June 28, 2025 • 51 mins
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Episode Transcript
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Allen Morehouse (00:00):
So anyway, I want to introduce our speaker today, and of course, I know a lot of people
know him, and it's Elder Mike Ortel, but I want to say one thing.
I mentioned that it was an answer to prayer, and through all of this pastoral search and
trying to arrange all the different speakers, during camp meeting, I got a couple calls.
(00:22):
One was a pastor that we thought might be coming for an interview back down.
So it was a little disappointing.
But then the very next night, I got a call,
and the person that was supposed to speak this weekend backed out.
And I'm thinking, wow.
And before I went on a walk, Renee says,
do you want to pray after you come back?
(00:43):
I said, sure.
So we prayed, and we prayed that the Lord would give us a sign
to know that he's in control.
And about three hours later, I get a call from Elder Charles Nyacondo.
from camp meeting saying, someone wants to talk to you. And he says, hi, Alan, this is Mike Ortel.
(01:05):
And he says, I've been praying. I just recently retired and I've been praying that the Lord would
find me a place that I can preach. And I said, really? And I had already made a couple of calls
and it wasn't being filled. And I said, you're an answer to prayer. And he said that he would come
this weekend. So anyway, I'm going to invite Elder Ortel up here, and I'll invite you forward.
(01:31):
And the first time I knew about him, he was the ministerial director here at Arizona Conference.
But I found, and our son, Michael Morehouse, who will be next week, is going to preach.
Good name, isn't it? Mike?
Mike.
Anyway,
so I got to know Elder Ortel through that, but I found out a little bit more.
He's been in pastoral ministry for 20 plus years.
(01:55):
In fact, he just recently retired from the Payson and is at Mesa Verde.
Camp Verde.
Camp Verde.
Camp Verde Church.
But I found out this.
He was a conference president for about 11 years in the Northern New England SDA Conference.
And it's where the Adventist movement started back in the 1800s, 1844s.
(02:18):
And he was also a conference youth director.
And like I said, he was a former executive minister here in our conference.
Also, his wife is well known, and that's Lynn, because she's been very active in the women's ministry.
I almost said youth, women's ministry and from the conference level.
(02:39):
And she's been traveling recently.
And then I know that his daughter is here.
Yes.
And so anyway, I want to welcome and thank Elder Ortels in being here with us today and Lynn sharing the message.
And God bless.
Pastor Ortel (02:55):
Well, thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
It's good to be here, and it's good to see probably one of the nicest churches we have in this conference.
And having been ministerial director and working in the office, I got to see scores of churches throughout the conference.
but this church has certainly got to be impressed.
(03:19):
But the only thing I'm not impressed with, what do you suppose that might be?
We have lots of pews.
We have lots of chairs.
But what do you suppose I'm not impressed by?
Where are the people?
And I'm sure you're thinking the same thing.
So I just want you to know God has a plan to do something about filling those seats and those chairs.
(03:43):
and God has promised us enough in the Bible and the spirit of prophecy how that may be done.
And I'm sure you folk are doing it, and I'm waiting for that day.
My wife and I were at a camp meeting back east, and big conference, and we were speaking during the week.
(04:03):
And on the weekend, that Sabbath, they wanted me to speak in a community which has lots of retired Seventh-day Adventists.
And if you've ever heard of Fletcher, North Carolina, or Hendersonville, Asheville, lots of Adventists.
(04:26):
They've moved from the South to come and stay there.
And it's just a very beautiful place.
But I went to that church and found out that I was to speak to the folk that didn't want to go to camp meeting.
And as I got there, it was probably one of the finest, most beautiful, and this is a close second, I will say.
(04:52):
But it's a huge church.
It could hold 1,500 people, maybe 2,000.
And they had remodeled it two years before.
and everywhere I looked, I was just overwhelmed with the beauty of that sanctuary, the outside
look of the church and so on.
And when I got there, there was maybe 150 people that met there.
(05:18):
And after I got done meeting with the people, they had me for lunch and we had a wonderful
time.
But then I learned that in that large church, which has a lot of members, there's hardly anybody that fits the pews.
The numbers weren't matching the people that lived around that were still there and not off at camp meeting,
(05:44):
but on a regular basis, only about 300 people that attend that church that has 1,100 to 2,000 seats for the people.
And I'm not a bearer of bad news, but I want you to know how shocked I was.
And one thing I can say is, if I am shocked and overwhelmed by that,
(06:09):
who do you suppose might be more overwhelmed by the lack of attendance on those churches?
God.
God's heart breaks.
Now, I don't know about you.
If you're a father or mother of some children, and you raise them, you send them off to Adventist schools,
(06:33):
they go off to getting advanced degrees, but when they get to be a certain age, about the time they're having children,
nobody's going to church anymore.
Now, am I talking about a bad dream or a reality that exists?
(06:56):
It's a reality.
It's a reality.
And we might have beautiful schools and colleges and universities,
lovely churches like this one here.
Now, maybe there are so many other Adventist churches around here
that have siphoned them off from here.
But when I went into the front doors last week, I was in awe of the beauty of this place.
(07:23):
And we do have lots of beautiful churches.
But somehow we're not filling the pews.
And that breaks my heart.
Now, if I'm brokenhearted because of something like that, we certainly know God is more so than me.
(07:45):
and all of us. But I'd like to just tell a story that might help to help us realize how we can
fill that void, which God wants us to do. I don't know if you've ever heard of a book,
ever hear of a book called Ministry Healing?
(08:06):
Okay, Ministry Healing. I never knew about that book. It was in my home. My mother took in
foster children, raised them, and they were sent off to Adventist colleges like I was,
but none of us were Christians when we left the house. We had gone to Seventh-day Adventist
(08:28):
churches all our lives. Matter of fact, on Sunday, we would go down just a few houses away. There
was a church. It was called the Free Methodist Church, and we'd get a double dose. We got Jesus
on Sabbath, and we got Jesus in the other church in town,
(08:49):
and Free Methodist Church.
But the thing is, that church is closed.
The Catholic church is closed in our town,
which was the biggest one,
and the town I grew up in, there's one left,
and it's a Methodist church where my mother was raised
and all her family and all my in-laws,
(09:12):
and they've got 12 people going to church on Sunday.
So it's not common to just Seventh-day Adventists
to have nice facilities, have rich heritage,
have colleges and universities and hospitals,
but we don't necessarily have people in the pews.
(09:33):
As I said, there was my brother, Bill,
who he is having a birthday this week up in upstate New York.
My birthday is this next week.
His was just.
And so we're celebrating the birthdays together.
(09:54):
And so all of the Klan, and we probably got 150, 200 people coming to celebrate a birthday.
And that's nice.
But there's more than just celebrating birthdays that gets people into a church or into a religious setting.
(10:15):
But what I'm endeavoring to say is all of us in our house, all the kids, we went off to college and we knew about Jesus and we knew about the Sabbath.
But guess what happened?
All of us really didn't have a relationship with Jesus.
We memorized our memory verses and everything.
(10:39):
And my mother had a little bit of a library in the house.
And this book, which has been rebound since, was sitting there.
And it had plastic all around it.
It had never been open.
And so my mother would take us every week.
(10:59):
And then when we were going to college, we got to go off to Seventh Avenue school.
So all of us kids went off to Seventh-day Adventist schools and got degrees and have great jobs.
And the Lord had blessed us.
But while we were in that college, most of us eventually realized we knew about Jesus, but we didn't know Jesus.
(11:22):
Is there a difference about and knowing?
Yes, a huge difference.
And so eventually I came home that first semester,
and I had fallen in love with Jesus
because I did not know what it was all about.
So anyways, I remember that first semester
(11:44):
going off to Atlantic Union College back in New England.
And when I went there, I was impressed with a Chinese fella
who came from China, and he was all on his own.
He didn't have any money supporting him in school,
so he had to work all the time.
His name was Don Chen.
(12:05):
And Don Chen came to church every week,
and I saw him there in church.
I saw him at all events in the school.
But I noticed that he happened to have a following of people around him.
And I found out eventually that he was the most popular person.
(12:29):
He was the poorest person on campus, had no money.
He was working all the time, but he had more friends than anybody in that school.
Everybody knew who Don Chen was.
I went up to his room about the end of that semester
(12:52):
because I had fallen in love with Jesus,
and I could tell that at another time,
but I'm not going to go into what happened
to help me to fall in love with Jesus.
But I went to his room one night,
and I knocked on his door, and he said,
oh, met me at the door.
And he was in there studying,
and that was study hall time in the dorm,
(13:13):
and I was there.
And he said, oh, please sit down.
on my bed. So I sat down on his bed and I said, now, I'm sorry, Donna, you don't really know. Oh,
I know who you are. You're Mike Ortel. I said, oh, thank you. And you're from New York State.
And I said, that's true. I said, I got a question to ask you. I have noticed being here for
(13:40):
Five months or four months that you're the most popular person here.
You don't have money.
You don't have musical talent.
You don't have this, that, and the other thing.
But yet everybody knows you and they love you.
I said, what in the world made that happen?
(14:03):
And he said, look around behind your bed.
And up behind the bed, which was a piece of paper, and it had, did you ever hear of today, mimeographing back in those days?
Mimeograph.
And if something was mimeographed and you took that paper and smelled it, what did it smell like?
(14:29):
It had an alcohol kind of smell.
And so I said, oh, wow.
But he had lost its smell to a certain degree, but it was kind of a blue ink, a bluish-purplish ink.
And he got up to the wall, stretched over the bed, and he read it to me.
(14:52):
And it says, we shall only pass through this world but once.
I thought, boy, that's pretty good.
And it says this, after that, we shall pass through this world but once, and if there's any good you can do or any kindness you can show any human being, do it now.
(15:16):
Don't defer it nor neglect it, for you'll never pass this way again.
When this day is over with, by the way, will this day ever happen again?
No, it's gone.
It's gone.
Life is lived now.
(15:37):
And I said, wow.
He says, when I read that, I realized I wanted to be that person that it's talking about.
You shall only pass through this world but what?
Once.
And if there's any good you can do or any kindness you can show any human being, do it now.
(16:01):
don't defer it
don't neglect it
for you'll never pass this way again
he says
I got down by my bed
and I gave my heart to Jesus
and I said Lord
I want to be what you want me to be
(16:21):
every day of my life
because this day or that day
will never happen again
but there's people all around me, Lord,
that don't, who needs some good things happen to them.
They need some kindness.
And so I'm asking, Lord,
would you help me to do what that says on the wall?
(16:45):
He got up and he said, Mike,
why I am popular, why everybody knows me,
why life is so much more fun for me than just about anybody else probably on the campus
is because I realize there'll be no other day but today, and I'm only going to live at once.
(17:11):
So if there's any good I can do or any kindness I can show anybody,
let me make an impression of Jesus in their life. What was his life like?
Wherever he went, he was opening doors for people.
Wherever he was, he smiled at people.
(17:32):
And if he didn't know their name, he would say something.
And he would greet them.
You know, in the Bible it says 24 times that we're to greet one another.
And it didn't say in the Bible, only greet the people that you're supposed to greet.
Or the only the people that are of your same nationality, economic growth.
(17:59):
It just says, greet one another
with a holy
hug, a holy kiss, or just greeting them.
And the best way you can greet people is by a touch.
Because of all the senses that we have, and how many senses do we have?
(18:22):
Five, of all the senses that we have,
we hear, we see, we smell, we taste,
but there's one called touch.
And when you touch somebody,
it will leave a longer lasting effect
than anything else you can do.
(18:43):
So when your children come home after school,
what are you supposed to do?
What?
Hug them.
you gotta greet them
what's that greet look like that makes them feel good
remember the little poem
said you know
if there's any good I can do or any kindness
I can show
do something good for them
(19:05):
and make kindness come
through you
to them
he says anybody I see
I wanna do
what Jesus would do
and the Lord tells me
to greet everybody
I don't know about you, I never greeted anybody at that time in my life before,
(19:29):
unless I knew them. And even then I was very shy. But I started watching this guy called Don Chen,
and I said, I don't know anybody. They don't know me. Nobody's saying hi to me. That doesn't,
what do we got? Boy, this guy's always thinking of, I guess bald-headed men think the same.
(19:51):
that's right thank you so much appreciate that
so so Don Chen taught me that every person I saw I ought to greet him
and guess what happened when any time any person I saw from then on
(20:13):
and I said hello or I'd open a door or say wow you got a
I like your clothing.
I'm impressed by whatever.
How long do you think it took
if I say hi to somebody else
that they would say hi to me?
(20:33):
Immediately, wasn't it?
That fella made more friends on that campus
than anybody else
because if he didn't know them,
he greeted them.
And he said something nice.
There's a poem that goes like this.
Not a poem, a story.
that happened out in mid-America.
That's where my wife and I served for a couple of years
(20:55):
and our family.
We loved the people out in Kansas, Nebraska.
That's a conference that I was youth director in
and had a bunch of other hats.
And from one corner of the conference to the other
was the distance between Chicago and Boston.
That's a third of the way across the United States.
(21:18):
Big conference.
So it gave me a lot of people to get acquainted with and greet.
So anyways, the story is that at the 50th wedding anniversary of these people that lived and had a farm,
the whole town was going to put on a, what you call it, a wedding anniversary.
(21:44):
It was a Sunday afternoon.
Everybody came to the park, and there was hundreds of people there
because small towns, you don't meet a lot of people other than that town.
And this guy and his wife were amazing.
They had great kids and great grandkids, and that family was so successful.
Everybody knew about them.
(22:05):
So everybody was invited, bring a potluck dinner and so on.
So the mayor was there, the editor of the newspaper,
And they came up to the couple and they said,
I want you to tell us what kept you together as a husband and wife.
Because,
you know, even
out here in the Tule bushes of Kansas, Nebraska,
(22:33):
there are divorces.
But something about you still love each other, you're happy.
And so the gentleman who was married for 50 years and his wife was there and the editor was taking notes and the mayor was asking the questions,
(22:53):
he went into his pocket and he got a, what kind of a watch that sits in your pocket?
It's got a chain on it.
Pocket watch.
And back in those neck of the woods, pocket watches were very common even when we were there a number of years ago.
He pulled out that pocket watch, and he pushed the button.
(23:14):
The chain was to it, and the lid of the watch flew open.
And there written on the glass of that watch was engraved these words,
Say something nice to Sarah.
(23:36):
His father-in-law wanted to make sure that they didn't get divorced by the time they were 50 years married.
Say something nice to people.
That's what Don Chen was doing.
And everywhere Don Chen was, he had a crowd of people.
Because he opened up the door, he said something nice to everybody, and he tried to be good and kind.
(24:02):
And you know something?
How many times do we growl at each other rather than speak to each other?
How many times do we point out something bad?
You know, you didn't pick up your shoes like I told you yesterday,
so you aren't getting dessert tonight because you didn't obey.
(24:22):
Could we treat our spouses?
Could we treat our kids?
Can we treat our neighbors by not being nice and kind and even touching?
When a baby is born, the most needed thing it needs right at that point is to be what?
Put in a bassinet and go off and make sure it's warm.
(24:46):
Put a bottle in its mouth and just leave it for a couple hours until I have to change the diaper.
And then I do that quick and then I go back, do something else.
What does a baby need to be healthy and live long?
Touch.
Touch.
Not this kind of touch, but this touch.
(25:09):
My daughter and son-in-law have a place up beyond Payson.
Just before you go up the rim to Heber, before you go and you take a right,
before it goes up this beautiful mountain of 4,000 feet,
I go back to a little village back there.
(25:31):
It's just houses.
They don't even call it a village.
But when I wanted to get away, when I was pastoring up there, Sharon,
and I would stay overnight in their house.
And the house was a beautiful cabin, and they had an acre of land,
and next to it was a couple acres of land.
(25:51):
There was a distance between everybody, but there's lots of deer and elk up there.
And if you've ever been there, oh, boy, it's amazing.
Well, I ended up sitting in a chair for my devotional time,
and the window was right here,
(26:13):
and right next to the window is the end of the house,
and it wasn't too far, maybe 20 feet,
and it was a fence between their property and the others.
And every morning when I was staying there for a few days,
and I'd come back even a month later,
and I'd be sitting there reading my Bible and all of that,
(26:35):
and I would notice out there a mama deer would come with their little one.
They would sit right next to the fence, lay down,
and after they laid down, the little one got real close to the mother,
and the mother started licking, licking her little baby.
(27:02):
and I just couldn't take my eyes off.
The love that mama had for that baby.
I mean, you know, it was born a few weeks ago
and she's still licking on the baby.
And the baby was cuddled right up to her.
I come back a couple weeks later,
(27:23):
about the same time in the morning,
Mama and baby fawn would come, and the same thing happened.
And as it got a little bit later, as the little baby started growing,
I noticed that when mama got done licking baby, cleaning her all off, guess what?
(27:44):
The baby started licking mama and cuddling up close to mama.
Do you know the world today is dying because nobody really greets them, cares about them,
touches them, says nice things about them?
(28:06):
You can't even watch television anymore.
And this station is downing the Democrats, and this station is downing the Republicans.
God wants us to go around, the Bible is called edification.
And edification means affirm people.
(28:27):
Say something nice.
Do something good.
And once you give some love, attention, acceptance,
and this was what my sermon was going to be,
but I had to change it after being here last week.
(28:48):
But I could come back someday in the future and give that all of Max the Cap,
because that's a whole story.
I wrote a book on the seven A's to healthy relationships.
Everyone wants attention.
Is that true?
Everybody, yeah.
(29:09):
So I walk into a place and nobody knows me, and I walk in and I'm looking around and so on.
I'm just waiting for somebody to say, well, hi, welcome.
Have a chair right by me.
Let me go get you some water.
Boy, that guy, I like him.
I got the water.
(29:29):
It makes him, me, realize that he cares.
Does everybody want to know that they matter in life?
They have value?
Even an old man like me.
I love it.
(29:53):
Say something nice to Sarah.
Say something nice to the mailman.
Say something nice to the clerk.
Say something nice to a homeless person.
Say something nice to everybody you see.
(30:16):
And if you can't say it, when you come up to a light and you're there, you know you're going to be there for a minute.
You can just sit there and do this.
Or you can sit there and look around.
Oh, if your window can roll down or if it is rolled down and the other one is not,
(30:41):
Just look at the person sitting in that truck or that car.
Five to ten seconds, they're going to look back at you.
Built in us is a sense of somebody staring at us.
And you can mouth it.
(31:02):
You can make gestures.
But let that person know that you care.
that they're special.
They have value.
They matter.
They have worth
because many people,
if not most of the people today,
(31:24):
don't have those positive things coming at them.
God wants us to do that.
Just got a card this past week
because of my birthday from a lady.
And my wife and I were young.
Our daughter hadn't even been born yet or just had been born.
(31:47):
And we learned that there was a couple that had little children on the next road from where we were living in the country.
And they never would come to church.
So I went over to their house one time and have to get by the farm dogs that will bite and bite your leg off if you aren't watching out.
(32:10):
So I got to meet them, and I said, I invite you into church.
Come to church.
Oh, yeah, we heard there was a new pastor.
Yeah, just kind of a growly conversation.
None of this, wow, good to have you around, pastor, and you're a neighbor of ours.
That'd be nuts.
None of that stuff.
It was just coal wall.
(32:31):
Well, I started praying for this couple.
And I said, Lord, they're not far from us.
They leased around the books of the church.
So I said, Lord, somehow make it happen.
Well, one day I happened to go to the hardware store in our little town,
(32:54):
which they were about two miles from it.
And I was about three miles away from that hardware store, maybe four.
And I walked in, and there he was, the husband and the dad of that little family.
I said, hey, Bill, it's good to see you.
When he first saw me, he kind of wanted to get lost in the aisle.
(33:16):
I went, so good to see you.
And so I had a little talk.
And you don't lick people like a mother does to her fawn.
But I wanted to send out vibes of called goodness and kindness and just being nice.
(33:39):
I said, man, so good to see you.
And hope again I can see you folk again.
You're always welcome at church.
They didn't come to church, but we got a phone call one day.
And they said it's blackberry season.
And blackberries are big, bigger than your thumb.
(33:59):
And if you want to come over to our place,
we're going to go out and pick some blackberries in the morning.
So we ended up, Lynn and I were so excited,
and we went over to their place,
and we all went out picking blackberries.
Guess what?
(34:19):
We couldn't thank them enough for the blackberries.
that was 50 years ago, literally.
I got this card in the mail from her,
and it opened it up.
Remember, this is not me.
(34:40):
Who was I praying to?
Jesus.
Jesus can send people to you or you to other people.
Just greet them.
If nothing else, just greet them and be nice.
Be a Don Chen.
And so there it was.
We end up making friends with them.
(35:01):
I get this card later, 50 years ago.
Later, she wrote in there, she says,
Mike, thank you for encouraging me to get a job cooking at the camp.
My wife and I had left that church and that district,
(35:22):
and we went to other conferences.
We came back as a youth director of upstate New York,
and I needed a cook.
And I remember this lady not only knew how
and where the big blackberries were,
but she could make a good blackberry pie.
And I knew she was a good cook.
(35:43):
So I asked her, would you be willing to be our cook at camp?
And she said yes.
So in her card, she says, thank you for inviting me to be the cook at camp.
And after you left, I went back home, and it got out that I was cooking during the summer at this camp up in the Adirondack Mountains near Lake Placid, New York.
(36:17):
And so the local school district asked if she would come and be a cook.
Well, after that, a bigger school district came along and said,
would you be the head cook?
And she wrote all this out.
And then a college found out that she was a great cook.
(36:37):
And not only is she a good cook, but she knew how to be a mom of deer
and lick on the children.
it. Every child that goes through that line needs some attention and something nice said about them.
And so she not only cooked, but she made cookies and she let the kids know that these cookies are
(37:05):
for you. And I learned you want this kind and that way. She didn't stand behind the counter,
but she took a step where the kids were and loved up on them.
She then became, for this college,
and then she had four things she wanted,
and the biggest one, I forgot what it was.
And she said, you gave me a stepping stone to get started in life.
(37:35):
She says, and God then led to different stones through life,
and I got higher and higher and higher.
And I am so grateful for that.
This woman, wherever she walks,
if anybody knows who she is, Pat Aubin,
oh, Pat, how are you?
Because Pat, what I gave her was a little stepping stone.
(38:00):
The Lord gave her lots of other opportunities
because it was her personality.
One of the churches I just left is up in Camp Verde.
And Camp Verde has a huge, one of the biggest food banks in the state of Arizona.
They bring a tractor trailer in every day.
I mean, every week when they have the day.
(38:21):
And during the week, the church members and the community are gathering all kinds of food and things.
They got a big free thrift store.
And that thing is growing like this and like that.
And eventually, it's right beside the church.
and they got to be interviewed,
and every week they got to go through all these lines in the buildings,
(38:42):
and it's getting so big, and money is coming in from other churches
and coming from the government, and people are making out checks,
and people are coming to church.
And I said, why are you really coming here and willing to stay?
I said, what time did you get here?
And it opens at 9 o'clock.
I got here at 5.
I was the first one at 5.30, and the other one behind her says,
(39:06):
I came a half hour later and I was 10th in line.
But I said, why are you coming here?
What kind of food are you looking for?
I just want to meet somebody who believes they love me.
(39:27):
Don Chen loved everybody.
How did he do it?
By touching them, by saying nice things to them,
by opening up doors,
by when he hears that they need something,
he finds something.
Nobody paid him for this.
Became the most famous guy.
This gal became such a famous cook,
(39:47):
it was far more than the food she did.
And what was the best thing about
what's going on at Camp Verde right now?
They said, we come here for a hug.
we come here for a compliment
because we know
(40:08):
that somebody loves us
I got to conclude with this story
I'm sorry I'm going late
but didn't even realize
what time I got started
but let me tell one more story
I've got lots of them
there's Bible text behind
everything I'm talking about
remember the Lord tells us
to one another
(40:29):
one another
says love one another
15 times in the Bible.
What does that mean?
Touch them.
Even your voice touches them, right?
What did AT&T say?
Reach out and what?
Touch somebody.
Well, they're a thousand miles away.
They can't touch your skin,
but they hear love coming through
(40:49):
those little vibrations on the phone.
There was a lady.
she was well i'll start this way the state of maryland was trying to figure out how they could
(41:12):
get rid of all of the stuff that was in going on in the school system i read this with zig ziglar
years ago. The story true. So the state was trying to figure out why all of these people in the slums,
in the ghettos, never go anywhere. They never get out of the ghetto. They go through school,
(41:33):
they go right back, and they steal, they cheat, they're into trouble, or they're lazy just waiting
for somebody to take care of them. And they said, we got to stop this thing. We can't afford this.
So they sat down with these kids and got their names,
and they found out that everyone graduated.
(41:57):
They didn't go anywhere in life.
And so the state hired one of their universities
who had lots of class members,
and they wanted each class member had a pack of names.
they had to go and visit these people
(42:20):
who ended up being the same.
But this is a different same.
Out of one school district,
there were kids that went on to college,
marriages stayed intact,
and they had money, they did things,
and they went back to the ghettos
(42:42):
and they started to make the ghettos better than they were.
And so they had them go and find those kids.
And they found them.
And when they found them, they asked them,
what made you go to college, that you're still this,
and you're not like everybody else in the ghetto?
(43:02):
And every one of them would say, there was a teacher.
There was a teacher.
There was a teacher.
And when the class all got together after going and finding these people,
they sat down and they say, where is this teacher?
(43:25):
They found this old lady who now has past teaching age.
They found her, and they said, all these kids that came in your class,
what did you do every week?
You did something in your room like Don Chen did on campus.
(43:46):
What did you do?
She says, all I did was love them.
I said, what did that look like?
It said what this book says in page 143.
Christ's method alone will bring true success in reaching people.
(44:10):
Jesus mingled among men as one desiring their good.
He sympathized with these people.
In other words, if they had bad days, he cried with them.
That's what it tells you on that page.
He ministered to these kids' needs, these adult needs.
(44:34):
And so this school teacher, who wasn't a Seventh-day Adventist,
but followed what Ellen White says is what will make you different than anybody else where you live.
So he ends up, they bring her among the class, and she just says, I just loved them.
What did you do?
(44:55):
When they came in and they were crying, I put my arm around them and I cried with them.
When they came into school, so excited, something great, happy with.
She says, I got it.
I gave them a hug.
I gave them a high five.
I let them know I'm happy with you.
(45:16):
That's found in, I think it's chapter 12, verse 15.
Weep those with weep and rejoice with those who what?
Rejoice.
God wants us to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.
She says, all I did was love these kids.
When they had a birthday, we had a real party in our classroom.
(45:39):
And when somebody was hurting, we all consoled them.
The world right around us is no different than it was back in her day.
When these kids got married or graduated from college or whatever,
(46:00):
She stayed in touch with these kids because when they moved from third grade into fourth grade,
if they had a good day, they went back and told the teacher because they knew she'd hug them.
And if they had something bad, they'd go see this teacher because they know they'd get a hug.
And some tears.
(46:20):
The world today is crying for people to love like Jesus did.
That woman did it.
When they graduated, when they got married, when something went right or wrong, she said,
I was invited to be there at that occasion.
(46:42):
I sat right by mother.
I sat right by father.
I was a part of their family.
And the world today is crying for somebody to make them become part of our family.
That's what's happening up at Camp Verde.
I get calls. I haven't been up there in five months, but I get all these calls. Well,
(47:05):
this person wants you to baptize them. These people want you to marry them. Would you have
this one's funeral? And I'm not talking about just almost nothing. This is real. People want
somebody to love them. And I believe in your neighborhood, if you say, Lord,
I give you everything I got.
(47:28):
This little book says 143.
You will be amazed at how
when you become like Jesus to people,
how you will feel like Jesus.
Jesus wept, and you wept, you weep.
But Jesus rejoiced.
Philippians 4.4, what does it say?
(47:49):
Rejoice in the Lord how often?
And again, I say what?
Rejoice.
And every verse afterward is talking about
how we're to relate to everybody.
God, love me so I can love other people.
Why don't we find God's love
because maybe we're not wanting God to love us.
(48:12):
Take time with him every morning
and ask him to change your life.
And I hope when I come back next time,
whenever that might be,
and I hope you get a good pastor,
I'm praying to that end
because this church could grow like wildfire.
It's beautiful.
And people have treated me so kind
(48:33):
since I walked through the door today.
Greeter, what was the gal's name of the greeter today?
What's her name?
Well, maybe all of those names.
All I know is, man, she gave me the hug,
and I said something.
(48:54):
she come over and gave me a hug and handshake
and all that sort of stuff meant something to me,
like I want to go back to this church again.
I'm going to have a word of prayer,
but I also want you folk to pray with me
(49:15):
what is said in a verse.
In Philippians 4, chapter 13 says,
I can do all things through what? Christ to what? So I can change if I'm not like John Chen
or this school teacher. That's what it's saying. And then in verse 19, it says,
(49:38):
my God shall supply all your, according to his what? Riches in glory. God's got storehouses of
riches and glory that he wants to give you so you can be like him, that when you turn around,
people say, wow, there's the person that loves me. Let's have a prayer. Heavenly Father,
(50:03):
I thank you so much that the Bible is full of stories of people who were like Don Chen,
Like this Baltimore school teacher, like other stories that I can tell time and time again,
which may be just unbelievable what people don't have to push Jesus, but they are Jesus everywhere they go.
(50:31):
Everybody wants somebody to touch them, to say nice things about them.
Lord, time is passing by quick.
And the older we get in this old world,
the more people are hungry for somebody to come into their life.
So I pray, Jesus, that each of us will pray that prayer
(50:56):
and claim that promise.
My God shall supply every need that I have
out of his abundance in heaven
so that I can be like Jesus walking on the face of this earth.
Thank you, Lord, and
help us to be like you.
In Jesus' name, amen.
(51:43):
Amen.
So anyway, I want to introduce our speaker today, and of course, I know a lot of people
know him, and it's Elder Mike Ortel, but I want to say one thing.
I mentioned that it was an answer to prayer, and through all of this pastoral search and
trying to arrange all the different speakers, during camp meeting, I got a couple calls.
(00:22):
One was a pastor that we thought might be coming for an interview back down.
So it was a little disappointing.
But then the very next night, I got a call,
and the person that was supposed to speak this weekend backed out.
And I'm thinking, wow.
And before I went on a walk, Renee says,
do you want to pray after you come back?
(00:43):
I said, sure.
So we prayed, and we prayed that the Lord would give us a sign
to know that he's in control.
And about three hours later, I get a call from Elder Charles Nyacondo.
from camp meeting saying, someone wants to talk to you. And he says, hi, Alan, this is Mike Ortel.
(01:05):
And he says, I've been praying. I just recently retired and I've been praying that the Lord would
find me a place that I can preach. And I said, really? And I had already made a couple of calls
and it wasn't being filled. And I said, you're an answer to prayer. And he said that he would come
this weekend. So anyway, I'm going to invite Elder Ortel up here, and I'll invite you forward.
(01:31):
And the first time I knew about him, he was the ministerial director here at Arizona Conference.
But I found, and our son, Michael Morehouse, who will be next week, is going to preach.
Good name, isn't it? Mike?
Mike.
Anyway,
so I got to know Elder Ortel through that, but I found out a little bit more.
He's been in pastoral ministry for 20 plus years.
(01:55):
In fact, he just recently retired from the Payson and is at Mesa Verde.
Camp Verde.
Camp Verde.
Camp Verde Church.
But I found out this.
He was a conference president for about 11 years in the Northern New England SDA Conference.
And it's where the Adventist movement started back in the 1800s, 1844s.
(02:18):
And he was also a conference youth director.
And like I said, he was a former executive minister here in our conference.
Also, his wife is well known, and that's Lynn, because she's been very active in the women's ministry.
I almost said youth, women's ministry and from the conference level.
(02:39):
And she's been traveling recently.
And then I know that his daughter is here.
Yes.
And so anyway, I want to welcome and thank Elder Ortels in being here with us today and Lynn sharing the message.
And God bless.
Pastor Ortel (02:55):
Well, thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
It's good to be here, and it's good to see probably one of the nicest churches we have in this conference.
And having been ministerial director and working in the office, I got to see scores of churches throughout the conference.
but this church has certainly got to be impressed.
(03:19):
But the only thing I'm not impressed with, what do you suppose that might be?
We have lots of pews.
We have lots of chairs.
But what do you suppose I'm not impressed by?
Where are the people?
And I'm sure you're thinking the same thing.
So I just want you to know God has a plan to do something about filling those seats and those chairs.
(03:43):
and God has promised us enough in the Bible and the spirit of prophecy how that may be done.
And I'm sure you folk are doing it, and I'm waiting for that day.
My wife and I were at a camp meeting back east, and big conference, and we were speaking during the week.
(04:03):
And on the weekend, that Sabbath, they wanted me to speak in a community which has lots of retired Seventh-day Adventists.
And if you've ever heard of Fletcher, North Carolina, or Hendersonville, Asheville, lots of Adventists.
(04:26):
They've moved from the South to come and stay there.
And it's just a very beautiful place.
But I went to that church and found out that I was to speak to the folk that didn't want to go to camp meeting.
And as I got there, it was probably one of the finest, most beautiful, and this is a close second, I will say.
(04:52):
But it's a huge church.
It could hold 1,500 people, maybe 2,000.
And they had remodeled it two years before.
and everywhere I looked, I was just overwhelmed with the beauty of that sanctuary, the outside
look of the church and so on.
And when I got there, there was maybe 150 people that met there.
(05:18):
And after I got done meeting with the people, they had me for lunch and we had a wonderful
time.
But then I learned that in that large church, which has a lot of members, there's hardly anybody that fits the pews.
The numbers weren't matching the people that lived around that were still there and not off at camp meeting,
(05:44):
but on a regular basis, only about 300 people that attend that church that has 1,100 to 2,000 seats for the people.
And I'm not a bearer of bad news, but I want you to know how shocked I was.
And one thing I can say is, if I am shocked and overwhelmed by that,
(06:09):
who do you suppose might be more overwhelmed by the lack of attendance on those churches?
God.
God's heart breaks.
Now, I don't know about you.
If you're a father or mother of some children, and you raise them, you send them off to Adventist schools,
(06:33):
they go off to getting advanced degrees, but when they get to be a certain age, about the time they're having children,
nobody's going to church anymore.
Now, am I talking about a bad dream or a reality that exists?
(06:56):
It's a reality.
It's a reality.
And we might have beautiful schools and colleges and universities,
lovely churches like this one here.
Now, maybe there are so many other Adventist churches around here
that have siphoned them off from here.
But when I went into the front doors last week, I was in awe of the beauty of this place.
(07:23):
And we do have lots of beautiful churches.
But somehow we're not filling the pews.
And that breaks my heart.
Now, if I'm brokenhearted because of something like that, we certainly know God is more so than me.
(07:45):
and all of us. But I'd like to just tell a story that might help to help us realize how we can
fill that void, which God wants us to do. I don't know if you've ever heard of a book,
ever hear of a book called Ministry Healing?
(08:06):
Okay, Ministry Healing. I never knew about that book. It was in my home. My mother took in
foster children, raised them, and they were sent off to Adventist colleges like I was,
but none of us were Christians when we left the house. We had gone to Seventh-day Adventist
(08:28):
churches all our lives. Matter of fact, on Sunday, we would go down just a few houses away. There
was a church. It was called the Free Methodist Church, and we'd get a double dose. We got Jesus
on Sabbath, and we got Jesus in the other church in town,
(08:49):
and Free Methodist Church.
But the thing is, that church is closed.
The Catholic church is closed in our town,
which was the biggest one,
and the town I grew up in, there's one left,
and it's a Methodist church where my mother was raised
and all her family and all my in-laws,
(09:12):
and they've got 12 people going to church on Sunday.
So it's not common to just Seventh-day Adventists
to have nice facilities, have rich heritage,
have colleges and universities and hospitals,
but we don't necessarily have people in the pews.
(09:33):
As I said, there was my brother, Bill,
who he is having a birthday this week up in upstate New York.
My birthday is this next week.
His was just.
And so we're celebrating the birthdays together.
(09:54):
And so all of the Klan, and we probably got 150, 200 people coming to celebrate a birthday.
And that's nice.
But there's more than just celebrating birthdays that gets people into a church or into a religious setting.
(10:15):
But what I'm endeavoring to say is all of us in our house, all the kids, we went off to college and we knew about Jesus and we knew about the Sabbath.
But guess what happened?
All of us really didn't have a relationship with Jesus.
We memorized our memory verses and everything.
(10:39):
And my mother had a little bit of a library in the house.
And this book, which has been rebound since, was sitting there.
And it had plastic all around it.
It had never been open.
And so my mother would take us every week.
(10:59):
And then when we were going to college, we got to go off to Seventh Avenue school.
So all of us kids went off to Seventh-day Adventist schools and got degrees and have great jobs.
And the Lord had blessed us.
But while we were in that college, most of us eventually realized we knew about Jesus, but we didn't know Jesus.
(11:22):
Is there a difference about and knowing?
Yes, a huge difference.
And so eventually I came home that first semester,
and I had fallen in love with Jesus
because I did not know what it was all about.
So anyways, I remember that first semester
(11:44):
going off to Atlantic Union College back in New England.
And when I went there, I was impressed with a Chinese fella
who came from China, and he was all on his own.
He didn't have any money supporting him in school,
so he had to work all the time.
His name was Don Chen.
(12:05):
And Don Chen came to church every week,
and I saw him there in church.
I saw him at all events in the school.
But I noticed that he happened to have a following of people around him.
And I found out eventually that he was the most popular person.
(12:29):
He was the poorest person on campus, had no money.
He was working all the time, but he had more friends than anybody in that school.
Everybody knew who Don Chen was.
I went up to his room about the end of that semester
(12:52):
because I had fallen in love with Jesus,
and I could tell that at another time,
but I'm not going to go into what happened
to help me to fall in love with Jesus.
But I went to his room one night,
and I knocked on his door, and he said,
oh, met me at the door.
And he was in there studying,
and that was study hall time in the dorm,
(13:13):
and I was there.
And he said, oh, please sit down.
on my bed. So I sat down on his bed and I said, now, I'm sorry, Donna, you don't really know. Oh,
I know who you are. You're Mike Ortel. I said, oh, thank you. And you're from New York State.
And I said, that's true. I said, I got a question to ask you. I have noticed being here for
(13:40):
Five months or four months that you're the most popular person here.
You don't have money.
You don't have musical talent.
You don't have this, that, and the other thing.
But yet everybody knows you and they love you.
I said, what in the world made that happen?
(14:03):
And he said, look around behind your bed.
And up behind the bed, which was a piece of paper, and it had, did you ever hear of today, mimeographing back in those days?
Mimeograph.
And if something was mimeographed and you took that paper and smelled it, what did it smell like?
(14:29):
It had an alcohol kind of smell.
And so I said, oh, wow.
But he had lost its smell to a certain degree, but it was kind of a blue ink, a bluish-purplish ink.
And he got up to the wall, stretched over the bed, and he read it to me.
(14:52):
And it says, we shall only pass through this world but once.
I thought, boy, that's pretty good.
And it says this, after that, we shall pass through this world but once, and if there's any good you can do or any kindness you can show any human being, do it now.
(15:16):
Don't defer it nor neglect it, for you'll never pass this way again.
When this day is over with, by the way, will this day ever happen again?
No, it's gone.
It's gone.
Life is lived now.
(15:37):
And I said, wow.
He says, when I read that, I realized I wanted to be that person that it's talking about.
You shall only pass through this world but what?
Once.
And if there's any good you can do or any kindness you can show any human being, do it now.
(16:01):
don't defer it
don't neglect it
for you'll never pass this way again
he says
I got down by my bed
and I gave my heart to Jesus
and I said Lord
I want to be what you want me to be
(16:21):
every day of my life
because this day or that day
will never happen again
but there's people all around me, Lord,
that don't, who needs some good things happen to them.
They need some kindness.
And so I'm asking, Lord,
would you help me to do what that says on the wall?
(16:45):
He got up and he said, Mike,
why I am popular, why everybody knows me,
why life is so much more fun for me than just about anybody else probably on the campus
is because I realize there'll be no other day but today, and I'm only going to live at once.
(17:11):
So if there's any good I can do or any kindness I can show anybody,
let me make an impression of Jesus in their life. What was his life like?
Wherever he went, he was opening doors for people.
Wherever he was, he smiled at people.
(17:32):
And if he didn't know their name, he would say something.
And he would greet them.
You know, in the Bible it says 24 times that we're to greet one another.
And it didn't say in the Bible, only greet the people that you're supposed to greet.
Or the only the people that are of your same nationality, economic growth.
(17:59):
It just says, greet one another
with a holy
hug, a holy kiss, or just greeting them.
And the best way you can greet people is by a touch.
Because of all the senses that we have, and how many senses do we have?
(18:22):
Five, of all the senses that we have,
we hear, we see, we smell, we taste,
but there's one called touch.
And when you touch somebody,
it will leave a longer lasting effect
than anything else you can do.
(18:43):
So when your children come home after school,
what are you supposed to do?
What?
Hug them.
you gotta greet them
what's that greet look like that makes them feel good
remember the little poem
said you know
if there's any good I can do or any kindness
I can show
do something good for them
(19:05):
and make kindness come
through you
to them
he says anybody I see
I wanna do
what Jesus would do
and the Lord tells me
to greet everybody
I don't know about you, I never greeted anybody at that time in my life before,
(19:29):
unless I knew them. And even then I was very shy. But I started watching this guy called Don Chen,
and I said, I don't know anybody. They don't know me. Nobody's saying hi to me. That doesn't,
what do we got? Boy, this guy's always thinking of, I guess bald-headed men think the same.
(19:51):
that's right thank you so much appreciate that
so so Don Chen taught me that every person I saw I ought to greet him
and guess what happened when any time any person I saw from then on
(20:13):
and I said hello or I'd open a door or say wow you got a
I like your clothing.
I'm impressed by whatever.
How long do you think it took
if I say hi to somebody else
that they would say hi to me?
(20:33):
Immediately, wasn't it?
That fella made more friends on that campus
than anybody else
because if he didn't know them,
he greeted them.
And he said something nice.
There's a poem that goes like this.
Not a poem, a story.
that happened out in mid-America.
That's where my wife and I served for a couple of years
(20:55):
and our family.
We loved the people out in Kansas, Nebraska.
That's a conference that I was youth director in
and had a bunch of other hats.
And from one corner of the conference to the other
was the distance between Chicago and Boston.
That's a third of the way across the United States.
(21:18):
Big conference.
So it gave me a lot of people to get acquainted with and greet.
So anyways, the story is that at the 50th wedding anniversary of these people that lived and had a farm,
the whole town was going to put on a, what you call it, a wedding anniversary.
(21:44):
It was a Sunday afternoon.
Everybody came to the park, and there was hundreds of people there
because small towns, you don't meet a lot of people other than that town.
And this guy and his wife were amazing.
They had great kids and great grandkids, and that family was so successful.
Everybody knew about them.
(22:05):
So everybody was invited, bring a potluck dinner and so on.
So the mayor was there, the editor of the newspaper,
And they came up to the couple and they said,
I want you to tell us what kept you together as a husband and wife.
Because,
you know, even
out here in the Tule bushes of Kansas, Nebraska,
(22:33):
there are divorces.
But something about you still love each other, you're happy.
And so the gentleman who was married for 50 years and his wife was there and the editor was taking notes and the mayor was asking the questions,
(22:53):
he went into his pocket and he got a, what kind of a watch that sits in your pocket?
It's got a chain on it.
Pocket watch.
And back in those neck of the woods, pocket watches were very common even when we were there a number of years ago.
He pulled out that pocket watch, and he pushed the button.
(23:14):
The chain was to it, and the lid of the watch flew open.
And there written on the glass of that watch was engraved these words,
Say something nice to Sarah.
(23:36):
His father-in-law wanted to make sure that they didn't get divorced by the time they were 50 years married.
Say something nice to people.
That's what Don Chen was doing.
And everywhere Don Chen was, he had a crowd of people.
Because he opened up the door, he said something nice to everybody, and he tried to be good and kind.
(24:02):
And you know something?
How many times do we growl at each other rather than speak to each other?
How many times do we point out something bad?
You know, you didn't pick up your shoes like I told you yesterday,
so you aren't getting dessert tonight because you didn't obey.
(24:22):
Could we treat our spouses?
Could we treat our kids?
Can we treat our neighbors by not being nice and kind and even touching?
When a baby is born, the most needed thing it needs right at that point is to be what?
Put in a bassinet and go off and make sure it's warm.
(24:46):
Put a bottle in its mouth and just leave it for a couple hours until I have to change the diaper.
And then I do that quick and then I go back, do something else.
What does a baby need to be healthy and live long?
Touch.
Touch.
Not this kind of touch, but this touch.
(25:09):
My daughter and son-in-law have a place up beyond Payson.
Just before you go up the rim to Heber, before you go and you take a right,
before it goes up this beautiful mountain of 4,000 feet,
I go back to a little village back there.
(25:31):
It's just houses.
They don't even call it a village.
But when I wanted to get away, when I was pastoring up there, Sharon,
and I would stay overnight in their house.
And the house was a beautiful cabin, and they had an acre of land,
and next to it was a couple acres of land.
(25:51):
There was a distance between everybody, but there's lots of deer and elk up there.
And if you've ever been there, oh, boy, it's amazing.
Well, I ended up sitting in a chair for my devotional time,
and the window was right here,
(26:13):
and right next to the window is the end of the house,
and it wasn't too far, maybe 20 feet,
and it was a fence between their property and the others.
And every morning when I was staying there for a few days,
and I'd come back even a month later,
and I'd be sitting there reading my Bible and all of that,
(26:35):
and I would notice out there a mama deer would come with their little one.
They would sit right next to the fence, lay down,
and after they laid down, the little one got real close to the mother,
and the mother started licking, licking her little baby.
(27:02):
and I just couldn't take my eyes off.
The love that mama had for that baby.
I mean, you know, it was born a few weeks ago
and she's still licking on the baby.
And the baby was cuddled right up to her.
I come back a couple weeks later,
(27:23):
about the same time in the morning,
Mama and baby fawn would come, and the same thing happened.
And as it got a little bit later, as the little baby started growing,
I noticed that when mama got done licking baby, cleaning her all off, guess what?
(27:44):
The baby started licking mama and cuddling up close to mama.
Do you know the world today is dying because nobody really greets them, cares about them,
touches them, says nice things about them?
(28:06):
You can't even watch television anymore.
And this station is downing the Democrats, and this station is downing the Republicans.
God wants us to go around, the Bible is called edification.
And edification means affirm people.
(28:27):
Say something nice.
Do something good.
And once you give some love, attention, acceptance,
and this was what my sermon was going to be,
but I had to change it after being here last week.
(28:48):
But I could come back someday in the future and give that all of Max the Cap,
because that's a whole story.
I wrote a book on the seven A's to healthy relationships.
Everyone wants attention.
Is that true?
Everybody, yeah.
(29:09):
So I walk into a place and nobody knows me, and I walk in and I'm looking around and so on.
I'm just waiting for somebody to say, well, hi, welcome.
Have a chair right by me.
Let me go get you some water.
Boy, that guy, I like him.
I got the water.
(29:29):
It makes him, me, realize that he cares.
Does everybody want to know that they matter in life?
They have value?
Even an old man like me.
I love it.
(29:53):
Say something nice to Sarah.
Say something nice to the mailman.
Say something nice to the clerk.
Say something nice to a homeless person.
Say something nice to everybody you see.
(30:16):
And if you can't say it, when you come up to a light and you're there, you know you're going to be there for a minute.
You can just sit there and do this.
Or you can sit there and look around.
Oh, if your window can roll down or if it is rolled down and the other one is not,
(30:41):
Just look at the person sitting in that truck or that car.
Five to ten seconds, they're going to look back at you.
Built in us is a sense of somebody staring at us.
And you can mouth it.
(31:02):
You can make gestures.
But let that person know that you care.
that they're special.
They have value.
They matter.
They have worth
because many people,
if not most of the people today,
(31:24):
don't have those positive things coming at them.
God wants us to do that.
Just got a card this past week
because of my birthday from a lady.
And my wife and I were young.
Our daughter hadn't even been born yet or just had been born.
(31:47):
And we learned that there was a couple that had little children on the next road from where we were living in the country.
And they never would come to church.
So I went over to their house one time and have to get by the farm dogs that will bite and bite your leg off if you aren't watching out.
(32:10):
So I got to meet them, and I said, I invite you into church.
Come to church.
Oh, yeah, we heard there was a new pastor.
Yeah, just kind of a growly conversation.
None of this, wow, good to have you around, pastor, and you're a neighbor of ours.
That'd be nuts.
None of that stuff.
It was just coal wall.
(32:31):
Well, I started praying for this couple.
And I said, Lord, they're not far from us.
They leased around the books of the church.
So I said, Lord, somehow make it happen.
Well, one day I happened to go to the hardware store in our little town,
(32:54):
which they were about two miles from it.
And I was about three miles away from that hardware store, maybe four.
And I walked in, and there he was, the husband and the dad of that little family.
I said, hey, Bill, it's good to see you.
When he first saw me, he kind of wanted to get lost in the aisle.
(33:16):
I went, so good to see you.
And so I had a little talk.
And you don't lick people like a mother does to her fawn.
But I wanted to send out vibes of called goodness and kindness and just being nice.
(33:39):
I said, man, so good to see you.
And hope again I can see you folk again.
You're always welcome at church.
They didn't come to church, but we got a phone call one day.
And they said it's blackberry season.
And blackberries are big, bigger than your thumb.
(33:59):
And if you want to come over to our place,
we're going to go out and pick some blackberries in the morning.
So we ended up, Lynn and I were so excited,
and we went over to their place,
and we all went out picking blackberries.
Guess what?
(34:19):
We couldn't thank them enough for the blackberries.
that was 50 years ago, literally.
I got this card in the mail from her,
and it opened it up.
Remember, this is not me.
(34:40):
Who was I praying to?
Jesus.
Jesus can send people to you or you to other people.
Just greet them.
If nothing else, just greet them and be nice.
Be a Don Chen.
And so there it was.
We end up making friends with them.
(35:01):
I get this card later, 50 years ago.
Later, she wrote in there, she says,
Mike, thank you for encouraging me to get a job cooking at the camp.
My wife and I had left that church and that district,
(35:22):
and we went to other conferences.
We came back as a youth director of upstate New York,
and I needed a cook.
And I remember this lady not only knew how
and where the big blackberries were,
but she could make a good blackberry pie.
And I knew she was a good cook.
(35:43):
So I asked her, would you be willing to be our cook at camp?
And she said yes.
So in her card, she says, thank you for inviting me to be the cook at camp.
And after you left, I went back home, and it got out that I was cooking during the summer at this camp up in the Adirondack Mountains near Lake Placid, New York.
(36:17):
And so the local school district asked if she would come and be a cook.
Well, after that, a bigger school district came along and said,
would you be the head cook?
And she wrote all this out.
And then a college found out that she was a great cook.
(36:37):
And not only is she a good cook, but she knew how to be a mom of deer
and lick on the children.
it. Every child that goes through that line needs some attention and something nice said about them.
And so she not only cooked, but she made cookies and she let the kids know that these cookies are
(37:05):
for you. And I learned you want this kind and that way. She didn't stand behind the counter,
but she took a step where the kids were and loved up on them.
She then became, for this college,
and then she had four things she wanted,
and the biggest one, I forgot what it was.
And she said, you gave me a stepping stone to get started in life.
(37:35):
She says, and God then led to different stones through life,
and I got higher and higher and higher.
And I am so grateful for that.
This woman, wherever she walks,
if anybody knows who she is, Pat Aubin,
oh, Pat, how are you?
Because Pat, what I gave her was a little stepping stone.
(38:00):
The Lord gave her lots of other opportunities
because it was her personality.
One of the churches I just left is up in Camp Verde.
And Camp Verde has a huge, one of the biggest food banks in the state of Arizona.
They bring a tractor trailer in every day.
I mean, every week when they have the day.
(38:21):
And during the week, the church members and the community are gathering all kinds of food and things.
They got a big free thrift store.
And that thing is growing like this and like that.
And eventually, it's right beside the church.
and they got to be interviewed,
and every week they got to go through all these lines in the buildings,
(38:42):
and it's getting so big, and money is coming in from other churches
and coming from the government, and people are making out checks,
and people are coming to church.
And I said, why are you really coming here and willing to stay?
I said, what time did you get here?
And it opens at 9 o'clock.
I got here at 5.
I was the first one at 5.30, and the other one behind her says,
(39:06):
I came a half hour later and I was 10th in line.
But I said, why are you coming here?
What kind of food are you looking for?
I just want to meet somebody who believes they love me.
(39:27):
Don Chen loved everybody.
How did he do it?
By touching them, by saying nice things to them,
by opening up doors,
by when he hears that they need something,
he finds something.
Nobody paid him for this.
Became the most famous guy.
This gal became such a famous cook,
(39:47):
it was far more than the food she did.
And what was the best thing about
what's going on at Camp Verde right now?
They said, we come here for a hug.
we come here for a compliment
because we know
(40:08):
that somebody loves us
I got to conclude with this story
I'm sorry I'm going late
but didn't even realize
what time I got started
but let me tell one more story
I've got lots of them
there's Bible text behind
everything I'm talking about
remember the Lord tells us
to one another
(40:29):
one another
says love one another
15 times in the Bible.
What does that mean?
Touch them.
Even your voice touches them, right?
What did AT&T say?
Reach out and what?
Touch somebody.
Well, they're a thousand miles away.
They can't touch your skin,
but they hear love coming through
(40:49):
those little vibrations on the phone.
There was a lady.
she was well i'll start this way the state of maryland was trying to figure out how they could
(41:12):
get rid of all of the stuff that was in going on in the school system i read this with zig ziglar
years ago. The story true. So the state was trying to figure out why all of these people in the slums,
in the ghettos, never go anywhere. They never get out of the ghetto. They go through school,
(41:33):
they go right back, and they steal, they cheat, they're into trouble, or they're lazy just waiting
for somebody to take care of them. And they said, we got to stop this thing. We can't afford this.
So they sat down with these kids and got their names,
and they found out that everyone graduated.
(41:57):
They didn't go anywhere in life.
And so the state hired one of their universities
who had lots of class members,
and they wanted each class member had a pack of names.
they had to go and visit these people
(42:20):
who ended up being the same.
But this is a different same.
Out of one school district,
there were kids that went on to college,
marriages stayed intact,
and they had money, they did things,
and they went back to the ghettos
(42:42):
and they started to make the ghettos better than they were.
And so they had them go and find those kids.
And they found them.
And when they found them, they asked them,
what made you go to college, that you're still this,
and you're not like everybody else in the ghetto?
(43:02):
And every one of them would say, there was a teacher.
There was a teacher.
There was a teacher.
And when the class all got together after going and finding these people,
they sat down and they say, where is this teacher?
(43:25):
They found this old lady who now has past teaching age.
They found her, and they said, all these kids that came in your class,
what did you do every week?
You did something in your room like Don Chen did on campus.
(43:46):
What did you do?
She says, all I did was love them.
I said, what did that look like?
It said what this book says in page 143.
Christ's method alone will bring true success in reaching people.
(44:10):
Jesus mingled among men as one desiring their good.
He sympathized with these people.
In other words, if they had bad days, he cried with them.
That's what it tells you on that page.
He ministered to these kids' needs, these adult needs.
(44:34):
And so this school teacher, who wasn't a Seventh-day Adventist,
but followed what Ellen White says is what will make you different than anybody else where you live.
So he ends up, they bring her among the class, and she just says, I just loved them.
What did you do?
(44:55):
When they came in and they were crying, I put my arm around them and I cried with them.
When they came into school, so excited, something great, happy with.
She says, I got it.
I gave them a hug.
I gave them a high five.
I let them know I'm happy with you.
(45:16):
That's found in, I think it's chapter 12, verse 15.
Weep those with weep and rejoice with those who what?
Rejoice.
God wants us to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.
She says, all I did was love these kids.
When they had a birthday, we had a real party in our classroom.
(45:39):
And when somebody was hurting, we all consoled them.
The world right around us is no different than it was back in her day.
When these kids got married or graduated from college or whatever,
(46:00):
She stayed in touch with these kids because when they moved from third grade into fourth grade,
if they had a good day, they went back and told the teacher because they knew she'd hug them.
And if they had something bad, they'd go see this teacher because they know they'd get a hug.
And some tears.
(46:20):
The world today is crying for people to love like Jesus did.
That woman did it.
When they graduated, when they got married, when something went right or wrong, she said,
I was invited to be there at that occasion.
(46:42):
I sat right by mother.
I sat right by father.
I was a part of their family.
And the world today is crying for somebody to make them become part of our family.
That's what's happening up at Camp Verde.
I get calls. I haven't been up there in five months, but I get all these calls. Well,
(47:05):
this person wants you to baptize them. These people want you to marry them. Would you have
this one's funeral? And I'm not talking about just almost nothing. This is real. People want
somebody to love them. And I believe in your neighborhood, if you say, Lord,
I give you everything I got.
(47:28):
This little book says 143.
You will be amazed at how
when you become like Jesus to people,
how you will feel like Jesus.
Jesus wept, and you wept, you weep.
But Jesus rejoiced.
Philippians 4.4, what does it say?
(47:49):
Rejoice in the Lord how often?
And again, I say what?
Rejoice.
And every verse afterward is talking about
how we're to relate to everybody.
God, love me so I can love other people.
Why don't we find God's love
because maybe we're not wanting God to love us.
(48:12):
Take time with him every morning
and ask him to change your life.
And I hope when I come back next time,
whenever that might be,
and I hope you get a good pastor,
I'm praying to that end
because this church could grow like wildfire.
It's beautiful.
And people have treated me so kind
(48:33):
since I walked through the door today.
Greeter, what was the gal's name of the greeter today?
What's her name?
Well, maybe all of those names.
All I know is, man, she gave me the hug,
and I said something.
(48:54):
she come over and gave me a hug and handshake
and all that sort of stuff meant something to me,
like I want to go back to this church again.
I'm going to have a word of prayer,
but I also want you folk to pray with me
(49:15):
what is said in a verse.
In Philippians 4, chapter 13 says,
I can do all things through what? Christ to what? So I can change if I'm not like John Chen
or this school teacher. That's what it's saying. And then in verse 19, it says,
(49:38):
my God shall supply all your, according to his what? Riches in glory. God's got storehouses of
riches and glory that he wants to give you so you can be like him, that when you turn around,
people say, wow, there's the person that loves me. Let's have a prayer. Heavenly Father,
(50:03):
I thank you so much that the Bible is full of stories of people who were like Don Chen,
Like this Baltimore school teacher, like other stories that I can tell time and time again,
which may be just unbelievable what people don't have to push Jesus, but they are Jesus everywhere they go.
(50:31):
Everybody wants somebody to touch them, to say nice things about them.
Lord, time is passing by quick.
And the older we get in this old world,
the more people are hungry for somebody to come into their life.
So I pray, Jesus, that each of us will pray that prayer
(50:56):
and claim that promise.
My God shall supply every need that I have
out of his abundance in heaven
so that I can be like Jesus walking on the face of this earth.
Thank you, Lord, and
help us to be like you.
In Jesus' name, amen.
(51:43):
Amen.
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