World Missions

Though statistics and maps can be a great place to start, The Yes Effect reveals that true transformation begins when we restart our hearts - getting in sync with God's tenderness toward the oppressed and regaining compassion for the lost.In The Yes Effect, Dr. Bush shares his own story as well as inspiring stories of individuals and organizations around the world whose acts of love and justice are bringing hope and transformation in places of misery and immobility.

On August 4, 1940, an unassuming American journalist named Varian Fry made his way to Marseilles, France, carrying in his pockets the names of approximately 200 artists and intellectuals - all enemies of the new Nazi regime. As a volunteer for the Emergency Rescue Committee, Fry’s mission was to help these refugees flee to safety, then return home two weeks later. As more and more people came to him for assistance, however, he realized the situation was far worse than anyone in America had suspected.

Stars glittered over the restlessly undulating waters of the North Sea late on the evening of May 10th, 1941, as a lone twin-propeller Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighter bearing the Iron Cross emblem of the Nazi Luftwaffe came in sight of the low, dark line of land along the horizon that marked where Scotland lay.

On August 12, 1944, Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., heir to one of America's most glamorous fortunes, son of the disgraced former ambassador to Great Britain, and big brother to freshly minted PT-109 hero JFK, hoisted himself up into a highly modified B-24 Liberator bomber. The munitions he was carrying that day were 50 percent more powerful than TNT.

The Book of Acts is a great story of the early church Jesus started and left in the tiny nation of Israel. He left his unlikely group of disciples with the enormous task of spreading what they knew about Jesus and their experience with him to the entire world. They were successful and not only reached their world, but generations into the future. Approximately 2,000 years after he returned to Heaven, the church exists in places like South America, Asia, and the remotest islands of the Earth.

Church leaders and pastors can sometimes struggle with a sudden increase in church attendance. And yet, what if the church in one nation is experiencing toward a million people each month being added? What would be the challenges? What about unity, communication, or discipleship? What are the church models that are applied to cope with revival and also in facing daily persecution?

At 13 years old, Singing Wind is captured in her Lakota village by a band of enemy Pawnee who take her as a virgin sacrifice. She escapes and wanders the Great Plains alone. How long can she survive?

In Who Will Stay?, veteran missionary and church planter D.W. Hansen explains how the true power to change lives is found in community. Weaving together stories from the mission field and teaching from the Bible, he paints a picture of the house that Jesus is building: a safe, thriving, love-filled place where God’s transformational work can flourish.

Staying on in Northern Ireland as a civilian after years of working on undercover missions against terrorists, Rob eventually gains employment in Bristol, undertaking security work, but things don’t work out and Rob ends up living in a squat. After a job offer from an old colleague, Rob heads to London to work in close-protection security for some of Hollywood’s royalty and later becomes involved in the rescue of some very well-connected people from a dangerous religious cult. Rob’s life seems to be getting back on track. But Rob’s work soon becomes more covert.

On an inky moonlit night, in Dupax Del Norte, an Igorot man would share with me the legend of the Ayturi tree, the symbol of the kings of Ituy. A Tuy was the Igorot king who embodied the ideal of the deep-rooted Ayturi tree. My religion sent me to Ituy to convert the Igorot and Cagayanese people to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, it was my adventure to Ituy that converted me to the way of the Tuy.