Episode 44: Bill & Sue McDonald: Saying Yes To God

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the Truth In Love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. The Truth In Love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Welcome back to the Truth In Love podcast. And I have in my studio today some wonderful friends, Bill and Sue McDonald, who are Christian teachers in Vietnam. What used to be North Vietnam. Right? Or do we say

Bill McDonald: It was. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Where are you located in Vietnam?

Bill McDonald: We live and teach about approximately 50 miles north of the capital of Hanoi.

Kimberly Faith: And what is the name of the university you teach at?

Bill McDonald: Tanglin University 

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Bill McDonald:  in Taiwan province.

Kimberly Faith: That’s a pretty big university from what I can tell.

Bill McDonald: It is, it is.

Kimberly Faith: What, one of the top ones in the entire country, Vietnam?

Bill McDonald: It’s one of three, they call them national universities and it’s the English language training center for actually foreign language training center for the Northern Mountains region of Vietnam. So, and at the top of Vietnam is a wide area most of the people are responsible for 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Bill McDonald:  Familiar with it. And we’re responsible for the language teaching and that whole area of Vietnam. So we teach it all over the place. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: You all are in the head, the spine runs down the coast, right? I was refreshing myself on my geography of Vietnam because it’s been a hot minute since I looked at it. Well, it’s a real pleasure to have you both here today and I kind of want to, back up before we get into what you’re teaching in Vietnam and kind of, introduce you because a lot of I just met you all and, we talked on the phone a few times and then I had the privilege to be acquainted with you professionally. Don’t worry everybody.

They haven’t committed a crime. You know, everybody asked, you came to see a lawyer. Oh my goodness. So I will, without breaching any confidentiality, nobody was in trouble. It was just so fascinated by your story and the journey that God has you on. And so let’s just kind of start, back up and start. When did y’all meet Sue?

Sue McDonald: Well, Bill and I met in the sixth grade. 

Kimberly Faith: Where was that?

Sue McDonald: It was in Selden, New York and we were in the same English class.

Kimberly Faith: I won’t hold it against you as your Yankees fan. 

Sue McDonald: Of course.

Kimberly Faith:  I was born in Connecticut, if I have to pick a team right now, it’s the Cardinals.

Sue McDonald: Well, we like the Cardinals, but the Yanks are it. Sorry, guys.

Kimberly Faith: So when did you all fall in love or when did all that happen.

Sue McDonald: He fell in love in the eighth grade because I had this like red mini skirt with red knee highs and a red tank top, you know? 

Kimberly Faith: The mini skirt, is that what did it ?

Sue McDonald:  I guess, I don’t know. Maybe it was the socks.

Kimberly Faith: Probably not.

Sue McDonald: So he fell in love. So he found out the best way to get with me was to be my friend. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh. 

Sue McDonald: Because friends were allowed to hang out at my house, but boyfriends had to go home. And so he said, oh, this will work. So he just came hanging around. And then we were friends. And then in high school, when we were in our senior year, he said, if I give you $50, would you come to the senior prom with me? I said, $50? He said, yeah. And I said, okay. I can do that. I never did get the $50, but we’ve been married a long time.

Kimberly Faith: How long have you been married? 

Sue McDonald: Forty eight years.

Kimberly Faith: When are you going to pay up? When are you going to pay up?

Sue McDonald: He says all these years I’ve had all the money I want. So I got my $50 more than once.

Kimberly Faith: With interest.

Sue McDonald: Yes.

Bill McDonald: Actually, I get all my money from her. So I have to get the money from her and I give her back the money.

Kimberly Faith: Oh my goodness. Well, you know what? It sounds like it’s worked. 

Sue McDonald: Yes.

Kimberly Faith:  It’s worked. And so how soon after that did you all ,you went into the service pretty quickly after that or?

Bill McDonald: Right after high school.

Kimberly Faith: Okay. And what branch?

Bill McDonald: I was in the United States Army originally for three years and never intending to make a career out of it, but I wound up being in the Army for twenty. And I was an infantry soldier

Kimberly Faith: Infantry?

Bill McDonald: Infantry soldier and a ranger. And I jumped out of planes, aircraft.

Kimberly Faith: So you say that so casually, I was a ranger, you know, no big deal, but that’s kind of a big deal.

Bill McDonald: It’s kind of a big deal. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Bill McDonald: I became, how can I say that? I became very proficient at doing my job, eliminating people. And fortunately, I’ve never had to actually extinguish a life, but I became quite well known for being able to do those kinds of things.

And frankly, it’s an old life. I don’t really like to accentuate that very much.

Kimberly Faith: Sure. Well, I can appreciate that. There’s a lot of our past that, when we, before we, especially before we knew Christ or even if we knew Christ and walked away, like I did, that we’re not proud of it, you know, but it’s part of our journey. It’s part of who we are. And I think, for those of us who’ve been around the military are, you know, the biggest part of our life and who have family in the military, you know, it’s a thing that gives you credibility to have served and to have served honorably and have done hard things like ranger schools no joke. You jumped out of planes. Actually, jumping out of planes was kind of what brought you back to the Lord. Is that right? Or brought you to the Lord.

Bill McDonald: Well, no. I accepted Christ when I was 20, I guess. And we both received Christ during, we call it now the Jesus revolution.

Kimberly Faith: Did you watch that movie?

Bill McDonald: I did.

Kimberly Faith: Was it absolutely 

Bill McDonald: Very accurate.

Kimberly Faith: All my hippie friends who watched that movie were like, we cried. That was us. That was us.

Bill McDonald: Oh, just, it was stuff like pray over cards that wouldn’t start and all kinds of things. And it was pretty hysterical. But I was in the army. I was already in the army and that was a Christmas holiday. And there was a thing called Coffee House.

And my brother and my younger sister had gotten involved with the Coffee House and they decided for the holiday, they decided to have it at my parents’ home. So Sue and I were at my parents’ house for the holiday. We hadn’t been married yet. She was sitting in the one end of the room with my dad, skeptical. And I was at one end of another end of the room also skeptical.

And I was listening and suddenly now we would say the spirit of God got ahold of me and I started trembling.

Kimberly Faith: And you heard the gospel?

Bill McDonald: I heard the gospel. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow. 

Bill McDonald: We heard the gospel and my arm started to quiver. And actually the woman who tried to hold my arm is now a supporter of us. 

Kimberly Faith: Oh.

Bill McDonald: We still have a relationship with her and her husband. And, the next thing I knew, I was in one of my sister’s room on my knees, praying with a friend of mine, Ralph, to accept Christ.

Kimberly Faith: So you accepted Christ as your Lord savior at a very young age.

Bill McDonald: December 27th 1975. My wife and my father thought it was nuts.

Sue McDonald: Yes.

Kimberly Faith:  Really? So you all were married then?

Bill McDonald: We weren’t.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, you weren’t married? That’s right. 

Bill McDonald: Boyfriend, girlfriend.

Kimberly Faith:  Okay. So, Sue, how did you get saved?

Sue McDonald: Well, I thought they were nuts, this group. You know, I mean, they got their hands in the air and they’re singing all these songs and I’m like, okay. So, because I’m on the other side with his dad, we’re both making faces. Well, he comes home the next week and he wants to go to this coffee house meeting, which was kind of five miles away or whatever. I was like, Oh, we got to go.

So we went and as I listened and they were singing and they were praying and worshiping and I was like, Okay, God. And the girl across the way saw me and pulled me into the next room and we had a chat. And then that’s where I accepted Christ. And so I became really close with her and her family. And he was in the military, so he was gone all the time.

And I would go to their home for, you know, Bible study meetings and different things like that during the week because we were both raised Catholic. So I would still go to Catholic church, but it was so funny because I would go to the cool mass. And so they would be singing and doing current songs and they had a folk group and stuff. I’d be back there with my hands raised in the air and I’m sure everybody was looking at me, but you know.

Kimberly Faith: You were born again. You were rejoicing.

Sue McDonald:  I was excited.

Kimberly Faith: So when did you all get married then?

Bill McDonald: June 25th 1977.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Bill McDonald: And yeah, it was great.

Sue McDonald: Yes.

Bill McDonald: And it’s been great, not every single day, but for the most part it’s been great and it’s still great.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. So you mentioned, or maybe I mentioned earlier that you kind of walked away from the Lord for a while. Was it just you, Bill or?

Bill McDonald: Well, we both did it at different times. I was what I would call on again, off again, wishy washy, whatever. And basically I thought my ticket was punched. And I had no idea about a relationship with Almighty God, frankly.

Kimberly Faith: You know, you say that I just want to A lot of people who believe in, who are skeptics of eternal security say that, well, now you can do whatever you want because you’ve been saved and Jesus can’t lie and he can’t take that away because he says he won’t. And they don’t understand what you’re getting ready to talk about, which is the relationship, which is, is it, that’d be kind of like y’all get married and you said, well, we’re married so I can go cheat on my spouse. You know, now you aren’t going to do that.

Sue McDonald: Well, I won’t see him anymore further. Okay. Bye.

Kimberly Faith: Bye. Right. I mean, one extreme or the other. It’s not what you plan with marriage.

Bill McDonald: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: And it isn’t with the relationship with Christ either.

Bill McDonald:  And personally, I had a struggle with the idea of what an infantry soldier does and is trained to do and the conflict that I presented with my faith. And how do I how could I do that? And how can I manage birthing both? And frankly, use it as an excuse to be a Christian on Sundays, kind of a Christian, so called.

Kimberly Faith: Right. Right. That’s so interesting that you had conflict. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie was it break neck rich?

Bill McDonald: Hackesaw. Hackesaw Ridge.

Kimberly Faith: Break neck. Hackesaw Ridge.

Bill McDonald: Oh, yeah.

Kimberly Faith: You know, that and what a great movie of course. 

Bill McDonald: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: But I can see how if you were taught, you know, you’re teaching about Jesus, you know, and then love your neighbor and love your enemies. And then you’re taught to go kill people.

Bill McDonald: Right.

Kimberly Faith: You know how that would, without the proper context, they would present a conundrum.

Bill McDonald: Yep.

Kimberly Faith: But that’s so interesting to me that you kind of use that as a way to check out.

Bill McDonald: Very much so. And unfortunately, and on top of that layer was the layer of false manhood,  which was probably cultural mostly. And so I was convinced about things, for example, that men don’t cry, real men don’t cry. So I actually trained myself not to cry and I didn’t cry for like eight years, never shed a tear. 

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald: And eventually, when I first realized I broke, I had broken God’s heart for something, with something, I couldn’t even cry. I wanted to cry, but it had been so long since I had actually wept that I couldn’t weep.

Kimberly Faith: Isn’t that interesting?

Bill McDonald: But now I cry all the time.

Kimberly Faith: I think empathy is, I struggle with empathy and I think it’s somewhat to do with my stuff in the past, you know, and being able to cry with people and, you know, I’ve had to pray and ask the Lord to give that to me, give it back to me. Because we’re born, I think with a certain degree of that. And it’s hilarious. Now my staff laughs at me that we were having our Bible study we have at the office and I was sharing something and just started crying. And one of the girls says, well, Ms. Kim, I’ve been praying that the Lord gives you empathy and look, here you are.

I bet she can guess who that is too, what the accent. Anyway, so you, the Lord, I want you to tell everybody about how the Lord brought you back.

Bill McDonald: I, okay. Well, the short version, I guess, is in, I think it’s October. I was stationed at Fort Riley. I was with the Big Red One.

Kimberly Faith: The what?

Bill McDonald: The first Infantry Division, the Big Red One.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, the Big Red One. I’m familiar with that.

Bill McDonald: And I was on a Saturday and I was jumping with some friends of mine and I was practicing certifying to become free fall, to be able to pull my own.

Kimberly Faith:  Oh yeah, yeah. 

Bill McDonald: And I was on this flight and a helicopter was called. And I always wanted to be on the first one out on the right hand side of the helicopter as it was flying. But that day, there was a really big Samoan guy, and he actually needed a big reserve shoot. So I said to him, here, take mine. I never use it. And I gave him my gigantic reserve, and I took a small one just to get through jump master check and I had this shoot on. And we got up in the air and I jumped out of the plane.

Kimberly Faith: How high were you?

Bill McDonald: 5,000 feet. And I went through the steps of dumb rip cord pulling to get certified. And in between my feet, I could see a small piece of white parachute silk. And I said to myself, wow, that’s a really pretty parachute. But my parachute was green, not white. It was my reserve.

And this itty bitty one. And I couldn’t normally we would cut away the main and fly the reserve, but my reserve was way, way, way too small. And so they got tangled. The shoots got tangled and wrapped around one of my legs and I was flying through the air and I was screaming and I fell 5,000 feet I fell 5,000 feet and not a scratch. I landed as a kind of a hysterical story, but I landed in about six inches of mud at the base of my neck to about halfway down my spine in between three huge limestone rocks that are about eight feet tall each and I was in the middle of these three rocks.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald:  And I, not a scratch, I had a, frankly, I smoked a pack of cigarettes and then I field packed my own parachute and I went and I jumped again. And I jumped the same day again. And I was convinced I had done something wrong and that caused some malfunction. And I jumped again with a different reserve and the jump was fine.

Kimberly Faith: How do you even survive something like that?

Bill McDonald: I mean, the only explanation is the hand of God was on me.

Kimberly Faith: Did God get your attention through that?

Bill McDonald: About a week. And about a week I went to church. I bought, actually on the way down, I promised God I’d buy a brand new King James Bible if you don’t let me die. And so I went and I bought a brand new King James Bible. But then after about a week or two, maybe I started drifting off again.

And then following August, August of 1985, August 17th, I don’t remember anything. I don’t remember the drop zone. I don’t remember what stick I was in or anything. I don’t remember any details. And, but I jumped. A friend of mine who was, he was actually the jump master. He said, he said in my log book, great jump, greatest jump he’s ever made. And, but I woke up four days later and I woke up on the 21st. I was in a coma, I guess, until August 21st.

Kimberly Faith: What’d they tell you happened?

Bill McDonald: Nobody knew. Nobody knew what happened. I had three popped blood vessels in my brain. I had nine grand mal seizures on the ground. And while they were medevaccing me, I was jumping with a bunch of SF medics or nurses. And so they didn’t wait for a medevac. They just threw me onto the aircraft and flew me to the hospital. And they apparently took care of me. And I wound up in a civilian hospital in Topeka, Kansas.  But I don’t remember any of that.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald: And we think, we narrowed it down, we think to September 1st, but that’s just a guess really. And the Lord spoke to me, it’s the only time I’ve ever heard God speak audibly.

Kimberly Faith: What did he say?

Bill McDonald: He said, it sounded almost exactly like this, Boy, I’ve allowed this accident and physically you’re going to be okay, but you’ve been living on again. You’ve been safe for almost ten years and you’ve been living on again and off again, mostly off all that time. You need to decide if you’re going to get on or you’re going to get off. But if you get off, we won’t be having this conversation again.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald: And so I said, the first words I said was, that I can remember saying the whole incident was, Yes, sir. I said, yes sir. And then I said, Lord, I have no idea how you communicate to me. If you teach me how you communicate to me, I’ll follow you 110% the rest of my life.

Kimberly Faith: Isn’t that interesting?

Bill McDonald: And he has. He has. He’s taught me.

Kimberly Faith: You know, I remember when you said that, it’s so sweet to hear you say that because the Bible’s so clear. The Lord, he roams the earth. He’s looking for the person who desires a relationship with him. And, you know, I always tell people I’m discipling look. Because they say, how do I hear God? Well, 95% of what he has to say is in the Bible.

Bill McDonald: That’s right.

Kimberly Faith: But man, if you want to be able to sense his presence and kind of like y’all been married for a long time, all you gotta do is give him a look. He knows exactly what you’re thinking. Right? And we get that relationship with God when we’re drawing close to him in his word. So we’re responding to his word and we are responding because we are in his will.

We’re living in obedience. So we know we’re in sync with him. And then we hear that still small voice or maybe son, a louder voice, right? Maybe you needed to hear that drill sergeant voice.

Bill McDonald: Yeah, that’s true.

Kimberly Faith: So how did that all end as far as you in the hospital?

Bill McDonald: I had two convalescent leaves, which at the time was unheard of, sixty days. My priority was how do I get back on jump status.

Kimberly Faith: At this point, how long have you been in the army?

Bill McDonald: I don’t know if it was

Sue McDonald: eleven years?

Bill McDonald: Something like that. And so I wanted, I mean, I wanted to get back on jump status.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Bill McDonald: And praise God. But my wife didn’t want me jumping anymore.

Kimberly Faith: What’d you tell him?

Sue McDonald: Well, I told him that if he wanted to jump again, he needed to take out $2,000,000 worth of life insurance. That he wasn’t leaving me alone with two little babies, sorry.

Kimberly Faith: Okay then, that’s almost like the voice of God.

Bill McDonald: Yeah, it sounded about as serious. And so I decided on what we think is September 1st to live by the spirit, live in the spirit of God, which I didn’t really know what I was talking about.

So the first day that I was on convalecent leave, I woke up and I said, okay Lord, should I go to the bathroom? Absolutely, yes, right now. And then I started literally everything. I didn’t do anything unless I felt like the Holy Spirit was telling me to do it. And I started to practice and I started to try to hear what I now would say, and most of us know is the still small voice of God the written word and my spirit. I gradually got to know him better and better and better. And I’m still getting to know him more and more and more each day I’d like to think.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. You know, I want to pause just a minute and kind of go back to when you were in the hospital. Because you told me a story before we started this that I want everybody to hear because I think it’s pretty cool. Did the doctor tell you anything before you were discharged?

Bill McDonald: Oh yeah. The doctor, he called me into the examination room and to me he was acting a little weird, but he was kind of almost mumbling. He was a little and he said, Sergeant McDonald, if anyone ever asks you if you were injured, please tell them that you were. And I said, I mean, by that time I’m a senior NCO, and he was a captain. And I said, I said, come on, what are you crazy? Of course, I’m going to tell them.

And something like that. And he said, no, really. He said, except for your word for it, there’s no physical evidence anywhere on your body that you’ve ever had a sprained ankle, let alone three popped blood vessels on your brain and nine grand mal seizures. There’s no evidence that you’ve ever been injured except my medical records.

Kimberly Faith: Even though you’d been on convalescent leave for sixty days.

Bill McDonald: He said, please, if anybody ever asks you, please tell them that you actually were hurt.

Kimberly Faith: I mean, 5,000 feet drop is just a small thing.

Bill McDonald:  And that was, I didn’t even know what to say, praise the Lord. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. 

Bill McDonald: Whatever I said. 

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Bill McDonald:  But that was amazing. It was incredible. And I knew, I knew we both knew, Sue was outside in the doctor’s office and we both knew that God had healed me.

Kimberly Faith: Isn’t it interesting how we can be going, we can be in the midst of a miracle and it’s oftentimes not to weigh after that we even recognize that was the hand of God, but how precious it is when we finally figured that out. And then you’re kind of hooked. 

Bill McDonald: Yes. 

Kimberly Faith: You know, you’re kind of hooked whether that’s, I always, you know, people ask, well, have you seen miracles? I said, listen, the greatest miracle is not healing. It’s not raising from the dead. It’s not any of that. It’s not moving a mountain. It’s when a soul receives Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior.

Cause that’s the only thing God can’t force you to do. He can move a mountain. He can heal your body. He can raise people from the dead, but he can’t force you to fall in love with him and receive him as savior. And so when we see those miracles, when somebody comes to Jesus, you know, it’s like, man, that is a reason to rejoice and rejoice and rejoice. But the other things are so important too. Like, I think it’s kind of a miracle that we’re doing this podcast, the way we met, you know? So anyway, so let’s fast forward to you, you finished your military career.

Bill McDonald: I did.

Kimberly Faith: Twenty years. And how did you end up in Vietnam?

Bill McDonald: Well, I needed money. So, and the GI bill is a real good source of money. And so I went to a university and because I was a Christian, I wanted to go to a Christian university. And I wasn’t really interested in taking any actual classes. I just wanted to take basket weaving or whatever I could just to get the money.

But it turned out that I had enough previous college experience that it was more economically feasible for me to take a psychology program because I already had credits to begin with. So I took a psychology program and I ran into the back then computers were relatively new and this is the late 90s, right? And so I was in a chat room talking to a former Marine who was at the battle in Kaesong and Vietnam. And he had, he was in what’s called an l shaped ambush and a Vietnamese girl, about eight years old he thought, was coming towards his unit’s position with a satchel charge around her neck. And he actually had to shoot her.

Kimberly Faith: Oh my gosh.

Bill McDonald: He actually had to shoot her. And he never had any effects from that. He was 60 years old. It was his sixtieth birthday. And when he blew out the candles, he somehow had a flashback and he reacted to what we would say today is typical PTSD symptoms.

And so I came up with the Play It Hearts, we call it a sandbag. It was sandbag symptoms, that’s how I referred to it. And I became interested in what was called PTSD.

Kimberly Faith: Well- That was relatively new.

Bill McDonald: It was relatively new at that And so I finally found, I was looking for a group of veterans. I wanted to interview North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, and American combatants. And I finally found a group called Vets With A Mission, which now doesn’t even exist anymore. And I went, with no intention of staying in Vietnam. I wanted to just do that, find some people, interview them.

Kimberly Faith: Was this for your doctorate or just part of your-

Bill McDonald: No, it was actually part of, I had already finished my bachelor’s and I was working on a master’s degree. Master’s degree. And it was mainly, I wanted to understand PTSD. And so I went and the Lord spoke to me and I was blown away that this particular group took doctors who require a different level of hotel than me. And so we wound up staying at the resort.

I was beside myself and I went outside to

Kimberly Faith: This was in Vietnam?

Bill McDonald: In Vietnam.

Kimberly Faith: What part of Vietnam?

Bill McDonald: It was in Da Nang. We did Da Nang. Actually, it started in Saigon. And I went outside and I said, Lord bless you to someone. And everyone on the street turned and looked at me.

And it was against the law to say the name the Lord Jesus. And I was intimidated and I went back to the hotel room and I cried out to God. I said, God, I want to spend this much money to go anywhere. What am I doing here? And the Lord brought to my mind I told you that the word of the Lord will not return void in any language, not just English.

So I got a Spanish Bible, went down back outside and I read scriptures all afternoon long in Spanish.

Kimberly Faith: And In the Vietnamese culture.

Bill McDonald: Vietnamese are wondering what the heck I’m doing. And and but I just I just count on the word of the lord not returning to him void.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Bill McDonald: And that was the beginning of my experience in Vietnam. And had no intention of staying, but we moved up to a place called Da Nang, and I was the bodyguard for the clinic and not making sure people didn’t rush to get this free medical care, which was a problem. And slowly but surely, I became friends with these six Vietnamese people and they would bring me cold water every day. Was June or July, it was very, very hot. And we became friends.

One of them asked me if she could call me father, kind of a long story. Bill, are you ever coming back to Vietnam? No, never. I’m never coming back to Vietnam. But then she asked me, okay, can I call you father?

And why? Why? And because while my father’s, he’s lousy. That’s the word she used. See, my father’s lousy.

You’re very wise. Would you please allow me to call you father? And she has ever since. And I said, Yeah. And I started to weep.

I said, Okay, I’ll be back. I’ll be back 02/2003. I gave her the date. I looked at my planner. I gave her the, I’ll be standing on that oil spot right there and be there or be square.

That’s what I told her. Of course, I didn’t know what that meant. And I went back there. I was there a year later.

Kimberly Faith: How did you get there a year later?

Bill McDonald: Just Same group. Same group.

Kimberly Faith: And they were still studying the effects of PTSD?

Bill McDonald: I was. Oh, you were? No, veterans. They were veterans of the war who were rebuilding clinics all over Southern Vietnam.

Sue McDonald: Oh, okay.

Kimberly Faith: So these were US veterans who were working in conjunction with the Vietnamese?

Bill McDonald: They were just building them themselves and donating to the Vietnamese. That’s so interesting. And the, so I became friends, and then I became friends with these, the Vietnamese I had met the first year, and a very long story, but I started, you know, I thought the target, the goal was to introduce them to the Lord. I found out that the best way to do that, which is probably even true here in The United States, but it’s definitely true there that establishing a relationship with people and showing people that you’re real. Those six people still say to this day, and now it’s been nineteen years. Well, with them, it’s been over twenty And they said, you’re the only one who’s ever come back.

Kimberly Faith: You know, you make a really important point and that is the relationship with people is our platform for reaching people for Jesus. If people don’t know you love them, then how can they how are you how do you have any veracity? How do you have any trustworthiness? This is why we call this podcast truth in love. Because if you give the truth without love, it’s cruel.

If you love without truth, that’s cruel too. And you’ve got to do both. And love is surface. Love is friendship. Love is time.

Love is effort and energy. And what you’re describing in, in, inculcating these relationships with six strangers, you know, is what Jesus did. I mean, he made relationships with people. And I think that in our culture of, I don’t want to, I’m not trying to point out any particular religion, but this whole idea that you have to win thousands to the Lord, you know, you have to be like Billy Graham and I love Billy Graham. Don’t get me wrong.

He was, he’s a great man, but that’s not, wasn’t the model that Jesus gave us. He said, go you therefore and make disciples, which means relationships, you know, and that’s what you’re describing. So you guys, what happened next? Is a great story.

Bill McDonald: Was, by that time I had become a short term a street preacher.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Bill McDonald: And I would proclaim the gospel in The United States and New Orleans and Louisville, Kentucky, and the Indianapolis 500, up in St. Louis and New York City and different places around The United States. Baseball stadiums and everything and places like that. And here in Waynesville at the Christmas parade and different things. Old In St. Louis.

Sue McDonald: On Settlers Day?

Bill McDonald: On Settlers Day here in Waynesville City Park and up in St. Louis for the VP Fair and different things. And then I became a social worker. Oh, And my specialties included women’s issues, domestic violence against women, women as the head of household. And I think that was it.

I had three specialties. And so I wound up working at a church in Southern Illinois, asked Sue and I to come and be house parents for a home for first time single moms and their one baby. Well, we did that for three years. And at the end of the three years, it was time for us to leave. And we came back to Missouri and Sue said, what are we going to do now?

And which means, where are we going to  get any money? And said, how about we pray a month and see what the Lord is doing, where he wants us to go? On the thirtieth day, she said, okay, what do you hear from God? And I had sensed that we were going to Vietnam and where I was going to be a university teacher of English. And Sue was going to be what they called at that time, a non teaching spouse because I had a master’s degree for two years. And Sue did not want to go.

Kimberly Faith: What did you think about that, Sue?

Sue McDonald: I did not want to go. I’m like thinking Vietnam? And he just said, we need to be praying about this. And I can remember sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace where I always used to have my Bible on my lap and pray and stuff. I would pray and pray.

And I would be saying, Lord, I really don’t want to go. And so this one particular day, I was doing the same thing again. God, I do not want to go to Vietnam. I mean, come on, you know how far away that is? And it’s hot and yucky.

I said, I don’t want to go there. Clear as a bell, he said, you can go. And I said, but God, I don’t want to go. And he said, I know you don’t, but it’s okay, you can go. I said, but, and then I sat for a minute and listened and he said, it’s okay, you can go and I’m telling you it’s going to be okay.

And I was like, okay, okay Lord. And so when he came home, said, okay, we can go.

Kimberly Faith: How soon after that did you go?

Sue McDonald: Oh, was it like a year? No, less time than that. Less than months. And so we were there for the first two years and okay. And I was like, no, we have to do this longer.

I mean, just starting to get to know students and the teachers and the food and the city and stuff like that. No, we can do a couple more years.

Kimberly Faith: Okay, we’re going to do four Now, do years. Time?

Sue McDonald: We were in Tai Nguyen. The second city where we’re at now.

Kimberly Faith: I heard they have good tea up there.

Sue McDonald: Do. Very, very famous. So, thing you know, it’s four years and then eight years and now it’s going on twenty. And as a part

Kimberly Faith: of that, you you know, Bill mentioned earlier that, you know, he had these degrees to teach English and that’s is that was that kind of the, is that kind of the way you guys have developed relationships so that if these people that you’re teaching, you, I guess you would have them in your home and you have, you treat them like family. Well, first of all,

Sue McDonald: we know all our neighborhood because we’ve been living there for so long. So we’ve watched the children all grow up and that kind of thing. So we know everybody. But the students, we have a thing called library night. And so we have a library with all kinds of books, easy reading books.

And so the students can come and they can check books out. They can eat snacks because I buy a bunch of snacks. They can sit around the table and chitchat. So it’s like two hours long once a week, you know. They can chitchat and work on their English and ask questions if they want, or just talk.

So most of the time they’re asking him English questions, but they’re chitchatting with me. So it improves their English a lot. And plus we do so many things with the school and the teachers and things like that. So we all know each other. Well, after all these years, I mean, we all know each other.

We’ve been to people’s homes and things like that.

Kimberly Faith: We obviously know you’re Christians. Yes, they do.

Sue McDonald: And they don’t have a problem with that at all. We have a Christmas open house that we do. I make a gazillion sugar cookies that the students will come and they will paint. We have the Christmas story in English and Vietnamese, the correct Christmas story. And so, when they come, I have signs that say, Jesus is Christmas, and that kind of And the shirts that we have,

Kimberly Faith: it tells us So they let you do this in this culture, that is, what you described as it was against a lot at

Bill McDonald: some point

Kimberly Faith: to even say the name of Jesus. You’re living completely free to express your faith, to bring people into your home, to have the cultural influence of Christianity, which is very transformational in so many ways. You know, what is, I know Bill, in an earlier conversation, you and I were talking about, just how you’ve kind of been invited to, to do that in your region. And what does that look like? Whatever you can say about that.

Bill McDonald: Okay. First of all, the government of Vietnam, the Ministry of Education and Training invited specifically a born again Christian, English language speaker.

Kimberly Faith: What?

Bill McDonald: A university educated person to come and teach in a university.

Kimberly Faith: Now tell us how that happened.

Bill McDonald: And so when we first showed up, we were 50 years old and our colleagues were in their 20s. They had just graduated from university themselves. And so the president of the university asked if there were any questions through an interpreter. Of course, the young people didn’t have any. I said, yeah, I have one.

I thought you hated Christians. Why would you invite us specifically to come teach? And the president, Mr. Law is his name, is long since retired. But he said, We know that if you really are Christians according to the book, that once you say you will do something, you’ll do it.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald: If you really are a Christian according to the book, once you commit to doing something, you will do the best you can at doing it. And we know that if you really are a Christian according to the book, you’ll leave our girls alone. And so Sue and I looked at each other and I said, okay. Yeah. We can handle that one.

And good. Yeah. We’ll do that.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. Wonder where he had learned that.

Bill McDonald: Well

Kimberly Faith: you were saying earlier that people didn’t even know who Jesus was.

Bill McDonald: They didn’t even know his name.

Kimberly Faith: They knew there was a book.

Bill McDonald: And they know the book. They

Kimberly Faith: I’m assuming you’re referring to the Bible.

Bill McDonald: Yes. Yeah. And they now the the flip side of that is they for different reasons, they assume that we are out to drag them into Christianity. And so that requires a little bit of discipline because frankly, some people do make it sound like they’re dragging you into Christianity. They Well, they

Kimberly Faith: had the crusades.

Bill McDonald: So it started a couple times. Two female teachers, one walked up to me and said, You must be the new American teacher. I said, Yeah, really? What gave it away? As you know, and then she proceeded to tell me how she was in competition for a scholarship to go to the University of Hawaii for her master’s.

And after a few seconds, said, Now, we had just gotten there, maybe ten days. So I was not going to say what we would normally say, but I said, you should go home and pack because you’ll be going. You’ll be going to the you’ll get that scholarship when you go to the University of Hawaii. And she said, How can you be so sure? She still says that to me to this And I said, And I wasn’t going to  say, we’re going to  be praying for you.

Yeah. Because we had just gotten there.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Bill McDonald: And I said, Well, let’s just, my wife and I will be agreeing with you that you’re going, but go home, pack your bags. So she went to the University of Hawaii and she graduated with a master’s degree. And she came back in a year and a half, whatever it was later. And I said to her, so how was it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, she, great, great laughing about it.

And I said, well, really, you should consider getting a PhD. And she laughed and why would I want to do that? I said, well, this is going to  be your profession. This is what we call an American, an old boys network.

Kimberly Faith: And

Bill McDonald: unfortunately in Vietnam or The United States, you have to have a bunch of qualifications educationally or however else, educationally primarily, just to stay even with those old boys. Interesting. And one day I see you being the first woman president of all of this.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald: In the history of Vietnam. Well, got a PhD. It was 02/2008, I think I told her that, maybe, yeah, early two thousand and eight. And she got a PhD. In 2012, She’s moving into her office as the first vice dean ever female of the school of fine languages in Dahaptan, the University of Taiwan.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald: And we both wept.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. Yeah. You guys have had a really powerful influence just culturally. You know, when

Bill McDonald: you

Kimberly Faith: what you’re describing is really, if that would come to America, the culture of would be overrunning our whole nation because it’s a lived out faith where the fruit of the spirit is so predominant that people want to know what you have. It’s like, why do you have so much peace? How do you know that God’s going to do these things in my life? You know? And, and you can have just such assurance because you have this personal relationship with God and it’s manifested in the things that you say, the things that you think about, the things that you do, the way that you help people.

Sue McDonald: People watch to see if you’re consistent in the way that you act and the things that you say. Right. We don’t use bad language or any of that. And they listen because they watch all the US films and everybody cusses like sailors when they see that we don’t do that kind of thing. They see that we hold hands all the time whenever we go We’re always holding So when

Bill McDonald: first came, we were holding hands. And the organization that we went with had the rules against PDFs. Probably the place of the college graduates. But I said, but we were, hadn’t married for a few years in. And I said, we’re holding hands.

And so we were walking around holding hands and a couple of students, three or four students came up to us and said, teacher, why do you and your wife hold hands all the time? And why do we always hear you say, I love you to each other? Why? And that gave me an opportunity to talk about the parachute accident and how God had gotten my undivided attention. And so now people in our community, our age, and the girl said, We have never seen people your age holding hands.

And now people of all ages in our community hold hands and are walking around.

Sue McDonald: That’s so

Kimberly Faith: powerful. I mean, really is powerful. That small little thing that you do that reflects the love of Christ is permeating your community. I want to go back to something you said earlier, if that’s okay. The man who said he wanted a born again English t-shirt, has that, has that been something that, that cultural awaken enlightenment, I would call it cultural enlightenment from somebody who doesn’t even really know the Christian culture.

Has that been expanded in what you’re doing?

Bill McDonald: Tremendously. In two specific instances that I can think of, one was I was assigned because I’m the longest tenured teacher, Vietnamese are American. Oh wow. In the school foreign languages. And so if they need somebody to represent in the international community, call me, they usually call me.

So one time Sue was back in The United States for something. And I had to take seven or eight foreign teachers from different places around the world. A couple from The United States to a thing called the people’s committee headquarters, the communist parties, people’s committee in our province. And it was a Lunar New Year celebration. And I went, we went and because I was the most experienced and we went there and this man would not let me sit with these teachers.

And it turns out the president of the province, probably the equivalent of a governor, wanted to meet me and he wanted to have supper with me. So I went, okay. So I went over and sat with the provincial president, Mr. Ho, this was his name. And he knew everything about Sue and I, he knew the day we came into Vietnam, he knew everywhere I’ve taught, all that.

And I was wearing a jacket with all the names of places in Vietnam I’ve been and he asked me in Vietnamese, you, oh, you’ve been to this and that? And I would answer him in Vietnamese and he thought my Vietnamese was great, which it’s not. And all of a sudden he said, Mr. Bill, can you explain to me, righteousness exalts the nation.

Kimberly Faith: Oh my gosh.

Bill McDonald: And I thought he was trying to set me up. I thought he was going to get me arrested. And I looked over my shoulder expecting police secret police behind me or something. Nobody there. So I responded and I told him.

I said, well, mister Hung, you and I both love Vietnam. We both want Vietnam to have a bigger part of the global community. So the only way that’s going to happen is if there’s zero corruption, zero bribery, that everyone does their jobs very, very, very well and we produce good things. For example, in my school front languages, I want my students when they go to a job interview or they take a proficiency test. I want the people conducting those things to say, wow, we’ve never heard Vietnamese people speaking English like that. And he started to weep.

He started to weep. He promised me all kinds of stuff which he can never do. But He

Kimberly Faith: just sensed the total love you had for his people.

Bill McDonald: And his country. Then a few years later, a couple of years later, our friend now, our friend and our, I have to be careful with the language that they use, but our fellowship leader, the first ever above ground legal church fellowship. He and his wife had been invited in courts by the police to come to the police station many times. Harassed, slapped children, messed with and all kinds of things for years, five years. This was, the police chief of police called him back and him and his wife into the police station.

And he said to them, We’d like you to start a church. And he did the same thing I did. He looked around looking

Kimberly Faith: Are wearing the brown suits, right?

Bill McDonald: Yep. They thought they were going to get whacked again. And the chief of police said, No, we’ve been watching Christians in Taiwan. And they obey the law, they work hard, they take care of their families, they’re good Vietnamese people. Would you please start a church?

So he did.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. And you’ve gotten to be on the ground floor of that.

Bill McDonald: Yes.

Kimberly Faith: I mean, that’s what I just think about your story and it’s so precious to me that, first of all, it’s precious that God thinks we’re, we’re worth dealing with, you know, that he wants to use us for his glory. But the fact that, I mean, you’ve had some, you’ve had a traumatic pivot two times out of a, out of a plane with, with the parachute, you know, malfunction or whatever happened, but God knew that you were going to have, and Sue were going to have this amazing ministry and all you had do is surrender. All you do is surrender and keep surrendering. Right? I love what you said when you first started listening to God, is it time to go to bathroom?

All right, let’s go. You know, I mean, and I’ll tell you from my own experience, you know, I just, I mentioned to you, I’d been sick about a month ago and, just, I don’t ever just get a little bit sick. I just, I get really sick. And, for the last, I don’t know, week I get up and I’m just like, all the stuff to do, Lord, I got nothing. I need you to help me.

I got nothing. And, the day I got up and I was feeling a little better when I didn’t say that I wasn’t, I wasn’t okay, Lord, I got nothing. You got to help me. I was like, oh, I have some energy. I’m going to take charge.

I mean, not thirty minutes later, I’m having my quiet time Lord is saying, so what changed? What changed? You don’t need me anymore. And it was like, wow, I was really convicted. Like, you know what, Lord, you’re right.

I need to get every day, every minute of the day, every hour of the day, say, Lord, I got nothing. You guide, you lead, you know? And that’s what you’ve done. That’s so tremendous. And to go, I mean, to Vietnam, that’s the other side of the world.

Exactly.

Bill McDonald: Actually, we were I was arguing with God when we were getting ready to do this.

Kimberly Faith: The podcast?

Bill McDonald: No, the podcast when we getting ready to go to Vietnam, I was arguing with God, I didn’t want to go to Vietnam. We wanted to go to Honduras the way we used to say, we want to  be in Honduras drinking non alcoholic pina coladas on a beach someplace. Was speaking the four spiritual laws in Spanish or something. And I was arguing with God out in the woods we live on, I was on the highway and I was screaming, God, don’t want to go to Vietnam. I want to  go to Honduras, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

And I have a friend of mine, took me to Honduras my first time, 1995 and he had a vision while we were there. And it was the rock of Christ dropping on Honduras and the rings of the water representing the gospel traveling to the rest of the world from Honduras. I was in the woods screaming to God one day and all of a sudden I had this picture in my head. I have it on my computer, don’t have it here with me, but I have it on my computer on a map, the map of the world and it shows Honduras and Vietnam are on the same latitude line. And the rings touched Vietnam.

One of the rings from Honduras touched I said, okay, I’m going. We’re going. We’ll go. Yeah. And that’s when I approached told Sue asked me what we were doing.

That’s when I told her, and nope, I’m not going. And then God

Kimberly Faith: And then God got her turned around the right direction too.

Bill McDonald: Would you mind, now it’s not like, this is not just me. Would you mind talking about me?

Sue McDonald: Oh, me from library now?

Bill McDonald: Yeah, that’s great.

Sue McDonald: Oh, we have a student, her name is me. And she’s adorable and she’s, you know, just one of a million students.

Bill McDonald: A freshman. Yeah.

Sue McDonald: And, but what I found out from sitting and talking with her a little bit was that, cause I always hug a lot of times. And I found out that her mother has never ever hugged her. Oh. Never hugged her. And when I found that out, I mean, made us both cry.

And I just wrapped my arms around her. Now every time she comes to the library or anytime I see her, I’m hugging because she never gets any hugs at home. That’s a heartbreaker. Mean, your mother doesn’t hug you at

Kimberly Faith: all? Yeah. Maybe her mother wasn’t hugged.

Sue McDonald: Maybe, yeah. She doesn’t even know that it’s Yeah. But I hug her and she’s it just does the world for her. You know? Something silly like a hug.

Kimberly Faith: It’s yeah, but it’s so simple. The Lord just has such a multifaceted ministry for us. If we’ll just pay attention, you know, and you think about her, her mother, her mother’s mother, you know, I mean, it’s so easy to judge people who have failed abysmally, including ourselves, but it goes back to Adam. Are we going to, I mean, are we going to judge or are we going to let God be the judge and we’d be the feet of you know? And what a blessing that you, because those, and this is, I’ll tell you this, my, in my experience with, with dealing people, one of the best ways that people, they know that you care about them and opens doors when you feed them, you hug them, you take them on a hike with you, you do, you have them over for Thanksgiving, you invite them into their, your family, your family circle, you’re in a ring and then they can see, wow, this person really does care about me.

More than anything, the question I get is why do you care about me? Why do you care about me? And I can always say I don’t Jesus does. And it’s only him and me that cares about you. And it’s such a great segue into the gospel.

So, all right. Well, you guys, I don’t want to shut you down at all. I’m not there. We’re getting up on close to an hour. I know y’all have to go, but is there anything else you’d like to share about what you’re doing in Vietnam as a teacher and as a visitor?

Bill McDonald: We’re trying to encourage a couple of things. We see what’s happening and we weren’t actually at the first, at the resurrection obviously, but we see what’s happening in Vietnam As it’s like having a front row seat. Can you imagine if you were eating breakfast, sitting opposite of the tomb. And you’re sitting there eating a sardine or whatever you’re eating, and all of a sudden this rock starts to move. And you’re sitting there looking and out comes this man called Jesus Christ and he’s alive.

How would you how do you think you would react? What what what’s what we see happening is like at one place in a in a southern city in Vietnam, 23,000 people came forward and received the promise of Jesus Christ.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald: They were people singing praise and worship courses that we all know Yeah. In English and in Vietnamese and we’re in the middle of this field weeping weeping because the same the same ground, American and Vietnamese people were shooting each other

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Bill McDonald: Fifty years ago.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Bill McDonald: And here are 23,000 people worshiping the Lord. Police are there. Wow. And we are seeing this with our own eyes and we’re crying. We’re out of control crying because we’re rejoicing in the Lord.

Who we talk about the great commission and wanting to fulfill the great commission, which frankly for most of us means let somebody else do it. And here we have an opportunity to see this manifesting right in front of our eyes, not on a screen, not not I mean, people traveled to Toronto, people went to Florida, people go to sit to see phenomenal things. This is a phenomenal thing.

Kimberly Faith: That that’s a truly phenomenal thing because it’s eternal.

Bill McDonald: Yeah. It’s eternal. And it’s incredible we get to have a ringside seats. So at this point, and while we’re here in The United States, this particular time, we’re encouraging people to experience this with us. Now I’m going to speak my email, is that okay?

Yeah. Is that okay? My email is teacher bill mcdonaldgmail dot com. And if you are interested in information, if you want to come to see us in Vietnam and experience this for yourself, Two weeks is probably the optimal time. One week is okay, but it’s Long trip.

A long trip for one week.

Kimberly Faith: And just to be clear, that’s teacher Bill McDonald without an A in the Mac.

Bill McDonald: Right. Yeah. Teacher bill mcdonaldgmail dot com.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Bill McDonald: And you’ll be able to meet with believers. You’ll be able to speak a blessing to our fellowship. You’ll be able to interact with students in my class or classes and in library night perhaps and It’s

Kimberly Faith: a ministry opportunity.

Bill McDonald: Yeah, it’s a tremendous opportunity. It’s an opportunity to experience something that most of us in The United States never would have thought.

Kimberly Faith: You know, what’s interesting to me is one of the themes that seems to have motivated you all and the next thing for your life is how are we going to  make money? But you told me later, earlier before this podcast that you don’t even get you don’t even take a salary. No. So that’s that seems like a God reversal in your life. Tell us about that.

Bill McDonald: One thing that the Vietnamese have lived poor. Vietnamese have lived in horrible conditions for most of their history. And so it’s understandable that people want to make a good living.

And they’re astounded, frankly, when I’m not interested in money. I’m not, the only reason, my main purpose for getting money is to give it away to somebody else. And we’re not wealthy, but the school is just, and that’s a good idea, that’s a good idea for them. They want to give me a stipend. So I finally got them to agree to give me a stipend that’s roughly what they would give a brand new teacher that’s there.

Kimberly Faith: Even though you’re the most tenured teacher.

Bill McDonald: Yes. And they like it. They enjoy that. They think it’s weird, but they like it. And frankly we use most of the money that the school gives us to bless other, bless Vietnamese people.

Kimberly Faith: So you all basically subsist on that stipend and your military retirement and

Bill McDonald: No, we have supporters.

Kimberly Faith: Okay, have supporters.

Bill McDonald: There are people who support us, there are churches who support us.

Kimberly Faith: Okay. Thank you for sharing that because I don’t think I was aware of that.

Bill McDonald: Yeah, we do. Yeah. And actually the largest number of supporters is intercessions. We have intercessors, several 100 intercessors that we We have to call these things petition focus.

Kimberly Faith: Yep, I understand.

Bill McDonald: We call them petition focus. And they’re one woman in St. Louis, she’s actually retired now, but she knew our students by name.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Bill McDonald: She knew, she had interceded for them for so many years. And she knew our students by name. Wow. And met one, One of them came with us to that fellowship in St. Louis and that woman greeted her by name.

And the student was, how does she know my name? Woman, her name was Marilyn. And she said, Oh, I’ve been praying for you for seven years. Wow. So, yeah, it’s a phenomenal It’s

Kimberly Faith: so, well, first of all, thank you both for sharing your story.

Sue McDonald: Oh, thank you.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, it’s so inspiring. And I, I think what inspires me the most is that, you know, you all are regular people who’ve had regular jobs, maybe not jumping out of airplanes, but you know, that’s kind of my dream. I’ve done it once. Yeah. Yeah.

I’d love to do it for a living. But, and, and, and the Lord has taken your life and carried out the great commission. And, and this is what, you know, that I know our podcast really tries to emphasize is that if you are surrendered to the Lord, you don’t have to go to seminary. You don’t have to, not that that’s a bad thing. You don’t have to, you know, do deputation for five years.

You don’t have to do all these things. You can be a missionary right where you are and you should be, we’re commanded to be. And, and then sometimes the Lord will call you to some more cool things like going to Vietnam, you know? But now with the internet, this, this podcast will go out to the uttermost parts of the world and it’s so cool, you

Bill McDonald: know. Amen.

Kimberly Faith: So thank you both and if there’s Thank you. If there’s one thing that just to kind of wrap up that you would want people to know, what would that be? Sue?

Sue McDonald: Oh, golly. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to  be. So I think anybody can do it.

Kimberly Faith: Because the Lord did it? Because because yep.

Sue McDonald: And I listened and he told me and I listened and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to  be.

Kimberly Faith: Well, that’s a good thing to know, isn’t it? Yes. Yeah, Bill.

Bill McDonald: There’s millions more than just one thing. But if the one thing that comes to my mind is why was I ever so reluctant to yield to the spirit of God? And I thank God, even though it took basically two serious accidents to get my undivided attention. I thank God that he went through the trouble of getting my undivided attention so I could be doing this.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, can you imagine your life without this? No. That’s how I feel about the ministries God’s given me. I think I’d rather be dead than not be doing what I’m doing. And that’s a terrible thing to say, but because life is precious.

Yes. But I can’t imagine life without this adventure. It’s such an adventure. And, I just, your story reminds me of the, of what the Bible talks about little as much when the Lord is in it, you And I, and I think about that, you know, we are, we’re so blessed to be able to glorify God. Yes.

There’s no better life. And, you know, again, I really appreciate you all taking the time to sit here in my office and go through this, just tell your story. And I want to encourage anyone who’s listening. If you have never received Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, today is a day of salvation. Jesus died to set you free from the bondage of sin, from the terror of hell, from whatever hell you’re going through right now.

And you can be free. Jesus paid the price because we couldn’t, because we can’t, because we’re incapable. We have the opportunity for our soul and our spirit to live in eternity in the presence of God by receiving the gift of salvation. And if you have not done that, and if you want to know more about that, go to our website, gofaithstrong.com and there’s a whole section on the plan of salvation. Reach out to us, we’re happy to pray with you, we’re happy to lead you to that decision.

So again, Bill and Sue, thank you so much for joining us, and, everyone have a great week. Are you looking for a place to recharge your faith, refocus your mind, and reignite your passion for Christ? Head over to gofaithstrong.com, your one stop hub for powerful devotionals, life giving podcasts, uplifting worship music, and real stories from real people walking their faith out just like you. We know life gets busy, and it’s easy to feel spiritually drained. That’s why everything we create at Go Faith Strong is designed to be clear, Christ centered, and easy to plug into, whether you’ve got just five minutes or you have a whole hour.

From bible based blog posts to worship music, it’s all there to help you stay connected to truth throughout your week. So take a moment today. Visit us at gofaithstrong.com and dive into the resources that were made just for you because faith isn’t meant to be passive. It’s meant to be lived, and we’re here to help you live it strong. Again, that is gofaithstrong.com, and don’t forget, hit that like, follow, and share button for the podcast.