Well, good evening and welcome to Calvary Chapel Chino Valley. Wasn't that just an amazing time of worship tonight? And what a great place to be able to pit stop during the week to be refreshed spiritually and to be encouraged in the Lord And even through the time of worship, it's such a great opportunity to turn our attention off of our problems and on to the Lord who takes care of those problems and tonight we have a very special night of just having me here with you I'm just kidding. But we're gonna have another night where we're getting together to study God's Word and I know for those of you that know my brother Brennan, he is I would say the best bealer brother and you get second best tonight and I am playing the sympathy card so that you like what I have to say this evening so don't say oh too much but we are very very blessed to be able to be in a place where we can come and study God's Word right now with all the crazy that's happening in the world there is such a huge relief I think of that it's a relief to be able to open the Word of God and to know where you stand spiritually to know that God is still on the throne that God's ways though they can be very beyond our understanding at times that they always end up being the best and they always end up being the right thing to do and so when the world is flip-flopping on what is right and what is wrong we know exactly where we stand because we hold on to the Word of God and tonight one of the things that we're going to be looking at this evening and I think that this is something that the Lord's been doing in my life personally and so this message is very personal to me but it has to do with how the Lord uses difficulties and pain and suffering so that his righteous work may be accomplished in your life and so I'm just going to say right off the bat if any of you are having a difficult time if any of you are questioning God's love and faithfulness to you then you are at the right place at the right time tonight because the Lord has a very special I believe encouraging Word for you and so if you have your Bibles would you please open up to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 we're going to be looking at verses 1 through 5 tonight and like I said this is a very very personal personal thing to me and I think that it is going to be used in a way hopefully as the Holy Spirit leads the teaching of his Word to minister to you in your time of need let's go ahead and pray and we'll ask the Lord to bless this evening Father in heaven we thank you so much for your faithfulness to us we thank you Lord for this place that we can call our church home we thank you for Pastor David and for Marie we thank you Lord for their faithfulness to you Lord I believe it was just 40 years now just not too long ago they celebrated 40 years of serving faithfully and Lord we thank you for them we pray that you bless this time of rest that they be refreshed and just Lord really just refresh them not only just in their spirit Lord but help their bodies their minds everything to just be ministered to by you to feel Lord completely refreshed in every area of their life bless them Lord and bring them back home safely Lord we ask that now for us here that you would add your blessing to the reading and to the study of your word and so Lord give us ears to hear what your spirit would say and we ask these things in Jesus name and all God's people say amen so 2 Thessalonians chapter 1 looking at verses 1 through 5 this evening beginning in verse 1 it says Paul, Silvanus and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians and God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ now if you have gold in your life and they could look a million different ways but if you're a goal oriented person one thing that you'll notice is that you will find yourself bumping into people that share those common goals and you'll find yourself you know in the same lane of people that are going in the same direction that you're going in for these three men that we're reading of tonight they were actually really good friends men that were called to the same calling to teach the word of God to preach the gospel and to equip the saints and as a follower of Jesus we're all to be about the work of the ministry in some way shape or form but there are some that make it their life's work there are some that their occupation in life their soul calling is to be about the Father's business now this doesn't mean that one calling is better than the other or for each is given a measure of faith we all are doing hopefully what we're supposed to be doing but when it comes to the preaching of the word of God and the planting of churches and the teaching of the scriptures there is a very special bond that is forged you know yesterday I actually saw your pastor as well as many others that were at K Smith's memorial service and we were celebrating her life and really it seemed like it was the end of an era as it will be eight years ago in October that pastor Chuck passed away and then Kay you know just a few weeks back in August passed away and what a dynamic couple they were how the Lord used them to touch a generation and I remember you know being on staff at Calvary Costa Mesa when I was a young man I was 24 when I went on staff there and I was able to serve there for nearly 10 years but I remember one Sunday afternoon after Sunday services were over it was about 1.30 in the afternoon or so and pastor Chuck had this old blue Cadillac you ever visited Calvary or saw him maybe when he had come to visit and you saw his car this old school Cadillac and it was a great car but I remember we pulled out of the parking lot by the shell gas station there and it was on Fairview and Sunflower and at the time I had a Chevy Silverado truck and I pulled up next to them and Chuck and Kay were at the light and I kind of motioned I rolled my window down and I said hi and I motioned to them and Kay looked at me and I said in a very serious voice I said hey you want a race and she goes she says oh you naughty boy like that in her real sweet granny voice and then as soon as that light turned green Chuck floored it off the line I mean in the Cadillac like the big V8 engine is it just went right off the line and I'll never forget that and there's countless stories you know that people can share about just really who they were as people and then the kinds of people that they attracted and that wanted to be around them and those that even including pastor David Rosales who's on the Calvary Chapel Association's Board of Directors and just this group of men that were called to lead a movement. There's a very special bond that takes place with these guys especially in the ones that we're looking at tonight where their lives were on the line for the sake of the gospel. You know there's really nothing like the foxholes of life to bring people closer together and for a minister though a pastor a leader for someone to fall into sin as we see and hear time and time again that it just breaks your heart when these things happen but for a minister to error or to fall into sin is to forfeit everything and the longer you're in ministry the greater the collateral damage can become and just like a family the more kids that you have and the more things you acquire the greater the losses when sin gets involved and the lasting consequences of sin are really not to be underestimated for they fulfill the promises of the scriptures where it says in Galatians 6-8 he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption but he who sows to the spirit will of the spirit reap everlasting life. Now maybe there are some of you here this evening that have gone through some pretty serious things so you're currently going through some pretty serious situations and as you go through these serious times of life and your family or your friends or there are those that may come alongside you or that might try to help you through those things and it brings if you have not yet noticed already going through those difficult times not only brings a lot of strain upon you but it can also bring a great amount of strain upon your relationships your marriage, your children but after going through those things the things that were the hardest things of your life over and over and over you walk through them you push through them you find that those that were closest to you that stuck with you through all of that are the ones that you have the strongest relationships with often even in our marriages I think as a side note we fail to realize that the adversity that we face as married couples is the very crucible for a lasting marriage but in the context of our teaching tonight there's nothing like risking your life for the most important cause which is to see people come to know Jesus that will bring you together that which costs the most and requires the most is really what I've found the very knife if you will to cut away the things that are not important and that will slow you down what we do for the Lord how we live our life because we've all come to a point and maybe some of you actually are not there yet but I think for those of us as we get older you come to a point in your life where you realize you have this major epiphany that life is just really short it's real short and maybe I feel it a little bit more so today because of the memorial that I went to yesterday but I think we come to a point in our maturity where we realize man life is really short I don't have a lot of time and you'll find that as you realize that life is so short that you start to value things that maybe you didn't value previously things that you took for granted and if you're a follower of Jesus you start to place more of an emphasis on the things that you do for the Lord that last and so Paul and Silas as he's also known as in Timothy were men that put their lives on the line for the sake of others both that were outside of the church and those that were inside of it as well these men were very remarkable men and they understood each other they understood the kinds of spiritual warfare that would take place they understood each other in the situations of life and ministry you know it's sort of like you know if you're a bearded man and you see another bearded guy you just automatically get each other like I see this guy right here I'm like hey what's up brother how you doing you got a beard and you give each other the knot yeah I understand I see you you know for those of you that have kids you know do you remember what it was like before you had children and how you had something called a social life and then you did things with other people and then you had children and then you started to see that you know your social life was kind of non-existent but then you started to have interactions again with your friends but your friends didn't have children yet but you did do you remember what it was like and how stressful it was when you had to preface everything that your children did to your friends that didn't have children and how you oh that's just what kids do you know kids will scream and kids throw stuff on the floor and they make a big mess and yep you know I got to change diapers you know this is what happens in real life and your friends are almost like I don't think I can ever have kids and then they have children you know and then all of a sudden you start hanging out with your friends that have children you make new friends because your old friends ditched you and then you have oh I've made friends with people that have a lot of children and then you go to share with them like hey I'm really sorry my kids jump off the wall sometimes they're like hey I have four kids I get it I understand what children do I understand that kids can behave like that see in the ministry it's the same way you don't have to preface anything because you just understand it you're dealing with as a pastor the same things that pastors are dealing with across the country you know I'm involved with a once a month meeting with these pastors that are in our Calvary Chapel movement and you know it's remarkable whether they're in the Midwest or over in the UK or wherever they may be that when they share their stories of the things that they're dealing with they're just the same straight across the board but you deal with that too no way I thought I was the only one but see as a follower of Jesus you have that same connection too with your brothers and sisters in Christ there's a strong connection there because some Christians are afraid to admit that they're having a hard time that they struggle here and there or sometimes that they actually struggle a lot in 1 Peter chapter 4 verse 12 Peter writes and says beloved do not think it's strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened to you and in verses 8 and 9 of 1 Peter 5 he says be sober be vigilant because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour listen to this resist him steadfast in the faith knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world so you're not the anomaly you're not the random weird one that's having those kind of difficulties the Bible actually says that the things that you experience as a Christian man or a woman here is being experienced by other Christian men and women around the world because we have the same adversary the devil who is roaring he's that lion looking for whom he may devour and as we get into this letter to the Thessalonians I think we'll see this unpacked in a way that is very personal and very practical to all of us today Paul writes grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ grace to you peace to you have you noticed how much the world is looking for grace and peace today something to fill that void we're all looking for that we're all looking for it you know there's an old school band by the name of Eurythmics that wrote that song they traveled the world in the seven seas and everybody's looking for something but the interesting thing is is that for the Christian we have what everyone's looking for we have it the deception comes to the church when the devil can get us to believe that there's something else out there besides what Christ has given us that will fill that void that we think we may have we have peace through Christ grace and peace Paul writes are from God you will find that grace does not come from good deeds from kindness or from love you will not find peace from money or possessions or relationships listen to what Jesus said in John 14 27 he said peace I leave with you my peace I give to you not as the world gives do I give to you let not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid there are so many things in our country right now that we can be afraid of in our state in our county in our cities in our neighborhoods the fear of the unknown now listen there can be temporal peace that you can find in a relationship that's going well there can be temporal financial peace from a bank account that actually has money in it but it's not that peace that comes from God your relationships that are healthy that's not the peace that comes from the Lord though you might say Lord thank you for blessing my relationships having money in the bank is not the peace that comes from the Lord though you might thank God that he's provided for you financially see the peace that Jesus gives kicks in when there is zero in the bank account that is the peace that comes from the Lord it's a supernatural peace this grace that Paul writes about that we've heard a million times in Calvary chapels really God has given us joy and pleasure and delight sweetness charm loveliness goodwill favor and loving kindness he has shown all of those things all which we do not deserve that's grace the peace that we have we are exempt from the havoc of spiritual war I'm not against God I'm not an enemy of the Lord I have been forgiven of my sins I have security I have safety I have tranquility through salvation that comes from Christ alone and so I fear nothing from God nor do I fear anything in this world and so here's where we get to the nitty gritty of this passage it's in verse 3 Paul writes and he says to the church in Thessalonica he says we are bound to thank God always for you brethren as it is fitting because your faith grows exceedingly and the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other Paul's bound to be thankful this is actually a very strong verse though we might lose the strength of it in the English language this is a very strong statement Paul is making here in verse 3 because he leads off with this word bound, bound which means to be bound by debt or if we put a modern day spin on it to owe someone big time owe someone a terrible debt see what an answer to prayer this was this answer to Paul's prayer is the same prayer that is prayed for you guys here at Calvary Chapel of the Chino Valley that your faith would grow exceedingly and that your love towards each other would abound so Paul says Lord I owe you so much for the work that you have done this tremendous work that you have accomplished in the Thessalonians life Lord thank you so very much you know when you see someone thriving and growing spiritually it is such a special thing that you can't help but give thanks to the Lord and realize what a blessing that is for those of us that have children to see them walking with the Lord we thank God for them especially in the world today maybe you have kids that are not walking with the Lord and it's grieving to your heart and when you see somebody change or you see someone where the spiritual light turns on and they take ownership of their relationship with the Lord you can't help but thank God you can't help but thank the Lord you know years ago and kind of where I cut my teeth after growing up as a kid at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa where my mom was pregnant with me when she started going to church there and so I was in utero singing the Lord bless thee and then to grow up in the church and I would actually go on staff there as a pastor for maybe eight or nine years or so I can't remember now but I had the privilege of teaching the Monday night Bible study and every Monday night I would get up and say good evening and welcome to Monday Nights Live in the Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa and it was on K wave and I remember there's one particular couple came up to me after service and every Monday night we'd give this particular couple came forward and gave their life to the Lord and I met them after service and they said no we've been living together as boyfriend and girlfriend and we know that God has called us to not do that and we're going to get married we know that the Lord wants us we're on the same page I'm just like blown away I'm thinking about this now and I remember exactly where we were in the sanctuary there and so they did what was right they didn't live together they got married and fast forward seven or eight years they started attending our church and they had a family they had a beautiful little baby boy so anyway we go out to lunch and this was last year or so and he's sitting at the table across from me and he starts telling me all of the things that God has spoken to him and what the Bible says about this that and the other thing and my mouth had just hit the floor and I couldn't help but thank God in my heart I thought Lord thank you so much thank you Lord so much for what you've done in this person's life how he's sitting there now telling me what the Bible says and I was like who is this guy this is amazing and you can't help but thank the Lord you see those that are closest to you maybe friends that you grew up with or family members that were like man they're so far gone there's no way and the Lord reaches them you can't help but just step back in amazement and think Lord only you can change somebody's life like that and so when Paul was writing to the church in Thessalonica what happened and you can read about this in the book of Acts but he planted this church really quickly and because of persecution he had to leave a baby church there and the church endured terrible tribulations terrible difficulties if you look at the two main answers to prayer that were manifested in that church's life that Paul thanked for it was their faith grew exceedingly and their love towards each other abounded both of those things your faith growing and your love for those next to you abounding can only be brought about by the Lord I can't do that by myself I cannot personally cause my faith to grow or my love for you to grow I mean seriously are you kidding me right now if you were to think that your love is going to abound more and more towards people if it's left up to you is hilarious absolutely not I feel like the only thing that would have bound for me anyway with people around me is annoyance man these people bug me rub me the wrong way in my flesh I'm like who are these people I'm not going to abound in supernatural love for those people that are around me this is an actual work of the Lord where I love people I'm not just talking about your cool and you kind of are nice to everyone I'm talking about you have a supernatural love for other people even for people that mistreat you or that are not nice or that might even rub you the wrong way do you think you can cause your faith to grow exceedingly I would say again absolutely not and the reason for that and this is the area that really hit close to home for me we are very nature as human beings our physical nature we take the path of least resistance always what's the easiest way out nature does it nature will take the path of least resistance I'll go from high pressure to low pressure or whatever it might be I will move in a way that is the easiest and so when Paul says that this church's faith was strengthened he understood what brought that about see faith which maybe all of us tonight would love to say I'm a man or a woman of faith I have faith it is only strengthened through hardships and trials and testings and breakings but thanks be to God who alone is all wise who knows the limits of our faith and does not allow us to be tested beyond that which we're able to bear see this church the Thessalonian church was planted by Paul on his second missionary journey as I mentioned earlier you can read about it and you actually can find it in Acts chapter 17 verses 1 through 9 but Paul was not there long he was forced to leave town a baby church with baby Christians and it would seem from what we understand of this church that they experienced many tribulations which actually caused vigorous spiritual growth you know I've yet to see anyone grow spiritually without resistance I have never seen anyone grow spiritually without facing some sort of resistance you know for those of you that might like exercising maybe at the beginning of the year you started your New Year's Resolution you were going to lift some weights or whatever it might be you can exercise so you start off with your two pounders and you're doing curls it's really hard painful process but then you move to the fives and then to the tens and then you skip the 25s and go straight to the 30s and you're like who is this person she's an animal what is the number on the weight indicate the amount of resistance the greater the resistance the greater the gains you don't grow without resistance you don't grow without adversity you don't grow spiritually in your faith or even as the Thessalonian church described as their faith grew exceedingly you don't grow without something coming against you and some of you tonight may be experiencing great hardship or great resistance you might even feel that the weight that you are bearing is more than you can handle I don't know how much longer I can do this might I just encourage you tonight that the Lord is on the throne and that he is with you he will never leave you nor forsake you and you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength and furthermore let us not grow weary in doing good for induced season you shall reap if you do not lose heart do not lose heart when everything in the world is telling you you need to shut down remember Deuteronomy 24 for the Lord your God is he who goes with you for you against your enemies and to save you and so their faith and their love grew and even overflowed and that was an answer to Paul's prayer for the church and that answer that answer to Paul's prayer his prayer found in 1 Thessalonians 1 2 3 which he says we give thanks to God always for you all making mention of you of you in our prayers remembering without ceasing your work of faith your love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father the church they worked out their faith they loved when it was laborious and they waited patiently as they hoped in the Lord and so for us tonight those three things still apply to us working laboring and waiting are the key components in the process of transformation that takes place in our life as faith, love and hope are refined in Romans chapter 5 verses 3-5 it says and not only that but we also glory in tribulations knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit and to us when I read of this church in Thessalonica I thought to myself, wow what a great church they experience all kinds of problems and difficulties and attacks against them but what were the byproducts their faith grew exceedingly and their love for each other abounded but before we go wishing that we're like them with growing faith and overflowing love look at what verse 4 says which describes the methods through which their faith and love were drawn out Paul writes so that we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure this was the church that faced many persecutions and many tribulations since the beginning of the church until the day Jesus comes to take his church home there will never be a church that has faced persecutions or tribulations that will not come through purified and powered for righteous living there is not one of you who endures tribulations or persecutions that will not come out refined that will not come out more like Jesus and less like you and the whole key to this which I think is perfectly summarized in verse 5 where he says this is manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which you also suffer now I don't know if you've read these verses recently or if you studied this passage and you are very familiar with this or this is the first time you've heard it but if you read these verses together it is mind boggling even as a pastor I was like wait a second you mean to tell me that the difficulties the resistance the persecutions the tribulations were actually the righteous hand of God in making that church strong how does that work itself out for me I must confess that when I'm suffering the last thing that I want to do is be patient and the last thing that I want to think is that this is God's righteous handiwork in my life it just doesn't make sense because it's when I'm suffering isn't it true if you're suffering isn't it the time where God feels so far away and that he's even turned his ear to your prayers just be honest if you're having a hard time and you're crying out to God and you're not seeing anything change and you're having to endure this day in and day out it doesn't feel like God is with you honestly the devil's right there in your ear no doubt saying yeah God doesn't care about you if he did why would he allow you to suffer why would you be experiencing these difficulties why is he not answering your prayers and then we begin to question God's love and his righteousness and the reason why we do that is that is exactly the reason we question God's love and righteousness is because that is exactly what our sinful nature thinks my sinful nature does not like difficulty my sinful nature does not like being patient during trials and yet it would seem that God's righteous judgment begins in his own house as he purifies and sanctifies those that are called by his name and you know it wasn't too long ago and this is why I said this was personal to me that I was really struggling I was having a hard time with these situations that I was faced with I just felt like it was too much for me to bear I know that might be a little surreal having a pastor say such a thing but I'm telling you just the pressures that I was feeling it just seemed like it was too much and I was hurting I was struggling I really felt that it was too much for me to bear the stuff that was happening with church things that were coming against my family and all this kind of thing that I was working through and trying to process in light of the truth of God's word but then this real time experience that I was having I'll never forget it I was standing in my living room facing the couch my wife Ruth was just on the other side and I was just venting saying I don't know how we can do this this is just I don't get this why does this keep happening is God hearing our prayer and I'm having these conversations and immediately the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart I don't know why it was timed in the way that it was timed like that but as I was listing off all of these things that were like challenge after challenge after problem after difficulty after resistance after you know persecution after all these things that I just like I can't even I don't even know how to handle this the Holy Spirit in a still small voice told me all of these things every one of those things that you've just listed off I am using in your life so that my perfect work would be accomplished I mean I still get goosebumps on it all my arms because of this and I'm thinking about this because it's so poignant still so vivid still and I was reminded do you remember when Saul before his name was changed to Paul how he was on the road to Damascus persecuting Christians do you remember that and then Jesus met him in that bright shining light and knocked him off his horse he couldn't see anything but he could hear and he said Saul why are you persecuting me he said who are you Lord he said I am Jesus whom you persecute and then he says it's hard for you to kick against the goats now when I was a kid I heard I don't know why like what is a goat and how do you kick against it that's a weird thing to say until I remember Pastor Chuck explaining that that you know if you were a farmer and you were plowing your field you would hook your oxen up to your yoke and in the front of your yoke which would be the back of the oxen with these long spiky little sticks and that if the oxen is stubborn ox and not do what the farmer was directing him to do and the ox decided that he was going to buck the system if you will that he would get a little pointed reminder of hey don't do that don't do that that's not right and I felt in my heart the things that I had listed off that were my problems and my woe is me moments I was rejecting those things God's righteous handiwork in my life no I reject that no I'm not having that no I'm not enduring that no I'm not going to handle that no I'm not going through that and in essence what I was doing was kicking against the goats I was rebelling against the very thing that the Lord was using to have his perfect work accomplished in me and so guess what it may not be the same for you but my situations have not changed but I'll tell you who's changed me often will pray Lord change the situation of the person often it's the case that the Lord just changes the person in the situation and I immediately found peace there I felt that the peace that I had not had that joy of the Lord that I felt had been a fleeting memory returned to me instantly when I was reminded by the Lord through this passage that the tribulations the difficulties the things that you don't like the things that you wish you could change the things that you don't want to have to handle that you don't want to have to deal with or endure are actually the righteous hand of God at work in your life and so this work of sanctification this painful process of patiently enduring and the refining of one's faith is all a work of a righteous God but honestly if we're to be honest with ourselves even as I am being honest with you tonight there is there in your heart that question but why Lord why am I having to do this why am I having to wrestle with this why am I struggling why am I broken why am I having such a very hard time why are you truly a child of God then you'll understand that if you desire to live a godly life you will face persecution and that persecution will be used by a righteous loving God to make you greater and stronger than you could have ever imagined being and as you wait on the Lord patiently he renews your strength as you keep the faith during persecutions and tribulations you receive strength that just doesn't run out but endures endures Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit and even having his own experiences to draw upon took the exact opposite stance to how we feel when we're suffering I honestly I was going how can somebody write these things because typically and don't get me wrong I'm not questioning God's word but I'm just thinking how can somebody have this perspective that I feel like I'm lacking typically we feel that God has abandoned us when we're hurting but Paul states that our suffering is evidence of the righteous work of God making us more like his son Jesus my flesh doesn't like that my mind doesn't like to think along those lines my friend David Guzik said this and I quote where suffering is coupled with righteous endurance God's work is done end of quote so we find ourselves counted worthy of Jesus when we endure suffering and when we push through trials in the early days of the church the disciples were being persecuted and they were treated terribly and after they were released they said in Acts 541 that they departed from the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name I wish with all of my heart that my faith would be able to increase and that I would be more like Jesus without experiencing suffering I wish that could be the case but what I've seen is that suffering is the very instrument of God's grace at work in our lives suffering actually whether you realize this or not helps us overcome sin suffering actually helps us to be less like our sinful nature and more like the Lord and it's during the times of crushings and perplexities and exhaustion that we find are also the times of the greatest spiritual growth because growth is a byproduct of resistance now in conclusion I'm going to share with you from 1 Peter 4 verse 1 that says therefore since Christ suffered for us in the flesh arm yourselves also with the same mind for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin now how many of you here tonight have ever suffered in some way, shape or form yeah all of us I'm sure that there's probably giving the size of this audience tonight that there are some of you that have gone through things that you thought was going to be the end of you that you didn't think you were going to make it out that this would be the very thing that destroyed you when we read of Peter writing that he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin and is like Christ that is something that we need to take ownership of in our own lives because here's the reality even for Christians in the church today we do not like to suffer we do not want our flesh to suffer it's not like hey can I get signups for your flesh to suffer none of us are going to be like yeah sign me up for that so the reality is is straight across the board we don't want to suffer and that's me as a Christian also what you will find is that even as Christians we will find that there are times or areas of our life where we do not want to deny the lust of our flesh I don't want to deny the lust of my flesh we don't like suffering I mean some of you may be suffering sitting through this bible study tonight I don't know and it's hard for you to know and you're pushing through good job I mean some of you you know on a different note maybe you've tried to cut out sugar from your diet I mean if you ever try to do that I mean if you ever want to find out why somebody is in a bad mood just about cutting out sugar huh stop drinking sodas huh because you just become like this raving maniac you know it's like what's wrong with you man no sugar your body craves it see the reality is if we deny our flesh our flesh will be very angry that we're not feeding it I don't want my flesh to suffer I don't want to feel uncomfortable I don't want to have difficulty I don't want to have trials I don't want to have these persecutions I'm like I've shared with you I have truly come to this place personally where I've recognized that there are so many layers of our sinful life that we're not even aware that they're until suffering takes place I didn't know that was in me I didn't know that I struggled like that and then once the Holy Spirit puts his finger upon an area of our life that needs to change it becomes very uncomfortable oh it's kind of getting hot in here you know I don't like this and the Holy Spirit is convicting you this is wrong this needs to change this has to go I don't like it Lord I just want it to stop when we suffer listen to me please carefully because this is so crucial to what we're studying tonight when we suffer we have to understand that it is our sinful nature that is suffering when you go through trials and testings and tribulations and persecutions it will not be that your spiritual man will suffer but it will always be that our flesh suffers I don't like this I don't want this because if you actually take a step back and you think about this according to what we know of God's Word and even your own personal experiences that your spiritual man has nowhere to go but to increase in strength and power as your flesh does not like it as you feel like you're getting beaten down the spiritual man is getting strengthened how do you think Paul can write in 2nd Corinthians 12 10 and say 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 in physical nature your sinful nature to become weak but Paul recognized that every one of those challenges that he faced every one of those problems that he endured every one of those things that made him feel uncomfortable that were not pleasurable that he did not like and that were hurtful he found were the very things the catalyst if you will for spiritual growth was there in the Lord and it's in the weakness of our flesh that we find that were spiritually strong in the spirit I would even say this on a personal note that in the weakness of Garrett I find that I'm spiritually strong in Jesus and the suffering in my flesh leads us to cease from sin and you might think well how does that work exactly well listen when you're denying the lust of the flesh it's painful I really want to do that when you're going through a trial it's painful guess what do you realize that when you're resisting the lust of the flesh that you're not getting into sin so that's an area of your life that you are not sinning in that temptations that's there and the way that you want to act in the flesh and give in to the lust or act in a way that's not pleasing to the Lord and you say no I'm not doing that no I'm not going there you're not ceasing from sin in that area you're not giving into it yes it's a real pain no you don't like it but listen if you're suffering in your flesh you're ceasing from disobedience to the Lord you're walking righteously as your flesh is hurting and that's how Paul wrote in Galatians 5 24 that those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires being crucified does not feel good and as your flesh is suffering your spiritual man can be thriving and that's a work of the Holy Spirit in your life and my final thoughts on this is that we rely so much upon our physical senses to discern spiritual things but they are incapable of discerning such things how do I feel what do I see what do I hear and we think that those senses are able to discern spiritual things Paul says the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for their foolishness to him nor can he know them because they're spiritually discerned and so tonight as a follower of Jesus take heart that God is working a mighty work in your life through the things that you don't like the most and it has nothing to do with how you feel about it the Lord's there and as you walk through those fiery trials Jesus is with you he'll lead you through the refiner's fire to the other end and you'll come out worthy of the name you bear Jesus and so hold on to that God's not done he hasn't abandoned you he has heard your prayers and he's doing a great and righteous work through those things that you don't like and so instead of kicking against the goat and say no I reject it, no not having it say Lord if this is how you choose to work in my life so that your perfect work may be accomplished in it then I submit to that and you'll find the joy comes back you'll find supernatural peace will be there in grace and you'll be thanking God Father we thank you for your word we thank you Father for giving us such a fine example of a church that endured great tribulations and persecutions and those were the very things that caused their faith to grow exceedingly and for their love towards each other to abound Lord I pray that you would give us a greater love for those around us and maybe even as we walk through our own trials Lord we would be more empathetic towards others that may be going through difficult times as well Lord it's really true that even throughout history we've seen that some of the greatest bonds are forged through great difficulty where we walk through our trials together as we encourage one another to fight the good fight and to run our race and to finish the course and so Lord I pray specifically for this church Calvary Chapel Valley and for every person that might be wrestling with something tonight I pray Lord that you would encourage them Lord that these things would be used so that your perfect work may be accomplished in their life and so fill them afresh with your Holy Spirit may their faith grow exceedingly, may their love abound and I ask these things in Jesus name Amen


Hi, I'm Thomas Henley and I'm on the autistic spectrum. I've come here to talk about some of the common topics around autism, dispel some of the stigmas and provide new outlooks maybe people haven't thought about. I'm currently a student at the University of Manchester studying biomedical sciences. I'm also a successful taekwondo athlete competing for GB at the under 21 European Championships and I've even won myself a Commonwealth gold medal. I've only been on YouTube for a short time and a lot of what I do is make videos about mental health and autism for people both on and off the autistic spectrum. I enjoy helping people and I do a lot of work within primary schools and within the university. The most important thing for me is showing people the reasons for our actions, helping people understand it's actually not a disease but something to understand better in the future.


Okay, I just lagged on those things. I could even do Another ninja here spark I remember that one guy has the thing He does the big frontal a we cone thing, right? I'm not sure where to stand I'm not sure what health he goes in there, but what's the name of the ability? I don't remember triple I think it's when he gets really low. I just the balls, right?  I only took one of those Where's the red I? Guess I took the other one. This guy's up. This it No, it's just that I Don't know what it's called man. Every time he does something. I'm like, is it fit? All right, maybe this is it I'm assuming this is it. I just pop blood for blood. Okay. That was it I Pop blood for bud. We got two minutes of it. I get anything else though I don't remember what to do in here. Oh, he's gonna take the meteors, right? I'm not sure what we're supposed to do Other than sit here and kill everything. Okay, that was really fast Not sure if that's good or bad. I Remember being that fast. Oh, we got we got out of there, so oh He did a limit break. That's why all right That's why all right Somebody else did a limit break to get a side of their ASAP. So they did a good job. We did it What I think oh, hold on. Hey girl. What's up?


I'm Salvatore Bobonis and in this brief video I'll explain how to run an all online university class. The world is changing and universities that don't adapt to the realities of 21st century technology are likely to face severe fiscal challenges in the future. But as universities struggle to get online, they've adopted two models, one of which is completely unattractive and the other completely unsustainable. These are what I call the bronze model which is cheap and easy but looks ridiculous in the social media age and the gold model where classes are so expensive to produce that it's inconceivable that it could be done on an institution wide basis. This presentation explains how to develop silver model online classes that leverage simple information technologies to achieve something approaching gold standard learning outcomes at more like a bronze level cost. Most universities going online have either taken a very low road or a very high road while failing to develop an appropriate scalable middle way. At the top of the market is the gold model of online classes that are professionally produced by professional videographers and in which discussion is facilitated via hardware filled video conferencing facilities that are simply, it's unimaginable that this could be scaled out to every class at an institution. But at the other end of the spectrum are bronze model online classes where lectures are simply recorded as delivered in the lecture hall and stuck up on a website or on a learning management system participation quote unquote is consists of students adding a comment to an online bulletin board never actually interacting with other students at all. What we really need is a silver model in between these that attempts to achieve the same kinds of immediacy and interaction as the gold model but does it at a cost level that makes it scalable to the university as a whole. This kind of silver model can be achieved taking an online native approach to building a class from the ground up using simple off the shelf components. Lectures recorded via desktop capture, readings downloaded from the Internet, discussion in online collaborative meeting rooms and assessment via online submission and examination. First moving online means that lectures don't have to be delivered in conventional one and two hour blocks. Head lectures can be delivered in a modular way piece by piece in easily digested chunks just like this video you're watching now. It's technologically simple to do this. Think of the video you're watching at this moment PowerPoint for slides. I have a simple Logitech headset which provides perfectly good sound. I use a very light desktop capture software package called Fast Stone that I bought online for $30 and of course YouTube for lecture delivery. I record the lecture, save it, upload it to YouTube. It's that simple. Then lectures can be unpacked so instead of one or two long lectures each week what I like to do is have a longer more substantial orienting lecture upfront that lays out the main issues or theoretical issues for the week then several medium length lectures that develop specific points and finally a short capstone that takes a specific applied example and runs with it. I also like to assign one, two or three external videos. There's lots of high quality short video on YouTube or high quality longer video published by NGOs and other educational institutions that can be used to supplement lecture material. For most topics readings can also be pulled from online sources. First almost every classic text from before 1920 is now in the public domain and freely available online. Second, contemporary texts are simply online. I mean they're published online to begin with and I really think we should be using a lot more of contemporary writing that is written for the internet. It's the 21st century after all. If you do want to use copyrighted work almost all copyrighted work is now available in eReader format. Just have your librarian order the eBook, get a link and give your students a link to the library eBook. You can sign in and use the copyrighted content via the library website. For instructors who want to use their own course notes as texts I strongly recommend take those notes and put them up on wiki books. Then your students can access them but everybody else can access them as well. Now, a major advantage of the all online format is the ability to pull apart the 20 or 25 or 30 student discussion section into small teams of four to five students. The first thing we do in a large discussion section of 20 to 30 students is pull them apart into working groups. Well, why not just have them in working groups right from the first minute? The students can be assigned to small groups that they work with collaboratively throughout the semester. I use Adobe Connect software which provides them with video conferencing, a chat window, a notes window. They can put files, share files in the room. It's a small personal conferencing space that works for four or five students in a way that it simply doesn't work for 25 or 30 students. Teaching assistants or tutors can just drop in. As long as the students are working at a specific time in their tutorial room, the tutor can stop in to see how things are going on video and talk to the students. What's really important is that online conference rooms leave an audit trail which facilitates meaningful evaluation of class participation. Participation marks don't have to depend on a tutor or teaching assistant remembering one out of maybe 100 students. Instead, the tutor or teaching assistant can actually go to the room and see what the student did in the room during the tutorial. Online paper submission, exams, etc. If they're done online can support much richer feedback than the in-person equivalence. So, for example, we use turn it in for written work. Turn it in, whatever you may think of it as a anti-plagiarism program, is great for providing verbal feedback. You read the paper and then you talk to the student for three minutes. And when the student wants to find out the reasons for the mark, the student listens to you for two or three minutes. It's a way to create a point of connection with students that we simply no longer have in classes of the size we typically teach in the 21st century. Blackboard also supports automated question-by-question feedback, so you can give specific feedback on a multiple-choice test for right versus wrong answers. And you can also do more personalized feedback if you want to. I don't do this, but it's pretty easy just to record webcam video feedback and email that to the students. Learning management system integration in the silver model is a straightforward matter of watch the lecture videos, read the assigned readings, do the collaborative activities, and then submit assessments via the LMS. Let me show you my own LMS. I'm here in Blackboard where I have weekly assignments one per week for every week. If I go into a typical weekly assignment, you will see a watch section. So students can download my PowerPoint slides and also directly access the YouTube videos. I also have external sources each week. There's a reading section, so I can not only have readings assigned, but I can provide some context around the readings. And here I even assign the students to find their own readings. So there's one reading assigned by me, a second reading assigned by me, and a third reading that the student is supposed to find for her or himself. Something to think about the readings and then the tutorial assignments. So the tutorial is organized around two to three assignments each week that students are supposed to prepare some materials in advance and bring them the tutorial room. And how do I know they brought them the tutorial room? Because they have to copy and paste what they did into the tutorial chat window so that I, their colleagues, and the tutor can all see it. Key takeaways. A scalable silver model can be used to deliver online classes that are the test I would like to use is at least as good as. A large, in-person, typical chalk and talk lecture. Second, low cost, uncomplicated desktop capture is the best way to record lectures and put them online. And third, a straightforward weekly cycle of watch, read, do, assess is easy for both teachers and students to master and get comfortable with. Thank you for listening. You can find out more about me at Salvatorbabonus.com where you can also sign up for my monthly newsletter on global affairs.


Okay, we're back. This is Dave Vellante and I'm with Stu Miniman. We're with Wikibon.org and this is Silicon Angles theCUBE, where we bring you the smartest people that we can find, we travel the world, we go to events, we drop in, we extract the signal from the noise and we love to talk to customers, to get the customer angle, the practitioners who are in the front lines, fighting day to day, bombs are dropping, they have problems all around them and they're fixing them and it's, we love to cut through the messaging, the messaging great, we love to have the executives on but it's really the customers that are making it happen. And we've heard, we're at the Dell Storage Forum, we've heard a very strong message around the customer first and that's really always been Dell's heritage, my course, the legend, Michael Dell, started his company as dorm room and very customer focused. And we're here with Pete Keeler, who's a senior system admin at Techplot, a Seattle based firm. Pete, welcome to theCUBE. Oh, well thank you. Thank you for having me. Great to have you. Good to see you at this event, the second Dell Storage Forum. Were you in Orlando last year? Yes, I was in Orlando last year. Yeah, so I mean, it seems to be a step up, it's getting bigger and better.  It is fantastic. First of all, I have to say that I had a great experience at the DSF in Orlando and wanted to make sure that I returned for this event here today. So, having a good time so far. Yeah, good. Tell us about Techplot, what's the company all about? Techplot is a software company that makes simulation analytics software and data visualization. They make the software that really focuses on helping scientists and engineers solve really complex problems. And that has been their focus and they've been in business for about 31 years now, which is really unique in the software world. Well, so this big data trend, you guys must be loving that, right? Because squinting through all that data is really hard. Most certainly. So is it like Tableau? I'm just trying to understand. Yeah, it's similar. Many of our customers are in the aerospace industry and so they are trying to solve really difficult problems around how to make an airplane wing more efficient, how to fully understand some of the anomalies that might happen with aerodynamic efficiencies. And so this is really what our focus is on for our customers. So what are the big drivers in your business? I mean, obviously invention, innovation, what else?  Well, one of the challenges that we are faced with, of course, is this notion of big data. Our customers are seeing that with the software that we produce for them. And so our software is extremely sophisticated. We really needed a sophisticated infrastructure so that we could focus on developing our software in a faster, much more agile way. Okay, so talk about that infrastructure. Well, in late 2008, we had a very traditional infrastructure and I went to one of Adele's channel partners, Mosaic, at Technology, and went looking for better ways to help solve this issue that I had about manageability, especially for an IT department with very limited resources. Managing the data, the infrastructure? Managing the actual compute infrastructure and the storage services as well. And so I worked with them to come up with a solution on how could we have a scalable infrastructure that allowed us to meet the demands of storage and compute services. So can you be more specific? What was the real problem that you're having? Your business requirements are changing, you couldn't meet those requirements, the old alignment problem, is that right? Yeah, it was the classic case, especially with our software that we're working on. Especially with our software development group, that they needed a lot of computational power to have these build systems that would help compile the software that they were building. And being able to provision those systems in such a way that would benefit their practices was very difficult in a traditional infrastructure. Benefit from the standpoint of the speed to which they could. That doesn't VMware or Hyper-V solve that problem? That made a significant step and it helped us go in the right direction. Of course, we needed the actual physical infrastructure for VMware to live on. And one of the significant components that we had with respect to this new virtualization solution was how were we going to store the systems plus the data that the systems serve up? So, like a lot of customers, you virtualize your servers and then all of a sudden, it really impacts the storage. It's like a domino effect on the storage. You got IOs going crazy, you got less physical resources. So that's what was happening to you? Yes. You're a storage, we've heard a lot about legacy storage. We know that's a euphemism for old clarions. Is that what you had? No, we had, whether fortunate or unfortunate, we had not made any investment into shared storage at the time. Okay, so you direct-attached storage? Yes. Which is great, but it's not shared. Right. Okay, so you didn't even have a storage person at that point, really? No. You were just moving the infrastructure and so where did it go from there? Well, we really had to say, okay, if we were going to build out a new virtualized environment with shared storage with a limited IT resources as far as the actual manpower, what were we going to do, what solutions were available that would allow someone like myself to be able to dedicate the time to managing the storage side. And that's really where we made the decision to go with Adele, an equilogic solution for our shared storage. So you would, was it fair to say that you're an IT generalist? Yes. Okay, you're not a Lund Management guru? No, no. Congratulations. Yeah. I'm happy for you. Thank you. Okay, and so what was the experience like? So you go from this DAS environment in your VMware shop? Yes. Okay, so now you have VMware, that's all the bit, probably what, three or four or five years ago? That was, yeah, just shy of four years ago. So that created some great opportunities but also created some challenges, particularly in the storage side. So now you're bringing in equilogic, it's a new world for you. How did that go? What was it like? One of the most significant challenges that we had early on was simply acceptance of this new way of our storage and computing environment. Acceptance of the users? Yes, yes. So that was, these were strange new technologies that we were leveraging. And being able to help demonstrate how these technologies would benefit everyone in the organization, thus our customers was something that initially it took a little bit of work. What changed for the users when you brought in equilogic? The speed of provisioning significantly changed. Our software development group had automated build systems that would need me to provision them or to protect them in a very quick way. And that was simply not possible in the past. Why was there some friction initially? What was the concern? I think in just for the lack of being familiar with modern day storage technologies as well as computational services. So the notion, we have a very curious bunch there at Techplot and they simply want to know how things work. To say that we were going to abstract out computing services from storage and so forth was very foreign to them as well. Okay, so they just didn't want to change. They didn't want to change initially. Okay, and then take us through what happened. So you had to, you took some arrows. Trust me, it's going to work. I'll stick my neck out, you know. Okay, so your job's on the line, basically. You've got to keep your constituencies happy. What happened next? From that point on, it was really about being able to take advantage of the new tool sets that we had there and that we had available to us. From there, it was being able to provision these systems and to demonstrate how we could protect the systems in such a way that was going to be beneficial for not just our software development group, but the entire organization. At that time, it was about six months into our transition, we had a neighboring building that burned to the ground, which really helped the notion of being able to take these newer technologies and help leverage them for our disaster recovery initiatives. Okay, so the, can you be more specific? I mean, was that a VMware high availability capability combined with Equalogic or? No, it was a purely Equalogic Sand-to-Sand replication is really what I focused on. Replicated to off-site, a synchronous replication, or was it? Okay, so basically, what would have been the outcome had you not had that capability? Well, in the case, and let me be clear, this was a neighboring company that had this issue, so we were looking at that saying, how would we be able to recover from that similar scenario? Okay, so it didn't happen to you, but you went just at first hand, had it happened to you, it would have been a true disaster, right? Yes, yes. Okay, so your management, your team, they saw that neighboring company and they said, oh my gosh, if that ever happened to us, so they immediately knocked on your door and said, what would happen if that happened to us? And you said, no problem, we got it covered. Yes, it most certainly helped us accelerate our disaster recovery initiatives. That was the simplest way to make sure that that was going to be one of our efforts. Okay, so you were in sort of mid-process of setting that up, which is great because you didn't get snake bitten when your neighbors did, which is unfortunate for them, but you didn't have to absorb that, because a lot of times people closed the barn door after the horse leaves, so did they get promoted after that? No, but what we did do is we simply, yeah, learned the lessons from others there and it was a great way to see and to really demonstrate how quickly something could turn so wrong for an organization and we simply didn't want to be in that position. Since we made the investment into the ecological family of storage, many of those tools were built in at a very fundamental level, so we wanted to be able to really highlight those and make sure we were utilizing them. So how did backup change? Let me ask it that way as a result of this new initiative. For us, because we had a very traditional infrastructure, we, much like everyone else, were focused on serialized traditional backups to tape and there's only so many hours in the day and so many hours in a given week. Bowing down to the backup window. Yes, and that was one of the most significant challenges that we had, plus we run a very mixed environment there, so we were solely dependent on the different kinds of operating systems that we were trying to protect. When we were virtualizing our infrastructure and then moving it off onto shared storage such as the Ecologic Array, that removed that element of having concern over the specific operating systems and it took the focus on to block-based SAN replication. Okay, and so how do you do backups now? Backups I like to think of as far as an overall protection scheme there are localized snapshots that live on the different SAN arrays. There are off-site SAN to SAN replicas that live at a colo site and then there are long-term archiving methods as well. So are you providing backup as a service to application owners on a application-by-application basis or is it more of a one-size-fits-all? Since our infrastructure has really changed into virtual machines serving specific applications and being very focused on specific applications, I think it falls into the former there where it's per application. Okay, so you've got a form of IT as a service. Yeah. So a lot of customers that we talk to, this is changing but historically it's daily incrementals, weekly foals, that's it, take it or leave it. But you've got different RPO and RTO requirements. Do users even have a sense of RPO, RTO or do you take care of that? How does that whole business discussion occur? One of the things that I have learned in IT is that you have to be the advocate for these kinds of discussions and so I am always helping our management team better understand some of the implications about an organization such as a tech plot choosing to not address some of these issues and so it really becomes an education process that I provide our management team in helping them really understand what these things mean to them from a business perspective. Yeah, because I see people say RPO and RTO, those are business notions. We used to go to talk to a business person about RPO and RTO, they go, what are you talking about? I don't know what that means. How much data do I want to lose? I don't want to lose any data, what do you mean? So you're saying you translate the notions of RPO, RTO, data loss, et cetera into a conversation with a business person. So how do you do that? You sit down and say, okay, let's talk about your application, what would happen if you lost it? Do you have that, is that how the conversation goes? Many times yes and it's really not about what you can afford but what you can afford to lose in these scenarios where even if it's not necessarily a pure disaster, this monolithic sort of a disaster, but primary services being down, what are you willing to give up? And that is something that the requirements are built off of those discussions. So you have a pool, let's say, let me describe what I'm hearing. So you have this virtual pool of capability, compute, storage, and backup services that can accommodate your application portfolio and you allocate that pool according to the outcome of those business discussions and you assess capacity requirements on a fairly regular basis and you update that notion regularly periodically, is that right? Yeah, a lot of it simply comes from experience of understanding some of these critical systems and what sort of recovery periods we need in order to maintain normal business operations. But in concert with that is helping our management team understand what are simply the capabilities now. That's a conversation that has dramatically changed the very fact that I can not only protect the data but protect the systems that serve up the data is a profound difference as it was just five years ago. P, what do you make of Apashure? Is that something that you're looking at or do you not have to look at that because you've got your snapshots all set with the ecological rate? No, in fact, I was at the breakout session a little bit earlier this morning with regards to Apashure. So it's intriguing to you. Personally, I love the vision of being able to dial up or dial down an RPO based on the requirements of the app and it seems like a nice pickup for Dell. They have some very compelling features built into them. Okay, good. Last question, any advice that you would give to your peers that are looking at doing some type of similar initiatives? Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that has worked out well for me with regards to our efforts in virtualizing our infrastructure with shared storage is helping communicate the right message to the key stakeholders. Helping them understand, in very simple terms, it certainly doesn't need to be complex. What are the implications of moving forward versus not doing anything? And the more they understand that side of things, more than likely they will understand your position. I actually had one more question.  Are you guys moving toward a DevOps type of environment? You know, that whole notion of intersection of application development and infrastructure operations? That is certainly an intriguing element moving forward. I know that we have a software development group that is very strong into the DevOps side and the notion of bringing that into IT infrastructures is, again, certainly a compelling one. Yeah, I saw somebody in the elevator the other night from Munder Capital who we had a peer insight at Wikibon with Wolfgang Gerlich who runs the IT operations at Munder and they're a full DevOps shop and kind of exciting what people are doing, you know, creating hyper-productivity essentially with these new methodologies. So something that we've been watching, you can check that out on wikibon.org. Just Google Wikibon and Munder Capital and you'll find it. Okay, well Pete, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE. It was a pleasure meeting you and hearing the story of Tech Plot. Thank you. Keep it right there. This is the Dell Storage Forum. This is theCUBE. We're live from Boston. We'll be right back.


The construction of a new primary school in the community of Lage-Barbono is underway following a sword-turning ceremony on the grounds of the building site recently. Chris Satney reports. The project is being undertaken at a cost of some $7.5 million E.C. dollars through funding from the Government of St. Lucia and co-financed by the Caribbean Development Bank, the CDB. Being executed under the Education Quality Improvement Project, EQUIP, the new LaGare Primary School building will comprise a basement, ground floor and a top floor. The top floor will house four classrooms, a library which will also house an IT laboratory and a music room.  The basement will house an open breezeway, male and female washrooms, and a janitorial storage area. Prime Minister Alan Chastney, who spoke at the sword-turning ceremony, says students within today's modern world must be given the skills necessary to help them adapt, think for themselves, and to continuously strive to be the best. This is the vision. This is the future. This is understanding the capacity of our country to be able to grow, and it's recognizing that the infrastructure, the smart school in itself, is not sufficient. And that's why a big part of the EQUIP program has been the first part for the first three years has been about training the teachers to be in a smart school. There's no point in giving a child an E-pad if the teacher doesn't understand it. If the teacher themselves don't have the vision of where we need to go to be successful in the future, and we cannot continue to rely on the faith alone, that what the teachers are doing is going to be successful. The school was due to be constructed under the basic Education and Enhancement B project, but was delayed as a result of the passage of Hurricane Thomas, which resulted in the Ministry of Education diverting funds to repair the many schools that were ravaged by the 2010 cyclone. Minister for Education, Innovation, Gender Relations, and Sustainable Development Honourable Dr. Gail Briggebot says the new smart school will be equipped to better prepare students to exist in a world that is continuously advancing. It needs to be smart in terms of the infrastructural integrity and its ability to withstand climatic events. It needs to be smart to the extent that it incorporates information, communication, technology. It needs to be smart to cater for the multiple intelligences of our students. It needs to be smart to reflect our own incorporation of renewable forms of energy. It needs to be smart in recognising that our students have different mental and physical capacities and so we must cater for those. MP for Barbano Honourable E. C. L. Joseph says the project is long overdue and says he looks forward to finally addressing the issues of the school which has been temporarily housed in a restricted space adjacent to the construction site. Honourable people of Laghe, thank you very much for your patience. I must say the parents, thank you very much for your patience. I know your support is there. I know likewise the teachers will look forward to that completion of this project but we want you all to be more involved even after the school is completed. Our involvement is critical to assist the teachers in the development of our students. That's important. So having a new school is one thing but you must give the principal and the teachers the support. The contract for the school's construction has been awarded to Construction and Industrial Equipment Limited whose CEO Reino Kajada is confident of completing on time and within budget. We started off the school and you know the little rains around and the kind of soil that we have here is going to hold us back just a little wee bit but once we get out of it it's going to be all easier and we'll be moving very quickly. Under the Education Quality Improvement Project Equip, two other schools will benefit from the construction of new units to enhance the educational and comfort capacities of these institutions. Students for the construction of these units were recently awarded and signed with Prudy's Construction Services Limited for the construction of the unit at the Gauden at Walcott Memorial Methodist at a cost of $6.5 million E.C. dollars and a construction and industrial equipment limited for the construction of the unit at the Vidbutai Primary School at a cost of $4.5 million E.C. dollars. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, I am Chris Satney reporting.