David Heflin (00:01.294)
Well, I want welcome you back to In the Seams. And I'm going to be very brief on this introduction because I basically introduced the session as we get into it here in a moment. But what it is is a conversation with Andres Ruiz, who is a great friend and brother in Christ, someone who knows intimately suffering through about, you know, because of chronic illness and is also the vice president of Broken In Minute Incorporated. And we do a little bit of background on Andres, just to introduce you to him and his story.

and kind of what his role is. But the main thing we are coming together to do is to discuss the conference that we just had on October 18th, a virtual conference. If you did not know that was going on, there'll be opportunities still for you to listen to those sessions. But it was really just a wonderful day of encouragement and hope while we dealt authentically with stories of real suffering. And Dave Furman, Arne and Trina Bahadurian,

Shannon Kramer, Veneetha Reisner, all of our speakers, and it just was, in my view, just a home run. And I want to give credit to the speakers and glory to God for that. so that's what the conference, so we kind of break down the highlights, if you will, for each session. If you're not going to listen to the whole session, this would be a good substitute, at least, to have a sense of the themes and things we talked about from the conference. But I would hope that you would, at some point, go back and listen to these sessions.

You know because just to hear it from the speakers and their stories was incredibly powerful and transform transformative for I think anyone that took part in it, so Anyway, thank you for listening. I Didn't say this at the end of the social shows I'll say at the beginning if you think about it. Could you rate the show? Both in terms of the episode or the show overall will help us reach more people So thank you, and I hope that you enjoy this conversation that I had with Andres

David Heflin (00:02.086)
I to welcome you back to In the Seams. We have a very special episode today. We just had our big conference on October 18th that we had been planning for a good while and promoting and inviting people to participate. I think that some of the people listening to this podcast will have also been some of the people who were involved in, registered and attended the event, virtual event. Although certainly some of you listening may not have attended and

So this recap will help you at least know some of the highlights, I think. And then also it will, if you did attend it, I think it's always good to kind of go back through and think about some of the things, some of the more profound moments for us personally. And you can be thinking about that as our listeners too, kind of what moment for you or what speaker, what advice or...

or sharing moment of transparency or scripture that really had an impact on you. And so we're going to be doing that. And I keep saying we, and so I'll need to let you know that we have Andres Ruiz with us here today. And Andres has been the producer on this show many times. And he is also the vice president of Broken and Mended. he lives in Chile. And so he kind of brings a different perspective in that regard, has been very instrumental.

in the work that we're trying to get going for the Spanish side of the ministry and many other things as well with Broken Inmended. So Andres, I want to officially welcome you to In the Seams.

Andrés Ruiz (01:40.517)
Thank you, David. It's a pleasure to be here.

David Heflin (01:44.25)
Yes, and it's a pleasure Andres to have you and I want to we'll get to the conference in a moment But I think it might be good for our listeners to have a little background on how you came to be involved with broken amended Why why broken amended is important to you because I know it is important to you I know because of the investment in your heart that you put into it. So let's let's talk about that a little bit. First of all How did you get connected with broken amended?

Andrés Ruiz (02:13.304)
Well, one of the reasons why I became engaged at first with Broken and Mended was looking for resources that can help people with chronic diseases, chronic illnesses, chronic pain and so on. And it so difficult to find some good quality, very biblical-based Christ-centered resources out there. It was very difficult. So at that point, I came to this very

very same podcast. This was one of the resources that the Lord used to encourage me like three or even four years ago, something like that. And then I believe that we started our conversation through Twitter, ex-formerly Twitter, right? Some of us still use that terminology, but we started that conversation in order that I was

David Heflin (03:02.544)
Mm-hmm.

Andrés Ruiz (03:10.73)
interested in volunteering. The reason was that also the motivation behind that is that I was facing a very difficult season of my life with chronic pain and chronic illness. had been dealing with a chronic condition for like five years now, something like that. My family has been very close to rheumatic problems.

family with arthritis, lupus, and in my particular case, undefined connective tissue disease. And that's also an autoimmune condition besides fibromyalgia and other things like that. So then I came to this wonderful ministry and I have been helping you along all this time.

David Heflin (04:01.028)
Yes, that's right. So Andres came along with that initial conversation did take place and we can just call it Twitter. Cause that's what it was still at that time. It was still Twitter and it should have remained Twitter, but we'll, we'll leave that, that part alone. And I, I somewhere in our archives, I have the original message you sent, you sent me. don't, I don't have it up right now, but I do remember receiving that message and you saying that you had been prayerfully considering asking if there would be a way that you could.

Andrés Ruiz (04:14.807)
Amen.

David Heflin (04:30.576)
that you could help and you had already been praying for the ministry even before we had that conversation. And right away, Andres became very valuable to the ministry and to me, and we formed a really wonderful friendship. And it wasn't really that long before it became apparent that Andres needed to be a part of our board. He brings a lot of project management skills to what we're doing. And I want to talk about that project, the Spanish part of the project here in just a moment, but I wanted to ask, I think it's just good.

Andrés Ruiz (04:48.547)
Hmm.

David Heflin (04:59.066)
to know you're married to Fabi and you have a son, Nico. remind me and all of us, how old is Nico?

Andrés Ruiz (05:08.066)
He's 14 years old right now. And I have been married with Fabi. She's my college sweetheart and we have been married almost 20 years. So it has been a long time and seven years of actually Christian dating before that. So I know Fabi for a long time and she has been my best friend till this day.

And yeah, we are living in Patagonia, specifically in Pontarenas. That's the southern city in South America. From the Chilean side of Patagonia, there are two sides, Argentina and Chile. At least Patagonia is very integrated in regards to manners and so on. So we are fairly close to our Argentinian friends.

David Heflin (06:04.742)
Okay, well yeah, thank you. you for that. And one of the projects you've really helped bring to fruition was the translation of our leaders and reflection guides. And for listeners that may not know this, these are what we use. They're our most important tool for our support groups. we have these, course, in English. We actually have them in Swahili as well for some of our Kenyan Tanzania friends. But for a long time, we wanted to get them into Spanish.

Andres, could you just speak for a moment about what you hope to see? What is your vision for the Spanish aspect of broken and mended? What would you like to see happen?

Andrés Ruiz (06:46.488)
There are many, many needs in regards to resources for brothers and sisters dealing with chronic conditions in South America. But to be more accurate in any Spanish-speaking country, even in the States, there are more than 40 million Spanish-speaking people. In South America, there are huge numbers and also in very good degree in Spain.

So there are a lot of people that are coming to the realization that they need something that they cannot find properly in the context of Spanish resources that has been very hard to find. If you don't manage or speak a little bit of English, your scope is very limited, unfortunately. So there are many people that also

are not part of the prosperity gospel movement. that is also very, very important because that has a lot of presence in Spanish-speaking countries, unfortunately. so the desire to bring this very good, godly biblical material into Spanish is a very good opportunity to many people for the forming and starting

support groups in different countries and even internationally or even online in Spanish. And I think that there will be many, many groups, churches, individuals that will be interested in to find something that can be a true blessing for their lives.

David Heflin (08:30.97)
Yeah, absolutely. The opportunity is enormous. As you kind of alluded to, when you're searching for Christian-based biblical resources related to chronic illness and chronic pain, even in English, there's not a whole lot of things out there, even less so in Spanish. And even we hope one day to have our website in Spanish and to

Andrés Ruiz (08:44.59)
That's right.

Andrés Ruiz (08:54.424)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (08:55.046)
just basically have a full wing of our ministry dedicated to Spanish speaking people. If you're listening to this, you're probably therefore bilingual if you're a Spanish speaker, but if this is something that you're interested in and your heart is moved by this and you think you would want to start something in Spanish for people that are hurting in your community, your church, whatever it may be, certainly reach out to us and we would love to help you do that.

We'll switch gears a little bit though and talk about the conference. And the conference was a big deal for us as a ministry, as an organization, because we put a lot into it. We wanted to make sure that this being our first one, that it was a really good event. We had a lot of praying go into it and God pretty much answered. think we can agree like every one of our prayers regarding this conference.

Andrés Ruiz (09:41.952)
Absolutely.

David Heflin (09:43.89)
And I will say that our theme of the conference was broken apart, mended together. And our speakers were free to create their message however they wanted to, but we just wanted to emphasize the importance of overcoming isolation or not letting isolation overcome us by because we are broken apart when we're not together, but when we come together, that's where mending can take place. It's not just about my personal relationship with God. It's also about our relationship

one another and broken amended is all about that. And specifically we were trying to emphasize that in this, this first conference, we had four speakers, Dave Furman, Arne and Trina Bahadurian. I should say five speakers, but Arne and Trina spoke together as a, as a married couple.

Andrés Ruiz (10:30.894)
Yeah, exactly. And a very good team though. Very good team.

David Heflin (10:36.43)
They were and they were and I could tell they had kind of worked out the different parts and that was real good and Shannon Kramer and beneath a Reisner and then we had a panel at the end which included a conversation with our and Shannon and beneath Dave was not able to be involved in that neither was Trina for different reasons but nonetheless even even the panel went great all of our speakers I don't know if any of our speakers will listen to this but if they do we want you to know

All of you were tremendous and that's what made the conference such a blessing and we wanted the conference to be a blessing to you as well. Even as you blessed us through the words that you shared and clearly God was in it because we heard all kinds of just wonderful feedback from the people who participated in it. They were touched and they were moved and encouraged and that's what this was all about. And so let's talk a little bit about Dave Furman's session.

Andrés Ruiz (11:25.144)
Yes.

David Heflin (11:33.222)
which was called Weakness is the Way. And 2 Corinthians 1, 8-10 was his main scripture text. And I don't have that up before me. Andres, do you remember kind of what that text emphasizes?

Andrés Ruiz (11:34.252)
Mm-hmm. Weakness is the way. Yep.

David Heflin (11:53.926)
I should have my Bible here. Let this be a lesson to you when you're gonna wait When you when you talk about the Bible make sure you have a Bible with you

Andrés Ruiz (11:57.418)
Me too, me too. Maybe we can edit this particular part. Let me have it right here with me.

David Heflin (12:10.662)
Andrés Ruiz (12:17.102)
man. Okay. Okay. Okay.

David Heflin (12:24.57)
We probably will edit out a little bit of this delay. Yeah.

Andrés Ruiz (12:26.062)
Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. Exactly right. If you want to start over that small part, I can read it to you. Second Corinthians 1, 11 and 8 to 11.

David Heflin (12:43.128)
Yes, so David's session focused on the scripture of 2 Corinthians 1, 8 through 10. And just for a reminder, Andres, could you read that for us?

Andrés Ruiz (12:55.458)
Yes, of course. For we do not want you to be ignorant brethren of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despair even of life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead, who deliver us from so great a death.

and thus deliver us in whom we trust that he will still deliver us. Such a great text. And by the way, this was my favorite session. Dave Furman was my personal favorite. All the sessions were very, very good and practical and a very true source of encouragement.

David Heflin (13:31.61)
It is, it is.

Andrés Ruiz (13:46.444)
But this particular session was my personal favorite. And probably one of the reasons is that he's so connected to his book. used to be called, I think that they updated the name in the second edition, but the first edition was called Kiss the Wave, Embracing God in Your Trials. And that was actually one of the resources that was recommended from

David Heflin (14:11.291)
Mm-hmm.

Andrés Ruiz (14:15.67)
from our website in brokenamended.org. And that was one of the first resources that I read in relation with trials and disability and chronic illness and was so significant to me. naturally, Dave Furman's live session in the conference was so good and he was developing a very theological session as well from this text.

David Heflin (14:50.438)
Yeah, I agree. It set the tone for the, you know, the whole conference and even as Kiss the Wave had an impact on you, it also had an impact on this ministry because it helped inspire our use of the Kintsugi logo, which then kind of helped inspire the name, Broken and Mended. And so Dave Furman has had an impact on this ministry even from the beginning.

Andrés Ruiz (15:10.862)
That's right. Yes.

David Heflin (15:17.934)
That text emphasizes our trust in the one who raises the dead. It's an important point. And I know that one of the things I wrote down during the session that was impactful to me was this line from, this is a quote, I got it down correctly, but one of the reasons God allows suffering is so we can learn to rely on the God who raises the dead.

Andrés Ruiz (15:38.414)
Mm-hmm.

Andrés Ruiz (15:46.531)
Yes.

David Heflin (15:46.692)
And it strikes me as something that we struggle with when everything is going well. Because when everything is going well and we're not dealing with lot of suffering, we don't think about relying on the God who raises the dead because we think we're doing pretty good on our own. But when we're going through suffering and life is not going like we think it ought to go, and we become more desperate for the one that we're supposed to put our hope in all along, and particularly looking both at how God

has the resurrection has begun already in Jesus Christ and that sustains us even in our suffering as we look forward to the final resurrection which will happen at the return of our Lord and so that that was one point of Dave's session that really resonated with me.

Andrés Ruiz (16:22.402)
suck.

Mm-hmm.

Andrés Ruiz (16:33.524)
Absolutely. the other thing, and because of that actually, it's a connection with the gospel itself because we are talking about the gospel. If the gospel is true and needed for every one of us from the moment of our salvation, it's much more needed to be a daily reminder for us with chronic illnesses and chronic problems. The weakness and the pain became very, very real.

And for that we need a gospel that is also very, very real. We need a daily reminder of the hope that we have in Christ. And certainly David addressed that in the conference.

David Heflin (17:16.014)
Yes, you did. You did. And I think Amy even mentioned at some point the false gospel. You've already alluded to it, Andre, some call it the prosperity gospel. Sometimes it's called the health and wealth gospel. And we, with Broken Amended, have spoken out against that in what we've said publicly, as well as our written materials, because it does such great harm, because it's not the real gospel, because it is something that turns God into kind of a cosmic vending machine. I say the right words or

or I have enough faith in God's got to give me this outcome and God is not about guarantee the only outcome that God is guaranteed for us is the one in which David alludes to and also Paul the Apostle Paul in that passage which is the resurrection Everything else in life is not about holding on to an outcome It's about holding on to God and keep putting our hope in him. So that definitely was it was a big deal

Andrés Ruiz (18:10.006)
Absolutely. Absolutely. John Piper usually put it like this. he says something like, bad theology really hurts people and dishonor God and good theology brings exactly the opposite. Honors God, give glory to him and bring joy to the, to the people. that's what we are desperately needed. the joy that we can find even in our suffering.

David Heflin (18:38.212)
Yes, absolutely. And I want to say too that Dave's not just talking out of a textbook. He's talking from his own personal experience where he was a missionary, went to Dubai, and as soon as he got there, these terrible debilitating problems began to happen with his arms, which caused him to not have the use of his arms in a lot of ways and incredible pain as well that he was dealing with. And of course, that forced him into

a lot of questioning as to why would God call him on this and then to this type of mission and then allow these things to happen to him and through wrestling with that he has learned the very title of his session right weakness is the way it is in our weakness that God is glorified Dave's not just saying that out of some kind of you know he read it in a book and seminary he's saying that from personal experience tied together with biblical knowledge

Andrés Ruiz (19:32.369)
Yes, absolutely. also there basically was probably the conclusion or the call or the invitation for all of us is to use the most powerful weapon that we have in our disposal that is prayer. That was the call. for that, he went to 2 Corinthians 1 verse 11 for that. And that is the thing that

David Heflin (19:50.276)
Amen.

Andrés Ruiz (20:00.936)
many of our listeners can do and will become a very good help for us. It will be substantial for us that you can help us in our ministry, praying for us. That's one thing that we always encourage to everyone that is supporting the efforts that we are doing.

David Heflin (20:19.79)
Yes, yes, absolutely. And there was, yeah, there was a strong emphasis on prayer, probably from all of our speakers, but I think particularly with Dave. And Dave said a couple things that actually remind me of some things that Vaneetha said. We'll get to her session, of course, in a little bit, but she said similar things. And here's a couple of them. God is accomplishing more in our suffering than we can see right now. And then suffering is never for nothing.

Actually, all of our speakers in some ways, I think, echoed that sentiment that suffering is never for nothing, that we may not always see what the good, suffering can do or our faithfulness in the suffering, what Christ is doing in it. We may not always see it, but we can believe that God doesn't waste anything that we put our trust in Him for. so, David was a very encouraging and again, a tone setter for the whole.

conference. Before I move on to talking about Arne and Trina, anything else you'd want to say, Andres, about Dave's session?

Andrés Ruiz (21:20.034)
Hmm.

No, I just will recommend to, of course, listen to it, but also to check out the book and resources from Dave Furman. Also, there are some very interesting articles in the website of Desiring God, and I think that he has been written for them. So he has excellent resources out there. It's a wonderful ministry.

David Heflin (21:45.424)
Yeah, good point about the opportunity to still listen to the session. So we will put the links in the show notes. They're currently unlisted links, which means you have to have the link. You can't find them by doing a search, but we're probably when we release this podcast, which I anticipate to be on November 3rd, then as you're listening to this, we probably will go ahead and make those public links so that they can be easily shared and viewed by whoever, because they're just too good not to share with as many people as possible.

Andrés Ruiz (22:14.51)
Mm.

David Heflin (22:15.21)
And so yes, you can go back and listen to this. And we recommend that, by the way. What we're doing is a recap, or if you haven't heard it, it's a primer for what you're going to hear. But hearing it from them will be more powerful even. Yeah. So let's talk about Arne and Trina's session. Their session is called The Comfort of God is an Uncomfortable Story. And in it, they actually focused on the verses that came right before.

Andrés Ruiz (22:19.789)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (22:27.683)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (22:42.898)
this with the reading that dave had which was second karenthians one three three seven any chance you have that

Andrés Ruiz (22:49.294)
And was totally providential, by the way. That was kind of the most thing. They were not coordinated to just do it in this way. It was totally providential that this was some verses that were before that. And yes, from verses three to seven, it says, bless be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and God of all comfort.

David Heflin (22:53.988)
Yes, that's

David Heflin (22:59.11)
That's correct.

Andrés Ruiz (23:17.448)
all our tribulation that we may be able to comfort those are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abounded us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. Now if we are afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation which is effective for enduring the same sufferings which we also suffer. Or if we are

Comforted it is for your consolation and salvation and our hope for you is steadfast Because we know that as you are partakers of the sufferings. So also you will partake of the consolation Isn't that great?

David Heflin (24:03.95)
It is so powerful. again, Arne and Trina speak about this from a standpoint of a great deal of suffering and grief in their life, but they have not given up hope. Instead, they look for God to turn that around in their lives to be a comfort to others, just as the apostle Paul was talking about in that passage. A couple of things to know about Arne and Trina is

Number one is that we've had them on the podcast before. So I will put the, the interview it's worth listening to as well as this talk. will put a show, a link to the prior podcast interview we have with Arne and Trina just a bit over a year ago. The other thing to know is that two days before, not even a full two days before this conference, Arne's father passed away. They knew it was coming. They didn't know exactly when, we had a.

Andrés Ruiz (24:39.886)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (24:56.294)
backup speaker in place. I wanted them to know that we totally understood if they could not participate in the conference. And again, I'll do a shout out to Laura Silverman who was willing at pretty much late notice, very last notice to be willing to speak and you know, I'll put a link to her book in our show notes too because I just think you know, that was really tremendous and an act of service on her part. By the way, she knows Arne and Trina.

And you know, so God was at work in all of this and that gave Arne and Trina I think the space to make a decision that wasn't based on the idea that they were going to be letting someone down if they didn't do this. In other words, they did this out of conviction that this is still what God wanted them to do. And so they were speaking at a place of recent pain as well as past pain, all kind of coalescing together. October 18th was

Andrés Ruiz (25:35.566)
That's right.

David Heflin (25:50.318)
in their minds and I can see I agree with this that providential date of our conference for them being a speaker in it because this was the day in which they lost their son was born and the same day three hours later on that day their son died and this is a place of pain that they speak about and so just a lot going on even before the session took place that made them such powerful and I think transparent authentic speakers.

on this issue of using the comfort they received to comfort others. What did you think, Andres?

Andrés Ruiz (26:25.666)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Sometimes even everything in the Christian life became together and its difficulties, but at the same time as the difficulties came grace. And I think that in this particular case, Aaron and Trina's speaking session was amazing in that sense. They really show grace in the midst of a lot of trials.

difficulties and this even this day was very significant for them. they were the real deal. They were not just pretending, they were not just discomfort because they didn't have Wi-Fi or their favorite coffee flavor. They were truly, truly in a very, very real test. So that makes it even more worthy, more glorifying to God, I think.

David Heflin (27:09.71)
Right.

David Heflin (27:20.58)
Yes, and I also appreciated just the uniqueness of having a married couple speak together. Such incredible love that's shown between them in that, in the unity that they have in the midst of a lot of suffering and trial. know, Trina, just a little background, she had struggled with chronic Lyme disease for some time as they were really coming to a point where they were ready to minister from that perspective. They started a ministry called Remain, and I'll put the website for that as well.

Remain with us.org is where that is I believe but anyway They started that ministry thinking that it was because of what Trina had gone through with that that they were going to minister to others and they do but then this thing happened with their son who had a a life-limiting diagnosis trisomy trisomy I have a hard time saying that word but trisomy 13 I think but I'll double check that but it's a

Andrés Ruiz (28:01.762)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (28:11.502)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (28:16.998)
It's it's a devastating diagnosis and they had a lot of pressure from others to you know, medical people who said well You probably should have an abortion or something like this, you know and they refused to do that and they have instead really clung to that three hours life that they had with their son and out of that has become a way to bless others who have gone through similar things and so really powerful I appreciate it to their

Andrés Ruiz (28:28.92)
in the end.

David Heflin (28:45.142)
their commitment to a biblical theology of suffering and also on the character of God. One of the things that Aaron emphasized was that from the beginning and throughout, God has been a God of compassion and mercy. And so he was rejecting this idea that somehow God was different in the Old Testament and isn't a new. That this is God's character and God's character has always been.

Andrés Ruiz (28:51.864)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (29:01.548)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (29:12.084)
Exactly right. all the other very theological aspect that they mentioned, and it was very, very happy to hear that, was about the union with Christ. And that was, in other words, the source of their strength in weakness was not just a shallow thought or just vain faith, was really deep flesh and bones.

theology concept in this particular case, the union with Christ and how that has been affecting their understanding on how they see weakness.

David Heflin (29:50.392)
Yes, absolutely. I think tying into that point is something that they said during their session. is especially in our weaknesses that we can experience the power of God. Beholding, experiencing, stewarding this pain in order to be a comfort to others. And it just, again, is just not something

that they are speaking about in any abstract kind of way, which was very clear.

Andrés Ruiz (30:21.983)
Exactly. Very real. Very plain.

David Heflin (30:24.92)
it was. Therefore I think they are able to say things like God's strength is made perfect or the power of God is shown through their weakness because that has been true for their lives.

Andrés Ruiz (30:38.166)
Absolutely. Yep.

David Heflin (30:43.204)
Well, I will move on to talking about the next session. And again, please listen to Arne and Trina session altogether. If you haven't, it was, it was just really good, very moving and it's stuck with me. Even still it sticks with me today because it just, and it had a lot of people talked about how that impacted them. But I do want to talk about Shannon Kramer, who was our third speaker. Shannon was also on our podcast a little bit longer ago, a good two, maybe even two and a half years.

or so ago that she was on our podcast, In the Seams, and I will put that in the show notes if you want to go back and listen to that. And Shannon had a very unique way of expressing her particular session, which you can see the common theme between the session titles here. Hers was called Weakness or Secret Strength. And she had several passages. I don't know, Andres, if you could...

Andrés Ruiz (31:13.473)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (31:39.438)
read the one from 2 Corinthians 12, 8 through 10, because it kind of fits with the others that we have been reading. I'll make allusion to the other two passages that she references here in a moment. But 2 Corinthians 12, 8 through 10 really kind of hits along with the theme of what all the speakers had been emphasizing.

Andrés Ruiz (32:00.514)
Yeah, absolutely. Concerning this thing, I plead with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, most gladly, I would rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure.

in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

David Heflin (32:40.174)
Amen. That passage, if I had to guess if there's one passage that is quoted the most in our ministry, it's probably that one. And so I appreciated her reflecting on that. And she went to a couple of interesting stories in the Bible and tied them together in a way I have not heard tied together before. And so the first one, and we won't read this, but I'll just mention it for our audience. I may put a link to the scripture in the show notes.

Andrés Ruiz (32:57.389)
Hmm.

David Heflin (33:08.806)
second Kings seven, three through 16. It's a story of when Samaria was under siege, and everybody basically was starving inside of the city. And there are four lepers who feel like they're going to die anyway. So they, they take the chance and go outside the city, assuming that the enemy was going to be there and maybe they would kill them or maybe they would give them food, but for them, it was worth the risk. And.

But turns out that God had already basically chased the enemy away and they find all this food that can save the city. And then how these very unlikely, these people that are rejected by everyone because of their leprosy and how not only because it was contagious, but it was considered to be unclean and they couldn't be with anybody else other than one another. And how they came under the conviction

Andrés Ruiz (33:41.133)
Yes.

David Heflin (34:03.428)
that the right thing to do was not to keep this for themselves, but to share it with everyone in there in the city. And it saves the city. These four lepers, these four people that would have been considered the lowest, the weakest in their society becomes God's means of salvation to the city of Samaria. And then she talked about, though, what about those lepers? happened to... Of course, we don't know exactly what happened to those lepers.

Andrés Ruiz (34:10.123)
is.

David Heflin (34:30.854)
But she talked about Luke 17, 11 through 19 as a way in which God has given an answer, or kind of an addendum, or as Paul Harvey used to say here in the US, you know, the rest of the story in a sense. And it's another story about ten lepers that Jesus meets in Samaria. Actually, nine of them, though, were Jews, and only one of them was a Samaritan. And Jesus heals these ten lepers.

Andrés Ruiz (34:43.054)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (35:00.454)
And then the story is, of course, of only the one leper who came back, who happened to be the Samaritan, to give thanks to Jesus and how that kind of puts a fitting bow, if you will, on the story that had started all the way back in Second Kings. And I just thought that was really interesting to pull those two stories together in that way.

Andrés Ruiz (35:22.286)
Absolutely. And I was very happy that she take this narrative from the Old Testament because sometimes we focus too much in the New Testament by itself. But we have one big picture, one big story, big narrative that we are part of. that's God's story. And I think that Shannon took a very good advantage of that point. And she complimented wonderfully.

David Heflin (35:33.51)
Mm-hmm.

Andrés Ruiz (35:52.015)
the very good biblical imaginary in a wonderful way and apply to us.

David Heflin (35:58.458)
Yes, yes she sure did. And again, just like the other speakers, Shannon was speaking out of a place of her own struggle, struggles with I believe POTS and narcolepsy and just things that were very life altering for her affected their ability to be able to have a baby. By the way, they've now been blessed with a baby, I think that's a one year old. I think it was a daughter that she said, but.

Just, you know, so that, but that has been a lot of hardship in their life. And what I really appreciated, well, two things I'll say both of these two things together, and then you can add anything you would want to Andres, but she was a very creative illustration in what she talked about kind of what her life had been like before chronic illness and suffering and what it was like afterwards. She used a glow stick.

Andrés Ruiz (36:43.176)
yes.

David Heflin (36:51.686)
And the glow stick doesn't glow, this particular glow stick, until you break it. Because there's this thin barrier that keeps the light from emanating from the stick. And she talked about how that thin barrier for us can be kind of a prosperity or success that makes us self-reliant and therefore God's power is not shining through for us. But then when suffering comes, it breaks. And of course she had a glow stick on the screen. She breaks the glow stick and it lights up.

Andrés Ruiz (36:52.099)
Mm-hmm.

Andrés Ruiz (36:57.325)
Yeah.

David Heflin (37:20.31)
and how that it's in this brokenness that God's glory and power shines through our lives. And so I thought that was beautiful. Let me let you react to that part before I share my last thought on this. Yeah.

Andrés Ruiz (37:20.791)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (37:33.054)
No, me too, me too. It was quite an amazing illustration. And that's one thing that we can, we always, if we lack of resources with adults, how much we lack of resources to deal with teenagers or even to kids. And I think that that is a wonderful way in which we can use creativity in a very positive way, bringing

a very good and godly and biblical reality to the example of many people. Sometimes we do not need so complex kind of examples to explain something that is very, very deep. And I think that Shannon was very successful in doing that and to put that in our attention.

David Heflin (38:19.684)
Yes, she was. And she has some other very vivid illustrations. We'll let you look at those though if you'll go back and listen to the session. We'll, of course, want you to do that. You can see it all on our YouTube link. One last thing though about Shannon's session before I on to Venitha that I wrote down that, again, kind of stuck with me. He is not about to let the life of his beloved children be wasted.

Andrés Ruiz (38:48.911)
Mmm, yes.

David Heflin (38:50.51)
A lot of times people going through chronic pain and illness feel like their life is being wasted. feel like because of what they envision, what they dream they were going to have has not happened. And they're living a life that they didn't want to live. They didn't think that this was what God wanted for them either. And so they're struggling with that to come to terms with life as it is now. And so that emphasis on the truth is that our suffering, our pain, even our lost dreams

They're not wasted by God. And we may not always understand fully how He's using them in our lives, in the lives of others around us, but God is not about to let the life of His beloved children be wasted. What a powerful statement that was.

Andrés Ruiz (39:31.49)
Hmm, it is amazing.

David Heflin (39:36.838)
Well, Venitha, many of you may know, I've heard of Venitha. She does a lot of writing, she's written some books. She also has an email list. If you go to her website, you can sign up for and receive different articles, if you will, that she writes about or shares more of her story and ways that can be encouraging to others. And so Venitha,

is well known by lot of people in the chronic illness and chronic pain community. We're very blessed that she would come and be with us and share her session, which was called When Life Breaks Apart, Three Anchors That Hold. And her scripture was John 9, 1 through 3. And do you have that ready, Andres, to read? Or should I talk a few more moments first?

Andrés Ruiz (40:25.934)
sorry, David, maybe we need to recap this part. This part too. Sorry, I was looking for some resource from Benita when you said that. Can you please share the quotation again? Yeah.

David Heflin (40:30.211)
Yeah.

David Heflin (40:39.6)
Scripture. John 9, 1 through 3. as you're turning there, I will say, and we've said a little bit of the story of each of these different speakers, and I think, you know, obviously it's always best if you could hear it from the speakers themselves. But, Venetha contracted polio as a child. Had all kinds of health and pain and even experienced bullying by kids in school and, you know, that sort of thing.

Later on she gets married and has a child and I think she has more than one child, but this one particular child is a son and has some kind of difficult illness that had to be medicated for that illness. And then the doctor decides it doesn't need to be medicated anymore, the doctor was wrong and the child ends up dying. So that's just incredibly devastating and heartbreaking.

And then later as she starts to move forward from that her husband, he abandons her and leaves her. And so now she's gone through a terrible disability and chronic illness, loss of a child, abandonment of a spouse. And now, even now, even though she's married again and happy in her marriage, she's still been told though by doctors that she is moving back toward paralysis because of

Andrés Ruiz (41:37.347)
Yes.

David Heflin (42:05.094)
what's called post polio syndrome. So again, when Venetha speaks about holding on to her hope in the midst of trial and suffering, she knows how difficult that is, and she has had some very real conversations with God and had many times where she was barely holding on, but by God's grace she has continued to hold on. So read that passage if you have it now, Andres from John 9, 1-3.

Andrés Ruiz (42:05.358)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (42:30.52)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (42:34.634)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course now has Jesus passed by he saw a man who was blind from from birth and his disciples asked him Saying rabbi who's seen this man of or his parents that he was born blind Jesus answered neither this man nor his parents sinned but that the works of God should be revealed in him so

It's amazing. I really want to keep going, keep reading because it's such a good passage. And it's also one that Benita chose so wisely because it brings a very good balance and a very good reality. Sometimes there are people that are very tough with us, that we are living with chronic illnesses. They immediately think about the sin that we are hiding, the secret pleasures.

that we have the cravings from the flesh and that kind of thing. But the problem is that that is not what the scripture tell us. We need to be take very careful attention, especially to the Lord and what he's revealing to us in his word. And in this magnificent passage, we can see that there are much more and sometimes even an intention from the Lord that he certainly uses our illnesses.

David Heflin (44:01.348)
Yes, yes, absolutely. And as I think about that John 9 passage, it reminds me of a lesson that seems not to be learned by so many people today who, from the book of Job, for example, when his friends assumed that what was happening to him was because of some kind of personal sin. As they were assuming the apostles in this particular story, and Jesus has an opportunity to correct them in this and say no.

It's so that the works of God may be made known through this man and through his suffering. And, Vanitha has taken that on as a personal, purposeful mindset for what she has gone through. And in that, I think her talk out of the four was probably the most structured in some ways. She gave us three, what she called them anchors that hold. And I wrote them down here, and they may be abbreviated forms, but presence, purpose, and promise.

Andrés Ruiz (44:54.35)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (44:59.728)
So the first one emphasizing that, hey, a whole lot of stuff may be going wrong in our lives, but God is still with us. And I think that was the thing that when Venetia tells her story, is that even in the moments where she had the most doubt and discouragement, or end up being the moments where she could testify to the presence of God the most, it's powerful. like the other speakers emphasized to the purpose, again, it's not saying

Andrés Ruiz (45:22.647)
It is.

David Heflin (45:28.978)
none of us are trying to give easy answers here. And so if you're going through some tremendous amount of suffering and someone comes up to you and they says, let me tell you the purpose in this, they probably should not be doing that. I think rather what we see is that we believe God's promise is that He will work out, He will work together for the good of those who love the Lord, that He's going to bring something good even out of the worst.

And she even talked about how ministry, the place where we hurt the most or were wounded the most becomes the place that forms our ministry. And then finally, the third one on promise, the promises looking forward. I mean, we have the promise of presence and purpose now, but she was really talking about remembering that we're going to have the resurrection, just like Dave Furman was emphasizing, right? And that we're going to have new bodies.

Andrés Ruiz (46:21.538)
Yes.

David Heflin (46:24.538)
We got to hold on to that promise, even in the midst, especially in the midst of our suffering. What were your thoughts, Andres?

Andrés Ruiz (46:27.234)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (46:31.726)
Yeah, definitely she was thinking about this catological promise that we have in the scriptures. We are talking about new creation. In other words, we are having hope that is so real, so real. We have true victory in Christ. We have true forgiveness of sin. such as it's the depth of all of the realities in our Christian life.

It's also the reality of the promise. It's something that will take us to live in this world has pilgrims, but thinking about the world to come. I cannot tell you how long I have been waiting for getting to that particular point when I have a new body without pain. cannot remember for some days now, for some years now, a day without pain, unfortunately, but the

promise of the Lord is firm and our hope in him is very solid and real. So that has been amazing. That is one of the biggest bookends of our Christian life and Christian hope and what we can expect from the Lord that never change. And also another thing that they wanted to mention is that Benita, she is an accomplished author. I think that she has wonderful resources and there is one very

good and short guide that is provided to you for free in her website when you are subscribed to her mail list. It's called something like, what should I do when life is falling apart? And that is very, very accurate. What many of us will feel or experience when we started in our journey with chronic illness. And the other thing is that she has a couple of other very good

interviews with John Eric Santada and Paul Tripp even. that was a very, was a privilege to have Benita with us in this conference.

David Heflin (48:40.678)
Yeah, yes it certainly was. And you know, she was really in her session big on kind of framing our suffering with correct thinking regarding our suffering and with God. And so this is a quote, I'll close with this part on her. What you're talking, what you're telling yourself is going to shape your experience of it. And so how we think about

Andrés Ruiz (48:53.806)
That's right.

David Heflin (49:08.41)
God in these situations, how we think about what we're going through in our suffering is important. And that really was kind of her lead into those three anchors that we need to be telling ourselves all the time. Presence, purpose, promise. So just like a preacher, right? Three points and alliteration, PPP, presence, purpose, and promise. So helps us to remember that.

Andrés Ruiz (49:29.666)
Ha ha ha.

David Heflin (49:34.406)
We're coming to the end here. We've been going here for about almost 50 minutes. It's gone by very fast. But maybe a closing comment or two about the panel discussion. So we have some really good questions that the audience gave us to be able to ask our panelists. Again, the panelists were Aron, Shannon, and Vinitha. And did you have any particular takeaways from that time, Andres?

Andrés Ruiz (49:41.386)
Mm-hmm.

Andrés Ruiz (50:03.566)
I can say honestly that they were not short of nothing good because they were very brave to talk about even theological perspectives. And I think that they were very, very balanced. Some of us that came from the more reform theological positions and so on. But I think that they were all charitable and brotherly in this sense. And we also have different strengths.

and witnesses and weaknesses. I think that the panel was indeed a very good and entertaining discussion. And they were not afraid to go with the difficult questions. What do you think?

David Heflin (50:45.528)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's correct. They were not afraid. They were, like you said, very generous of spirit toward one another, toward me, toward the questions themselves. And so I was very glad for that. But they answered difficult questions because a lot of the things they said, people related to, but they wanted to know, OK, tell me a little bit more. So we talked about things like lament. if you've not

Andrés Ruiz (51:10.838)
Hmm.

David Heflin (51:12.742)
If you're not used to the practice of lament, how do you begin? And we even talked about how there was a problem in the church as a whole if we're not creating space for lament in a community setting. That's just an example. I'm going to have one of the difficult things that we talked about. I think there was a question. I don't remember exactly how it was worded, but it did kind of prompt a discussion about kind of how we speak about God's will or God's sovereignty and as it relates to our illness.

Andrés Ruiz (51:23.63)
That's right. That's right.

Andrés Ruiz (51:38.915)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (51:41.83)
And I think there was some different perspectives there. But what we would all want to agree with is that we do say, yes, God is sovereign. Nothing has surprised God. That's happened to us. And therefore, he can use anything in our lives for his glory. And as Christians, we should want him to. Because what's the alternative? That we go through it and it has no meaning? Well, we can't. I can't abide that personally.

Andrés Ruiz (51:47.149)
Yes.

Andrés Ruiz (51:54.925)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (52:10.706)
from my own experience, you know, and I don't believe that's true for us, those of us who are in Christ. So it was a wonderful conference and, you know, it just will continue hopefully to be a blessing to others if they listen to it after the fact, and many people have already, and we want to make that possible for others to continue to be blessed by it. You know, I'll close by saying that we do have another conference coming up in a few days.

Andrés Ruiz (52:14.146)
Yes.

David Heflin (52:39.246)
November 7th and 8th. Yeah, Diamonds Conference. And I will get to speak at that conference. That's an honor for me. They've asked me to do that several times. It's a humbling honor, you know, but I'm glad to get to do it. And I've got to be getting to work on that, by the way, because that's just in a week. But we're looking forward to being together. And that's a two-day conference. So it's a little bit different in scope than ours.

Andrés Ruiz (52:40.174)
That's right. That's right.

Andrés Ruiz (53:01.719)
Yes.

David Heflin (53:07.11)
We focused a little bit more on just the four. I wanted to have intentionally a smaller conference, but here over these two days, you will be able to hear from all kinds of different people in the chronic illness ministry world, so to speak. But we'll put a registration link for that in here too.

Andrés Ruiz (53:14.627)
Hmm.

Andrés Ruiz (53:26.25)
Yeah, also Diamonds is a very interesting conference, very recommendable. They have been partners in the ministry in this regard, and also they have been establishing a very strong community. And that has been a blessing for many of us that are isolated. That's one of the very difficult, probably if not the most difficult,

one of the most difficult circumstances that you can face during all this chronic illness that you will be completely isolated. You need to be in company with others, encouraging one another. That's fully rooted in the scripture. And that's why also we emphasize so much the establishment and participation of support groups. That's our goal as Broken and Mended. And that's our desire to bring to

the Spanish-speaking people out there, and also maybe in the future, people in Asia or different countries. So we really want that the world will have the possibility to face these difficult circumstances in the company of many brothers and sisters in Christ.

David Heflin (54:47.684)
Yeah, amen. that is, in a way, it's at least one of the reasons we did the conference was to let more people know about what we're doing and to ask them to consider if they can join us in ministry in this way that we're talking about. And also, I want to mention one more thing about diamonds, and then I'm going to just make one last appeal to our audience as we sign off here. I just want to say, I meant to say this at the end of the conference and forgot to do so, that we really did

Andrés Ruiz (54:56.43)
That's right. That's right.

David Heflin (55:16.326)
pattern what we did in our conference off of what we have learned from Diamonds in the past. For example, we use StreamYard as our platform to send it to YouTube live. we even used several, a couple anyway, of their different volunteers who have helped with Diamonds, helped us. And so just a lot of, I want to recognize them as trailblazers in this virtual conference for people with chronic illness and chronic pain.

Andrés Ruiz (55:27.117)
Hmm.

David Heflin (55:45.21)
We weren't trying to go up against them in any way. And I'm glad that there was no direct overlap between our two conferences. And that's why we did ours a little bit differently in terms of scope, because we're not trying to do what they're already doing. We wanted to bring something unique, but we still patterned what we did and what we learned from them. so I'm so grateful for their generosity in sharing that with us. And finally, I'll say thank you for listening. It's been really, I think it's been a wonderful conversation.

Andrés Ruiz (55:52.536)
Absolutely.

Andrés Ruiz (56:07.127)
Mm-hmm.

David Heflin (56:13.838)
you to listen to the sessions and I encourage you to to go to our website check out our resources there are ways there on our website you can find to get connected to our ministry through our social media accounts you can also reach out directly to me regarding how to start a support group or something like this and and also if you could consider doing a donation any amount helps you can partner with us in that way and we are in the middle of a

a $50,000 campaign, which we're wanting to conclude during this, hopefully this next month. But it's important for us to continue to do the work that we're doing. And if you've been touched by this and you're in position to be a blessing and return that blessing, so to speak, then we would really appreciate that. so you can go to our website and do that too. And that will go to our general contribution, if you will.

Andrés Ruiz (56:53.975)
it is.

David Heflin (57:10.598)
I will also put a link, particularly for the $50,000 campaign, if you would, in the show notes. And you could just go there and as I said, anything helps $5, $10, a million dollars would help too, whatever the Lord wills, right? So, all right. Thank you everyone. Thank you everyone for listening. Thank you, Andres, for being a part of this and we'll see you next time on In the Seams.

Andrés Ruiz (57:22.349)
Yes.

That's right.

Andrés Ruiz (57:34.958)
Thank you.

Thank you, God bless.