Sermons

What was it like during Reach Week? What language are we going to speak in Heaven? What was the missionary retreat like? Why don’t we share more details about our missionaries?

In this week's episode of the Calvary Life Podcast, Pastors Eric and Matt will go over all those questions and more. Don't forget to email your questions to

TIMESTAMPS:

Reach Global Sunday Discussion (10:20), What language do we speak in Heaven? (18:17), Missionary Retreat (26:26), Why do we share more details about our missionaries? (37:39)

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Podcast Transcription 

Introduction
From Calvary Church of Santa Ana, this is the Calvary Life Podcast, the show where we share stories, laugh together, and have discussions about faith, life, and God with people from Calvary Church. Here are your hosts, Eric and Matt.

Eric
Welcome to the Calvary Life Podcast. This is Eric Wakeling here with Matt Doan, and we are post-Reach week. So we probably got a punchy Matt Doan today. [laughing]

Matt
I do. Yeah. It felt such a good week. I just loved every part of it, but I also am feeling a little tired here the day after.

Eric
Yeah. I was calling Reach week missions VBS. Because it's just like, there's not a lot of things where you have an activity almost every day. We actually really try to not do that at Calvary. But it's ... Yeah. But it's important that when we have all the missionaries in town, we want this big focus. And so it's good. It's a good thing. It's not bad, but it's just a lot.

Matt
It is, man.

Eric
Especially for you as the primary leader in that area.

Matt
Yeah. Our team loves every part of it, but yeah, it's just day after day, like you're saying. And that's because we only have, a lot of our missionaries are in town for four to eight days. So it's like, I want to take advantage of that. And there's different types of groups too, that we want to connect our missionaries to, from kids to seniors. So all that involves a lot.

Eric
Yeah, exactly. And that's probably more felt by you and your team, but the church is not coming to the family fun night, and the ... you know, like the Saturday morning thing or whatever. Yeah. Anyway.

Matt
But I am a little punchy. So ask me anything.

Eric
Oh yes. All right. So you were telling me just before we recorded.

Matt
Oh no, this is what we're getting into. [laughing]

Eric
Yeah, let's just go right into it. Before we recorded, he was telling me that he was getting some feedback from someone close to him in his life, that as he chews gum, that he makes like a [slurping sound for demostration] sound or something like that.

Matt
Yeah. So ...

Eric
And then I just, well, hold on, let me, let me fill, fill in the blanks. Cause then I just heard you swallow with like, now we had microphones and our headphones on, but you swallowed some coffee and it was kind of like almost deafening in my ears. [laughing]

Matt
Side side note. I got this Yeti a couple of months ago. It's the best travel mug.

Eric
That's a nice one.

Matt
I mean, you literally can pour coffee into this thing, not touch it for like eight hours and it's cold, but six hours it's hot.

Eric
That was a weird way to say that.

Matt
Well, I said eight hours. That's a little extreme. I was realizing I was exaggerating halfway through that sentence, but five, six hours keeps your coffee hot. It's amazing.

Eric
Yeah. What's that? Is that branded with something?

Matt
Yeah.

Eric
Is that a giveaway from somebody?

Matt
Oakland A's.

Eric
Oh yeah, that's Oakland A's one.

Matt
Thank you for that shout out.

Eric
I have a Greater Europe Mission one, but it has, the only thing I don't like about it is it has a handle on it, which I don't like the handle. I don't need that.

Matt
Well, handle makes it difficult when you put it in like your cup holder of your car.

Eric
Yeah, exactly. But it does keep it nice.

Matt
Yeah. So anyways, I was just, I was sipping some coffee out of my nice Yeti and you go, "That's so loud. It's so loud." That's my voice for you. "You just quiet it down."

Eric
I like that. Should we try and do the podcast in each other's voices?

Matt
[mimic] "Hey Hey"

Eric
I don't even know how to do your voice.

Matt
But also when ... You said I do this, I, or I hit the arms of the chair. And that's like, I can't hear it.

Eric
You can't hear it.

Matt
I can't wait. I can sort of hear it, but it doesn't bug me.

Eric
Okay. Wait, what if I do it?

Matt
Oh, that's terrible.

Eric
Yeah. You can hear that a lot. Right. So it's just yourself. So you can't hear yourself doing something annoying.

Matt
I think that's my problem. [laughing]
Because so as you're alluding to my sweet wife, who's listening to this, because she's saying she's listening every week now on her commute.

Eric
I tried to keep her out of it, but you brought her. That's your, that's your decision to bring her in.

Matt
But she said, and this is agreed upon by my kids that when I chew gum, I often will go [chewing slurping sounds]
and I'll sorry, I had to do that. I had to demonstrate that.

Eric
You get slobbery when you chew gum?

Matt
I don't know. I, I, I guess, but I have no idea I'm doing that. And so she'll even say like, you're doing it again. I'm like, ahhhh!

Eric
Oh no. Yeah. See, you gotta, you have to have people in your life that are willing to say the hard things though. Like that. Because, so I've told my kids, "Hey, tell me if I have, if I like have hair growing out of my ears or nose and I'm not taking care of that." You know, cause I don't want to be the person that just doesn't realize that they got a forest just growing out of their nose holes. Right.

Matt
That's coming for both of us, brother. Okay. Question on this. I was having coffee with a Calvary person last week and they spilled a little coffee on their long beard. So I know that eliminates about half of ...
three fourths of Calvary, but if you have a long beard this could be you. And there was coffee. There's like a drip on their beard, but I didn't say anything. We just kept talking. Now do you think you owe it as a friend to say, "Hey, you got something on you." Or is it just like no big deal?

00:05:02
Eric
I think most of the time you should say something. There's a, there's a friend of mine that eats salads and like in the process of eating the salad ... I struggled because while we're eating the salad, there's just constantly salad in their teeth. But like, I feel like I shouldn't have to say anything until the end of the meal.

Matt
Okay. Cause it's a process.

Eric
Yeah. I feel like they're working on it. And so it's like, if we're driving away and I don't say something, then it's on me. But I just got to, it's, I got to suffer through it. [laughing]

Matt
You know, it might even depend on the level of relationship, right? Like that's my kids or my wife or my brother. It's like, "Oh, Hey ..." But I don't know if it's someone that you don't know as well. I don't know.

Eric
Yeah, absolutely. My kids are brutal with me, honestly. Yeah. They're just completely brutal. So if I, if something looks bad or whatever, they're like, "Dad, you look fat!" You know, and I'm just like ahhh. So, you know, but I feel, again, I feel like that's actually kind of like the greatest form of love at some level.

Matt
Sure. Intimacy, no filter.

Eric
So Marie is trying to help you. Yeah. See, she doesn't want you doing that. You know, there's like always that kid in the class that would make a weird sound like that when you're little. And that kid just is got serious self-esteem issues today. And you know, like we're just trying to help people.

Matt
That was me! [laughing]

Matt
So listeners tuning in for reach week stuff and you're getting bodily sounds.

Eric
Yeah, no, but yeah, that's important.

Matt
We got some stats finally on the pod.

Eric
No, no, no, no, no, no. Why do you want to talk about that?

Matt
We have more than one listener.

Eric
Yeah, we do have more than one listener.

Matt
So thank you everybody!

Eric
Yeah, we do. We have at least seven. No, just kidding. No, it does seem like there's around, we'll be real, but it does seem like there's around 150 people that listen to this.

Matt
Thank you. Amazing!

Eric
Yeah. We are grateful to you for listening to this.

Matt
Now, does it do, does it keep track of how long they listen?

Eric
At least the thing I was looking at does not. I think this is like without even me with like the membership looking at those numbers. So I think you can look up that more.

Matt
Okay.

Eric
But they don't give me access to that kind of stuff.

Matt
Yeah. And they probably shouldn't.

Eric
No, they probably shouldn't. You're right. But we can look. And it doesn't tell you ... What I'm more curious about is like how many people listen, how often those people listen. So is it really that there's a couple hundred people or a few hundred people and they only listen to like two times a month or something like that? So anyway, kind of like church attendance.

Matt
I don't even know if it's like, "Oh, whoops, hit the wrong, hit the wrong podcast!" And then get out. Like it's next to their favorite podcast. They just accidentally hit it with their thumb.

Eric
Right. Or if they subscribe to it and it just goes on to their like Spotify or Apple Music or something and they don't actually listen to it. When does it appear on my thing? These are probably questions that ... There are people that actually know the answers. And hey, we'd love if you would email us at [laughing]
Which again, we have zero emails.

Matt
Well, I heard one time and I don't know how accurate this is to this day, but like the emails we send out as a church, there's like a 33% open rate. So even if people subscribe to it, they don't necessarily open it.

Eric
Right. Correct. Correct. And that's supposed to be actually pretty good. If you get half the people to open your emails from like a business or organization type email, that's, I mean that's like legendary. Isn't that crazy?

Matt
Yeah. Do you have, do you have consistent emails you get that you don't have the heart to unsubscribe to but you also don't read?

Eric
Oh yeah. Even just this morning I went on my phone and just like deleted without opening 150 emails from my, not from my work account, but from my personal one. But that has all the like, you know, when you

Matt
"10% off this thing."

Eric
Yeah. All the online shopping stuff or whatever.

Matt
So I'm guessing for you it's like biker shorts. [laugh]

Eric
There is that, there is that kind of stuff. Yeah. There is a lot of triathlon related content there. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, which you, this is your fault.

Matt
I brought it up.

Eric
You opened it up for the line of questioning.

Matt
You're in the home stretch here. But this rain's got to be tough to train in.

Eric
The rain has been making it difficult. About 12 days out as of recording for a half Ironman in Oceanside, California on April Fool's Day, but it's real. And so yeah, yeah, but I've been, been going for it as much as I can. Yeah. So anyway.

Matt
That's awesome. I just met a new couple in our church. They've been coming just for a few weeks here and they're ultra marathoners.

Eric
Whoa. Cool.

Matt
So she's doing a 50 miler in Santa Barbara in a couple of weeks, and then he's going to try for the hundred miler.

Eric
Nice!

Matt
In one day.

Eric
Wait, you got to introduce me to these people and we got to introduce them to Liz Clark, because she is the ...

Matt
I've already mentioned it.

Eric
Oh, nice.

Matt
A hundred miles. I think I get tired driving a hundred miles.

00:10:02
Eric
I do get tired driving a hundred miles. I know.

Matt
Running that.

Eric
I know. It's yeah, it's crazy. Cause I just, I think about biking that far and it's kind of takes, takes a long time. It takes a, does take up actually a very long time. Like a whole day almost. So anyway.
All right. Let's, should we get back into Reach week stuff? Let's let's start with the first Sunday and thinking about Brian Smith's message, which was pretty powerful. Yeah. What were your initial thoughts?

Matt
Yeah. The idea of "blessed to be a blessing". I mean, Brian just told a little bit of his story of being in a basically Eastern Europe country area and really feeling like God had called them there, had left a job in business that was pretty, I don't, he didn't get a ton into it, but it was pretty lucrative. He was doing well down San Diego area felt called to reach an unreached people group. They get trained for this language. They have some effectiveness building relationships, and then it all kind of gets pulled out from underneath them right before kind of even just war broke out in that area, like January of that year. And then they had to come home.

Eric
Yeah. Yeah. Being 10 year deportation. That's brutal. But what I love is the passion never stopped and you could see the passion actually when he was talking about and he was getting teary when talking about people that he had been reaching out to, but hasn't been able to continue that. Yeah.

Matt
Yeah. Yeah. So that was just powerful to hear his heart, his focused vision on reaching those who have never heard, and then kind of turned the tables on us, all of us as a church. And he said, "Okay, what's your role? What are you going to do?" Loved it. It was inspiring to me. I love that he's on our team and even kind of help people understand. There's been a little bit of confusion I've heard even last week of like, wait, who's doing what? So Brian's full time on our team as of January 1st. So he gets this 10 year, we can't get back into that country. So we started this conversation right between us and him of like, hey, what would it look like to join staff? And so he's jumped on board. And so he'll be doing a lot of our global stuff right alongside me, and then I'm kind of more on the local side now. He'll be doing more of the global side. We'll both kind of be collaborating together. Just point people on that for our team. But yeah, he is what a joy to have him on the staff, isn't it?

Eric
Yeah, it's pretty great. Pretty great. And if you didn't get a chance to hear that, that was March 12th. So if you go to like calvarylife.org and go to sermons, you can find that there and our YouTube channel for Calvary Church, because that's a good way to be able to access that kind of stuff is even there. And just really encourage you to listen or watch that because I think it will just even help you think about like, I don't know, I just think it gets you in the right headspace and heart space at some level of just, you know, how can I respond to all of this? And I do have a role. And I think that you ... that his passion, just like, I think it is inspiring. Yeah, it came through for sure.

Matt
And we had talked about this a few weeks ago on the pod, but like the idea of that Psalm 67, like kind of jumped out of nowhere for me, at least with this idea of like, whoa, I didn't even see this Psalm before in relations to missions and even to the, you know, Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6. So it's all tied together right there. So it was a great passage for him to go over and for kind of the theme of our week.

Eric
Yeah, so good. So good. It was a really powerful Sunday morning with this kicking off like the "for everybody". I know there's other events, but this is kind of like the where you get like the tons of people that are part of it.

Matt
Right. And even to go back a little bit. So Friday night, we did our Hispanic ministry dinner. That's kind of a traditional thing we do where our Spanish speaking ministry gets together, has a meal. We hear from a missionary. This year is a little unique. Usually it's one of our Spanish speaking missionaries. This year it was Steve Meeker, who's learning Spanish, doesn't quite feel comfortable to preach in it yet. He'll get there though. I think he will. But he shared along with his wife, Jenny. They had a translator named Juan, and it was so powerful. He was sharing about just the good news of Jesus and why it compels us to go to hard places. And Juan, his translator, like had to stop and just started tearing up as he's hearing this, the good news of what Jesus has done. It's like he had heard it for the first time all over again. Right.

Eric
Was that wait ... because was it hitting you? Like was it especially moving what Steve was saying? Was it just hitting like ... I'm trying to understand the moment.

Matt
No, no. Kind of the whole room. Yeah, translation's difficult because you're ...

Eric
We talked about this like just a couple of episodes ago.

Matt
Especially if you're listening, if you know both languages. That's not me, but I think for the people in the room. And in that moment of such a powerful moment, the whole room, I think, was feeling that emotion. So that was just like, whoa, God's up to something. And then the next day, we didn't really get to talk about this publicly, but the next day our Spanish ministry had a evangelism training and they had like 50 people come and they went out into the like the laundromats and parks of Santa Ana and just started sharing about the Lord with people. And that's part of like a larger effort in Santa Ana. There's a bunch of churches getting together to start these kind of evangelism Saturdays. So it's kind of old school, just kind of confrontational, meaning you just walk up to somebody and say, "Hey, can I talk to you about God or spiritual things?" So confrontational, not that you're trying to get an argument, but that you're just kind of coming cold into the conversation meeting. But there's a bunch of churches that are kind of getting on board to try this. So be kind of interesting just see where it goes.

00:15:38
Eric
Is that mostly amongst Spanish speakers?

Matt
Yeah, mostly Spanish speaking churches. But yeah. So, yeah, so that was Friday night. And then Saturday we had our kickoff dinner and Jacqueline was awesome. She's from CRU, lived here for a long time, but then CRU actually moved all of their ministry operations to Florida. So she moved there. And just a powerful testimony of her husband, Warren, who passed away. They were both at that point, I think their kids weren't even teenagers yet. So they were just a young family. Her husband passes away. And at that point she had every right, like peace out. I serve the Lord well. They've been in several countries. I think I'm just going to go raise my kids and start a new life. But she's like, no, we're called to this. So she stayed in it with Jesus Film and has gotten to play a really cool role in their organization ministry. And then we just got to celebrate 2000 languages have been translated into that film, which is kind of crazy because have you seen the film?

Eric
Yeah, it's been a while, but I've seen it.

Matt
It's dated. It's from the seventies. Not ... I mean, I think it was like $6 million to make, but it wasn't like ton of production value, at least from what we're used to. It's like God just has his hand on this film.

Eric
I know. Cause I remember I asked somebody involved with like involved with Jesus Film. I was like, so I mean, you've got to have plans to update it, right? You've got to, you've got to. And they were kind of just like, "No, no, it's, it's working." And it's not really for an English context as much anymore. It's about, it's like, it's a, it's essentially like a Bible translation project more than it is like a media project or something. And that's what's so cool about the 2000 languages thing. Cause it's, it's a visual, cause it's, it's the legit ... cause people don't understand that it's the words of Luke. And so it's using exactly the gospel of Luke.

Matt
It's not like The Chosen that's kind of like fills in the gaps. This is just literally scripture.

Eric
Yeah. So just plain scripture with visual attached to it, which is cool. Cause it's just like, then what you're doing is just taking and basically showing people the Bible instead of just trying to get them to read it. Cause there's especially for like lower literacy rates in different cultures and societies.

Matt
This was kind of hitting me of like, they're like, sometimes these people groups have never seen a movie subtitled in their language or dubbed in their language in their entire life. Cause it's such a minority language. It's not something that, you know, you would take Star Wars or Titanic and like, okay, it's worth doing in this small language for a hundred thousand people. But they've gotten this experience of that. It's so cool. Somebody asked John Waters, one of our missionaries yesterday at an event I was at, they said, "Okay, John, you're the translation expert. And I've had a question I've always wanted to ask you." And he goes, "What language will they speak in heaven?"

Eric
That's good. I know. Huh?

Matt
What do you think?

Eric
I just did do it. I just did your gum thing.

Matt
Oh no, it's spreading.

Eric
Man, I know that's such an interesting question. Cause I was like, is it Hebrew?

Matt
No, it's obviously English. [laughing]

Eric
But like old English, King James version.

Matt
"Come thou fount of blessing."

Eric
I know. Yeah. My brain goes to like Hebrew or could it be Greek, but like, it feels like God's chosen people spoke Hebrew, but we're, what did, and what did Adam and Eve speak? That's the other crazy question because that's pre ...

Matt
Babel.

Eric
Yeah. Pre Babel pre yeah. What was the pre Babel language? Oh, that's mindblowing.

Matt
Maybe that's it.

Eric
Yeah. Yeah. I bet that's it.

Matt
I mean, John had a really, John Waters had a really good response to this. He just said, you know, I wonder, you know, part of sins infiltrated everything. So obviously that's how the languages people got separated, but maybe with the removal of sin in eternity with the Lord, the languages he said are maybe a lot more closer than we think. But maybe just our own, you know, broken world systems, minds, we just can't see how commonality ... I don't know. It was kind of an interesting answer.

Eric
It is interesting to think about how languages are essentially like a curse type thing. The fact of different languages. Kind of like pain of childbirth is like a, is a result of the curse. But then a little while later, the Babel sort of curse, I guess you could say, right. Was like different languages. That's an interesting thing too. That is that not good? Is that essentially, because if God created everything and it was good, then was it not good? But then it also like blows your mind because then you have like, were there other cultures like happening during the time of Adam and Eve, which is all like kind of can blow your brain up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:20:33
Matt
John's not John Waters, but John the apostle has this vision in Revelation where he says there's tribes, tongues, I think he says languages. So there was some sense as he gets a vision of heaven of different wording, languages, or something he's hearing. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. And not, I don't know if that means that that was a universal, like he just observed, oh, those are different types of looking people or I don't know. I mean ...

Eric
People that would have spoke different languages, but now they speak the same and they're singing holy, holy, holy or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's cool. That's an interesting thought. I like that.

Matt
I had a friend she goes here to Calvary and she says, "I don't know what it is, but just in my ministry, God gives me just supernatural ability to understand languages that I'm not even really that good at when it's like needed." Like she's a counselor and she like comes alongside people in trauma and she's like, "I can just understand like Vietnamese or I can, or I can like get it in those moments." I know it was crazy.

Eric
Oh my goodness.

Matt
I wish I had that.

Eric
Yeah, really? Yeah. You need that for your job. [laughing]

Matt
I feel like I have the opposite gifting. Languages are said and I was like, oh ...

Eric
That's so funny. I know that's funny how though like once you get to too many languages, like you're in your role, you oversee or support people from like many, many different language groups. But like, it's kind of like, I remember Bea was teaching, um, a couple of years at a public middle school and she taught a class that was for like non-English speakers. But you can't get, you start to think like Spanish or whatever. And, but her class had 15 or something like that different languages spoken by kids in that class. And so it was a very strict rule that you are not allowed to speak Spanish because maybe there were, you know, 15 that spoke Spanish and then 15 that spoke some other language. And that was just like super unfair then to those kids. So you had to just, you know, yeah. So it's like you could learn Spanish, which would probably be the best language to learn here in SoCal, but you know, it's not, that's not cool sometimes too, you know, or best.

Matt
Yeah. The world's come to us in so many ways here in SoCal, but yeah. So anyway, that was just a thought that was asked to John Waters. I though that was interesting. And then, yeah, going back to Sunday, we had Brian, Sharon, and then we had 18 life groups that hosted missionaries, which was cool. It's really cool. I don't know if you guys even know this, but there's just a ton of life groups on Sunday mornings. Encourage you if you're not in something at 11, jump in. Like, you know, sometimes I get it like Sundays are a busy day. Weekends are busy and maybe you come to church at 9 and the English speaking, or you go to the Spanish speaking church at 11, but you're like, Oh, I'm tired. I don't know if I can do another hour thing, but I don't know. I love it. I've been a discipline of ours and you're like, well, you're the pastor. Of course you have to do that. But no, it's just, it's, it's enjoyable to be with a group of people in a smaller setting. So we had 18 different missionaries sharing. That was amazing.

Eric
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. That's a great way to be able to hear just a little bit more of, I don't know, just from each from, from different ones, like a little bit deeper of their story. Cause that's my favorite part of Reach week is just being able to hear people's stories and how it's going. And it's like, so cool. Cause some of these people are in just wild contexts or they've done some really, really interesting things or they're currently doing something really interesting, even if they're in a place that feels more normal or something, you know, not exotic or something.

Matt
Like in our group Don Nellis shared about, he lived, grew up at almost 6,000 feet in the mountains of Mexico, but the little tienda store that his parents would send him up to, to get stuff was another 2000 feet up.

Eric
Oh my goodness. That's crazy!

Matt
So he would climb. And this might be an embellished, maybe it was only 500 feet I don't know, but he would climb up there, grab all the groceries, put them on his back and then come back down the mountain. Like that was how he lived as a kid. Like just crazy.

Eric
I know, that really is wild.

Matt
Kind of puts in perspective when you're like, Oh, I got to go to Ralph's right now. Does Ralph still exist? Vons, whatever.

Eric
Yeah. Normal groceries. We have, it's crazy. Like when you think about it, cause like where I live in Tustin, I feel like I can just drive a quarter of a mile and be in six different grocery stores. It's just, it's insane. Yeah. It's just, yeah, we have so much and then we're like, "Oh, it's why did that one open? I wish a different one opened." Or something, you know, like good grief. What's wrong with us?

00:25:10
Matt
Yeah. So many places in the world. It's just the all day effort to get water or to get food supplies.

Eric
Yeah, that's true. That's true. And there was the Corey Ten Boom musical and we don't have to cover like every single thing of the entire week, but it was really good.

Matt
I was proud of those guys though, cause I don't think we've done a live like play type thing here at Calvary since pre COVID. Is that possible?

Eric
Yeah, I would think you're right.

Matt
I mean, I may need a fact check on that.

Eric
Outside of school stuff.

Matt
Yeah. School, the school stuff. And we've done like a couple, we've done 'Hymn sings' and stuff. But yeah, it was fun just to see people of Calvary using their giftings. Hearing her story a little bit. And she, Corey Ten Boom's - like World War II legend - she's buried right down the street at Fairhaven.

Eric
I know! So weird and interesting. Not like weird, but interesting weird.

Matt
Two plots away from the Samsvik family. Which is, you know, part of the history of Calvary, Michael Samsvik. Sixth pastor, fifth pastor of Calvary, fourth pastor. What are you? Are you seven?

Eric
I don't know. I don't know the numbers. I think it might be seven.

Matt
I think you're the seventh. Oh.

Eric
What?

Matt
It's a number of perfection.

Eric
Oh, good grief. You stop. We all know that's not true. Yeah just take a poll. [laughing]
But yeah. So then my, like my favorite part, which like, I guess we can give you guys a little inside baseball, but my favorite part of Reach week is this retreat we go on with the missionaries. And we're able to go to this little place in Malibu Canyon this year, which is a cool little camp, like simple, but great. It was dumping rain almost the entire time. So we spent a lot of time inside one room, but even then it like didn't matter. Like it was great. Just so awesome to hang out with. I don't know. There's probably like 30 missionaries or something. I don't know. Something like that there. And then our pastoral staff was there as well. And so just again, hearing like how they're really doing and just getting into chats with people and yeah, really cool.

Matt
Yeah. I loved it. It's so we found this little Salvation Army camp a few years ago. We'd gotten snowed out of the mountains on, we try to do this every year. And so it was Rebecca Pasmino, one of our partners in Ecuador, she was with us and she, she got on a plane to go back to Ecuador and someone on her plane, somehow they struck a conversation and they're like, "Oh, you should try this camp in the Malibu Canyon." And so she emailed that back to us. We'd never heard of it. Went up there and the place is awesome. It's where they filmed MASH.

Eric
Oh yeah. That's right. I love that show actually.

Matt
So when you hear Malibu you think like, "Whoa, super fancy or something." But it's not, it's, it's rustic, but it's, it's a really neat location in those Hills.

Eric
Yeah. It's like three miles probably from the beach or something like that. Just up into the Canyon. So yeah, that's really neat.

Matt
So yeah. Part of the hope and point of that time is just for our pastoral staff to care for our missionaries and vice versa too. You know, the missionaries at Calvary as a corporate whole are probably on the older side right now, which is something we got to keep, keep even just paying the vision forward, just having new generations come up in missions.

Eric
But it also tends to be that the younger ones are not coming to the retreat as often because a lot of the retired folks come to the retreat. And so anyway ... That's part of it too.

Matt
Yeah, that's a good point. But our staff is kind of a younger staff, I'd say at least as we get older, I call them younger. And so it was really just cool dynamic of our older missionaries caring for pouring into our younger staff too. So I love that part of it. And then we got to hear from Lanny Aronson, legend missions, just director of African Inland Mission for many, many years. He and his wife, Carla, just gave a great talk on Monday night. And then you shared kind of state of the church on Tuesday, which was super helpful, encouraging for everybody. And then Lloyd Peckham led us in communion on Wednesday. So just inside baseball, right. But it's just like, it's just really significant that time.

Eric
One thing I love that Lanny and Carla were sharing is, you know, they had been in some significant roles, like leadership type roles and also did some missionary work themselves, right? Like, like anyway, but you know, like in Africa and all that, and then you're leading and you're kind of going from place to place and, and in leadership, but then they've been retired for a while now and it has, it has not stopped their ministry at all. They are still going hard for ministry, like reaching evangelism, caring for people, had kind of like a sort of semi homeless person, like living in their basement for a while and like just taking risks. Like, cause that's the thing, like missionaries are people too, that like often are willing to take risks for ministry. Like you might just be like, people probably think like, what? You had somebody just come and live in your home. And they even said they were kind of freaked out by that and it couldn't last forever. It was just for a season, but they were willing to take some, some risks. And so even in that like retirement mode of life, and I just think that's so like inspiring to me. And I hope that is even to you as you're listening, that like your impact has nothing to do with your age or your job, what stage of life you're in. You can make impact at any of those stages.

00:30:19
Matt
Totally. Yeah. Whether, like you said, if Lanny overseeing what 700, 800 missionaries to now just caring for the one, caring for the person in front of him. He told us something funny too. We were just asking like, "Hey, what are some of your hobbies? You guys, how do you kind of even rest and ministry?" And he goes, "I built a tree fort." [laughing]
So Lanny in his seventies built a tree fort in his backyard. I just think that's awesome.

Eric
I think it's super awesome too. And he just was like, not for his grandkids or whatever. It was just like for himself. Just to have fun.

Matt
That's a new goal right there. Didn't you always want a tree fort when you were growing up?

Eric
I know, I know. Totally did. Yes, totally did. I was trying, I don't think I actually ever had one, but I had a couple of friends that had like a little tree house or whatever, you know? So it was fun.

Matt
We had one. And then my neighbor, Michael Demetrius fell out of it, broke his arm and my dad tore it down.

Eric
They didn't try to like sue you or something. They weren't like that.

Matt
I don't know.

Eric
Oh, you're not sure.

Matt
That's a different story.

Eric
That's what's brutal about this day and age is like all that kind of stuff ends up resulting in that, you know, which is lame, but I know we would do crazy stuff.

Matt
So yeah, we had a nice time with there and then we moved over to Wednesday. I don't know how much you want to get into all the rest of it, but it's like

Eric
We don't have to debrief every activity.

Matt
Yeah, but it's just, it's just great having our missionaries interact with our, the people of Calvary. So Calvary people, thank you for jumping into the things you did. And if you didn't get a chance to, I know sometimes there's spring breaks that pop up around Reach week or there's just different things that pull you away. But I encourage you when these weeks pop up, like it's just a great opportunity for you to rub shoulders with people who like you've said, have said yes. They're not necessarily heroes, but they've just said yes to God's call. And I think when you're around that, it just inspires you to also say yes to the callings of your life.

Eric
Yep, exactly. I think that's like a huge way for us to respond. And I think the other thing I was picking up on this week is how many of them are like receptive and listening to the Lord's prompting like to say yes, but even like in the midst of their ministry life, they're really deeply in prayer. And I feel like they're deeply seeking out the Holy Spirit's guidance for them. And it's like you hear kind of like crazy stories from them as they're willing to listen and then respond. Christy Faber really just feeling like she was like walking by a kid that was just, you know, just thought that kid was just kind of like nerdy bookworm or whatever, but ended up just turning around. I think after being like a half mile past her, because God was just prompting her, no, you're supposed to go talk to her. And this girl was just suffering from loneliness and she really was able to minister to her and you know, stuff like that. And there's even another story that Brian Smith told that I almost don't even want to tell you guys, but I'm just going to say it's going to come at some point, you know.

Matt
Such a good story.

Eric
On stage from Calvary or whatever. But I think that the central theme of all of those is they're in prayer and they're listening for the Lord's leading and then they respond when there's a prompting and then boom.

Matt
Yeah. I will tell this story briefly, but you had John Clark who shared the second Sunday, did a great job as well. Just tell a little bit of his story and then challenging us to, you know, even just step out. But one of the things he talked about was a guy he called Bill for security purposes who called him up out of the nowhere, found his phone number on like the, on the church website or something in Mali, Africa. It's like, "Hey, I'm, I'm a Muslim jihadist. I'm interested in Jesus." So they start this phone kind of discipleship conversation over the course of several weeks. The guy places his faith in Christ and says, can I meet you? And then John and Julie had this like, okay, is this ...

Eric
Are we being set up?

Matt
Do we step out? Yeah. I mean, so John, if you totally caught it, if you were here, but Westerners have a $3 million bounty on their head. So if you kidnap a Westerner, the going rate is $3 million to ransom them back. So that's just what he lived ... That's what they live with on a day to day basis. In fact, there was just a guy from Mali released, this morning who had been in captivity for six years, uh, missionary in Niger, Mali area. So it happens. So this guy says, "Hey, can I meet with you in person?" And then John and Julie have to kind of seek the Lord like, "God, is this, are you calling us to trust you and step into this?" He does. The guy ends up wanting to get baptized. And then John didn't explain this part, but I've seen this from my own eyes. They got baptized in the Niger river. It's like, I don't say this like kindly, but it's muddy, dirty. People just throw their trash into it. And it runs through the central part of the capital city of Mali, Bamako. So there's tons of people just walking by with carts and on their way to their house or this market or what. So it's very public. And John baptizes this former Muslim in the Niger in front of kind of a public view. I mean, that's like ... gutsy man.

00:35:20
Eric
That's so cool.

Matt
They could have been like beat up in an instant for that. And uh, just went for it. Trusting the Lord, hearing promptings from God.

Eric
That's so cool. That's just an incredible story. Cause I mean, you hear this word jihadist and you know, that's sort of like bad, but that means they want to kill you if you're a Christian. Like that's their, that's the whole point of being a jihadist. Right. Like is yeah. Not just cause Muslim people fine, you know, but Muslim jihadist, that's, that's just wild. So it's so cool to see how God just moves in, in people of that are as far, as far as possible away. Right.
Yeah. Wow. I love that. And then you can also see maybe even a little bit in some of these things we've been saying of why we sometimes, you know, turn off the live stream or we refer to people by first name only or, you know, some stuff like that, because that's, that's because, you know, like 10 year deportations and possible six years of being kidnapped. So we don't want that to happen, but they're willing to take those risks, but you don't want to be like, well, you want to be smart about how you handle yourself.

Matt
Yeah. I have a brother that's in missions and he had an opportunity to go to ... let me say this. He was in a really gnarly middle eastern country. And, when he got there, he was in the capital city and they had like a minder for him, like a guy that would kind of like tour him around, but kind of keeping their eye on him. And the guy told my brother, he goes, "Yeah, I Googled you just before you came just to make sure you weren't some like Christian radical." And so, I mean ...

Eric
Interesting.

Matt
That just happens, right? Google's accessible around the world.

Eric
Yeah. And if you Google like one of us, it's just like pastor, like stuff is just going to pop up from our website or, you know, just everywhere. And so we're just like instantly ...

Matt
Male model athlete.

Eric
Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. It's just like ...

Matt
Vocalist ...

Eric
Ironman poster boy ...

Matt
Oh yeah. And then also pastor pops up. [laughing]

Eric
It's more like Ironman brand is like ashamed or it's like, or it's the picture that says, "Anyone can do it." [laughing]

Matt
But yeah, so that's kind of a new world, like in some ways, like people ask us, like how, like I even got something yesterday, like how come you don't do like videos of all your missionaries, like post like little get to know you videos. It's like, oh, we'd love to do more of that. But there also is just some of those security things we have to be kind of trying to trust God, but also just want to be wise too.

Eric
Yeah. And some of them even are in a place that's fine, but they just don't know even like what their next call could be or could they shift or could their country shift, you know, you could be, you know, I don't know. You can just be anywhere in kind of the situation shifts, let's say. So anyway, that's kind of wild. But yeah, yeah. John was fun, man. John Clark was super fun. He had all sorts of crazy stories and just his life of going from, you know, being a, being in this like hospitality kind of Disney connected industry. And, and then just boom, I'm out. Yep. Going to, going to Africa.

Matt
I know, 20 plus years ago. And then even, even when he got there saying I'm not a missionary or pastor, like I'm just here to be an I.T. guy, like behind the scenes and the Lord just kept kind of giving him opportunities. And they had every right to bail too, because they got in a gnarly car accident. And they should have died, airlifted out of there and yet continue to go back. It's just incredible, incredible obedience to what God was calling to do.

Eric
All right. So what are you, what are you excited about for, I don't
know, the future missions or what could people be thinking about?

Matt
That's a good question. We are ending in a couple of weeks here, our perspectives class, been a six week class, just in introducing, inviting people to take a journey of where do you think God could place them in the great commission story. And so that's been fun to see like six people from Calvary going through that. We have our GO teams that are getting trained up and ready to get sent out. So we have a team that's forming right now, high school kids going to Portugal, hopefully getting one or two more to go to Lesvos, Greece, and then looking for some more opportunities down the road as well. So getting those fired up, but we would love, Brian said it so well yesterday, we'd love to journey with any of, any of us who are just considering what's my role in the great commission. How am I called to participate? And sometimes that's kind of confusing, not just a one size fits all, you know, for some that might be loaning a car when a missionary comes into town, for others that might be doing a two week trip. Maybe for others it's like, no, I want to seriously look at doing business as mission, like taking my business skills and going somewhere with that, getting a visa for that. Or giving, like frankly, we need more people to jump into kind of the giving pool here at Calvary to support some of the things that God's doing here.

00:40:23
Eric
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, we'd really implore you to help support this because we want these missionaries and even some of the like partnership projects that we get excited about, but we, that stuff gets canceled first if we're short on funds because we want to, we support our missionaries as like is primary. But yeah, but it can be, you know, it can be hard to be able to add more or things like that, or even to give, we feel like we even need to give like all of our missionaries, like a bit of a raise of what we give towards them, you know, like kind of raise the whole thing just because as inflation affects everybody. And so it's just like the whole, the whole world and like kind of the whole fundraising world is affected by that. And so we'd love to be able to support more, but we just need to be able to, to be able to get more for that. So we'd ask just and implore you to pray just as the missionaries, like they all are praying constantly, listening for how to respond. And as they're prompted by the Lord, same, same for you.

Matt
Yeah, that's good. And if you have any financial questions too like, please hit us up. And I know sometimes it's kind of confusing how this works. Typically an average Calvary missionary has about four supporting churches and probably anywhere from 30 to 70 individual supporters. So it's not just Calvary. I mean, it takes a ton of people to send somebody out. And when you hear that, you're like, "Whoa, how much money are they like having to raise?" I mean, we're not talking extreme amounts. It kind of depends on the country you're in.

Eric
Totally. And a lot of people giving you 50 bucks a month or whatever, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't add up to like everything you need to support your entire family overseas. And some are in more expensive places than others. And so it's just, you know, it's all valuable.

Matt
Yeah. But it's all of us contributing and seeing where God has us in that.

Eric
Yeah, that is a pretty important thing for people to understand though, even if just like they might think that if they're a Calvary supported missionary, that means we just give them like a hundred thousand dollars or something or whatever a year, but it doesn't, yeah, it's not how it works necessarily. But it probably costs like more than that for most honestly, to be able to kind of do what they ... Cause it's not just living and life, but it's their ministry. And it's not just their ministry, it's living and life. They need to be able to just sort of eat and pay rent and whatever, you know, where they are. And the world's a difficult place to live in for all of us financially. So yeah, that's good. Yeah. I'd love for people to just jump in in some way. So just a great week of kind of celebrating God's work around the world, as well as giving just people different like opportunities for how you can get plugged in. So I'd love for you to figure that out for you.

Matt
Yeah. And one last plug, jump into our 10:02 email too, that comes out every Friday and you can set your watches, clocks, phones. That's what the word I was looking for. But just a reminder to pray each day at 10:02. It was rad, John's - who was speaking yesterday - his phone went off right when he was closing, right?

Eric
Right when he was closing. It was so good. So good. I know I actually have my thing. You can on your like Apple, at least on iPhones, like I have it set to go off at 10:02 every day except Sunday. So often I'm like on stage at that point. So I just don't need my phone like buzzing.

Matt
It's funny. Most people in my life kind of know my schedule and know I'm not available Sunday mornings, but I did get a phone call from we were camping in July at and so the state park had a question about the reservation. They called me like at 9:45 in the middle of the service. I was like, Oh no, is that emergency? Like what's happening? Like pick it up and it's like, Oh, it's nothing.

Eric
Just you talk about just like yesterday. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Do you take your phone on stage with you?

Matt
We talked about that. No, I typically don't.

Eric
Yeah. I don't either. I put it in the ground. I also don't like the look of like a bunch of stuff in my pockets.

Matt
Yeah. Feels uncomfortable.

Eric
Yeah, exactly. So I take my keys out.

Matt
Let me get a little public service to my ...

Eric
Keep my wallet in though ...

Matt
I could get in trouble for this with some of our, our older generations. So you know, the scriptures say, you know, honor those that are older than you ... have humility, but PSA public service announcement.
When your phone rings, you don't have to answer it. When you're in a group setting. And you certainly don't have to talk to the person. Okay. That's all I need to say. I've witnessed this in the last 24 hours. In a group setting. Phone rings. Someone goes, "Hello? Hey, do you mind if I call you back in a second?" You don't need to do that.

Eric
Yeah. Everybody knows if you didn't answer it, that you can't talk right now. And then you can call them back.

00:45:08
Matt
Now there's exceptions. When Marie was pregnant with our four, I was on like baby alert that last like trimester. So anytime Marie would call I'd be like, I got to get this, this could be us heading to the hospital. So there's, I understand those types of things.

Eric
Oh, should we have a little pet peeve segment here? I think we just opened up a little.

Matt
I think we should. Our inner Tim McMahon. But, uh, but yeah, yeah, you don't need to answer it.

Eric
No, you're right.

Matt
And this even goes into John Clark's parenting or unparenting yourself.

Eric
Oh yeah. That's actually, yeah, that's right. What's that? I already forgot the guy's name or whatever.

Matt
I know it's so good. I watched all the videos last night.

Eric
Those commercials are so funny. Yeah. Yeah. I love those commercials. Yeah. You don't need to tell people to straighten the line out or you're in a line and that's one of them is like, Oh, can we straighten up? Can we tidy up the line? And you're like, no, no, no. You're not in charge of the line. It's fine. [laughing]

Matt
You don't need to say working hard or hardly working.

Eric
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are like kind of dad cliches that end up happening with guys always ... Like in line at Home Depot or something, you know, I don't know. You say stuff like that, but yeah, he showed the one where the guy has his garage or his, his trash cans labeled and there's just like locked and labeled. Nobody's trying to, nobody's trying to take your trash. And if they did, who cares? Let them take it.

Matt
It actually happens in our neighborhood every week. Guys come through and pick up trash.

Eric
Yeah. Through the recycling stuff especially?

Matt
Yeah. They go through it and I have actually washed off ... I've cleaned my trash cans.

Eric
You've cleaned. Oh my goodness. But tell me, tell me more about this. What was the ...

Matt
I didn't polish them or anything. I just like ...

Eric
Tell me the motivating factors going into that decision.

Matt
The trash cans were dirty.

Eric
Okay.

Matt
So I just got a hose and ... [hose noises]

Eric
And it was like somehow upsetting you that they were dirty. You like them to be nice and clean. Okay. Are your trash cans visible from the street when you drive by?

Matt
No, that's actually illegal in our neighborhood.

Eric
Oh really? Illegal in your neighborhood?

Matt
Yeah. I mean, on trash day you can take them ...

Eric
Santa Ana has like laws. I feel like it's just like a lawless society.

Matt
Yeah, city of Santa Ana, shout out to our hardworking officials.

Eric
What?

Matt
I mean, on trash day you can put your cans out. But on the other days they can't be visible.

Eric
They can't be visible. Interesting.

Matt
You also can get a ticket in the city of Santa Ana for parking, like having your bumper over the driveway.

Eric
Oh, even your own ...

Matt
I mean the sidewalk. Like so you have to have your car enough in your driveway.

Eric
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt
If it's sticking out and blocking the sidewalk, you can get a ticket.

Eric
It makes me mad when people do that though. I was literally, it's funny, it's a pet peeve, this literally made me mad on Saturday on my run and I'm running up this street called like Woodland or something like that. It's with all the Eichler homes, like the kind of cool, it's like these cool architectural houses. And there's these people that have these huge trucks that park it blocking the blocking the sidewalk. And so I have to run around to the street and run around. I'm just like, yeah, yeah.

Matt
If they live in Santa Ana, they'd get a ticket.

Eric
Yeah. So here's my other thing with this. Okay. For some reason, landscaping trucks are just allowed to park in bike lanes and block the entire thing. And sometimes what they do is they'll, they'll park blocking the bike lane on like a major street like Portola, Irvine Boulevard, like scary, like big major streets where people are going fast and I'm riding my bike and then it pushes me. I have to go out into the actual lane and I'm like, and they could have like scooted up like a hundred yards and turn, you know, been around the corner or something, you know, but I don't understand why the law doesn't apply to them. Like why can they just do this? Yeah.

Matt
I don't know.

Eric
Yeah. Pet peeve.

Matt
That's a pet peeve.

Eric
What do you got? You got any others? [laughing]

Matt
Yeah, I do. Okay. I'm trying to think I have a lot, have a lot as I get older.

Eric
[gum slurping noises] When people do that, it bothers you.

Matt
Marie and I had a, I was actually thinking about you Friday morning.

Eric
You wanna lash out a Marie now?

Matt
No, no, no. This is ... we're team. We went, we just had an awesome walk at back bay. So we just went down to back pay in Newport and the sun was actually out on Friday for a little bit. Felt like we're in Washington, right? "Oh, the sun!"
So we just had a nice little walk. But you always get mad when you're a biker and there's pedestrians. And then I get it when you're a pedestrian, you get mad at bikers. I don't understand back bay. The route there, like you got bikes flying at you.

Eric
There's three lanes. Okay.

Matt
And I know this hits close to home because this was part of your accident situation is there was someone not obeying.

Eric
Yes. And I was also there on Friday on my bike, but it was later, a little later in the day, probably by the time I got there. Cause I swam in the morning and ...

Matt
Yeah, we were early morning.

Eric
Drove all around the world in the morning for a canceled surf contest to Bolsa Chica, which was quite frustrating.

00:50:04
Matt
Oh, bummer.

Eric
But okay. Yes. There's three lanes, Matthew. Were you, were you walking in one of the bike lanes?

Matt
I don't know. There's not like, how do you know?

Eric
There are signs.

Matt
I didn't see any.

Eric
There are signs painted on the ground that say walking only on the closest to the water.

Matt
Okay. So that's the walking lane.

Eric
That's the walking lane.

Matt
Closest to the back bay.

Eric
Yeah. And then the next one is the like bike lane that goes towards the ocean. And then the other one is the big wide lanes. That's both bikes and cars going away from the ocean. That's the rules.

Matt
Okay. We were definitely in the middle lane.

Eric
You were walking in that middle lane. You could have, you could ... See people did this to me even since my crash. And now I'm like, so PTSD that I freak out. I like could have like yelled at you probably.

Matt
That would have been awesome.

Eric
Yeah. "Get out of the way!"

Matt
And then also like, I think that was Eric.

Eric
Yeah, exactly. I know. I try, I try not to do that because that can get you, get Pastor Wakeling in trouble. But yeah, the flesh sometimes. Yeah. I do feel the anger, but I try to control it. But yeah, yeah. It's only because I almost died. It's fine. No big deal. It's cool. Your convenience though is probably just as important as my safety. [laughing]

Matt
I agree. Any other pet peeves for you?

Eric
Well, I feel like I just said one because you just said you went for a walk.

Matt
Oh yeah.

Eric
And it turned into my pet peeve.

Matt
I guess I was a pet ... Yeah. I was the producer of the pet peeve.

Eric
It's real nice place though to go.

Matt
Yeah. So you guys, you need to get down there. It's awesome.

Eric
Yeah. Yeah. And you'll likely run in to Lloyd and Nancy Peckham.

Matt
Yes they ride it.

Eric
Yep. So I see them quite a bit. I think they are a little more patient with people than I am just by nature. A, just by nature and B, because they're also cruising a little bit slower on purpose. Lloyd has high capacity, but he just cruises on purpose. But yeah. Anyway, this was fun.

Matt
It was great.

Eric
Look forward to it. So we'll have like a missions, like a Reach focus Sunday, typically in November. So somewhere around the third week in November.

Matt
Yeah, Sunday, I think before Thanksgiving.

Eric
Yeah. Yep. So that's our next time of like a big focus on, on it. But yeah. Yeah. Listen up for different like updates and things like that. So again, going to fill out the card or whatever, like nine seven zero zero zero, fill out the card and then you can get like the Reach email.

Matt
We'll throw you on our Reach thing every Friday.

Eric
Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, Doan. And thank you for listening to the Calvary Life Podcast.

Matt
Oh yeah.

End credits
Thanks again for listening to the Calvary Life Podcast. If you'd like to share any of your thoughts, please
reach out to us at You can find out more about the show on Instagram @calvarylife or on our website at calvarylife.org/podcast.