Your Thoughts Are Loud. God’s Word Is Louder.

Eleven percent of kids between the ages of 3 and 17 currently have a clinical anxiety diagnosis. Among adolescents 12–17, that number jumps to 16 percent. And those are just the ones who’ve been diagnosed.

If you’re a parent right now, none of that surprises you.

On a recent episode of the 226 NextGen Podcast, Youth Pastor Garrett McCord sat down with Executive Pastor Daniel Justice and Kids Ministry Director Teresa Moen to talk honestly about something most of us feel but don’t always have language for — the way anxiety has quietly become the water our kids (and we) are swimming in.

This isn’t a clinical conversation. It’s a pastoral one. And it starts with something Daniel said early in the episode that’s worth sitting with:

“Being anxious is not failure. Feeling distracted is not failure. Feeling stressed is not failure. Those are actually the kindness of God raising a flag — there’s something here we need to address.”

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We Live in the Anxious Age

The numbers are real, but the experience is more real. Teresa has been in kids ministry for nearly 20 years. She’s seeing anxiety in first graders now in ways she never did before. Daniel works with adults and watches smart, faithful people get paralyzed by decisions they once would have made without a second thought. Garrett sees it in students every week — kids who know what they’re supposed to believe but whose anxious thoughts feel louder than the voice of God.

Daniel doesn’t blame the pandemic for everything. His read: the pandemic didn’t cause much of anything. It exposed and accelerated what was already there. Isolation made fears bigger. Social media poured fuel on it. And now we’re raising a generation — and living as adults — in a culture where everything feels urgent, every decision feels high-stakes, and the least little thing can make you crumble.

One thing worth naming clearly: feeling anxious doesn’t mean you’re a bad Christian. Teresa put it simply — people are already struggling with anxiety, then add a second layer of guilt, wondering why Jesus isn’t making it go away. That compounding of anxiety plus spiritual shame is its own trap. The goal of this conversation is to help dismantle it.

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So What Do You Actually Do?

Daniel offered a three-part framework — not a formula, but a direction. A way of actually using God’s Word to do what we say it does.

1. Slow down.

This one’s first because nothing else works without it. When we say “go to God’s Word and it’ll quiet the noise,” we don’t mean open your Bible app during a 90-second gap in your morning. We mean actually carving out time, removing distractions, and being present.

Daniel’s practical advice: get a physical Bible. Not your phone. The thing you use to read your Bible is also the thing your notifications live on, and you will lose that battle. Garrett mentioned an app called Brick — a tool that physically turns off your phone for a set window of time. Teresa turns hers off. The method doesn’t matter. The point is: you cannot quiet the noise if you never actually get quiet.

This isn’t legalism about Bible-reading habits. It’s an honest acknowledgment that quick fixes don’t address heart issues. A verse-of-the-day habit isn’t going to do what we’re asking Scripture to do. We have to actually change our rhythms.

2. Ask better questions of the text.

Reading Scripture to check a box is different from reading Scripture to be shaped by it. Daniel’s framework for getting more out of any passage — not just the obvious anxiety verses, but any passage:

• What does this tell me about who God is?
• What does this reveal about my own heart?
• Is there a truth here I’m not currently believing or applying?

Garrett shared something from his own sermon prep that landed: when he was studying Jesus appearing first to the women at the tomb, he just started asking questions. Why the women? What does that say about God’s heart? And out of a passage he could have read and moved past in thirty seconds, a whole theology of God’s care for the overlooked opened up.

That’s the move. The Bible was never meant to be skimmed. It’s meant to shape you. And nothing shapes you that you don’t spend time in.

3. Talk back to your thoughts with Scripture.

This is where it gets practical in a specific way. You cannot use Scripture to combat anxiety if you don’t know Scripture. But knowing random verses isn’t quite the point either — the goal is knowing the lies you’re prone to believe and having Scripture ready to answer them.

Garrett brought up a 4th-century monk named Evagrius who went into the desert, cataloged every lie he felt the enemy whisper at him, and then searched Scripture for an answer to each one. He called it a handbook for combating demons. Garrett calls it the most practical spiritual warfare resource most people have never heard of. His suggestion for students — and honestly, for all of us: make your own version. When you notice anxiety rising, ask why. Is it a need for control? Fear of failure? Misplaced hope? Name the lie underneath it, then find the Scripture that answers it directly.

If you’re new to Scripture and don’t know where to start, openbible.info lets you search by topic and returns a list of relevant verses. Start there, then work to understand those verses in context.

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What Scripture Doesn’t Do

Daniel closed the conversation with something that might be the most important thing in the whole episode: Scripture won’t make anxiety disappear.

We live in a fallen world. There are things worth being afraid of. Things that are genuinely uncertain. Scripture doesn’t erase any of that. What it does is give you a quiet confidence — a settled awareness that there is something bigger than what you’re facing — so that you can navigate the hard things in healthy ways rather than being crushed by them.

And it only works if it’s a habit. Not a one-time thing. Not a crisis resource you pull out when things get bad—a consistent, practiced, daily returning to the voice of God over your own thoughts.

Garrett ended with Paul’s thorn. We don’t know what it was. We know Paul asked God to take it away, and God said no, not to be cruel, but to build dependence and humility. If you’ve prayed for the anxiety to lift and haven’t gotten a yes yet, hear this: God is not distant. He is not ignoring you. If your struggle is pushing you back to him, it is working exactly as he intends. As Garrett put it, borrowing from Spurgeon: “I’ve learned to kiss the wave that crashes me against the Rock of Ages.”

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Listen to the Full Conversation

Episode 014 of the 226 NextGen Podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

If something in this episode connects and you want to talk it through — how to actually use Scripture this way, where to start, what this looks like in community — reach out. Garrett, Daniel, and Teresa are here and would love to sit down with you.

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Share This Episode

Know a parent in the thick of early childhood? Send them this episode. Small decisions made early often shape the long road ahead.

Let’s raise the next generation with wisdom and courage.

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Three FBC Boerne members traveled to the Middle East with one purpose: to strengthen believers who had almost nothing — and came back changed by what they found.

In part two of this conversation, Kris Campbell, Lori Rogers, and Heather Austin share the moments that stayed with them. Lori sat with new believers who had traveled 12 hours to reach an airport — people who had never owned a Bible and were writing down everything they heard. Kris worked alongside young men living in metal shipping containers in the desert, men who face daily persecution and still show up with open hands. Heather found herself in a refugee camp with hundreds of Yazidi children, five team members, and no shared language — and watched God close the distance anyway.

What strikes you when listening to all three accounts isn’t the hardship. It’s the contrast.

These believers have almost nothing by any Western measure — no furniture, limited water, no heat in the winter, metal walls, floor gaps, and cold air coming through. And yet, as Lori put it, they’re ready. They’re willing. And it convicts me. What the American church often treats as optional — prayer, sacrifice, surrender — these believers treat as air. They traveled across borders for the first time in their lives. They came with nothing but a hunger to know Jesus and bring him back to their families.

That’s not a story about the mission field. That’s a mirror.

The team also reflected on what it means to participate in a mission without getting on a plane. Heather laid out the five habits of a global Christian: give, go, send, pray, and mobilize — and the FBC Missions team is actively building infrastructure for all five. Perspectives classes launch in January. Ten mission trips are available in 2026. Sending teams exist for every one of them.

The question the episode keeps circling back to is the one Lori named most directly: We have it so easy. And yet — are we willing?

Sacrifice, it turns out, isn’t the cost of following Jesus. It might be the point.

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Listen to the full conversation on the SO THAT Missions Podcast, Episode 85, Part 2: available below, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.

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Go, Pray, Give, Welcome

These stories are one expression of what it looks like to take the Great Commission seriously — not just as a concept, but as a way of living. At FBC Boerne, we believe every follower of Christ is called to play a part: to go, to pray, to give, to welcome those who’ve been brought close. Faith is doing all of it.

If her story is stirring something in you — questions, curiosity, maybe even a little fear — that might be worth paying attention to.

Interested in learning more about missions at FBC Boerne? Visit fbcboerne.org/missions to learn about upcoming trips and the Perspectives class.

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There are parts of the world where saying the name of Jesus out loud can cost you your family. Your freedom. Your life.

Chris Campbell, Lori, and Heather knew that before they went. They went anyway.

This fall, fourteen people from FBC Boerne and partner churches across the country traveled on a Middle East mission trip with the mission organization To Every People. They didn’t go as a group. They split into three teams and spread out across three locations, each team with a different assignment, working alongside local partners who have been quietly, faithfully, and at great personal risk carrying the Gospel into some of the darkest places on earth.

This is Part 1 of their story.

Lori: Equipping the Brand-New Believer

Lori’s team of three worked with a local couple who do something extraordinary. They gather new believers — people who have come to trust Jesus from Muslim backgrounds, from atheism, from no background at all — and spend a week in intensive discipleship. No Bibles. It’s illegal to have one where they live. These are people who believe Jesus died for their sins but have never read a single chapter of Scripture.

The training is called Foundations, and it does exactly what it sounds like: it gives new believers the whole story of the Bible in one arc, from creation to fall to redemption, showing them that God has been working to bring people back to himself from the very beginning. Lori’s team came alongside that couple and co-taught the material with them, pouring into a fresh cohort of brand-new believers over four intensive days.

The deeper goal isn’t just discipleship. It’s church planting. The couple trains believers to go back home and start something — a house church, a growth group, a car church. Lori describes the Gospel spreading across the region “like wildfire.”

“Our partner told us,” Lori said, “‘You have Jesus in your heart and you brought him to this place, this dark place. You can’t discount the importance of just being here.'”

Heather: The Ministry of Presence in the Refugee Camps

Heather’s team of five went to refugee camps. Their assignment was focused on children — a population the local partners haven’t yet had the resources or access to serve. Over three days, across four camps, they interacted with more than 400 kids.

There were significant restrictions. They couldn’t use Jesus’ name. They couldn’t preach. What they could do was show up with the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, a few relay games, some crafts, and a bracelet-making activity — and love kids who have grown up in a desert with no home to go back to and very little hope of one.

“Camp life there is just dry,” Heather said. “Their physical surroundings are dry. And it’s spiritually dry. They’ve lived through persecution, through ISIS, through losing everything. There’s no hope. So just for us to come in with the light of Christ, we just prayed that they felt the love of God while we were there.”

They couldn’t say everything they wanted to say. But they carried Jesus with them into that place. As Lori put it from across the table: “I know those kids felt the love of God.”

Chris: Walking Young Men Through the Life of David

Chris Campbell is a fifteen-year FBC Boerne member who spent years on the sidelines of missions before taking Perspectives in 2024. Since then, he’s been on three trips in eighteen months.

For this trip, Chris and a team of four men worked with a group of young male believers — brand-new followers of Jesus with minimal training. Over two days, they walked through the life of David: the victories, the failures, the grief, the worship. They built the curriculum themselves.

They expected a quiet room. They got the opposite. The men opened up, shared stories, and talked about miracles they had personally experienced. One man described waking up one morning — still a Muslim at the time — and feeling led to go to church. He found one, attended, and came home to find that something catastrophic had happened while he was away. Had he stayed, he would not have survived.

Dreams, visions, miraculous protection. Chris said it plainly: “While these countries may want Jesus out of there, Jesus is not going to be thwarted.”

Why This Matters

The Middle East is one of the fastest-growing regions for the Gospel on the planet. Not because Western missionaries flooded in, but because God has been showing up in the dreams of Muslims, in the courage of local partners, and in the quiet multiplication of house churches, car churches, and underground gatherings of people who have given up everything to follow Jesus.

FBC Boerne gets to be a small part of that. Fourteen people. Three teams. A handful of days. Thousands of years of kingdom work woven together in a million decisions that brought everyone to the same room.

Chris, Lori, and Heather came home changed. Part 2 of their conversation — with more personal highlights and a closer look at what God is doing in the region — is coming soon.

In the meantime, if something in this story has stirred something in you, that’s worth paying attention to. Reach out to anyone on the FBC Missions team, or consider signing up for the next Perspectives course. The harvest is real, and there is room for you in it.

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Listen to the full conversation on the SO THAT Missions Podcast, Episode 84, Part 1: available below, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen.

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Go, Pray, Give, Welcome

These stories are one expression of what it looks like to take the Great Commission seriously — not just as a concept, but as a way of living. At FBC Boerne, we believe every follower of Christ is called to play a part: to go, to pray, to give, to welcome those who’ve been brought close. Faith is doing all of it.

If her story is stirring something in you — questions, curiosity, maybe even a little fear — that might be worth paying attention to.

Interested in learning more about missions at FBC Boerne? Visit fbcboerne.org/missions to learn about upcoming trips and the Perspectives class.

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Subscribe to the SO THAT Missions Podcast | FBC Boerne

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When Faith got on a bus headed to the airport for her trip to the Middle East, she wasn’t sure she was ready. Fear had been building for days — not the kind you dismiss, but the kind that makes you look for an exit.

She found one thing that helped: Philippians 4:6-7. Peace that passes understanding isn’t a phrase to her. It’s a testimony.

That’s where Part 3 of Faith’s story on the So That Missions Podcast begins.

Joy as a Compass

Before she left, a friend told her she felt like God wanted Faith to experience joy on that trip. Faith didn’t know what to make of it — until she got on the bus and felt it before they’d even left the parking lot.

That theme runs through the entire conversation. Brittany walks Faith through a simple exercise: ask God to bring to mind a moment from childhood when He was present. For Faith, it was racing her brothers down a hill — winning — and the pure, uncomplicated joy of it. What she heard from that memory: He wants me to have joy from now on.

She had just been sharing with another group that morning about anxiety over her future. The timing wasn’t coincidental.

Scripture as a First Response

Faith describes a season of anxiety, driving to a job she didn’t love — 30-minute commutes where dread of being late felt unbearable even when she left early. Her response wasn’t a playlist or a podcast. She memorized Psalm 23 and recited it until the fear left.

She still knows it by heart. Brittany asks her to share it in the episode. It’s worth the listen.

Open Hands

The most grounded moment in the conversation comes near the end. Faith talks about holding plans with an open hand — not because mission work is unpredictable (though it is), but because she’s learned that God’s plan is better than hers.

“If I can go, why wouldn’t I?” she says. It’s not bravado. It’s just honest math.

For Parents

One of the most practical threads in this episode is a conversation about raising children who love Scripture. Faith’s answer is disarmingly simple: find them a mentor who isn’t you. Not because parents don’t matter — they do — but because kids hear things differently from someone outside the home.

She also names what got her into the Bible: a color-coding system for her highlighters, a book of Revelation now full of cross-references in a pink she didn’t think she’d need, and a Psalm she’s carried into anxiety and come out the other side.

Listen

Episode 83: From Fear to Peace — Faith, Identity, and Calling (Part 3) is available now on the So That Missions Podcast wherever you listen. Start with Part 1 if you haven’t — you won’t regret it.

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Go, Pray, Give, Welcome

Faith’s story is one expression of what it looks like to take the Great Commission seriously — not just as a concept, but as a way of living. At FBC Boerne, we believe every follower of Christ is called to play a part: to go, to pray, to give, to welcome those who’ve been brought close. Faith is doing all of it.

If her story is stirring something in you — questions, curiosity, maybe even a little fear — that might be worth paying attention to.

Interested in learning more about missions at FBC Boerne? Visit fbcboerne.org/missions to learn about upcoming trips and the Perspectives class.

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Subscribe to the SO THAT Missions Podcast | FBC Boerne

Never miss an episode. Subscribe on your favorite platform:

She Prayed for Boldness at 13. Now She’s Going to the Ends of the Earth.

A young woman from FBC Boerne is learning that her identity as a person of prayer and her calling to the nations aren’t two separate things — they’re the same thing.

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She didn’t want to pray out loud. Not even close.

A year ago, Faith — a high schooler at FBC Boerne — would have told you that praying in front of other people was one of her biggest fears. Now she’s the one saying, “Yeah, I’ll pray.” Out loud. With people she’s just met.

That shift didn’t happen overnight. It started with a prayer she prayed when she was 13, a desperate, honest ask: God, give me the boldness to accept you, because I can’t do it on my own. He answered it. And He’s still answering it — one mission trip at a time.

From Mexico to the Middle East

In the past year, Faith has gone to Mexico twice on mission with FBC Boerne’s youth team and returned just weeks ago from a trip to a refugee camp in the Middle East — a region most people her age only know from news headlines or history class.

She almost didn’t go. Someone told her it wasn’t a good idea. Her family made nervous jokes about war zones. And honestly? She understood why. But somewhere in a Perspectives class at FBC Boerne, she heard a missionary describe a trip that was “a little out of the normal,” and something in her stirred. She walked up to a team leader and said, Hey — if you’re ever going somewhere like that, can you let me know?

A week later, she got the call.

What She Found There

The team arrived in a large Middle Eastern city and made their way to a refugee camp — tarps draped to form makeshift homes, dry ground, no jobs, few fathers. Mostly mothers and children who had fled a violent government and were now living in a place where, as one local described it, “there is no hope, there is no life.”

They came prepared for 40 to 100 kids. Two hundred and fifty showed up.

“I just had this overwhelming peace,” Faith said. She later connected it to Philippians 4:6–7 — the peace that surpasses understanding, the kind that guards your heart when everything around you is uncertain.

The team ran what amounted to a VBS — coloring pages, bracelets with the gospel woven into each color, a simple retelling of Jesus feeding the 5,000 using a folded paper that opened into a crowd. When the kids unfolded it, their eyes lit up. Many of them had never seen a coloring page before.

They had to be careful. Camp leadership was watching. The bracelets’ colors — including one representing the blood of Christ — had to be explained softly, quietly, in ways that didn’t set off alarms. The people they were serving believed Jesus was a prophet, not the Son of God. Every word mattered.

And yet.

When the team left on their final day, camp leadership — the people controlling access to the camp — pulled them aside. Are you Christians? they asked.

Yes.

You are welcome to come back. Any time.

On the spot, a team member asked: Can we come back for Christmas?

Yes.

“We still saw God move,” Faith said. “Even when everything was restricted. Even when we thought there was no way.”

Prayer as Identity

Through a Bible study she’s been doing with friends, Faith has been sitting with the idea that God gives each person not just a shared identity as His child, but a particular calling — something placed in them specifically for His purposes.

For Faith, that thing has to do with prayer.

She didn’t like that answer at first. You’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t even like praying. But she’s been leaning into it anyway. And what she’s found is that the more she prays, the more she sees — in Mexico, in the Middle East, in a refugee camp with 250 kids and a bracelet in each hand.

She’s now signed up for her fourth mission trip. South America, if they’ll have her.

She’s not done.

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Hear Faith tell her story in her own words on the Sew That Missions Podcast — Episode 82, Part 2. Listen below or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Go, Pray, Give, Welcome

Faith’s story is one expression of what it looks like to take the Great Commission seriously — not just as a concept, but as a way of living. At FBC Boerne, we believe every follower of Christ is called to play a part: to go, to pray, to give, to welcome those who’ve been brought close. Faith is doing all of it.

If her story is stirring something in you — questions, curiosity, maybe even a little fear — that might be worth paying attention to.

Interested in learning more about missions at FBC Boerne? Visit fbcboerne.org/missions to learn about upcoming trips and the Perspectives class.

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Subscribe to the SO THAT Missions Podcast | FBC Boerne

Never miss an episode. Subscribe on your favorite platform:

She Kept Saying, “Not Yet.” God Showed Up Anyway.

Faith knew something was missing.

She grew up in a Christian home. She heard the Gospel. She sat in church. She knew, somewhere deep down, what the empty feeling meant. And for years, she made the same quiet bargain a lot of people make: I’ll get there eventually. Just not yet.

She wanted to be in the world first. She was afraid of missing out.

It’s an honest thing to admit — and more common than most people say out loud.

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A Dream She Couldn’t Shake

When Faith was 13, she had a dream. In it, Jesus was returning — coming through the clouds, just as Scripture describes. And she saw herself on her knees, desperate, too late.

She woke up and understood something she hadn’t let herself face before: you don’t get to choose the timing. You can’t decide you’ll follow Jesus after you’ve had your run at the world. The moment isn’t yours to schedule.

The dream planted something. But it didn’t change everything immediately. She carried it with her — and kept finding reasons to wait.

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God Uses People Before They’re Ready

Here’s the part of Faith’s story that’s hard to explain and impossible to ignore.

Before she had surrendered her life to Christ, she signed up for a youth mission trip to Mexico. She pulled a few strings to get on the roster. She went. And while she was there — not yet saved, not yet sure — God moved through her anyway.

She gave away a Gospel booklet half-reluctantly, wanting to be done with the moment. Instead, someone started reading it aloud. A crowd gathered. People leaned in to listen.

She turned the corner and saw it happening without her.

“Even when I was like, I don’t want to do this,” she said, “God was still using it.”

That’s not a story about Faith. That’s a story about God — His patience, His pursuit, His refusal to be limited by our hesitation.

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The Surrender She Almost Missed

Later that same summer, Faith went to camp. Every night, she sat in tears. She knew it was time. Every night, she didn’t move.

On the last morning, she broke down in the lunchroom — in front of a lot of people, exactly the thing she’d been afraid of. A leader found her. They talked. And finally, after years of bargaining, waiting, and running out of excuses, Faith surrendered.

She described it simply: believing that God’s got it, and then letting go.

Knowing something and believing it are two different things. She knew the Gospel for years. Believing it — trusting it enough to let go of everything she’d been holding onto — that took longer. And it happened not in a quiet, private moment, but in a crowded lunchroom, in tears, surrounded by people.

God isn’t particular about the setting.

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What Happens After Surrender

Since that summer, Faith has been on two more mission trips — including a recent trip to the Middle East. She took a 15-week class called Perspectives that introduced her to the 10/40 Window: a geographic band stretching across North Africa and Asia where more than three billion people live with little to no access to the Gospel.

Three billion people who may live and die without ever hearing the name of Jesus.

That reality undoes something in you, if you let it. Faith let it. And it changed what she’s doing with her life.

“The reason we’re still here on earth, once you’re saved,” she said, “is to go and make more disciples and bring people to Christ. And if I can do that, why wouldn’t I?”

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Her Story Is Still Being Written

Faith is in her last year of high school. She’s already been on three mission trips. She’s already seen God use her in ways she didn’t expect and couldn’t take credit for.

And she’s the first to say: none of this is about her.

“It’s not my story. It’s God’s story — just using me.”

That’s the most honest thing anyone can say about a life on mission. You don’t have to be impressive. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to stop saying “not yet.”

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Hear Faith tell her story in her own words on the Sew That Missions Podcast — Episode 81, Part 1. Listen below or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Subscribe to the SO THAT Missions Podcast | FBC Boerne

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There Is a Historical Movement of the Gospel Taking Place Among the Iranian People

What God is doing in Iran right now is unlike anything in modern church history.

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We are witnessing a pivotal moment in Iran, shaped by God’s purpose for King Jesus.

Amidst war and widespread displacement, God is working in unexpected ways — turning people’s hearts into fertile ground for the Gospel. The underground church is not retreating. It is advancing.

Despite pressure and persecution, believers are stepping forward with courage and faith. FBC Boerne’s ministry partner, To Every People (TEP), recently hosted a live briefing where church and ministry leaders heard directly from Iranian believers — firsthand accounts of lives transformed and a church growing stronger in one of the most hostile environments on earth.

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Two Million Believers. The Fastest-Growing Church in the World.

Iran now has an estimated two million believers — confirmed, practicing, baptized Christians. Through TEP’s ministry alone, 16,000 people have been brought to Christ. The Iranian Christian Church is widely recognized as the world’s fastest-growing church.

Praise God.

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One Man. Nineteen People Groups.

Among those who shared at the briefing was Ali — his name changed for his security. Originally from Kurdistan with Islamic roots, Ali was expected by his father to become an Imam. But Ali wrestled with Christ’s message, finding that what he read in the Qur’an conflicted with what God was doing inside him.

He left Islam. He found a house church in Kurdistan, Iraq. He learned to speak about Jesus.

Then he started bringing people to house churches, teaching them to share Jesus, and sending them out to disciple others. Every month, they reconvene for ongoing training. Over eight years, this ministry has been growing and multiplying — reaching 19 people groups so far.

This is what Deploy looks like on the other side of the world.

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Getting the Word In.

Getting Bibles into Iran is no small accomplishment. TEP has found a way: 3D-printed devices that conceal audio Bibles, allowing thousands — including those who cannot read — to hear the Word of God. Romans 10:17 says it plainly: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”

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The Cost Is Real.

God’s work in Iran has come at a price. Workers have given up physical comfort, family, and in some cases, their lives.

Iranian Christian leaders, speaking in their own words, expressed gratitude for the international pressure being applied to a regime that has suppressed the Iranian people in the name of Islam for nearly 50 years. They are praying for regime change, long-term religious freedom, and the freedom to worship King Jesus without threat.

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A Hotel Room. Palm Sunday. The Resurrection.

Amid all of this, something holy happened.

In a small hotel room in Iraq, 15 Iranians, 10 Syrians, a couple from Baghdad, and a few Americans gathered to celebrate Palm Sunday and the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. They were sad and weary — grieving for those who don’t know Jesus and for those who have lost their lives. And at the same time, rejoicing. Rejoicing for all those who have come to know Jesus as their King, Lord, and Savior, and for all that He is doing in Iran and Iraq.

This is a historical movement of the Gospel among the Iranian people. And we are alive to see it.

Thank You, Jesus.

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Pray for the liberation of the Iranian people and for the mobilization of resources, both physical and otherwise. Pray for the workers. Pray for the underground church to keep advancing.

FBC Boerne partners with To Every People as part of our commitment to taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Learn more at ToEveryPeople.org.

— FBC Boerne Missions Story Team

When Teresa Moen shared the church mission trip opportunity to the Yucatán, Brittany Whitworth felt two things at once: excitement and hesitation.

She and her husband had been on mission trips before. But this was different. This time, it meant going as a family.

“We’ve long desired to help our children grow in their Christlike identity and understand who they are in His Kingdom,” Brittany shares. “Still, saying yes felt like a sacrifice.”

Her husband was in the middle of building his business. The timing wasn’t convenient. But their oldest, Libby, is two years from graduating high school — and they didn’t want to miss the window. With kids ages 15, 10, and 8, they recognized the moment for what it was.

So they said yes.

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What they found there.

The team served alongside a new church plant in the Yucatán — running VBS, making home visits, and doing practical work around the school campus. Brittany’s husband hung ceiling fans. She connected with the moms of school children. Their kids showed up in ways that surprised everyone, including their parents.

Their youngest, Niyah (8), joyfully welcomed kids to VBS. Their oldest, Libby (15), made deep connections during home visits — at one point holding a sweet baby in a family’s home. And their son Zeke (10) stepped forward and led the devotional their family had prepared — more boldly than anyone expected.

“Watching our kids step out of their comfort zones was unforgettable,” Brittany says.

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What God did in them.

They served families who had far less than they did. And those same families were full of peace and joy — a kind of contentment that was impossible to miss and hard to explain.

The Whitworths came home closer to each other. Closer to the families they traveled with. And with a clearer picture of what it means to live in the Kingdom — not just know about it.

Oh, and the business? It kept going just fine while they were away.

“God was so faithful,” Brittany says simply. “He gave us some wonderful memories.”

That’s the thing about saying yes when it’s inconvenient. You find out that God was already there, already working — and He was just waiting for you to show up.

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Maybe you’ve felt that pull. An opportunity that excited you and scared you at the same time. A moment you didn’t want to miss but weren’t sure you could afford — in time, in money, in risk.

The Whitworth family knows that feeling. They went anyway.

If you’ve been considering a church mission trip for your family, ask about upcoming mission opportunities at FBC Boerne — we’d love to help you take the next step.

— Brittany Whitworth, FBC Boerne Church Family