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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

Yesterday’s Experience... EXPIRED

Well, have you ever been really, really hungry?

I've mentioned it several times, but I had the experience to go as a student missionary to Pohnpei.

And I remember on the time after that, we had just gotten back, and I was going through Southern, and I was kind of going to withdrawals because Pohnpei is out in Micronesia and the water is just blue and clear and you can see forever.

And so I love to scuba dive and to snorkel and to be in the ocean and to see all these fish and creatures and so I was going through withdrawals because there's not many places in Collegedale where you can go on a reef and just snorkel.

And so I ended up connecting with a friend of mine his name was Wes Hall and he served as a student missionary at the same time, except he was in Belize, because Pohnpei is so far away.

And so Wes and I started talking, and he was going through the same withdrawals that I was for clear water and for the ocean and all these things.

And so we started planning, Wes and I, we said, why don't we go down to Belize?

Do you have, you have to have some hookup, right?

Is there some hookup, some place we can stay?

Oh, well, there was actually, I know the guy at a dive shop there really well.

And as we processed all of this, we ended up going down to Belize.

We found some lady that we stayed with, some older gal.

She says, I'll put you up in a room in my house and I'll feed you all the meals that you want to for 200 a person for the month.

For college students, you're speaking my language.

And so we were off and We got there and the water was great, the snorkeling was great, we got to go on these dive boats that weren't full whenever we wanted to, we didn't have to pay anything for diving, which was very expensive.

So we just had a wonderful time, except for the housing arrangements.

Now, again, we were in college, so we were too cheap to do anything different.

There was this whole slew of very nice, plush places we could have stayed.

I don't know if we could have afforded any of it.

But we were too cheap to do anything different than what we'd already arranged.

And the bed was nice, you know, the room we were sharing this room together, Wes and I, and that was all fine.

We described that we were vegetarian and she knew a little bit of English.

And so, you know, no carne or whatever we said, I don't know.

And so she was trying to prepare a certain meals, and it was just completely hit or miss.

I mean, sometimes it would be something worthwhile.

And sometimes it was beans and rice and we would just scarf that up.

And other times it was, I don't know what it was other times.

Sometimes there'd be a bunch of vegetables and she had this vegetable plate to go on top of the beans and rice, almost like a haystack.

We're like, keep this coming, this is wonderful.

And she'd leave it out there on the table and we'd come back for supper and it hasn't been touched.

Nobody's put anything in the fridge until the flies have been laying on the avocado and they're brown, and we're thinking, oh, what a waste.

So we started to learn some of those things.

But I remember 1 particular evening, which was kind of par for the course, she fed us something that I thought was pretty good.

It was so good that I remember going back, actually Wes went back first, to get some more out of the pot.

He says, why don't you go have some more?

And I don't mean to offend anybody, but this is not part of my culture at all.

But in the pot was some chicken in a form I'm not used to.

I didn't see any of the chicken in there exactly, but I did see the scratchers in the pot as if it was some kind of a seasoning leaf or something.

And you can see, you know how chicken feet have all these like finger...

Anyway, I don't need to get all the fingernails, all it was all there in the pot Suffice it to say I didn't have seconds and Over the month that we were there.

I Lost in 1 month and I wasn't chunky I Lost 10 pounds.

Now we could have gone to some of these restaurants, but we were too cheap.

Sometimes people ask about my student missionary experience and tell us how was it, and they want you to sum it up in 1 sentence, which is impossible.

But in a word, how was your mission experience?

I mean, we'd spend our whole stipend on food, we'd eat it every month and we were still hungry.

It seemed like I went almost a year without feeling full.

This afternoon you're expecting, You're anticipating, I can tell, You're expecting to be full.

I remember playing Saturday afternoons, I wasn't full.

There's something about food, there's something about hunger, and we can put it off for a time.

But it just kind of continues to grow, doesn't it?

Until more and more and more you're hungry, you've got to find some food, you've got to find something.

As we move into this new year, what are you hunger for?

Is there a hunger in your heart, a hunger in your soul?

What are the non-negotiables, if you will?

Jesus himself said some of the very first words out of his mouth in terms of this Sermon on the Mount to the whole crowd, to the masses, he's making all of these huge statements now for the first time in front of this large audience and he says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.

Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness this morning?

This morning I want to look at a time when the Israelites experienced a spiritual high, if you will.

God was with them, he had miraculously delivered them.

In fact, just 3 days prior, there was this incredible Red Sea experience.

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Yesterday’s Experience... EXPIRED

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