“O Little Town of Bethlehem” - Mark Cornacchione AlongTheWay 77

Welcome to along the way, i'm john matter as your host and fellow traveler, thank you for joining me along my way as I try to become more like Jesus every day. Well, today I have a very special episode for you. I've been wanting to do this episode for a while actually tried to do it last year and things just didn't work out. My good friend Mark Cornerstone is my guest on this program today. And we're going to be talking about an event that happened 17 years ago, as we were just talking, before we hit record here. And when I was a discipleship training school student early on in my youth with a mission career, as I went on for eight years with that, but this was the This was my first real big trip as a missionary. And we went to Israel for my discipleship training school. And Mark was one of the leaders of that team. And we're going to talk about that trip. We were in Israel for six weeks. And we happen to have the opportunity that God opened up for us to be in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve 2003. But Mark, I want to thank you for allowing me to join you along your way as we're talking about something that we've actually done together. So I just want to take a moment and hear a little bit who you are and what you do. Now, before we go back in time.

Yeah, my name is Mark Cornacchione. And I've been with youth with a mission in Pittsburgh since 2002. And I'm the director here and we do like a variety of different ministries, we run the discipleship Training School, which is a five month missionary training program. And we're going to talk a little bit about when you were in it today. So we do that it's three months of lecture, and then two months of outreach, mostly overseas. And then we do a variety of local outreaches as well, we we do an evangelistic programs for refugee and immigrant children and families. We do open gym basketball, outreaches. And we have an after school program that we run on a weekly basis here.

Yeah, you guys are busy all the time. And I know, I mean, we text periodically just to figure out a time that we can actually get together. And you guys are so busy serving the kingdom of God in so many different ways that it's really difficult to track people down. So I am always amazed at just the level of commitment that the women that I know have as they serve the Lord and nobody in Wyoming gets paid, everybody has to raise their own funds. So it's it's really living by faith.

Yeah. And it's a privilege to see how God supplies and we have some amazing staff here as well. I we right now we have 19 staff here in Pittsburgh. And they're all young, but all like madly in love with Jesus and would do anything to see him glorified. And so it's it's a total privilege to be a part of what God's doing. Oh, yeah.

And I know for the eight years that I was on staffing, why we in Pittsburgh, when we were in a different location, I thought that I was going to be doing that for the rest of my life. And then God definitely changed my plans and led me in a different direction. And I'm grateful for that. But while him gave me such a great foundation, and discipleship training, school was a huge, huge part of that. The things that I learned in that, especially the three months of the classroom training, where basically each week, we've focused on the same topic, basically for a whole week. And so you really got to work through a lot of some of those topics, whether it be the father, heart of God, or a week on how to share your faith effectively, or apologetics and things like that. So does your training school is is awesome. What are some of the topics that you really appreciate about that?

Yeah, well, some of my favorite topics would be relationship with God and hearing the voice of God. I think a lot of times young people grow up in churches and hear people talk about knowing God a lot. But they don't have their own interactions with him. Maybe they felt his presence, or heard his voice here and there, but to be able to take them through the Bible and share the story of the Bible as God relating to man, and God wanting a relationship with all mankind, including them. And what that looks like, that's probably my favorite part of it. And you know, the the young people get to hear God understand his ways, have him put his finger on the difficult things in their lives, some of the sins they've been holding on to or struggling with. And to see them get healing, it's awesome. But not only that, they get to then bring that to other people. They get to bring the freedom that they've found in Jesus, to people that don't know him. And that's why I think discipleship training school was so special, for sure. And then doing the two month outreach.

I mean, I don't think I had been away from home for more than a week or two and maybe like A week and a half was like the most that I had done before my dad was returning school, a trip to Israel. And so we were there for six weeks, which is a long time. And it's not the longest trip I've been on. But it's it's still pretty long. Mark, how did we actually decide to go to Israel?

Well, it's funny the Christmas before we were praying, and I was actually in a discipleship training school, and a bunch of us got the words, Israel, when you say got the words Israel, do you mean? So we were praying, and we felt like God spoke Israel to us during our time of prayer. And one of the students at that time saw a picture of a Christmas tree. And it was in one of the notebooks and we just wrote it down and thought, who knows what God wants to do. Maybe it's, yeah, maybe he wants to do something special in Israel for Christmas. And as the year passed, and we were getting ready for your discipleship training school, we were really praying about where to go. And some of the leaders they had had heavily on their heart that we were supposed to go to Israel. And we got out the old notebooks from our prayer times. And there were things about God, bringing revival, God, bringing Jews and Muslims to him. And we prayed a lot as a leadership team and felt like it was the Lord. But it was a pretty controversial decision, because there is a lot of tension at that point. It was during the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, there were actually quite a few suicide bombings happening in the weeks leading up to when we're there. And when we were there. It was a pretty tense time, but we felt like we had the word of the Lord to go. And so that's how we decided,

yeah, and I remember Doug Tunney senior, the director of the well, and base, I think it was in Romania, that was after an outreach, and there was a rabbi that came up to him and said something about you need to come to Israel. And then he was in the middle of the square, Doug turned away to look, you know, to talk to somebody else. And then he went to talk to the rabbi again, and the rabbi was just gone. Do you remember that? Or mo? I

mean, it may have happened, but I don't remember that one.

I kind of I kind of remember that one. But, you know, I, I know that why we I'm always really puts a lot of prayer into every decision. And so the things that you were saying, and just knowing what it's like to be in an intercession meeting, and just kind of be like, I feel like God's saying this, or, and somebody else says, I feel like God saying this, and then you seek the Lord about, do these things fit together? How do they do that? And then you're like, Well, we've got the word of the Lord about something. And we're gonna go until God says, No, you know, going to Israel was, was remarkable. We had an interesting team, there was 10 students and five leaders. And most of us, I think, were right out of high school. There was a couple that were a little bit older, but most of us were brats right out of high school. And

yeah, that's true. A lot of it was a very, very young team. But it was a very solid team. You know, one of the things I remember is there was no infighting, ran the whole trip. And it could be we were so concerned about what else was going on that we didn't have time to fight with each other. But when you have a team that young and they're that unified, I think the Lord just provides his blessing on it. Yeah. But yeah, that's one of the things I remember most about the team. But they were very, very young, but, but passionate about God and passionate about preaching the gospel.

Yeah. So just to kind of describe what some of the outreaches were like, we used dances and dramas to attract a crowd. And so we would carry these battery powered PV solo speakers with us that are maybe a foot by foot square, and they've got eight D batteries in them. So they're pretty heavy. But they've got this nice handle on them. So you can, you know, carry them around. And they're great to sit on as you're waiting for the bus or all these different things. But you've got a couple people carrying these speakers, you've got somebody else carrying the music equipment, you've got somebody else carrying the the props, and the costumes that we're all going to wear. And so basically, we were street performing group, and so we would set up the speakers and then we would wear our khaki pants for this because it was a little bit colder. So we are khaki pants, and then our team shirts for that day. And we would play the music and we would dance and all of a sudden people would start looking at us. And then as we were getting ready for the next song or for the next drama, somebody would get on the microphone and and our drama was is called doors. And it's still a really impactful drama. It's been updated a little bit with the music and stuff. But as we're basically the story of God creating man, in this case, it's played by a woman and she's the seeker and she's searching for the meaning to life. And so she's going to try after she rejects god she tries drugs and alcohol she tries materialism to find the meaning to life that she tries relationship and then she's so depressed achieve and tries to attempt suicide and Jesus intervenes. And then those different sins attack Jesus. And then we demonstrate a crucifixion scene. And Jesus, of course, comes back to back to life and saves the rescues the day. It's the gospel through drama. And so we're doing this on the streets of, of Israel. And we did a lot in Tel Aviv, especially on I forget what street that is, but it was kind of like this little market or something. And we would walk a couple miles to get there, it felt like, so

I remember walking, but I don't know how long it was,

it felt like forever. I know that.

But along with that, we would just strike up conversations with people. And one of the things I remember most vividly is how willing people were to talk about God, and how willing they were to talk about what they believed about God. And the differences between what they believed, as, you know, people raised in Judaism, versus what we believe as followers of Christ. And sometimes our team would just do nothing but have conversations for an entire day. Oh, yeah, easily eight hours of talking with people about Jesus. And each of those conversations would last 3040 minutes to an hour sometimes. And we saw quite a few people that wanted to pray to make a decision to follow Jesus. I don't remember the exact number.

But I remember at the end of the trip, we counted 142 people that respond to the gospel. Yeah. And we had been told before we went that, you know, for a team our size for as long as we're going to be there. Nobody's ever seen more than three or four people responding to the gospel.

Yeah, I remember people telling us we were going to get killed.

Yeah, we've had a lot of people telling us Don't go, it's scary, you know, you're going to be so demoralized or physically hurt. But God protected us. Definitely.

Yeah. And it was a times discouraging when people didn't want to hear about Jesus, or you really invested half hour trying to talk to them, and they would walk away and not want anything to do with him. But then there are other times where people would want Jesus. And that's the parts that I remember best.

Yeah, it's remarkable to be in a situation where you're in another country, and you know that you're there for the purpose of telling other people about Jesus, you're not there to just be doing sightseeing. And it's not a vacation at all, at least the way that we're doing mission trips, it's not a vacation.

Right. And I think, you know, we want to honor the Lord as much as possible with our efforts, and honor those who who support us and give of their time and money to get us there. Yeah. So

even though, you know, we were not on a sightseeing trip, we did get to see some really cool things there. I think we counted like, just because we were like, Hey, we're ministering in this area. Let's go, you know, check out what's near here. There's like 60 or 70, different historical, biblical archaeological sites that we got to see. Yeah, I

vividly remember being in Nazareth, and I still, I'm struck by how small it is. And yeah, and how small the buildings work compared with the rest of the archeological digs. But yeah, when when they said, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? It means something a little different when you've been there. Right.

Right. And speaking of being there, you know, one of the things that that I think is so interesting about Israel, specifically, is the fact that after being in Israel, and like reading your Bible, there were a lot of these things happen. I mean, most of the Bible happens in Israel, some of it happens outside, but nearby, and I can close my eyes and still picture some of those places, as I'm reading in the Bible.

Yeah. There's nothing like reading the Gospels sitting on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Yeah. And I remember that for the rest of my life, for sure.

And I know, like being up on Mount Carmel, and knowing like, this is where they believe that the Elijah called down fire from heaven. I mean, that's a pretty darn cool, and then killed all the profit. Yeah, kill all the false prophets. Not that yeah. So I just want to try to set the picture of like what we're doing. So we're we're literally traveling all over the country from the north and the Golan Heights to a lot in the south, which is on the Red Sea, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We were all over the place. And it was really, really interesting that we got to see basically Israel's about the size of New Jersey. I think that's a that's a decent comparison to a state. And so we got to see a lot and minister in a lot of different areas. And before we talk about Bethlehem, I do want to talk about the red light district because this was this was a, this was one of the biggest faith building things and I felt like we were really going into the enemy's territory with this. So yeah, how did how did we end up getting there?

I have no idea. But I remember there was a suicide bombing in the red light district two days before we went and I remember meeting as a team and we as leaders said to everybody, hey, it's a pretty dangerous area, there's a lot of sin. There's a lot of frustration. And there was a bombing two days ago. So we're going to give you the opportunity with no judgment. If you want to pray and, and feel like you are not supposed to go, we want you to have the freedom not to go. And the whole team took some time to pray. And every one of us came back excited for what God was going to do. And we went there. And it was so sad. It was so sad to see the women who were caught in the life of prostitution. And we even had a chance to minister to some of them and witness to them. And then the guys did not go in. We stood

outside. Just want to make that clear.

Yeah, we stayed on the outside.

We looked at the cracks on the ground quite a bit. Yeah, we did.

Yeah. However, I do remember talking to this one woman about God's love for her. And I remember how how much my heart broke when she had a client that she had to go tend to in the middle of the conversation. And it was just sad. But we did have our drama. And we did have her dance, and we set up in one area. And it was right in front of a few of the stores other than the houses of prostitution,

because there was some legitimate businesses in there as well. Yeah.

And we set up and there was a group that would follow us actually, everywhere we went

the odd laheem. Yeah, hand of God, anti missionaries. Yeah,

yeah. So it's a group of anti missionary Jewish rabbis or

something like that. evangelists?

Yes. And they would actually wait outside of where we were staying and follow us in their own vehicle to see where we were going so that they could go and argue with us and tell the people that we were talking to that we were trying to steal their souls or send them to hell. And they were there that night. And so we set up anyway. And we we tried to not engage them as much as possible, because it just ended up with them yelling at us, right. But they were there that night. And we set up and we started talking to the to the crowd, and we had quite a few translators didn't we?

We actually went to that place many, many different times. So I know the one time we had like seven different translators.

Yeah, it was insane. We had to translate into Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Arabic translator. Our Arabic translator was so drunk, we're sure he was drunk. And

we believe that the Holy Spirit was translating through him instead of what he was. Yeah.

But I can't remember the other languages. But apparently, it's visited by a lot of tourists. Yeah, for obvious reasons. But we set up and the other team that night was particularly aggressive. They're very angry. And one of the shop owners came up next door team. And he set up a plastic table and began putting out all of these fine chocolates. pastries, cheese, wine, actually,

I think there was like soda as well.

Yeah, there was soda as well. We're a ministry that is dry. Yeah, not because we think alcohol is a sin, but we don't want to lead people into any kind of temptation. So our team didn't partake in the wind. I think our Arabic translator definitely did, he does. But as the shop owner was setting it up, he bowed and presented it to us. And immediately a group of us started saying, Wow, Lord, this is like the 23rd Psalm, You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies. Yeah. Lord, do you want to bless me even when there are enemies all around? Not that the ob laheem were our enemies, but they were definitely trying to come against what what the Lord was doing during that time?

Yeah, that's another night that I don't think I'll forget. I remember the guy when he first set up the table. He like set it up right in front of what we were trying to perform. Right. Then he was, then he realized what he was doing. And he moved it to the side. But it was like, it was so cool to know, like, God's like, literally setting like a mini banquet table up for us. Like he's pleased with what we're doing. That's so cool.

Yeah. And I remember just being so emotional about how the Lord would care for us in those moments.

Yeah. And, you know, throughout this whole trip, I don't know if we had a plan exactly for what was going to happen the next day, or just kind of like, we just had an opportunity. And we just took it. And I know there was definitely some of those.

Yeah, there was a little bit of both. Yes.

Yeah, there was definitely some things that were planned in definitely some things that were like, here's an opportunity, we're just gonna take it and that's actually what happened with going to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. So we were in Jerusalem. And for those of you that aren't very familiar with your biblical geography, Jerusalem and Bethlehem aren't too far apart, but it's not an easy walk either. Mark, you know more about how this opportunity opened up for

us. All that I remember is we received word that Bethlehem which had been closed for years that non Palestinians was going to be open on Christmas Eve because they wanted to begin allowing tourists to spend their money there. And it was the first night that Bethlehem would be open. And so we as a leadership team prayed about it and felt the Lord's peace that he wanted us to go. And that, that we should go. But I think quite a few of us were kind of scared because of how tense The situation was between the Palestinians and the Jews at the time. But we prayed, and it was another one of those times where we gave the team the option. If you don't feel like you were supposed to go, please, please, please don't go. But everyone felt like we were supposed to go. Yeah. And I remember we got our bus tickets. And we didn't have any translators available to come with us. But we felt like we should take our materials for evangelism anyway. So we brought the sound system, we brought the costumes, we brought Arabic New Testaments in case we had a chance to witness. But we're going mainly because we knew we would be able to visit the place where they believe Jesus was actually born. And that I think, for all of us was pretty exciting to be able to be able on Christmas Eve to visit the place where Jesus was born.

Yeah, if you're not going to be with your family on Christmas, like being in Bethlehem is pretty cool.

Yeah, it was pretty amazing. The bus took us there. And on the bus. Actually, we were having a conversation with somebody there. Who said, so what are you guys doing here? Do you remember him?

I do. I could probably pick him out. If I saw him.

I remember his face pretty well. Yeah. And he said to us, what are you doing in Israel? What's happening? And so we told him, though, you know, we were preaching the gospel. And we were going into Bethlehem that night to visit the place where Jesus was born. But also we were hoping to be able to share our faith with Muslims.

We were going just by faith, because I mean, that in Bethlehem, that's under Palestinian control, and they don't speak English very much. They're right. And so we were definitely gonna need help. And we didn't have plans for an Arabic translator.

Yeah. And he said, Well, I'm a missionary to Jordan, and I speak fluent Arabic. I could translate for you.

Yeah, I remember him being excited about it.

Yeah, he was very excited. So we went to the church. And can you tell me how you felt as a student during that time,

as a student, I was like, this is really strange, because it was like this side door of a church that had a whole bunch of bullet holes in it. And like that church had been on the news, because I guess people had been killed there. Within the last couple of years or something, I don't remember the whole story. But then we kind of had to like go through that and through like a side door and then down like this weird staircase, and there was candles everywhere. And there was a lot of soot, one of our team leaders actually fell down the steps because of that. But then there was like, this little hole in the ground, it was almost like a little fireplace, then there was like this little hole in the ground and you like the surrounded by like this golden star or something you could like, touch the stone underneath that. And it was just like this very religious spirit.

Yeah, I remember feeling really disappointed. There was a lot of gold, a lot of money had been put into the decor of the building. And it seemed kind of the opposite of what Jesus was born into being born into, basically a place where animals live, yeah, placed in a manger. And and here it was, you know, 1000s and 1000s of dollars worth of decorations and religious paraphernalia, and it felt awkward and I felt disappointed.

Yeah, there was a lot of things like that in Israel, and I felt like disappointed, but there was a few places that you definitely felt the presence of God. And we can talk about that a little bit later. But right after we were in that church, after we got to see the the quote unquote, spot where Jesus was born, we went back out into major square. and major square is huge. Yeah, it's like a European style square. It was, I don't know, how big Would you say that is?

That's like, probably about 100 yards in each direction, at least. Or maybe

more than that. Okay, a couple 100 yards in each direction. I just remember it being I just remember thinking this is absolutely huge. And there was like TV cameras and stuff there. Because I think like the Vatican, they're like the Catholic channel or something. They had their TV equipment there. Of course, I was interested in that kind of stuff. They were actually allowed in, they were actually allowed. And so that was kind of a big one. Yeah, but we set up our speakers. We, you know, get ready to do our performance. And we're kind of feeling like we're undercover and we're like, we're ready to do this, like, commando style operation. And at least that's how I felt. And so yeah, I mean, it wasn't exactly looked upon as a good thing to do evangelism in Palestinian territory at the time, you know, right. You're totally right, because remember the people But we're on the bus with us once they found out that we were what we were going to do, they said, basically, we want nothing to do with you. Yeah,

Yeah, I do. And to be honest, I was pretty scared. As we were setting up, I remember thinking, God, if this is it, please let me know if there's anything wrong in my life that I need to get right with you right now. He's

doing the same thing. Mark, I was doing totally the same thing.

I actually thought we were going to die that night. Part of that was just my American fear of other cultures, particularly our culture. And you know, it was a little closer to 911 happening. Only two years away. Yeah. And the fact that there was so much tension in the country contributed to it as well. But I remember we set up and turn on the music. And then immediately we had a mass crowd, right surrounding us from every angle, every direction. Yeah,

actually, Jeremy Tunney, who's now the base director of why went Boston and john Katyn and I were very close. And we were joking and saying, you know, what, if if we got to go out, a great line to go out with would be shouting, there's too many of them. But so we joked about that for quite a while, like literally that's that's kind of what it was like, but yeah, so we started the music and the the song shackles by Mary Mary was like, the coolest dance at that point that we had. It's not looking back, but it's it was it was good for that day. And I remember to there's like, 10 of us. And I don't remember if all of us were dancing, because some of us, I don't know. But anyway, we were we were dancing. And the crowd just came in so close. I thought we were gonna get mobbed.

Well, I couldn't dance. And so my job was to hold the speaker on my shoulder so we could get a little more sound out of the the PV solos. And I remember the crowd pushing up against me trying to get in closer to see and I thought we were going to die just by being beaten to death. Yeah. But the truth is, they just wanted to see right. And they were so close. We actually well, that we could we had to stop.

Yeah, we couldn't keep going. Yeah, we had no room to dance. And I remember hearing people shouting and like running towards us and I,

that's when they're blowing the whistle.

Yeah, and so I'm thinking, Okay, this is it, we're gonna die. Like if the mob doesn't get us, the crowd doesn't get us. Like there's police coming. And it turns out these guys wearing blue camouflage uniforms, the AK 4747, the, the, into the PLO, guard of the PLO, Army, whatever you want to call them. I'm not exactly sure what they were I wasn't going to ask. I just, I was definitely

no, so we didn't speak Arabic.

Very true. Very good point. But they could speak to the crowd. And so they came into the middle of where we were dancing. And actually, they pushed the crowd back. And they they basically created a space for us that was maybe, you know, 15 feet by 30 feet. And then whoever was the leader, I remember him kind of gesturing to us continue, like he had his arm and he just went continue almost like the, like a conductor at a stage play or something like that. Yeah. We were like, well, we're gonna go straight to our drama right now. So Doug senior got on the microphone and started the introduction as the rest of us. We're rapidly getting our costumes ready. So

yeah.

And it was the drama that I explained earlier doors. And so the gap it was it was pretty remarkable.

Yeah. And part of the drama is a crucifixion. Yeah. Where I was pretty convinced again, that we were going to die. Yeah, when when they showed Jesus on the cross, but they didn't, they weren't angry. They watched and enjoyed it. And then when Jesus rose again, in the drama, they cheered. Yeah, they were excited. And then what happened was our team leader with Arabic translator started preaching, and he explained why we celebrate Christmas that Jesus came to earth to take away our sins. And he explained that he lived a perfect life and died on the cross as punishment for us to take the punishment from us. And then he said this, he said, Jesus said, I am the way I am the truth. I am the light. No one comes to the Father except through me. And that was another time I thought you're all going to die. But we did. Yeah. And he continued and said, Islam can't save you. The church can't save you. But committing your life to Jesus receiving his free gift of grace is how you can have your sins forgiven and be guaranteed heaven. And he said to them, to the crowd, I mean, we're talking hundreds, probably a few 1000 people. Yeah. And he said to them, if today you would like to have your sins forgiven and receive the free gift of salvation through faith in Jesus. I want you to raise your hand and men started raising their Hands to give their lives to Christ right then. Yeah. But the soldiers actually went around and forced them to put their hands down. Mm hmm.

I'll never forget that. Because we were like, wow, God sees their hearts, you know, even though they can't physically raise their hand, God knows what's happening in their hearts.

Yeah, I can't remember do we pray at that point,

I've yet Doug led them through a prayer and it was translated. And I don't know if they like responded like the callback, I forget that part of it. But I'll never forget what happened. Next. We had these Arabic Bibles.

Yeah. And so we, we were given a bunch of Arabic New Testaments. And on the front, it said in Arabic, the word NGO, which is the Arabic word for gospel, and in the Quran, it says, God gave us the NGO, as well as the Psalms, and the Torah, the Arabic words for those, but it was an Arabic word and that they would be familiar with. And so we had 600 of them that were given to us to distribute, we had them in a couple different boxes. And I was lucky enough to have one of the boxes, and I was holding it. And

like, literally, we were reaching into the box and handing it out to the crowd. And, like people were grabbing them, and then taking them and shoving them into their jackets in their pockets. And then like they would just run away. And I was like, I was thinking, they're just, they just want whatever the the white people were giving them. And so you know, it's a it's a foreign gift. And so it kind of makes sense. But then you would see the people come back, and then they would, they would grab my hands. And they would shake my hand but have like both hands around it. And they would just say, thank you, thank you. Beautiful, beautiful and the look in their eyes. When they when you looked in their eyes, it was just like, you could see that Jesus was working in our lives right there. And like, there's that look, you just can't fake that.

Right? And I remember just how appreciative they were at first, soldiers rushed to the people with the Bibles and one of the see what they had. I don't know if you remember that. I don't remember that. No, oh, well, maybe it was just the one closest to me. A soldier ran over and took a look at it. And he wanted to know what it was. And he paged through it. And then he gave the nod, and actually started helping pass them on to the men who were there.

And that's that's what happened to me too, like I had this box. And, you know, as we were, as we've been talking about this whole time, it seemed like every few moments, it felt like we could die at another, you know, here's another junction that we could possibly die because of us preaching the gospel. And, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, at least everything that we've done before would just be like hearsay, you know, somebody was going to be accusations and, you know, levy accusations against us. But at least now, I have physical proof in my hand that we are proselytizing and telling people about Jesus and I have these Bibles. And so I'm handing them out. And one of the army guys grabs the box from me. And I thought, I'm dead. I'm absolutely dead right now. And so he grabs a Bible out of that. And he looks at the Bible, he looks at me, he looks back at the Bible, and he looks at me. And then he starts handing them out for me. And I was like, This is absolutely amazing. This is this is the hand of God working. And I'm not sure if he was blinded to what it was actually doing and what he was helping us with. Or God met him and changed his heart during that time. I don't know what was going on with him. But I was just so grateful that we got to live another day to preach the gospel. But that was a that was a Christmas Eve, I will never forget.

Yeah, for sure. And some of the soldiers were so grateful that I remember them saying thank you, one of our team members was kissed by one of the soldiers and embraced by him, which for Palestinians is common for Iran to kiss somebody on the cheek to just show Karen and love. It's something I'll never forget. And it's a memory I'll cherish forever. But the truth is, we don't know what the Lord did. And we want

to happen. Yeah, well, we actually got to perform two more times at night. Oh, okay. Yeah. And the second time, I believe, is whenever there was that we actually had a heckler. Yeah. And this heckler. He was from he spoke English, and he was a white man there. And he was shouting at us. What are you American Christians doing for Palestine? And remember, and our bass director or Team Leader Doug Tunney, he makes it a policy to never really respond to hecklers. You know, it's one thing if there's like, a reason to but just to somebody that's going to heckle you. He's not going to do that. But I remember after the third or fourth time, he turned to this guy and said, We are loving them. Whenever he said, What are you American Christians doing for Palestine and he said, we're loving them and After, you know, after he responded, and he kept doing that the crowd turned on him and pushed him away.

Yeah, remember

that too? No, it was amazing. We gave out over 600 Arabic New Testaments. I don't think other than like, whenever I get married, and I have a family, if my child will be born on Christmas Eve, I don't think I don't think that this will ever be replaced as my number one Christmas Eve.

Yeah, it's, it's an amazing memory. Something I'll remember for the rest of my life. Yeah.

So I'm not sure if you know this, but a couple years later, myself, Doug senior Debbie Tunney and Jessie Welsh, who's now Jesse Sibley. We were on a short term mission trip to Cape Town, South Africa, Doug and Debbie were invited to speak at a disciplemaking school within why Wham. And they asked, you know, for some of the staff to come along. And so I felt there was a couple other reasons why I went eventually, a couple years later, I got to go to the radio school there that I've mentioned in this podcast before, but one of the churches that we were at, it was interesting, Doug was asking myself and Jesse, what should I What should I talk about at this church? And we had just been like, comparing notes and talking about this story about being Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. And we were like, well, let's just talk about that, you know, tell that story. And so, Doug shared that story at a little church and fishhook, just outside of Cape Town. And somebody came up to us afterwards and said, I need to talk to you right now, I need to talk to you. This is in 2005. This is like a year and a half later, this lady came up to us and said, I need to talk to you right now. And so once Doug, and Jesse and myself, we were all together, she told us, I want you to know that I know what happened that night. I'm a missionary to Bethlehem. I've heard about what happened that night. And I want you to know that Bethlehem used to be the center of where, like the most of the, the suicide bombers came out of, and like they were, you know, going into Jerusalem and all these different areas. And they were, they were coming out of there. And she said, I want you to know that from that night until now. So this is about a year and a half. She said there hasn't been one. Wow. I I've heard of what happened that night. It's an honor to meet you. Wow. And so that was one of those times where I was like, you know, I've always heard like, you'll never know what impact you make until you get to heaven. Well, I the grand scheme of things. I know that we won't, but that was a little taste. And that's pretty darn cool.

Yeah, I wasn't there for that. That's amazing.

Yeah. So I'm just like, wow, God, you allowed us to meet somebody in South Africa that knows what happened that night. And I'm just blown away that God chooses to use flawed people that are just willing to say yes, yes, willing to go and do whatever, whatever he tells us to do.

While there's absolutely nothing special about you. Yeah, john is my very good friend. Yeah. But no, we're a bunch of ordinary people was flaws, young, clueless in many ways about much of life. And and the Lord used us to, to bring the gospel to some people that he loves a ton, and desperately needed the message.

Yeah. And, you know, looking back at that trip, there has been so many things that I still reference that whole trip, you know, those six weeks, and just the different things that we got to experience and see, and yes, that that happened on Christmas Eve, and that's something that I'll never, ever forget. But there was people that responded to the gospel and their lives were changed. And we don't know how many people responded that day, because there was really no way to keep track. But we know that there was 142 people that responded to the gospel throughout the remainder of that trip.

Yeah. And we got to people to talk to people from all over the world. And in addition to Jewish people and an Arabic speakers. There were many Filipinos, many Africans who are visiting. Yeah, man, what a great time.

Yeah, it really was. And, you know, just thinking about this again. Like, who are we like, the fact that we got to go to Israel and see something that nobody thought was possible? Like, like I said earlier, all these teams of people, I call these ministries so that we've never seen more than three or four people respond to the gospel. I think the biggest difference was the fact that we actually just talked to people and we care what they had to say and listen to the Holy Spirit, and how to respond and to really just care about them.

Yeah, it's true. And we were willing to take risks. There's something you don't know and you can edit it out later. If you don't want this There's a man we worked with. I'm not going to name him, actually. But he was arrested after we were there for us doing evangelism. Oh, wow. And so yes, it was with risk of our lives, but he spent some time in jail because of it. But you look at the grand scheme of things, and people came to Jesus. Yeah, he looked at it. And we can say, the Lord really used us. Mm hmm. But it did come at a cost and more so for him than for us.

Yeah. And you look at the Bible, and you read these verses where it says, go and preach the gospel to, you know, from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And I actually got to lead somebody to Jesus, on Ben Yehuda street in Jerusalem. There's this guy on a bike. And I just, you know, talk to him about Jesus, and how Jesus changed my life and how you gave me purpose and, you know, explain to, you know, answer the questions that he had. And then some of the anti missionaries that we've mentioned earlier that were following us. There's different anti missionaries in different parts of the country, but they came over and we're trying to do evangelism. And then our bass director, Doug, he was like talking with this guy and talking with the anti missionary and basically the guy on the bike who prayed with me to respond to the gospel, that he came back over and was talking with me, and I just kind of like followed up with them. And he said, Yeah, I believe what you said about Jesus, you know, they, they had some interesting points, but I'm gonna believe what Jesus I'm gonna believe in Jesus now. And even though like he just, I was thinking about the parable of the seeds, and how it if they're not quickly, if they're not taken care of, and planting the right soil, they're so easily taken away. Yeah. And that was an attempt to take away that that freshly planted seed. And so it was really cool to know that God protected that. And I got to actually see him say, No, I'm gonna I'm gonna believe in Jesus. This is this makes sense.

Yeah. And I remember there was a girl we were talking to one day, who said, I've always kind of known it was true, but I didn't understand what Jesus said, done. She had grown up in a Jewish Home. And we had one team member who their biblical knowledge wasn't that great. So they struggled, going through the old testament to try to convince us that Jesus was the Messiah. So he just preached a very basic Gospel to her about forgiveness of sins through Jesus because of what he had done. And she said, Yeah, I'm Jewish, but I know this is true. And she gave her life to Christ. And our team was able to meet with her again at a coffee shop later, and she wanted Jesus, and she was reading her Bible. And so things like that are just so encouraging to know, the Lord does work on people, and people are ready. Even whenever people say, you know, that person's hard, they're not going to respond. You know,

we just we looked at that and said, that's a challenge. You know, we're going to go and do what God said to do and trust that His Word is true. And not the reported man.

Yeah. And even if they are hard, God still loves. God still wants a relationship with them. And and Jesus still died for that person. Yeah. And so if they're difficult, when did they just love them anyway?

Mm hmm. Yeah. You know, Mark, the theme of this podcast is about the mass road and how the disciples were walking with Jesus, but they had no idea was him until they look back at you know, they're sitting down at a table, Jesus blesses the food and breaks the bread, and then poof, he's gone. And then in Luke 2432, they turn to each other and say, weren't our hearts burning within us along the way, as he was revealing the scriptures to us? You know, I don't want to miss those moments. And, you know, we share this this story, this journey, and I'm so grateful that you're in my life. And you know, from from that point until now, and you know, I plan on having you in my life, for as long as the Lord keeps us both alive. Yeah. But when you look back at that, that trip, or, you know, leading into that, where do you look back and see how Jesus was there, but I didn't realize it in that moment.

You know, I look back. And one of those times, there are many, and many of them, just the Lord using us to preach the gospel. But the one time specifically, I remember was the man who's leading a team, Doug said to me, and the other two younger leaders, he said, You know, I feel like the Lord wants you to make some major decisions from here on out. And I want you to pray about the rest of our schedule for the rest of the trip. I don't know if he knew this happened. Because there were three of us that were pretty inexperienced leaders at that time. And we prayed and felt like we were supposed to visit a few more places. One was going back to a lot we had been there once. We felt like the Lord was telling us to go back. The other one was Were supposed to go to, I think Hebron. And in each of those places, I had the opportunity to lead people to the Lord that I still remember. And on the last day there, I haven't got to make the decision about outreach where we were going to go. And I still remember the man's face, he was a redheaded Jewish man. And at that point, the only people that I had been able to lead to the Lord, were people that had grown up outside of Israel. This was the first Jewish men that I had spoken to that was very open to hearing about Jesus. And he ate up everything I said to him. And when I asked him if he wanted to receive Jesus at the end, he said, Yes, I do. I want to give my life to Jesus. And we prayed, and it was the last guy to talk to at our last outreach, or I had the privilege of leading in Jewish man to the Lord. Wow,

wow, that's really cool. There was a moment actually, before the trip that I was nervous about going. I was, you know, we dealt with a lot of fear, and things like that. And you know, the reports of violence and stuff like that. And in addition to, you know, planning for this trip, we had an opportunity to go to Italy that next summer. Yes. So, I was going through my Bible, and I was like, God, I need some, I need some peace here. And so I came to Paul is having an encounter with Jesus outside of the road to Damascus. And like, in red letters in my Bible, it said to, like Jesus said to Paul, as you had been my witness in Jerusalem, social, be social, you'll be my witness in Rome. Hmm. And at that point, I was like, Oh, my gosh, Jesus, you just spoke to me through your word, saying that, yes, I'm supposed to go to this trip to Italy. But I'm going to survive this trip to Israel, like this is, this is pretty cool. And so in one verse, in like a different part of the Bible, where you're not used to seeing red letters, Jesus spoke to me through what he spoke to Paul. And it gave me peace to know like, I'm gonna get through through that. And even though it's difficult, and I share that verse with some other people that were nervous about me going, but and so I had a little bit of confidence. But man, I was so green, going into this trip, and not really knowing what I didn't know. And it really changed my life completely.

And I think one of the things that made our team special is we didn't know how much we didn't. Yeah. understanding of how little we knew about what was going to happen, and how did I even do ministry, but I was with you. I was I was very afraid, at times leading up to it. But every time I prayed, Lord gave me peace about going, Yeah. And I think that was all of us.

Yeah, you know, Mark, we're now 17 years removed from that trip. And if you could go back in time to before we went on that trip, or some point on that trip, and you could give yourself some advice, and talk to yourself for a moment or two, what would you say to yourself? And I know what you're thinking, but let's let's go somewhere else.

I would say to myself, God's got this. Let him lead you and to what you feel he's calling you to do. Don't be afraid. Yeah.

I know, for me, I would go back and tell myself write a lot more in your journal, you're going to want to remember a lot more of this. And it's amazing, like 17 years later, I do remember a lot. But there's so many times where I'm like, man, I just wish I remembered about this thing better. You know, I remember the first people the first two people that I led to the Lord their their names were rough and tall. And the reason I remember that is because I wrote their names down. Yeah, I don't

remember the other eight. I can't remember how many people I led to Lord, but that would be good to do.

Yeah, yeah.

I hate journaling that I know. It's, it's something I've gotten a lot better in the last couple years. But going back, I'm like, Man, I wish I would have wrote like written a lot more down. And you know, some of those times were, you know, myself and Jeremy and john Katyn, we were up on the roof of the of the hostel that we were staying at. And I think we got in trouble for that. But we would just be up there and talk about Jesus and talk about the Lord. And, and yeah, we didn't want you up there. No, you didn't. And yeah, we did get in trouble for that. But, you know, we found other ways to, to cause trouble. But, you know, there's, there's times that it's just important to know that when you're in that season that where God has you to just take a step back and realize that these are the moments that you can remember for the rest of your life. Yeah. And whether you feel like it in the moment, are not these are life changing moments. And if you're willing to let God intervened in those, you'll see him moving quite a bit and I think the Bible

tells the stories of men and women who were average and ordinary, and God wanted to use them to do great things. And so for everyone who hears this, the Lord wants to do things much greater than you can imagine three,

yeah. And if you want to know how you can maybe take that first step beyond just making a decision to live for Jesus, and you want to actually do more for him, I highly recommend looking into youth with a mission. It has changed my life, and you don't have to be a quote unquote, youth right out of high school or something like that. There is so many different ways that people can be involved with youth with a mission. And, Mark, would you mind just talking a little bit about what youth with a mission is and how people can get involved with that? Yeah, so

youth mission is, it's a global Ministry of more of a movement of young, mainly young men and women, but some older men and women my age and older, who love the Lord and want to see the gospel advanced. So we have roughly 35,000 full time staff in about 1500 locations worldwide. And we're interdenominational International. And from what I hear, we're now in every country, and from almost every country. Wow. And so what we do have in common around the world is we run discipleship training schools to help people get involved the five month program we talked about at the beginning, we run one, we run one here in Pittsburgh, but there are hundreds of other locations as well. And youth of the mission is like there's so many different avenues to do ministry there. And I mean that I did my school for radio broadcasting in Cape Town, South Africa. So

if you're interested in the arts, there's schools for that there's schools for worship, there's schools for inductive Bible study, there's schools for basically you name it, and you want to try to use that for the kingdom of God. There's a way to get connected with people to do that.

Yeah, we have a lot of innovative, passionate men and women who want to see people equipped to use the gifts that God's given them to advance the kingdom. Yeah. So you're right. Pretty much anything you can imagine youth with a mission is trying to use it to reach people for Jesus. Yeah.

And so if you want to find out about youth of the mission, Pittsburgh, I'm going to plug that right now. So it's why why am pittsburgh.org Pittsburgh with an H, if you're not from this area, YWPTSBURG H dot o RG, and you can get all the information about what Mark and his staff here are doing on a regular basis. And you said earlier on that you do a lot with the refugee community here.

Yeah, the Lord's given us the the unique ability to reach people from all over the world right here in Pittsburgh. We have refugees that have been here that are from Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, Thailand, Albania, Sudan, all over Wow. And we interact with with kids and families from all of these different nations on a weekly basis. That's

so cool. That even during a pandemic, which we're you know, recording this at the end of 2020. You can't go to the nations as easily, but God has brought the nations to you guys.

Yeah, amen. And we've seen people from all different backgrounds that have grown up in families that have taught different religions. We've had Hindus make decisions to follow Jesus, we've had Buddhists make decisions, follow Jesus, Muslims make decisions follow Jesus. All right here. And it's a privilege to be used by God in those ways.

Yeah. Well, Mark, it is a privilege and an honor to call you my friend, one of the men who has spoken into my life more ways than I can count. And I just appreciate our deep, deep friendship that we've had for so many years. And I want to thank you for allowing me to join you along your way.

Yeah, and I consider you the same. Very good lifetime friend. Absolutely.

I hope that you enjoyed this conversation of my most memorable Christmas with my good friend, Mark corner. chode. Before we started recording this episode, Mark, and I took a moment just to compare notes about our memories from that night. And even after 17 years, we still remembered all the major details of that night. This was a moment and that trip is a hole I will always be able to look back and know that my life is marked by those experiences. When I have moments of doubt, and I wonder if God really can use me I think about stories like these, God used a ragtag group of nobodies that just were crazy enough to be obedient to his leading and show up in a potentially hostile environment, to boldly preach the good news of Jesus Christ. You might never know the impact that your obedience can make in someone else's life for eternity. That Christmas Eve night 2003. As we were telling people about Jesus, I'm pretty sure that most of them had no idea that almost 2000 years previously, the Savior of the world was born just a few 100 yards from where we were standing at that very moment, as they heard the good news of Jesus, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, humbling himself to be born as a baby in a manger in their own hometown, so that he could one day give his life on the cross for all of our sins so that if we receive his greatest gift of forgiveness, by His grace through faith, then we can know that we are forgiven and saved from our sins, their lives were changed forever. When I close my eyes, I can still see the new life in their eyes from that night. saying yes to Jesus is the best decision that I have ever made. And I want to invite you to make that same decision to if you want to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Please pray with me. Jesus, I love you. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins and making a way for me to be reunited with you. Jesus, I'm sorry for everything that I have ever done that has offended you. I ask that you would forgive me of that, so that I can live for you from now on. I choose to make you the Lord and Master of my life. The leader of my future. Jesus, I love you helped me to live for you from now on. If you prayed that with me, then I want to invite you to connect with me. Please send me an email john along the way@gmail.com I would love to hear how Jesus has changed your life. Again, I want to thank my good friend Mark cornerstone for joining me in this episode, I'll be providing a link to why when Pittsburgh's website in the show notes. Thank you for listening to along the way. If you've enjoyed joining me along my way, please share this with a friend who you think will be encouraged by this podcast. Also, please rate and review along the way on iTunes that helps more people discover along the way and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening. You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram and at my website along the way dot media. I hope that you've enjoyed this part of my journey and may you realize when Jesus is walking with you along your way. Along the way is honored to be part of the charisma Podcast Network. You can find tons of spirit filled content from their vast catalogue of podcasts including my Monday through Friday news stories for the charisma news podcast. Go to CPN shows calm to see the full list and latest episodes.