about recent work she's done on deep learning for genomics and craft structured data. It flows in yours. So thanks for the introduction. So as you mentioned, I'm going to cover some work that we did in the last year and a half or so on deep learning for genomics and graph structured data. And before I introduce the outline of the presentation, I would like to recall that as you know, deep learning has proven to be very effective in many application domains, such as computer vision or speech or natural language processing. And for many of those domains, there have been some models that have proven to be especially successful and that have become like well established. So for example, for computer vision, convolutional neural networks are kind of the de facto standard and with all of their extensions to tackle specific problems and the same happens for sequential data where recurrent neural networks have proven also to be successful and have been widely used. However, when it comes to the biomedical domain, we find a huge variety, a very rich variety of different kinds of data including text-based data but also image-based data or genomics, transcriptomics, or even graph structured data. And within these kinds of data, we still do not have these very well established models. So in this presentation, I'm going to cover two of these kinds of data. So the first part of the presentation will be devoted to genomic data. I'll start with the motivation. So the data that we use looks like and what are the challenges posed by this data. I'll present the framework that we propose to address the challenges posed by this data and present some results on the 1000 Genomes data set. Then the other half of the presentation will be completely on a different topic. So I will switch gears and cover graph-structured data. For this particular case, again, I'll start with the motivation and the problem formulation. I'll give a very brief overview on some prior work and introduce the graph attention network, which is the framework that we proposed. And I will share with you some results on two different application domains, namely the protein-to-protein interaction vectors and brain connectomes. So let's start with the genomic spark. So this work was done while I was a postdoc at Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, and it was a collaboration with many researchers there and also researchers in the Institute of Cardiology de Montréal. And this work was presented at iClear last year. So to give you an overview of the kind of data that we were dealing with, so we're dealing with SNP data. So modern genotyping techniques usually target millions of variants across the genome. And as a consequence, we end up having for each one of the participants a very high-dimensional feature vector, including all of the SNPs. However, even for very large studies, what happens is that the number of participants is still limited. So we end up with these kind of situations where we have a data set, where we have a very limited number of samples that can be orders of magnitude lower than the number of features, or in this case, the number of SNPs that we have per participant. And given this dire imbalance between the number of samples and the number of input features, there are some challenges that appear. So first of all, what happens is if we think of a very simple neural network where we connect all the input to one single output neuron, if we have very high-dimensional input vectors such as the ones that would be the case for SNP data where we could have, for example, a feature vector that could be in the order of hundreds of thousands or even larger than this, what happens is that in this very simple setting we have the same number of parameters as the number of input features that we have. And the same happens for deep neural networks. In that case, what happens in the first layer of the network, so the layer that is connected to the input features, the number of parameters there grows linearly with the number of input features. So we have a parameter explosion. And when this happens, if we do not have enough samples, we are at higher risk of falling into the overfitting regime. Moreover, because we are in very high-dimensional space and we have very few points, it's going to be very hard to cover the whole space and we also encounter the problem of course of dimensionality. So given that, what we decided is to propose a new framework that would parameterize a neural network in order to reduce the number of free parameters that we would learn. And this framework is specifically designed for cases where we have fewer number of samples that can be ordered of magnitude lower than the number of features that we have. So let me give you a bit more details on how this framework looks like. So again, remember that we are in this setting where we have N, which is the number of samples, which is much lower than the number of features F that we have. So given one sample, which is very high-dimensional with F features, we can feed it to a neural network to have some prediction. And all of these layers here will be, for example, fully connected layers. Optionally, we can also have another branch from the neural network that will try to reconstruct our input. So in this kind of setting, we have this parameter explosion that I was mentioning before in two layers. So one is the first layer of the network that is connected to the input. But if we have this reconstruction branch, we also have the parameter explosion at the last layer that is trying to reconstruct the input. So what we do in order to reduce this parameter explosion is tie these parameters to an auxiliary network. So we define an auxiliary network that instead of taking as input one sample, so one participant with all of the features corresponding to this participant, it takes instead one feature. So it takes all the values of one particular SNP across all the trading populations. So if you remember the data set matrix that I showed you in the beginning, where we had the number of samples times the number of features, it would be like transposing these matrix and using these matrix as input to the auxiliary network. So we will have many more examples. So once we take one feature and we feed it to this auxiliary network, we can either handcraft some embedding or learn some embedding. And the motivation behind that is that two features or two SNPs that are similar under some circumstances might end up having similar features. And these similar features will then be used as weights. So what we do basically is have this auxiliary network predict the weights of the layers containing the most of the parameters in the predictor network. So the parameters of the predictor network are not free anymore and are tied to this auxiliary network. And how does this affect the number of free parameters of the network? So to give you an example, if we consider the case where we have 300K SNPs and we are projecting them into lower representation of 100 dimensions, in this first layer of the predictor network we will have 30 million parameters. But if instead of having these three parameters we tied them to the auxiliary network, the number of parameters that we have free instead in the auxiliary network is to give you an example. If we take into account an embedding of 500 dimensions that we project into the 100 dimensional space, we reduce the number of free parameters to 50K. And just to show you that the connection between the two networks matches in terms of matrix sizes, what we have in the first layer of the network is weight matrix of size F, which is the number of features times 100 if I follow the same example as previously. And what we have at the output of the auxiliary network is also F, which will be the number of features which we passed through the auxiliary network times 100 following the same example as before. And as we did for the first layer of the network, we can have a second auxiliary network that predicts and ties the parameters of the reconstruction layer if we eventually have it. So now that you have a brief overview on the Diane Networks framework, let me go over some of the results that we had. So we tested the model on the 1000 Genomes project. The 1000 Genomes project is a large scale comparison of DNA sequences, which is based on the presence of genetic variations. The dataset represents 26 populations, which are then grouped into five larger geographical areas. In total, we have about 3.4K individuals, from which we extracted about 300K SNPs. SNPs were encoded as having 0, 1 or 2 copies of the genetic variation. So here are some of the results. In this plot, in the X axis, I showed the number of free parameters of the model in the lock scale, and in the Y axis, I showed the misclassification error in percentage. So the MRP would be the predictor network without using the auxiliary networks, and the Diane Networks would be the whole framework. So we can see that as we significantly reduce the number of free parameters of the network, we can improve the results. We also compared these frameworks to more traditional frameworks used in the genomics community, that is extracting fixtures via PCA and then learning some kind of classifier on top of it. We chose different number of PCs. I'm just showing here the results for 50 PCs and 200 PCs, since 50 would be the standard number used for this kind of dataset and 200 would be the best result that we achieved. So we can see that compared to more traditional approaches, deep learning models can also do better. So to show you a bit more the results, these are the confusion matrices on the dataset. So we have the confusion matrices over the 26 populations, but also over the five larger geographical regions for a network that has been trained to classify 26 populations but was not given any information on the larger geographical areas. So as we can see here, the network prediction does a pretty good job. It still finds some confusion between populations belonging to the same larger geographical area or between populations that might share some ancestries. And when it comes to larger geographical areas, it does a much better job. So now that we have seen the results, one might ask, can we try to assess what the network is learning? And to do that, we did some experiments and plotted the features that were learned by the network at different points. So I will show you the raw input features and compare them to some features closer to the input to the network and some features that are closer to the last layer of the network. So those are some Disney plots. So that would be the Disney over the 26 populations for the raw data points. And as we can see here, well, everything kind of overlaps. If we go a bit higher in the network and we can see that small clusters start appearing and these small clusters roughly correspond to the 26 populations that we have in the dataset. And as we go up in the hierarchy, we see that these clusters start gathering together. If instead of showing you the clusters with the 26 populations, I show you the same, but with the five larger geographical regions, what we see is that what happens closer to the last layer of the network is that these bigger clusters are gathering together populations that belong to the same larger geographical areas. So to wrap up on this genomics part, we introduced this Diane Network framework, which is a neural network reparameterization that allows us to reduce the number of reparameters that the predictor network has and is specifically designed to handle problems where we have very few number of samples compared to the high-dimensionality of the data. And with the experiments that we did, we showed the potential of deep learning models to tackle genomic-specific tasks. So now that I've finished with the genomics part, let me completely switch gears and go to the graph structure data. And in this second part, I'll cover two works that were published this year. So one would be the Graph Attention Networks. The framework was published at iClear this year. And then the extension and application of the Graph Attention Networks to the persuasion of the cortical meshes, which was presented at the middle about a month ago. So this work is also in collaboration with many researchers at Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, University of Cambridge Computer Vision Center, and the MNI here. So some motivation about why use graph structure data. So I think graph structure data, we can find it everywhere, also in the biomedical domain. So we can think of molecules represented as graphs, compounds, brain connectomes, but we can also think of protein to protein interaction network, gene interaction networks, or more broadly, we can think of networks depicting some kind of epidemiology, for example. So hopefully this is good motivation enough to work on graph structure data and see what kind of deep learning models are well suited for the kind of data. So the problem that we are tackling here is the node classification problem. So we're trying to assign one label to each node of our graph. The kind of data that we have is organized as follows. So as input, we have matrix of node features, and we also have an adjacency matrix, which tells us the connectivity of the graph. And as output, what we expect is a matrix of node class probabilities. So for the rest of the presentation, what I will assume for simplicity is that edges are undirected and unweighted. However, most of the work that I will cover is readily applicable to a broader set of graphs. And I will focus on the inductive learning problem, which is the setting where training does not have access to all the nodes up front. So this is the case for graphs that are joined, and we might want to use some of these graphs for training, some of these graphs for validation, and some of these graphs for tests. And there has been, like, a huge amount of literature in trying to design models for graph structure data from the deep learning point of view. And the simplest model one can think of is the model where we have a per node classifier. So we would just feed the network with the node features, but we would completely drop the structure of the graph. And given this natural baseline, some research has been introduced trying to complement the node features with some structural features. And there have also been some attempts to use recurrent neural networks to tackle graph structure data. In this particular case, we are interested in leveraging convolutions for graph structure data. So a natural question that arises is why convolutions? So convolutions have a number of desirable properties. So first of all, they are independent of the input size. Second, they have a fixed number of parameters because we share the weights across all input locations. They are localized, so they act on local neighborhoods. They are able to specify different importance to different nodes, and they are readily applicable to the inductive problems that I was mentioning and that we are interested in. The question now is how do we apply a convolutional filter to a graph? So there are a number of challenges that make this an interesting problem. So for example, it is not straightforward how to think of how to slide the convolutional kernel across all the input positions, so across all the graph positions. And second, what can happen in graphs is that each node may have a different number of neighbors. So how do we deal with that? So there have been two main lines of research to try to address the problem of applying convolutions to graph structure data, and those are categorized into spectral approaches and non-spectral approaches, so to give you a very quick overview on what spectral approaches are. So graph spectral networks operate directly in the spectral domain. So they mean that they exploit the Laplacian matrix of the graph, which is defined as the degree matrix minus the adjacency matrix or some kind of normalized version of it. And once they have the Laplacian matrix, they compute the eigen decomposition of it. With the eigen decomposition, they can transform the graph signal, so the features that we have in each node of the graph, into the spectral domain. And once we are in the spectral domain, a convolution becomes a simple multiplication. So the transformation that we do to compute the features at the output of a convolution using the spectral networks are first transforming the features into the spectral domain by using the eigen decomposition of the Laplacian matrix, then multiplying by some convolutional kernel, and then transforming back the signal into the spatial domain, into the graph domain. So some potential shortcomings of these kind of approaches are that first computing the eigen decomposition of the graph Laplacian might be very expensive, especially if we have graphs where we have a lot of nodes. And second, in this kind of approaches, filters are not localized. So in order to overcome these shortcomings, there have been the Chebyshev nets and the graph convolutional networks introduced. And in this case, rather than computing the Fourier transform of the graph, what they do is use an approximation computed as a Chebyshev polynomial of order k. So in this case, that's how the computation of the convolution would look like, where the Tk of L term corresponds to the Chebyshev polynomial. So some features about these Chebyshev polynomials is that they have a recursive formulation, which I'm not showing here, but you can check. And this highly simplifies the computation. Moreover, they are built in a way that they are weighted sum of all powers of the Laplacian matrix up to some degree k. And so that's interesting because as you take the powers of the Laplacian, you are basically increasing how far you see. So if you take the power two, you will see two hops away or three hops away and so on as you increase the power. So that makes the operator trivially localized. And the number of parameters in this case is fixed. So we can see that the parameter Wk, we have one parameter for each one of the polynomials. And that fixes the parameters, but has another potential problem, which is that it's applying the same parameter to all the neighbors. So we will apply the same Wk to all the nodes that are one hop away, the same way to all the nodes that are two hops away, and so on and so forth. So we are unable to specify different ways to different nodes in the same neighborhoods. We are learning essentially isotropic filters. And so that was for the spectral approaches. There have also been attempts to tackle the convolutional graph problem in the spatial domain, so in the graph domain. So those are interesting approaches because they do not assume any particular graph Laplacian up front. But the problem here is, as I mentioned before, how do we handle the fact that each node, for example, may have a different number of neighbors. So just to give you a couple of examples of things that have been introduced, so there are the molecular fingerprint networks. And in this case, they address the problem of having different degrees per node by building a weight matrix for each one of the node degrees. And that's a good strategy in their particular problem because their node degrees only range from two to five. But clearly this does not scale well if we have a very wide-degree distribution. There have also been other attempts, like the graph sage, but in that case they maintain the computational footprint of the models fixed by sampling a fixed-size neighborhood. So although that might work keeping the neighborhood size constant, it has a problem that we are inherently dropping some data that might be relevant. So what we propose, which are the graph attention networks, those are networks operating on the spatial domain, and what we will do to be able to handle a different number of neighbors per node is leverage the self-attention operator. And this self-attention operator will allow us to emulate convolutions on graphs. So here is what self-attention looks like in the particular case of a graph. So if we have two nodes, which we can call i and j, each one of those nodes might have their own features, like h, i, and h, j. So we will compute some scores, so we will feed these features to an neural network that will output some similarity score between these two nodes. And once we have the scores for all the pairs of nodes in the graph, we can apply softmax nonlinearity to get...


All right, so my name's Nicole Purple-Line. I'm with Design Theory. And I just want to share a quick talk about social media and advertising. Do you have your Twitter handle? Oh, I will. All of my information is on the last slide. I'll give them my Twitter handle. OK, my Twitter handle is at dt underscore Nicole. No H. Reluctant social media manager. That is me. Is anyone else reluctant about managing your social media account, like you want to just do the work and provide the product and give the service. And all that social media stuff is just right. But not really wanting to invest a lot of money into hiring a social media manager. We don't need to go that far. But I'm sure there's things that we could be doing to increase our reach, our exposure. That's me, social media manager, but reluctant. So where do you start? First thing, what is your goal? And I mean, she talked a little bit before about what is it that you're trying to accomplish on social media? OK, so really think about what am I trying to do? Am I just trying to get my name, my name out there, build my brand? Or am I actually trying to make sales from people on social media? Am I trying to network? Am I trying to establish myself as a knowledgeable person within my industry? Really understand what your goal is. Am I trying to generate content from users? Am I trying to create a community? Based on what your goal is, talk about what your audience is. So we do a lot of work with photographers that are starting up their own businesses and they're trying to get online. They need a website. They need some type of advertising. And we always talk to them. We say, OK, so you're a wedding photographer. Who are you trying to get? I'm trying to get brides. No, you're not. You're trying to get event planners, because the event planners have the brides. So really think about who your audience is. High level, you might think I'm a photographer. My audience is the person I'm taking a picture of.  So really understand who your audience is. Understand your goal. And that's going to lead you to the right platform. I mean, the list is monumentist. But we have our big three. You've got your Twitter. You have your Facebook. You have your Instagram. You've got your Snapchat. You have your Dying Vine. You have Anchor. You have, hey, just saying, sorry. You have Blab. You have Periscope. You have all of these different avenues. You just have to really understand where your audience is and is that audience going to get you to your goal. Last step, once you identify those platforms, and I'm a big proponent of don't spread yourself to three. I hate when you're talking to someone or they give you their card and it's like five different accounts and act this, act that, act that. Integrate, okay? So you need to make sure that the platforms that you are choosing play well together. Make sure you're integrating. All right? So that's just where to start. And next slide. We're going to start because this is a lightning talk. Nice and easy with Facebook. Easiest platform and in my opinion, biggest bang for your buck. Because we are going to talk about spending money, okay? Not just creating ads. We're going to talk about actually spending money on these ads. So you're on Facebook. It integrates well. Facebook owns Instagram, Facebook and Twitter kind of friends. So you can really leverage having a Facebook page for your business. Facebook groups are becoming more and more popular. For the sake of creating ads, you need to have a Facebook page, okay? Whether you use your page as much and maybe you lean more on your Facebook group is the decision of all of your own. But in order to do the ads, you need to have a Facebook page. Make sense? All right. So you want to generate engagement. You want to join other groups. You want to like other people's pages. You want to comment. And this is a rule that goes across platforms even on Instagram. Instagram, the biggest way for you to generate more leads and more people on Instagram is to search the hashtag that you're trying to promote in a general, not your specific WordCamp Miami 2016 hashtag, but WordPress, right? You search your hashtag that you're trying to promote, find the top influencers. Don't just like their pages. Comment. Oh my gosh, that's so cool. All right. You know, thanks for sharing this. Or what do you think about blah, blah, blah? That person is going to follow you. Their followers are going to follow you. And now every time I'm looking at WordPress, you know, post on Instagram or on Twitter, I always see your name come up. This person must know something about this thing, so let me go follow them. So that's how you kind of generate that engagement, especially if you don't have a base to work from, right? If your industry, your family and friends don't care about what you do, so like how do I get people who care about what I do to help support me? Hey, I'm speaking from a span. So, and then use tools to keep your page active. Oh my goodness. Twitter, you have a community, you have all of the Buffer, TweetDec, Hootsuite. You have all of these different tools that will help automate posts for you, help automate the process of engaging, right? So where maybe I only have to go in two days a week and just kind of like, oh, thank you, you know, like really thank you for following. I know that was my bot that said thank you, but now I'm really gonna say thank you. Other tools like hashtagify me, which will let you search and, you know, I'll put these things up because I don't think I added it in the slide, but it'll let you search hashtags and find the ones that are related. How popular is it? Like, I might think that, you know, save the dolphins in the world. You know, hashtag is, you know, the best hashtag to use, but if I put that in a hashtagify me, it's gonna say, you know, stopseaworld is the best hashtag to use. Does that make sense? So you use tools to really help you be specific. Facebook has easy conversions. All right, if you, has anybody done a Facebook ad? All right, Facebook pages. People have Facebook pages? Okay, easy conversion and they keep changing it. If you haven't taken the time, go to Facebook for business. I think it's called facebook.com slash business. We have a whole course of how to use Facebook to generate conversion for your business. I mean, the courses are, they get very specific and it bleeds over into just common business practices, but also, you know, how to use the learn more tab, how to create a really engaging ad, when to use a video ad versus a regular ad. And then what we're gonna talk about for like, literally 30 seconds is retargeting, which is my absolute favorite service that Facebook is providing. And I think that at some point when Facebook realizes the amount of money that they are generating for businesses, it's gonna become a service that's gonna be monetized by them because retargeting is mind blowing. When I saw it, I was like, I can't believe that they do this. Okay, and then it's effective, inexpensive advertising. Cheapest ad unless it's changed on Facebook, I think you can start at $5, right? Five bucks, come on. And again, integration with Instagram ads in the late fall last year, Facebook started rolling out Instagram ads small to small pockets of businesses. I think by now almost everybody should have Instagram ads unless you just recently created your Facebook page. They're kind of wanting it to start with, you know, small business that were more established that they know would use it. So if you haven't, you can always send a message over to support and say, hey, I'm interested in doing an ad on Instagram. Most people think that you go through Instagram to set up your ads, but you actually do it within the Facebook page ad manager. Next slide. All right, quick anatomy of the Facebook ad. And I apologize, this got a little squished because of the display. But basically you create an image-based ad with attractive copy key. Note is image-based ad. Facebook has a rule that you can only have 20% of text on your image of your ad. And Facebook has a really bad calculator for that 20% image of, am I the only one? Oh my gosh, five minutes more. So, image-based ad. This is one of our clients that we've done ads for. You wanna make sure you're targeting the appropriate audiences. When you go into the ad manager, it can get very specific. I can say I only want, you know, 18 to 35 year olds who live within this zip code who have searched these pages, who are interested in this, who buy things online, who like to use Google, and who follow, be right, one of my favorite musicians, on Facebook. Like you can get specific to five people, right?  Again, the bang for your buck. And we all know Facebook knows everything about us, right? Facebook, especially if you have it installed on your desktop, Facebook is not only looking at what you're doing. On Facebook, they're looking at what you're doing and all those other tabs, what you're searching, what websites you've been to, and what they're doing is they're allowing us small businesses to tap into that information to target our customers. So, when you go back to that first page where we were talking about your goal, your audience, your platform, you really have to know your audience. I listened to a podcast that my husband made me listen to where this woman was talking about, like imagine the actual person who is your target customer. What would they do? What would they like? What would they wanna be interested in? Write that list and feed it into the ad manager and you'll be targeting that exact person. Next one. All right, so this is just a screenshot. Facebook ads. This is a really small campaign that we did, but I just wanted you to see for the price what we were able to do. So we spent $30. We reached 7, 7,500 people and we had 1,800 video views. And this is for a business that is local to Orlando, Florida that specializes only in photography workshops for brand new photographers, not established photographers, not people who are making all of their money in photography. It's a very specified group of people and we were able to target those people and I think it tells you, Facebook will give you a range. Like as you start putting in your requirements, it'll say, all right, you're gonna get like 500,000 people in this bucket. We had gotten down to 1,800 to 2,300 people in the bucket of people that we were trying to target. We got almost 1,800 views for $30. Does that make sense? Okay. And we ran it for seven days. If that, we didn't do a lot of the AB testing. We did two ads. Here, two ad sets. So these are... How many ads were in the ads sets? That's it, just these two. These are the two ads that we did, right here. Yeah, so we did one ad where it's got like the cute little animation and the music behind it and the guys talking. Like, this is why you should come to our workshop event.  All of that we put in there and you can see which one performed better.  So this is just, you know, kinda give you an idea of what you'll see once you go into Facebook ads and start trying to create your ads. All right, this is it. This is it. This is the reason why we did this talk. The pixel. All right, listen.  Facebook will give you a pixel. It will give you a snippet of code to take and put on your website. If you do WordPress development, you put it in the header. That's it. Just copy this code. Now they also give you some additional switches that you can add to the code that can be even more specific. If you have a, you know, a large site and maybe you have a blog post that you know was really talking to the people that you were trying to get to, you can actually edit your code to say, especially target these people who looked at this page. But anyway, just the basic code to me is like $1,000 worth of investment. You take this code, you put it on your website. Now, every time, not every time the person clicks the button from your ad to go look at your website, every time any person in the world goes to your website, Facebook is tracking that, and then Facebook will come back and if they're on Facebook, they're gonna see your ad. Now, now, here's the other thing. You can edit, you can edit your, great! Okay, all right. Listen, here's the other thing though. You can edit your pixel code to say, oh, not even if this person visits my website, but you know, like what if they go to- My competitors. My competitors' website. What if they go to, like if I'm trying to target people who are at this specific store, they need to come to, you know, live in this area, be this age, have this income, like to shop online and go to this store because I have the store's website. Many not just the store. Let's say the store had a specific event or a sale. I want them to go to that event page. Like, you can get so specific, like I want everyone who's been to Word Camp Miami to see my ad. I can do that in my pixel without them touching, without them even knowing who I am on Facebook. Does that make sense? Okay. So this is where you go. We're still within the ad manager. If you go into tools and go to pixels, it'll give you the initial pixel code. You copy that pixel code, you put it in your header, and it'll even tell you, your pixel's working. No, we don't see your pixel, you didn't do it right. Question. You put it- If you're doing a page, would you put it in your page? Yeah. But you're saying, where on the page would you put in this pixel code? You would put it on your website and the HTML header for your website. Question. I'm confused because I used pixel, but I didn't get one code. You're saying that the pixel can be tool for each different market. Yes. And you get that. Yes, I think I have a- Can I see a screenshot on the next page? Okay. So my talk is almost over, guys, but you can create more than one pixel. And you can also edit it. Facebook.com slash business. It will walk you, just look up pixels and it'll walk you through how to create those, those different, but you can edit it and then you can even further target your traffic. However long you're running. However, while you're paying for the ad. Yes. Okay. And I think that's it. Next slide. That's it. Here's my contact information. Email me, tweet. Just keep going. Go ahead. I can answer questions. Anyone who's, you know, not hungry. I have a question. Yeah. I have a really nice one. I'm sorry. Sorry. It's a song that I want to do about people and I'd like you to support my project. Thank you. I have a really good one. I did a big job. You did?


on the stream page asking if I've received the assignment. Yes, I have. Once you submit it, once you hit the Submit button and you get a message saying it's submitted, don't worry about it anymore. You don't even have to double check whether you have submitted or not. I would suggest what you do is you can type a private comment.  So you can just send a message saying I have submitted. That's good enough for me to know that at this time, on this day, you have submitted your assignment. Even if there is an issue, I'll be able to figure that out. But once you have submitted, you can send me a private message if you are in doubt. But otherwise, you don't really have to check whether it has reached me or not. Because you'll get a confirmation on Google Classroom itself saying it's done. OK, yeah, OK, yeah. I think Zellittoli and one more person had messaged me. Sorry, I didn't respond to that. Was it Ruben? I don't know. Yeah, one of you. So just submit and you can be at peace that it has reached. So anything else about the assignment, everyone? Yeah, that's it. Is it like multiple choice or does it have a combination of all like descriptive? And that's what I understood. Yeah, so I've given a combination, Divya. OK, OK, yeah. OK, so usually for the more descriptive answers, we would attach a Google Word doc for you to write in. But I didn't want confusion. So in the same quiz form, I've given you some spaces where you can write a longer answer. So you don't have to be very lengthy. But if you can answer the question which is being asked briefly and maybe add a small explanation to it, that should be sufficient. You don't have to write a lot. But the form allows you, this quiz form allows you to also write long answers. OK, OK, thank you. Thank you first. Yeah, yeah, sure. So the only thing which you have to be mindful about is hitting the submit button. So before you hit the submit button, you can work on your questions as much as you want. Maybe you have ticked something and then you're like, OK, I'm not sure. Let me study my notes and change it. You're allowed to do all that till you hit the submit button. The moment you hit the submit button, you will not be allowed to make any changes. OK, so whatever comes through comes through at that point. OK, so yeah, just be mindful of that. So best is there a session expiry for Google Forms? No, there's no expiry. But then your answers will not be accepted after the last date. I put a due date, no? That's the limit I have set. So if your answers come up, yeah. So if you don't complete it by then, what I generally do is proportional to the delay that is deduction in your marks. Yeah, what I meant at that time when I'm doing the assignment, is there a session expiry like? No, no, no. No, no, no. No, OK. No, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, sure. OK, so please work on it. And if you suddenly have some new things that you want clarified, then please do check about it and we'll answer those questions. OK, so that's about the assignment. It's a little bit different for the e-learning students if you all are listening. So you don't have to worry about the Google Classroom aspect of things. All right, so with that, let's pray and let's get started with today's session. I would like to request somebody to pray anyone. Yeah, this is the prayer and intercession class. So I just encourage all of us when you join the class, be ready to pray. So it'll be nice if people can just jump in and pray. So yeah, the time is open. Anyone, please go ahead. Yeah, sure. Shosit Kanu. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, Father God, we come to the throne of grace. We thank you for the time you have given us. We are going to spend in learning about prayer and intercession. Lord, we pray that this hour should be a valuable Lord. Whatever we will be learning, whatever we will be Lord, we will be reminding Lord, we will be remembering, we will be studying about your kingdom, Lord. Whatever they're learning, whatever we will are going to study about prayer and intercession, Lord, whatever all the topics we are going to cover, Lord, today, let it be a lot remembered in our heart, Lord, a letter we also carry a special place in our mind, Lord. Whatever we are going to learn, Lord, thank you for this time you have given us. Thank you for all the students. Thank you for our teacher, Lord. Thank you for the opportunity you have given us, Lord. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen, amen. Thank you. Thank you, Shosit Kanu, for leading us. We will move on to the next chapter here. So far, we have talked about ministering through prayer and we said that we can pray for our own families and exercise our spiritual influence upon our family. And the next chapter that we touched upon was praying for believers and praying for our local church. And I think I had asked us to come back with some points on how you would like to pray for your own local church. If anybody here has it ready, then you can share. Anyone, do you have those points ready with you? What we said in the last class? Okay, Divya, go ahead, Divya, you can share. Yeah, I just wrote down these regarding yeah, salvation and steadfastness and faith, especially for children, those who are coming to faith in the near future. And for workplace situations, for God to help, especially with a lot of pressure in the workplace. Nowadays, not only professionally, but also culturally. So praying for God's hand and to God to bless in those situations. And also for, especially as families to have like the vision, what is the vision of God? Like what is God's calling in bringing us as a family together maybe, so like for families. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you, thank you, Divya. And I can see that you have picked points that are very relevant to your setting, your church and the believers that you know. So that's exactly what we were talking about. We could pray scriptures through the general ones that were mentioned in the last class, plus additionally, your own things that apply in your context. John also has shared here, John Paul, he says pray for believers for love, for each other to increase, okay, wonderful. Then for intercessors to arise, then for people to exercise faith, wow, wonderful. So those are the three points that John is praying. Anita is sharing unity among believers, spiritual growth, understanding of God's word, okay, great. So you know what? This is the way in which God impresses it on our hearts. Don't take anything lightly. If God is impressing something on our hearts, just be faithful with that and go ahead and pray and say, okay, Lord, this is what, it's not like, oh, we should pray for this, only for revival or this or that, but Holy Spirit is impressing on our hearts. Even the simple promptings, take it up and we say, okay, God, you're showing me this and I'm going to pray through, I'll pray into this point and I believe that you are working, Lord, even as I'm asking you to minister in this area. So that's wonderful class. Please continue in this way and as the Holy Spirit lays different points on your hearts, keep praying for people. Okay, Zillatoli also sharing. She's saying, pray for unity in the church, okay. God's spirit to invade our church. Wow, and to grow and mature in Christ, okay. Three points that she feels will be good for her people. Wonderful, Zillatoli. So let's keep doing this. Today, as we discuss about ministering through prayer, we will come to another very specific situation, okay. And this is about praying for the lost or those who have not yet received the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, those who are not saved or those who don't yet have salvation. So how do we pray for such people? We are using the term lost, okay. Now, in this lesson, we are going to understand that there is, when we say prayer, there are different kinds of prayers. We've already seen it. No, we can petition God. We can ask that somebody be saved, which is all right. But when it comes to people not seeing the gospel for what it is and receiving it, we study in God's word that there is another aspect, okay. That is Satan trying to keep people away from the truth. So there is a prayer aspect, but there is also the opposition, which we have to deal with, which we are going to term as spiritual warfare. So as we are going to look at this subject, these are the two things that we will talk about. One is prayer in terms of petitioning God and asking God for various things. And the other is to fight against the opposition, which is coming from the enemy. So Satan works very hard on keeping people away from knowing the truth. How Jesus said, the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness did not understand it, even when he was walking the earth. No, people did not recognize. Isn't it sad that the truth is out there, but people are not able to recognize. People are not able to receive it because there is a God of this world again. When we say God, it's not the capital G, it's a small G that the Bible uses. Who is Satan, okay, who is trying to exercise his influence and prevent people from knowing the salvation, the redemption that Jesus has already bought for us on the cross. That is why we call it what, good news. It's such a great news. What no man can do, Christ Jesus, he became the propitiation for our sin, the Bible says. So God himself has done it for us. And now we can be justified because of what God has done. We can become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. This much of truth is there, but people are not able to see it. People are not able to understand it. People are not able to receive it. Why? Because Satan is working hard to keep them away from this reality. So what is Satan doing? No, we see that Satan blinds people. Okay, he blinds people. And that is what we see in scripture. It'll be good for somebody to read 2 Corinthians chapter four, verses three and four, please. I'm on page 63. 2 Corinthians four, verses three and four. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In whose case, the gods of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, John. So, you know, we see here that the gospel is veiled. Okay, what is a veil? You put a veil, right? People usually use a veil kind of to cover their face. So the gospel is veiled is what we are being told. And the God of this world, Satan has blinded. So, which again means that there is a barrier. They're unable to see even though the work has already been done and it exists. So it's like a cloud, you know, a dark cloud between the truth and the people. And this is what Satan does. And we've seen that here in this very passage. There are other passages also, which are given here, but they talk about the same thing, how people have been blinded by Satan. So these things have to be broken. That blindness has to be removed. Okay? And that is when people will be able to see the truth. Now, there are instances in scripture where we see that this blindness comes about, you know, for certain reasons. Now, when we look at the book of Acts, okay? In Acts 13, when Paul in Barnabas, they're traveling on their first missionary journey, they go to a place called Paphos. And in that place, there is an intelligent man. He wants to know about God. But, you know, there is a hindrance. Even if he wants to know, there is a spiritual opposition, okay? Which is created for this man not to receive the gospel. So he is not able to understand, even though Paul wants to minister to this individual, but there is a sorcerer, okay? Somebody who's engaging in black magic and things like that. So he is becoming the hindrance. And he is creating the spiritual influence for this intelligent man not to understand the gospel. Okay, so there you see the hindrance, right? And now we saw how Satan himself is kind of blinding the eyes of the people. But in this particular case, Acts 13, we know that Satan was using an individual to create that blindness in the life of another person. So we can have, you know, such blindness existing for various reasons, okay? Over regions, over territories, over individuals, so on and so forth. So there can be a, there can also be a human, you know, agent, or an empowered, demonically empowered person also, okay? Who's bringing about that kind of an opposition over a group of people, okay? So the point we have to understand is that there is blindness which Satan tries to create and he does not want it to be lifted off. But we know in the case of Acts 13, you know, Paul ministers, Paul recognizes, why is this intelligent man not able to receive? Okay, it's because of the sorcerer elements. So he rebukes the sorcerer and he says, you know, he rebukes and he kind of there's a judgment on that sorcerer, he goes blind. But after that we read when that spiritual influence stops on the intelligent man that he is able to hear what Paul says and also we read that he believed, he actually believed. So Satan brings about blindness. So when we pray for people, we must remember that. Now, the other thing, the way Satan engages is that he likes to keep people in bondage. We read in scripture that God has brought us out of a, you know, like a wrong way of living before we come into, before we come to Christ, that is, you know, the things of the world which we are engaged in, we are lost in those things, we enjoy those things, we desire, you know, the things which exist in the world. But once we come into the Lord Jesus Christ, we are set free from those habits, from those practices, from that evil way of living. And we can continue to live free. Recently Pastor also shared a sermon about in Christ, free in Christ, the liberty which we have in Christ. We can live free to worship the Lord from any form of bondage, but here is the plan that Satan has. He holds people in bondage, okay? Especially those who are lost because he has an influence over them. They are not yet part of the kingdom of light. So what does he do? He keeps them as prisoners, okay? He keeps them as prisoners in what? He keeps them in habits. He creates strong holds in their lives.  And so they are stuck, right? They are stuck in some immoral activities. They are stuck in some deeds. They might be addicted to those things. Now Satan likes to do that as long as he can keep people prisoners. One is blind them. They won't even understand. Even if you share the gospel, they won't even understand because there is a spiritual veil which is standing between that person who's listening and we who are sharing the message. The second is people are caught up in their bondages, okay? In their addictions, in their habits, in their immoral lifestyle, all kinds of things. When he knows how to keep people bound in those things, he knows that they will be stuck. They will not try to come to the light.  They will not know how to come out of that prison. So they will remain stuck in their own ways. So he loves to do that in the lives of people who are lost. And, you know, he always tries to bring about an opposition. Paul talks about it. He says that, you know, whatever work they set out to do, Satan was always trying to oppose it. So we know that, you know, different, different cities as Paul and his team traveled, there would be individuals who would rise up against the team, you know, kind of instigate mobs against the team, accuse the team, you know, create, make things very difficult for the team to minister. Why? Because they don't want the gospel to be preached. Now, who is doing this work of opposition? Obviously, it's Satan. He's working in the hearts of, you know, individuals and he is kind of fanning the flames and telling them, don't let these people preach the gospel. You know, they're not doing the right thing, so on and so forth. So Satan loves to do all this blindness, keeping people in the prison, opposing the work of the gospel. So when we are wanting to reach out to those who are lost, you know, we must, yes, preach the gospel, but also engage in spiritual warfare, okay? Now, remember, we talked about the example of Charles Finney, okay? And Father Nash, we said how Father Nash, he prevailed in the spirit. In that context, we talked about them. But also, you know, the results which Charles Finney had, it was because of spiritual warfare that Father Nash and team engaged in, right? Because when we read his testimony, he shares how after Father Nash died, he did not have a team that would go out and prepare in a spiritual sense for the ministry. So he would go and preach, but he would not have the kind of results he had when Father Nash and team used to go and pray. So what is the, you know, like our conclusion? It's likely that the intercession that Father Nash and team engaged in, they were engaging in spiritual warfare.  And even now, you know, when we talk about church planting, you know, this course, you'll probably have it in your future semesters. We say how it's important, like when we are a church planter, we are going to a particular place, the first few months, okay, or the initial time, it's important to just, you know, engage in worship, engage in praise because all this is spiritual warfare, okay, engage in prayer, engage in tearing down, you know, the works that the enemy is doing. So as we're engaging in spiritual warfare, the spiritual atmosphere is being prepared in that place. Okay, usually, that's what generally church planters do. They take up whatever time God shows them. Some people take six months, some people even take a year. Only thing they do is pray, worship, just, you know, go after the presence of God. And even as God's presence breaks through, all the, you know, the works of these demonic powers over the region, we will talk about, you know, territorial spirits and things like that. When we study about believers' authority, you know, what happens is that we see the victory over the demonic works, okay. And spiritual warfare is something that we engage in. And after that, when we start doing the preaching, you're reaching out to people, there is a greater openness because what have we just done? We have broken the strongholds of the enemy, okay. So spiritual warfare has a very important role to play, particularly when we are praying for those who are lost, okay. So the church has this responsibility, first of all, it's our responsibility, okay, to shine the light of the gospel. We have the great commission. Is it a great suggestion? No, it is a great commission. So should every believer shine the light of the gospel, talk about, you know, the blessings that we have received through the cross, the freedom that we have received through the cross. Yes, every believer has a responsibility to go ahead and share this with others who don't know it. And at the same time, you know, we said that there are prisons in which Satan is holding people. The church is called as, you know, the entity that will set the prisoners free, okay. So God has called us with this kind of a responsibility. You know, we can look up, there are some passages of scripture that have been given here in our notes. You could look it up. But, you know, ultimately what they're saying is that, you know, we have to arise shine for our light has come and we have to go and we have to set the prisoners free. We have to do the work of God. So the church is vested with authority. We are already given the authority to do this work. We can overthrow the works of the devil, right. And, you know, we've seen this, that God has given us the keys of the kingdom to whom has he given the church is given the keys of the kingdom. In other words, authority and dominion to overthrow the gates of hell shall not prevail. So overthrow the powers of darkness. Whatever the powers of darkness are doing, it's not a matter of worry for the church, okay. Obviously, Satan will try to do his best, but we are coming from a place of victory. We are coming from a place of dominion. So we don't have to be scared. Oh, Satan is doing this. These spirits are doing that. We should not be worried about that. Instead, we must use our authority and we must exercise it. How do we exercise it? One of the ways we said this, prayer itself. When we pray, we are exercising our authority. You're on earth. We can also declare God's word, right. We can speak over the people.  Come on, arise. There are many declarations that we can make over the lives of the people. We can, you know, engage. We can engage in spiritual warfare. And in spiritual warfare, we have the authority to bind and lose. You know, we have talked about that, right? So basically, we are restricting the enemy from working. So when we say, I bind you, Satan. You know, you will no longer keep this person in prison in this immoral habit. We are exercising our authority to restrict, okay. So we can bind. We can lose. We can lose the power of God. Remember when Jesus, he cast out a demon in Matthew chapter 12. He said, the kingdom of God has come upon you because when he cast out the demon, like he lose the kingdom of God on that individual. So we can lose the kingdom of God over people. We can cast out. And Jesus did that. You know, he delivered people from demonic possession. So we too can do that as believers. So in all these ways, what are we doing? We're overthrowing. Okay, Satan, is this what you're going to do? Doesn't matter. We have the authority and we are going to take you head on and we are going to exercise our authority. So in all these ways, the church is called to minister.  Let's pack our bags. It's too scary. Let's, you know, scoot from here. No, we already have the authority. We can engage. We can go against the devil. Who should be afraid? Satan should be afraid of us. Okay, and we are also told in God's word in second Corinthians 10 verses three to six, how every, you know, everything that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, we are able to bring it down. Okay, so we can use our spiritual weapons for warfare and we can shout the victory of God. One more thing which when we talk about believers authority, we emphasize on it a lot. That is the finished work of the cross. Okay, again, there are so many scriptures. We can look upon this, how the Lord Jesus, you know, he has expelled the enemy, how he has defeated the enemy, right? How he has destroyed the devil. So how he has gained victory on the cross and he has made a public spectacle of the evil one. So when we read about these passages about what the Lord Jesus has done on the cross of Calvary, you know, we recognize that we are fighting from a place of victory. We no longer have to gain the victory. Victory has already been gained by Jesus. Some scriptures that you can look up is Colossians two verses 14 and 15, Hebrews two and verse 14. How about we read it? I think it'll be good to read these verses. Colossians two verses 14 and 15, one person could please read it and then another person Hebrews two and verse 14, please. Anyone just feel free, unmute and read it. All right, Hebrews two 14. Therefore since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise also partook of the same that through death, he might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil. Yeah, thank you, John. Thank you. So it's so clear, right? So what has he done to Satan, render powerless? So then who is the enemy? He's a defeated enemy. He is powerless. So who are we fighting? We have to always remember that as we fight the devil, we recognize he's nowhere equal to God. First of all, he's a created being. God is the self-existent, almighty God. And Satan is a created being who is opposing God. So that in itself is no equality. Beyond that, what do we see? The Lord Jesus has defeated the devil, render powerless. Who has the authority? Jesus has all authority. He gave it to the church now. And what about the devil? He's powerless. That's what we read in scripture. Okay, Colossians 2. Yeah, Divya has posted it here on the chat. Divya, would you also like to read it please? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Colossians 2, 14 to 15. Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was called to read to us. And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross, having disarmed principalities and powers. He made a public spectacle of them, trying to bring over them in it. Yes, wonderful. Thank you, Divya. So we notice here, having disarmed principalities and powers, principalities and powers, these are like ranks, hierarchy in the demonic realm. So principalities, powers, then he made a public spectacle of them. You know, public spectacle those days when conquerors took on a region. They would, how do you say? Put the defeated person to shame. Public spectacle. Publicly put the defeated king or the defeated king and his ministers and all the people. They'll put them to shame. So that is what Jesus has done. We are being told that he is the reigning ruling king who has defeated the devil such that he made a public spectacle of them. And then again, another word that triumphing over them in it, meaning on the cross, he has triumphed over Satan. He has triumphed over every principality, power, you know, every spirit of wickedness. Anything that you can list out as demons or dark powers. So the clear, a clear point that I want us to have in our minds is we are victorious. Jesus has already done the work. So think about this, even before the cross, at one point in Luke 10, Jesus sends out some disciples and he tells them, okay, you go, you do the ministry. Now, when he gives them the authority to do that ministry, he says, look, nothing shall by any means harm you, okay? Even before the cross, he encourages them and says, don't worry, don't worry about anything. I've given you the authority. You go against the works of the devil and nothing shall by any means harm you. So how much more after the cross? You know, we are protected in that sense. So that is why I just want to make it clear because sometimes when we talk about spiritual warfare, believers get scared. They'll say, oh, no, it's only for pastors or apostles or, you know, prophets. Don't ask, I'm just a believer. You know what? Every believer has been vested with incredible authority. No, there's no gradation of authority that Jesus gives us, isn't it? We are given the authority. The church is given the authority, all authority which Jesus had, he gave it to the church and we have seen scriptures now that say that the enemy is disarmed, right? Made a public spectacle, Jesus has triumphed over him. So we keep all this in mind and we engage in spiritual warfare. So who should be afraid? It's Satan who must be afraid. So when praying for people who are lost, we must pray.  Set them free from their addictions. We can pray all these prayers, Lord. We continue to speak and declare the destiny of God over their lives. But at the same time, what we are saying is we can take spiritual authority. So we can pray things like, okay, I bind that spirit of deception which is working in that person's mind. Maybe you know specifically, you know, what is that deception that this individual has in their minds? You pray against that in Jesus' mighty name. Now, you can take, you may want to cast out a demon, you know, out of their lives or you know, you are just continuing to declare and say that you're fighting basically.  So you're going against that blindness. You could pray prayers like God. You remove the blindness. I come against that blindness which is stopping this person from understanding your love for them. So in all these ways, one is we are praying, okay, petitioning God and all of that. But the other is that we're engaging using our authority, spiritual authority. We are praying against what Satan is doing in the lives of the people. We can also destroy. God may show us, hey, this is the root cause. You can pray, I cancel. I cancel this in the name of Jesus. I destroy the work of the enemy in the name of Jesus. You know, I destroy that oppression which this brother is facing in the name of Jesus. So whatever authority we have, we apply it as per the situation as led by the Holy Spirit. So as we are praying, as we're engaging in spiritual warfare, what's happening on one side? Yes, God is working. God's word is working and all of that. But the enemy is retreating. The powers of darkness are being rendered, completely useless in the life of that person. So it becomes easier and easier for that person to understand the gospel, to receive the gospel and to come to the Lord. We must keep engaging in both of these ways for the lost people. So in our notes here, certain things have been listed in terms of prayer. What are the prayers which we can pray for the lost people? More specifically for them to come to know Christ, we can pray and say that we invite the Holy Spirit to work in their lives. Now, what will the Holy Spirit do? We are told in John chapter 16 verses 7 through 11 that he is the Spirit who brings conviction. Or he lets people know what sin is, what righteousness is and about judgment. So even if we are speaking, right, we may not be able to bring that person to a place of conviction, but it is the work of the Holy Spirit. So when we are praying for somebody who's not a believer, we can say, Holy Spirit, we welcome you. Holy Spirit, you come. You work in the life of this person or these people. Let them know you. Let them know the sin that they are engaging in. And basically you invite the Holy Spirit to come and work. We can also pray that God will draw the people to himself because we see that in the book of John. Jesus says that the Father will draw, the Father draws people to himself. So because scripture says that God plays a part in drawing people to himself, we can ask and say God, you know, so and so. We pray, heavenly Father, that you will draw them to yourself, oh God. So that is another prayer which we can pray. Now, we can also pray that God will bring this person that we are praying for to a place of repentance, okay, and to a place where they will have the knowledge of the truth because we see in scripture that the enemy, okay, he entraps people. And, you know, he does not let them understand or have the sense of what the truth is. But when we pray and we say, God, you know, you work in this person's life, Lord, you bring them to a place of repentance, you give them the knowledge, Lord, of what the truth is, we can expect God to work in their hearts and in their lives. We can also pray and ask God for his spirit of wisdom, his spirit of revelation to work in the hearts and lives of the people.  So nothing wrong in praying that even an unbeliever, yeah, correct, they're spiritually, they're dead. But still we can pray and we can say, God, open their spiritual eyes. They're not seeing you right now. They're not seeing the truth right now, you know. So you please work on their lives and on their hearts and open up their spiritual eyes. So what happens when their spiritual eyes are open, they will be able to perceive the reality of who this Jesus is, how he has redeemed their lives and what kind of a life they can have, right? Because of the salvation which God has offered. So we pray in this manner. We can also pray, you know, that God said, right? Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. So we can pray and we can say, Lord, send more laborers.  So bring people into their lives, bring Godly people into their lives, who will sow the word of God into their hearts, who will live the life of an example before them, okay? So when we pray things like this, God is faithful.  We can also pray for supernatural encounters. So supernatural encounters has to do with things like God, giving them a dream or God, visiting them. You know, you recall Saul on the road to Damascus, he had an encounter with God and he was a persecutor before that, but once he had an encounter with God and God spoke to him, God called him to himself. Now you see that he was a completely different person, but how did it happen? We know, even at that time we know that the early church was a praying church. They used to pray, they were praying for boldness, they were praying that, you know, God would work, right? So much of persecution was going on. So it's likely that the church had prayed. So God can encounter people, any type of person, they could be very far away from God and we may wonder how is this person, you know, in the whole world, how this person can be saved? Maybe people thought like that about Paul, you know, Paul, when you read about him, it's quite scary. He dragged, it says that he dragged men and women.  In his zeal, he did what he did. He was thinking he was doing the right thing.   So this man is a Gentile. He has no clue about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing, but what happens? There is a vision, God tells him, God ministers to his heart. So today we could do that. Who knows how God would, you know, talk to somebody, give them a vision and say, you should go here or do this and you will hear, okay, the gospel or angels, God can send angels, God can give dreams. So I know of a particular friend who was very far away from God and you know, she, her whole family accepted Christ, except her and they were all praying for her and but she was like a rebel. She never wanted to listen.  She was not at all keen. But once what happened is apparently forced by her family, she went for some retreat or camp and in that camp, she had a dream. She had a dream that she was walking on a beach and Jesus was walking with her and it was as if Jesus was asking her for reasons, why is it that you don't believe in me? You know, so she had a dream like that and some in that dream, she sensed that what she was doing was not correct. Why am I not believing in God? I must put my trust in the Lord Jesus. So through that dream, she gave her life to Christ, okay? And today she and her husband are pastors, okay? They are pastors with, it's amazing. They're not in India, but in another country, but they're serving the Lord beautifully, okay?  So these are all prayers which we can pray and we must not give up on people who are right now far away from God because God wants us to be those who stand in the gap. You know, that's what we're learning, right? In prayer and intercession, intercession, what is intercession?  So today we might be able to list out some people, individuals in our own lives and say, oh, these people really need God or God may put a region on our hearts and say pray for Bangalore or pray for India, pray for Uganda, pray for, you know, I don't know, different places, but just heed the call of God and these are all ways in which we can engage in praying for the lost. So because of the time I'm gonna stop here, but I would, maybe we can briefly look at some of the questions or, you know, comments that you all have. Few minutes, we'll look at that, but we'll come back again tomorrow, delve into the same subject and study some more. So any thoughts as of now? Any, anything you want to share? Okay, so maybe you just wanna think about it some more. Okay, and let's come back, let's come back tomorrow and we'll pick up from where we have stopped. So we're talking about praying for those who are lost, okay? Yeah, and I think it's very, very important. So even as we wrap up today's class, I would like to request somebody to please lead with a word of prayer. Anyone, please go ahead. Okay, yeah, Siddhi Khidoo. Yeah, go ahead. Father, we come to the throne of grace. Lord, thank you for the time with the Lord. Thank you for what we have learned today, Lord. We learned about praying for the lost Lord. We pray all the people, all the lambs, Lord, all the sheeps of your, which are going astray, Lord. All the people who are Lord, who wanted to hear about you, what the word, the gospel is not reaching to them, Lord. We pray, Lord, Lord, give us the charge. Prepare us so that we can go to the sheeps, Lord. We can go to this lost lambs, Lord, so that we can bring back to you for them, Lord. We can bring back them to your kingdom, Lord. We thank you for whatever we have learned and praying for the lost Lord. We thank you for this session. We thank you for all the students, Lord. We thank you for the ma'am, Lord. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you for the day you have given us, Lord. Many are no more today to see this day, Lord, but you have made us available to see this day, Lord. Thank you for all the places. Thank you for all your goodness, Lord. You have shown to us in Jesus' name, pray, amen. Amen, amen. Thank you. Thank you, Siddhi Khidoo. Yeah, so yes, class, do continue to think about this subject and let's come back tomorrow. We'll complete it. And yeah, I'm sure God will work through us, right? Even as I'm talking to you, I'm just thinking of some of my relatives for whom I've been praying and it's taking so long, but let's encourage ourselves and keep pressing on, okay? Right, okay. God bless you. Have a good day. We shall meet again tomorrow. Bye for now. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.


The events that led to the Battle of Mogadishu really started months prior to our arrival. When we got there, we didn't really think it was going to be anything of significance. Very quickly we realized that that wasn't the case. We are pretty sure that the target, which was Mohammed Farah I.D., was no longer in Somalia. We had shifted our focus more to his executive staff, and because we had shut down their communications so effectively, they had to have a face-to-face meeting. Therefore, it was a target of opportunity for us. We launched at a soft force on October 3rd. We could already see tires burning in the city, which is a good sign that they know you're coming. When the helicopter came to a hover, the dust from the rotors was just blinding. We got off the helicopter, moved into our section of the building. The raid itself went really, really well. It wasn't until we began to leave the target that things started to get a little off-plan. One of our rangers fell out of a helicopter from about 90 feet. It required our air assets to stay on target long enough for one of those gunners to get lucky, and we lost a helicopter. I was on the roof waiting for a helicopter to come pick us up. I saw the helicopter go down. I saw Super 6-1 crash. I knew immediately, as soon as I saw it go down, that things had changed. It crashed probably about a half a mile to three-quarters of a mile away from where we were at. As we began to fight and run and shoot and climb through that city to get to that crash site, that three-quarters of a mile in combat can be an eternity. We got there after dark. The helicopter was completely destroyed in the crash. We had already put in our search and rescue team. Most of those guys were already wounded, but they had managed to hold it long enough for us to arrive. We found that one of the pilots was actually underneath the aircraft. We weren't going to leave that body, so we began to disassemble that aircraft using the tools that we had in the middle of the night under gunfire. So it took us hours to basically recover the body of the pilot and then get the wounded ready to move. We left as the slum was coming up. The leaf column came in. We took our wounded and our killed in action. We put them on the armored vehicles and the remainder of us moved out, but we were on foot. We ran through the city to a link-up site where we linked up with 10th Mountain Division. We moved about another mile or so with elements of 10th Mountain that distance was known as the Mogadishu Mile. When we got to the Pakistani stadium, we looked and we realized just how big the operation had become. When you're an assault team working in a small element, you're really only focused on your one or two meters of the ground on that battlefield so you don't really see the place it was going to take in history.