school, colleges and foreign lands. Right now we're doing about 1 million Bibles every six days. The key verse that we stand on as Gideons is Isaiah, 5511, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and shall prosper in the thing where unto I send it. And I believe that I've seen firsthand what God's word can do when it's sent, I've heard many testimonies from scriptures that we've sent out that were purchased by churches like yours, and they have changed lives. The Gideons, as of right now, are in 199 countries and territories, and we're printing Bibles in 109 different languages. The small testaments that you see, every dime that you give goes to those and the and the bigger scriptures. Also, not a penny of your money goes to anything else but the scriptures. As far as getting the scriptures to where they go, the Gideons, we cover that we take care of that ourselves. Last year, there were 70 million Bibles sent out, and that's great, but there were 90 million Bibles that were requested. So that says there's work to be done. And one of the greatest blessings I've received, I've been a Gideon for a couple of years now, and and I get to hear these testimonies, some first hand, and some through other people. But like I say, we spread God's word all over the country. So a lot of these testimonies I would like to share come from different areas of where these Bibles have been sent. The first one I want to share with you is as a woman named Natasha. Natasha was a school teacher who taught sixth grade in Ukraine. Natasha did not believe the Bible. As a matter of fact, she mocked the Bible and told her students that God was not real and it was a myth, and that anyone that believed it was foolish. Well, we had a group of Gideon men go to Ukraine, go to the sixth grade, hand out the Bibles. Well, not only did they hand out Bibles to the students, they gave every teacher there a Bible also. Well, Natasha received the Bible, and she took it home, and for reasons unknown, maybe she wanted to mock God to her students and make fun of it. But that's not what happened, as you know, as she started to read God's word, he convicted her, showed himself to her, and she repented of her sinful lifestyle, and she got saved from reading that Bible. But not only did she get saved, now, when she goes to her class, she tells her students about Jesus, she witnesses to class after class every year. And that really spoke to me, because you think about when you go to the schools, you give the Bibles to the students, and that's amazing. That's great that you give bibles to students, but I overlooked the teachers, and it shows how God's ways are higher than our ways, because when he reached that one teacher, how many students will be reached now, because that teacher tells about Jesus, another one that comes from a different part of the country is happy. Is spelled H, A, p, p, i, happy is from East Africa in the part of the country where he lives is very poor. They have very little. And one time when happy was in school, he was given a Bible, he took it home and he put it in his nightstand drawer. Well, happy had a very hard life, like I said, they had very little there. And to complicate happy life, his father and his mother divorced, so he would spend time with his mother, then he would go spend time with his father. And it really devastated him, with his family being broken. Well, when happy was about 12 or 13 years old, he had been with his father, and he wanted to go stay with his mother again. And when he arrived there, his mother said, You can't stay anymore. I don't want. You, I don't have time for you. You need to go back to where you're at. And you can imagine what that did to that young man so happy said that when he get this is happy personal testimony that when he got home, he got his little nightstand, and he had exposed beams in his house, and he threw a rope over it, and he went to stand on that little night standing, it tipped over, and when it tipped over, the Bible fell out, and he stood it back up, and he was going to try again. And he looked down, and the Bible had felt open, and he saw Psalms 2710, when your father and your mother forsake you, the Lord will take you up. And he knew right then that the Lord was speaking to him, so he did not end his life. And he continued to read God's word, and he accepted Jesus as his Savior, and he lives for the Lord. Now, not only does he live for the Lord, he is also a very devoted Gideon that goes and shares God's Word with other people, and we're very blessed to have happy and have his testimony, like I told you earlier, one of the another place that we give Bibles is in the military. And this testimony comes from a gentleman in the military. He is named as chaplain major Thompson. He was with the 100 and first Screaming Eagles air assault in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And this this testimony comes from back in the war in Iraq. He talks about the chaplain, major Thompson. He talks about one time when he was in a very rough area of Iraq, and they were attacked a lot, and the call came in for medevac to come and pick up a group of GIS, because they were under attack. Several men were hurt and injured, and the chaplain was on that helicopter going to go pick these guys up. And when they landed, they were under fire. It was very chaotic. Men were jumping in. They were, you know, putting wounded soldiers in. And you could hear the bullet trick of Shay and off the helicopter and the dust. And it was just, you can imagine the scene. And he said, as the helicopter took off, and they finally got high enough to where they were safe, he looked down and he saw a soldier that had died well, as a chaplain, it's his job to figure out who this soldier is and try to let the family know, and that's part of his job. So he's reaching around, and he's feeling on this soldier's jacket for some kind of identification, and he reaches in the inside pocket and he pulls out a camouflage New Testament. This soldier had been given this New Testament when he joined the military. In the back, it's part right here, where it says, I have made a decision to receive Jesus Christ as my savior. And that young man's name was right there. But not only was his name right there, there were several other soldiers all over the pages. What had happened was that young man had received that testament, read it, accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior, and he had shared the Bible with all the people that he was in the military with, and the the names that he had written in there were the ones that he had led to Christ from that testament. And I think about that if I was to go to a foreign country, and I was to be killed, and someone had to figure out who I was. What better way for someone to figure out that my name is Kyle agent, and I'm from Little Rock, Mississippi, Jesus Christ is my Savior. And while I was on this earth, this is the people that I told about Jesus Christ. All this was possible from this little Bible that was given to him. One testimony that really spoke to me is we have camp meetings. I wasn't at this camp meeting. I hadn't joined the Gideons yet when this one was given. But a lot of times at our camp meetings, we'll have someone come and give a Gideon give a testimony of how a bible they received from the Gideons changed their life. This woman wanted to come and share a testimony with us at our camp, and her name was Trish Chapman. The the testimony she shared wasn't her own. It was about her daughter. Her daughter's name was Amy. Amy at a very young age, 1314, years old, got involved in drugs, got in a bad lifestyle, and it really being involved in drugs really messed with her mind. Well, Amy ended up in a mental hospital, and her mother, Trish, had not heard from her in quite some time. She got a phone call one day from Amy, and she called her mother, and she said, I'd like for you to come see me. I feel a lot better. I'm doing better, and I would really like to see you. Well, that was very out of character, because most of the time her daughter, Amy, would tell her she didn't want to see her. That's why she hadn't been able to so she came to see her, and she knew Amy looked clear headed. She looked great, she looked different, and she couldn't figure out what's going on. And she said, Amy, what's going on? You look great. She said, Well, I found this book right here in this drawer, and I've started reading it, and I feel so much better. And she continued to study and read that Bible, and it changed her life, and she became a Christian, and she got to go home. All, and she was a new person. Then Trish, with tears in her eyes, let us know that about six months after Amy got home, she was killed in a head on collision, but she was so grateful that her daughter had received Jesus Christ and that and into her life was great and that she knew she would see her daughter again. The last one I want to share with you that I've received is a young lady named Darla Beckham. Darla Beckham, from what I understand, I've heard this second hand, but she doesn't live too far from where I live, Decatur, Mississippi, I think, is where she was from. Darla was a young lady who did well in her younger years. Went to college, and in college, she was given one of these Bibles because we, we go to a lot of colleges. She put that Bible up. Didn't think anything else about it. Well as her life continued, she also got involved in drugs and the and then she just proceeded in that lifestyle, and it got worse and it got worse and it got worse. And one day, Darla decided she wanted to end her life. She opened her nightstand. She had a pistol there, but right beside that pistol was this little Bible right here. She pulled the Bible out mockingly, and she said, God, if You're real, you better show me right now, because I'm done. And she opened the Bible, and it felt a second Corinthians, two, four, for out of much affliction and anguish of heart, I wrote unto you with many tears, not that you should be grieved, but that you might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you. She felt that the Lord was speaking to her in the Holy Spirit, pierced her heart right then, she got on her knees and repented, and Jesus Christ saved her life. And today, Darla is very successful, and she is very living for the Lord very well. And she has a great life. Now, because of that Gideon testament, there's several ways you can help the Gideons. The main way we would like for you as a church to help us, the most important way, is to don't forget to pray for us, because there's a lot of areas that we need prayer in. We need to always keep God at the forefront of our minds in this ministry, and remember, it's not our will. It's his will. We want to know that what we're doing and where we're going is where he's sending us. So we need your prayers. A lot of the men there in these foreign countries have heard testimonies where they are. They are. They're risking their lives giving these testaments out. I've heard personal testimonies recently of a gentleman that went somewhere and then and they tried to stone this man, and he he barely got away. So pray for the protection of the Gideons that go all over, giving out these Bibles, and pray that we would always be lining up with God's will for our lives. Another way you can do is you can give, and your church has been faithful to do that, and I appreciate that. Want you to continue to remember that we have Gideon cards. If you're not familiar with these cards? We we have some. I brought some with me. Uh, we'll leave some in the back of the church. You may already know what they are, but if you want to honor someone, there's several different areas, just like you would buy a cart go to a card section at a store for several different things, but what you do is you can give Bibles in honor of someone. And another thing I want you to know today is that we need men to join the Gideon ministry. If you feel the Lord calling you to join this ministry or a ministry, I ask that you pray about that and you don't push it aside. I'm going to share something I haven't shared this before in one of my Gideon testimonies, but I'm going to share my own about joining the Gideons. I'm going to take you back about 12 years ago, I was in a church about like this with my wife. We didn't have any children, and we went to church that morning, we had a Gideon speaker just like myself, who told of the logistics of the Gideons and gave the testimonies. And at the end of it that Gideon looked me directly in the eye. I was 26 years old, and he said, We need young men like you to join. And I nodded my head and and I thought to myself, that'll never happen, because what that Gideon did not know, and my wife didn't even know at the time, was the only reason I had gone to that church that morning was because I didn't want to fight with her. She had committed herself to the Lord. She was saved, and she was living for the Lord, and I was not. But if you ask me, I would tell you I was a Christian. I would tell you that I believed in Jesus. I would tell you all these things. Another thing that they didn't know was that at that point in my life, I had a horrible addiction to prescription pills that I kept to myself, 26 years old, and addicted to prescription pills, and I never thought this was something that my life would turn into. I always told myself, though that I would quit this one day in my own strength, that I could beat this. And as you know, I could not by the time I was 30 years old, I. A young daughter daily, and my life had plummeted. I couldn't provide for my family. I couldn't keep a job. My addiction had gotten so bad it wasn't a secret anymore. Couldn't even go to my own daughter's second birthday without drugs. And I thought my wife would have left me, but she didn't. She prayed for me. She didn't give up on me, and I got to the end of myself, and I cried out to the Lord, and I repented, and I told him, I want to live for you, and I don't want to do it my way anymore. And God changed me. God took that for me, and he changed my life, and He has blessed me since I was 30 years old. Got involved in church, and I go now because I want to, I look forward to it. I was blessed at that same church just a couple years later. They saw that I was serious about the Lord, and they let me and my wife teach the children. Later on, we we after COVID, church had slowed down, and we just felt the Lord was moving us around, and we went to a different church up the road. We left the church I had grown up in, and we love those people and Miss em, but we just felt the Lord was calling us to do something different. And but with my past, not Gideon material, you know? And I said, I got on my knees and I started praying, and the Lord hit me just as soon he said, Son, I have cleaned you up. I have made you a new creation. I'm not calling you to the Gideons for a vacation. I need you to go to work. So when I went back and saw that man, I said, Yes, my wife and I, we will join, and we were glad to join. That was a little over two years ago, and I'm going to tell you the same father that couldn't even go to his own daughter's birthday party without drugs. Now takes his daughter and we give bibles to people. We've had that privilege of going to a hospital and handing out Bibles in the rooms and seeing my youngest daughter give people Bibles. They might tell me they don't want one, but you let her hand them to em, they'll usually take em. So that's my little catch there. I let her come with me and she can get em out. I say that to say this, that if something in your life that you've done in your past, that you think you're not eligible to work for the Lord. And if you've surrendered your life to the Lord and you've repented of your sins, he's cleaned you up and he wants to use you, you're eligible. If you're thinking you're not, you are, and if you feel the Lord is calling you to join, I want you to come today, and I want you to pray about that and consider that, and don't leave today without talking to me about it, because we need you. We need you bad. But more importantly than that, if you were like I was for for years and years, and you sat on a church pew and you believed that Jesus was real, and you attended, but you had never repented. I was lost in going to hell for a long time, and if you'd asked me, I would have told you I was saved, but I can tell you when I repented and made Jesus Christ, my lord, that's when things changed. If you've never repented, I ask today that before you leave this place, you would repent and you would make the Lord Jesus Christ your Savior. You.