How many states did we end up in?Family photo!These photos were taken outside of Tempe Marketplace, a local outdoor mall where Daniel went to study and Taliah and I went to go find people to share the Gospel to! We had a great conversation with two girls named Teren and Gwen! They seemed like they understood bits and pieces of the Gospel, but not everything. They knew that Jesus died on the cross, and that they needed to repent from their sins to be saved, but it wasn't clear what they needed to be saved from, and why they needed saving. I explained to them that I deserve Hell for the crimes I have committed against the Lord, because I have lied and stolen (and done many more things) against God. Therefore, I needed Someone perfect to pay for my sins. Then the Gospel seemed to make sense to them. They were part of a local apostolic church. Pray that, this Christmas, they truly understand the Gospel and make sure they what they are believing about Christ is biblical and true! The end of the first semester!!Yay! My husband finished his first semester at Expositors' Seminary! If you haven't kept up with previous blogs, my husband and I are missionaries in training to Papua New Guinea. My amazing, Australian husband, Daniel, is doing seminary training through our church, and we hope to be in Papua New Guinea planting a church when he is finished. Our goal is to live like tomorrow may never come, because we have no promise that it will come, but to strive for the advancement of the kingdom of God with our futures, because tomorrow might come. I "designed" this seminary binder for my husband, because the quote helps him remember that, while it's important to study hard and well, you can't spend all your time working on something that might never come to fruition. Focusing on the future can be of benefit, but fire for sharing the Gospel shouldn't be quelled, even in times of difficult, time-consuming training. It reminds me of 2 Tim 4:2: "...preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction." Walking out of class for the year...So, now we have a little more time to share the Gospel and spend time as a family! I'm so proud of how hard Daniel has worked these last few months, and I'm so grateful for the few weeks we have together, our break from studies, so we can get back at it again soon! Our time together on break has been awesome so far, and I'm excited to mention all our travels... ...and a little trip we took locally. Wait...how is Taliah, though? Road trip planning!She's already driving! Just kidding...she is growing fast though! Taliah was having fun at a playscape in a local mall in this picture. I always love trying to connect with other moms when at such places! Our little girl loves being out in public! It's almost as if she was excited for our trip... But first - door to door!Before we left, I just wanted to mention how fun door to door evangelism has been! This one specific apartment complex has little paper clips that are perfect to put Gospel tracts in! We had the privilege of going a few weeks ago with one of our pastors, and we had an interesting encounter. After we knocked, and the door opened, we were face to face with three Mormon missionaries, complete with nametags, looking ready to go door to door themselves! Our pastor made a funny remark about how, normally, it would go the other way around, but we wanted to change it up and knock on their door instead! They talked for a few minutes, and our pastor explained some errors in their works righteousness beliefs, and their false doctrine of not believing Jesus is God. Speaking of Mormonism... Visiting the Mormon Temple - our Arizona TripWow. What a place... This is the Mesa Mormon Temple. It had been under renovation ever since we first moved to Phoenix, and, just recently, it became open to the public. No pictures were allowed inside the temple, but I included some pictures of the visitors center above and below. The first thing I want to mention, is that, even if the architects who built this thing tried to exactly follow the blueprints of the temple in Scripture, it is CLEARLY an insanely inaccurate depiction that looks nothing like anything you would see in Israel. It's extremely Western, and the Bible was not originally written in English. Also, I have NO clue what those people in the bottom middle picture above were doing, next to that Catholic looking statute that's supposed to look like Jesus, but it honestly just looked like they were staring at a wall... More weird stuff...Here's outside the temple, and in the visitors center. It's so clear that Mormons don't believe the true Gospel, just by the way things are worded. They try to have innocent-looking stuff for the kids, but really, it's just a decoy. While Taliah enjoyed playing with some blocks, she was also able to catch some people's attention and give them tracts. Even though, when we got there, we weren't sure how we were going to do much evangelism without getting kicked out, we were able to do a little bit because of her! No one says no to a Gospel tract from Taliah! :) Here's a few more examples of how we tried to infiltrate the place... Sticky Notes!This was were you're supposed to write how you can "improve relationships" with your families in multiple categories. I was trying to think of something helpful to say, and I ended up with writing, "By reading the Scriptures alone. Please consider LivingWaters.com. God bless!" (My sticky note can be seen...if you have good eyesight...on the far right picture. It's blue.) The reason I wrote that is because Mormons follow the Book of Mormon, which contradicts the Bible, along with the Bible. If they were to read the Scriptures alone, they would realize, especially through the book of John, along with Eph. 2, Titus 2, and Hebrews that Jesus is God, He is the only God, and no one can be saved by any human works. I also wanted to include a website, because it's doubtful that many would read the Bible for themselves just because a sticky note told them to do so. I figured a website might get their attention, and, I wanted to be genuinely polite, so I included God bless. The only way God will bless them eternally is if they understand the true Gospel. Watch out for Mormonism today, because it looks shockingly similar to the modern, evangelical, megachurch movement. What else did we do...? Book of Mormon Tract Placement!The LDS (Mormons usually prefer this term) say that the Book of Mormon is "another testament of Jesus Christ", despite verses like Galatians 1:8-9: "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, even now I say again: if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!" So, because they have added to Scripture, we decided to add some Scripture back into their book! In this Book of Mormon, I placed a curved illusion Gospel tract. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was into occultism, and the occult practices of his beliefs bled into present day Mormonism, so I thought an illusion would be fitting. It's so important to remember that there are many false christs out there, and the people following those religions need to be treated with love and respect. A way to show that care for them is to give them the Gospel. So that's where our trip comes into play!We left Phoenix, and went out to other states to go share the Gospel in different ways, and to connect with family and friends we haven't seen in a long time! Here's Taliah sliding down on a little playground in the back of our church. One last slide before we go! We were ready to head out, and it was so awesome! I will give just a few highlights. Tracts and Travels!Find the God Puzzles! We received over a thousand God Puzzle booklets from Wretched, and it has been so fun putting them places! This is one of the first rest stops we passed on our trip. Going through northern Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan made for plenty of exciting stops! Including the next place… Tree of life?It’s so important to be aware of new age stuff around us, and to recognize that it’s not of God. Many places use Christian sounding terms, but they do not reflect Scriptural principles. This “celestial tree of life” is a picture of universalism, not a picture of anything godly. Pray for the people who have made these! Back to travel… Taliah driving?(Don’t worry, she didn’t really drive!) But she did do amazing on this trip!! We were so thankful for how content she was with all the driving. :) She seemed to enjoy much of the trip, and she loved seeing new things along the way! Another cool stop is below! A Colorado stop!!This stop had an odd green light that we didn’t notice until we took the pictures, but it was a fun stop! I love rest areas where they have brochures you can put things in! Can you find the God Puzzles? You can see one in the picture on the left, and two (one the same as the first picture) on the right one. Next stop Kansas! A Kansas stop!!Kansas was awesome! We were able to stay with an extremely amazing, hospitable couple, and we had dinner with another sweet, super awesome couple! They were both from the same church in Kansas as my friend Renee goes to! That made it so fun to connect! Then we made a fun stop I don’t think we’ll ever forget! A Missouri stop - the MTC!This is the missionary training center from Ethnos360 Bible Institute! I went to Ethnos360 for college, so it was SO fun to meet up with old roommates who are attending MTC, along with some newer friends we made! Since Daniel and I first met at Ethnos360 (the Bible school in Michigan), this part of the trip was really refreshing and exciting! We both found it so awesome to be around people that are on the same page with the importance and urgency of missionary work to unreached people groups! My former roommate Lydia cooked for all of us, inviting us to her apartment, and we had such an encouraging time! Her roommate is amazing too - we ended up connecting over Living Waters evangelism, and it was so encouraging!! So thankful for the opportunity! More fun at MTC!This (the largest picture) is Heb. 12:2 in Pidgin, the trade language of Papua New Guinea, the country we plan to share the Gospel in. Here’s the text: Heb. 12:2: “…looking only at Jesus, the originator and perfecter of the faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” I can’t stress enough how important it is to help missions organizations get the Gospel into all the languages of the world. So thankful for Ethnos. According to Wycliffe, only around 700 languages have a complete Bible. Almost 2,000 languages don’t have ANY Scripture in their language AT ALL. Over DOUBLE the world’s languages don’t have any of the Bible in their language. Yet English-speaking Westerners have around 100 complete English translations. How is that okay? Do you understand how terrible that is for the rest of the world? We need churches planted! The Gospel needs to go to the ends of the earth! People in other countries need the Word of God! Please pray for this endeavor. I beg you to not sit passively either - something needs to be done about this - now. A Chicago stop - evangelism!I love how this verse on the wall at Moody relates to the last post! It was so fun to visit Chicago! Though we only stayed for less than an hour, the opportunity to go out into the city streets to share the Gospel was incredible! I’m so thankful for those at Moody who are training so they can do the Great Commission seriously! :) More pictures below! Moody church!Here’s some family pictures and some pictures of Daniel and Taliah at Moody church and Moody Bible Institute. Though we don’t agree with everything Moody does, I’m so thankful for their presence in the midst of the craziness of Chicago! It’s fun to make connections there and to hear about different people’s experiences with the institute. They have such an awesome building! Final stop up next! A Michigan stop!Here are some pictures of Taliah (find the Daniel in the background…haha) playing in a community center playscape! We had some awesome times in Michigan with old friends and family! Taliah grew so much, and we got to connect with so many people! Many places were open that were closed last time we were in Michigan, so it was fun to see things we missed last time. And Daniel got a head start on studies! Studies and exploration!Here is Daniel studying, getting ready for next semester, along with some pictures in a local church that I thought looked awesome! As I write this, we are still making memories in Michigan, so please pray for safe travels back despite the crazy weather! Hope you are having a merry Christmas!! Just as a quick reminder, at this time any donations to us through Finisterre Vision go to help us with missionary training, in particular seminary training. Let’s focus on the Gospel together! Finisterre Vision link: www.finisterrevision.org/donate/ Merry Christmas!!
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AuthorsDaniel and Sarah Bruce desire to be missionaries to the unreached peoples of the world. Daniel is from Australia and Sarah is from Detroit, MI. They reside in Phoenix, AZ, where they are members at Shepherd's House Bible Church in Chandler, AZ. Archives
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