We can honor You and bring our attention towards You and to hear the Gospel once again. We pray, Lord, that You would help us to consider more about You and Your glory, less of ourselves. Help us, Lord, now in this hour to think about what it means to glorify You and to serve You in the context of Your Kingdom. Thank You, Lord, for this opportunity to explain the good things You've done. I pray that You would be remembered throughout this time. Do you say amen? Well, I see a few new faces. I'll introduce myself just in case, but most of you are my family. I'm Mark Mudge. I'm one of the missionaries that Cornerstone Baptist Church supports. I've been planting a church in Guatemala City for the past year and a half. Before that, my wife and I were members of Cornerstone for 12 years. And then I served as a pastor for a few years, a couple of years. It's hard to tell. It's hard to tell, but for some time. So today in this Sunday School time, for the next 45 minutes, what we'd like to do is give a report about the work the Lord has been doing in Guatemala and to be able to answer any questions about that work. So I thought that I would describe some of the main purposes first of what we're doing. And then after that describe sort of like what's happened since the last time I saw you last year. And a very fly-by overview and hopefully with in the short enough time to be able to answer questions. So if you remember, one of the focuses in biblical missions is to do the work of the Great Commission. So in the work of the Great Commission, we're focusing in on church planting, discipleship, evangelism. And so when I give a report to the church, those are the things that we like to focus in on and what's been happening in regards to those areas of emphasis. And the reason why we focus in on those things is we believe that there's a biblical way that missions should be done. In the local church, not in a paratroops organization, it should be done with the focus of discipling, not simply preaching and then leaving. They should be done with evangelism. It should be a focus on preaching and glorifying Jesus Christ through His gospel. And so those, I'll bring you to the choir. So I want to express how grateful we are for your love.  Your prayers have been a great encouragement and blessing to us that we know there's more done by that dependence on the Lord than what we can see. And so I want to encourage you that the Lord works through those prayers in great ways. I want to encourage you and thank you for the support that you've given us as we've been able to be there and focus in on all this work because of you guys. Like I'd say 90% of our financial support comes from you guys. So we have been able to plant a church in Guatemala City because of your support. So the fruit that I'm speaking about today is your fruit. It is what the Lord has done through you. I'm a pastor, Mark, so I've got to cry before I get started. Let's go ahead and open to Luke 24. I'll read verses 44 to 49. Luke 24 verses 44 to 49. He reads, Then he said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you. That all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then he said to them, Thus it is written, Thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. And the repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things. Behold, I send the promise of my father upon you, but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. You can see when you look at your Bible from verses 44 to 45, you can see how the Bible is Christ centered. You can look and see verses 46 to 47 and see how Christ should be declared to all nations. You can see verses 48 to 49 that this work can only take place by the power of the Spirit and will take place by the power of the Spirit. When we consider verse 44 and how Jesus reminds the disciples and those with them that he has told them before the cross would happen, before the resurrection would happen, that all these things must take place. And he uses day the divine necessity to say that they are ordained events in his sovereignty, that they must be fulfilled. And then he points to all the Bible and says, all the Bible has been pointing to this to be fulfilled. The law, the prophets and the Psalms are all written concerning me. And they all point to him, to glorify him. The law in the moral law, the civil law and the ceremonial law, all of them written for the purpose to draw attention to Jesus Christ. The prophets prophesying of Jesus Christ, who he would be, the government be upon his shoulder in Isaiah 9-6. How in Daniel 7, which you'll study, and I think it's a small group, right? You'll study in a small group about how the Son of Man in the heavens and all the nations praising him and glorifying him. And then in the Psalms, how the Psalms have prophesied, how he sits in the heavens and laughs, how he's the Lord who, the prophecies of his crucifixion and his resurrection in Psalm 110. And in verse 45 he opened to understand that they might comprehend the scriptures. Apart from the mercy of God, apart from the work of the Spirit, we cannot understand the things of God. But look at the connection between the work of God in the hearts of men with the connection with the scripture. It's not the Spirit working apart from the scripture, but he's working so that we might comprehend the scriptures. And for what purpose? For what of all these things? That we might glorify him. In verses 46-47, this message will be handed to us. This message that in verse 46 it's written, it's written so it must be declared, it's necessary for what? For Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. So that in this work, in this work, in his name, repentance and remission of sins or forgiveness of sins should be preached. It should be preached to everyone of every ethnicity and every country and every time and every place. This is a timeless truth and a timeless message that needs to be declared. It's a baton that needs to be passed from generation to generation. A baton that has blood on it and it is our turn. It is our turn in this generation and in this time to do this work of glorifying Jesus Christ in all nations, in all places. I've been very encouraged and excited to hear about the work in Haiti and to hear from the pastors and I couldn't imagine more fish out of water than Pastor Mark and Haiti. It's very enjoyable to see the pictures and hear all the stories and to think about how other works are taking place in other places to glorify Jesus Christ's name. That this message should be preached there. So we're witnesses of these things. We have that responsibility in verse 8.  How can this take place in verses 48 to 49? Only by the mercy and the power of God. It can't take place in our own strength with our own planning. Yes, we need to plan. Yes, we need to work towards it but ultimately, apart from the Spirit of God, all those efforts are in vain. And so he's the one who's given us the desire. He's the one who's given you the desire to nod the head and say, Right even right now to this brief explanation of these words. Because it's been him at work in you that it's not simply a words on a page. It's something in your soul. It's a person inside you, the Spirit inside you who has given you the passion to glorify Jesus Christ in this way. And so we've been working to be able to obey this scripture, obey this scripture by, I keep on thinking about some words in Spanish now and trying to translate them in English. I keep on saying edifying a church but we don't have edified churches. We build up churches. So I came last February and so now I'll just begin to describe briefly what's happened since then. In Guatemala. In last March we were able to do, we're doing studies through the book of Strange Fire, which is a book by John MacArthur about cessationism and about how the sure foundation that we have in the Bible and how we don't need apostles, prophets, healings and revelations, that we have everything we need in the sufficient Word of God in order to worship him and glorify him. And the Spirit works in other ways, other ways than what the charismatic movement is telling, but he works in better ways, more powerful ways, more significant and lasting ways. And so we've been continuing through the book of Mark, verse by verse. It's a good gospel. And we were in Mark chapter 4 last year and now we're going to begin Mark chapter 11 when I come back. If you remember the book of Mark has three main, if you think of the book of Mark, you think of three books and then the three books on a shelf with two bookends. So the first bookend is like an introduction to the prophecies of who he is and an introduction with John the Baptist. And then you get to the three books. One is his ministry in Galilee. The second is his road to the cross. And lastly is his time in Jerusalem with the cross. The last bookend is the last chapter in the resurrection. And so we are just about to end that second book and begin the third book, if you think about it that way. And the progress through the book of Mark. In April of last year, we were able to have a new church location. We were meeting in someone's home and now we're able to have a more central location in the city. And the Guatemala city is in a valley. A lot of the cities in Latin America are in valleys and that they were built in places where the temperature is nice. Because if you go down to Central America and you go to the beach, it's going to be as hot as here. And then if you go to the mountains, then it's going to be cold and you could even get a little bit of snow. And so then if they go summers in between, then you get a very nice Hawaii-like temperature. And so it stays between 50 and 80 all year round. So we moved from a home that was in one of the mountain sides down back into the valley where the city was at back in April. And then we had our first teams from Orlando come at that time. And they were great help to us. They were preaching and teaching from the book of Colossians back in April. It allowed me to go to a pastor's conference in New Jersey where there were other Latin reform Baptist preachers. So the reform community is very small.  So in the Latin world, for instance, what was there? Somebody like Andres, right? Andres was somebody visiting here. Yeah, so people who were visiting our church and I'd met them in the conference. The world was so small of reformed Latin community. So it was a joy to be able to go to a pastor's conference, be edified, hear Jeremy Walker preach. I don't know if you guys remember, we studied the book, The Broken Heart of Angeles, a few years ago, that he wrote, and here are all Martin preachers, very encouraging to be there. In May, we began a study through the book of Romans in our sort of version of small group study. And so we're still in the book of Romans going through verse by verse through the book. We're in chapter 14, this stuff coming next week. And we also studied the Ten Commandments by Thomas Watson, which is very edifying, very convicting. He's very much of a pastoral heart. Last June, we had some key families come to the church. The Gonzalez family and a cousin of Ashley's was converted in that year. It's been a great blessing to be able to have him, Alex, and he's also come and visited you all too. So in July of last year, our son Samuel passed away. We're very thankful for all the love and support from you all in that time. And in August of last year, we changed our focus from open-air preaching to more street evangelism. Because some of the newer people in the church were a little bit overwhelmed with the open-air preaching. And in open-air preaching, some of them would have to be off on their own sometimes. So we transitioned in order to focus on discipling them and helping them to be able to have the ability to have those conversations on their own back in August. In September, we had another missionary team come from Cornerstone in order to focus in on a conference, the First Church Conference. And we had a conference about the Holy Spirit. It was very encouraging, it was a great blessing. Many people came from Miami, people came from Honduras. We had as many people as we could fit in our little church building, church room. I don't think we could have fit anybody much more than that. It was very hot, right? There's no air conditioning or heating in Guatemala. So I was able to go to a conference after that in Bolivia and be able to preach there. It was very encouraging to see about 700 people come to the conference, people from all over the country of Bolivia. So they're planting churches in Bolivia. And it was a great encouragement to see many old friends and faces there, people from Bolivia and the churches there. In October, the Russi's were able to come and visit here and give you guys an update. And we were also around that time being able to begin the essentials class again in our church. So Lee would be able to teach that essentials class and I would continue to teach through Romans. And that's been a blessing to be able to input some of the newer people through the essentials class to move them towards membership. And we also began to study the 1689. And so we just covered the law of God. I don't know if you remember what chapter that is. In November, we began to do planning for the next year or this year. And we were able to go back to more open air preaching. In open air preaching, it's just so good there that it's hard to get away from it. Because of how many people will be able to hear the gospel in a short amount of time. And so we continue to do that in the downtown open air, downtown park there. In December, we were able to have our first baptism and membership service. That was a great blessing. I hope you were able to see some of the updates and pictures from the people or testimonies. We also filled out a membership covenant and signed all the founding members signed. But I forgot to bring that with me to put in the wall outside or the plaque outside. So I'll try and give that to the missionary team that comes next month. So that you all can see that it's very meaningful for us to have that first class of membership. And that first official constituting of the church. And then last month, praise God, Lee was able to get a job. And so I know that many of you have been praying for that. We've been praying for that. He's been looking diligently. He's been doing many different things. He'll fix cars. He'll play music in the park. He does work in the gym doing physical training. He does many different things. And so now he's gotten a job teaching English. And he remembers his English still. But he does have to brush up on grammar. So you can imagine it's cool to go back to school. He is very happy to be able to have a job. And we're very happy. That allowed us also to be able to look for a new place to live. Because we were living together for that first year or so, year and a half. And so we've just moved in this past week. We've moved into a new place. We've traveled to Costa Rica. We've come here. And it's been a whirlwind tour doing all those things in one week. And so we were very happy. And also we found out last Friday that we're pregnant again. I'm not, but actually I'm not. So that's kind of the year in review or in a few minutes. A typical week for us would be... I'll give you kind of the perspective of the muggies. A typical week for us would begin on a Sunday. And our Sunday service starts around 9.30 so we get to sleep in a little more. And then we have small groups instead of Sunday school. It works out better that way in Guatemala instead of focusing on Sunday school. And we switch Sunday school to midweek. And what we would do in a Sunday school time. And so on a Sunday morning, the first thing we'd do is pray together and go over accountability, encouraging one another. And then we'd go have a class for 45 minutes at that time. And then we have a break. And coffee is important here, but I think maybe it's a little more important there. And so the coffee break is a very important time. Between services. Then we'll begin our regular worship service. And we have a worship service in the same way that you all have one here. With the different calls to repent and calls to worship. And then we'll end around 1 o'clock. Which is a little bit later. Or maybe you guys do run till 1. Do you guys run till 1? I've forgotten. Okay, so then on a Monday, then I'll begin to work a little bit on getting resources together for the sermon for the next week. We will take Benjamin to music class. Mostly it's a rest day. And then on Tuesdays, I'll begin to go to a Spanish class. It's very important for me to be maintaining continual study and growth in Spanish. And then I'll begin to work in the Greek work of the Sunday sermon. And studying some for Romans in the week. On Wednesdays, I'll begin to work on Spanish homework. And studies on correlation texts and word studies for the Sunday sermon. I'll meet in the morning with a brother at his nearest workplace. And we'll eat just as you know typical. It's like typical breakfast for Guatemala, which is beans, no rice. Beans, tortillas, wafers, eggs. And we'll have a cup of coffee, of course. So we'll go over to 1689 together. And then he's a manager at a music store. And he'll go back to work. He's invited someone from his workplace. A young lady there who's a cashier. He's a manager. And so she's been coming to the church since September. She's one of the people that come to the church and attend. But we're hoping that she'll understand the gospel. She's a single mother. And so the ladies are patient to continually explain the gospel to her. And you remember some people have been paid. Sometimes some of you have had that experience to come to church for months. And somebody explained the gospel to you. And the Lord has saved some of you that way. So we hope the Lord will save her in that same way. Her son is named Anthony. He's about 10 years old. And Benjamin considers him one of his friends. So on Wednesday evening we'll do a leadership equipping training. So we're going over the deliberate church by Mark Devere. We're going through church ministry study. Then on Thursdays we will... I'll be doing more Spanish homework. Then I'll also be studying the 68-9. And that day's kind of the day to study Romans all day too. I'll meet with the pastors on Thursday morning. They have their elders meeting here. And so I get to Skype in almost every week into that meeting. So it's not a new thing for me to see their faces. FaceTime really helps make the... Continue and keep the relationship. Like Benjamin knows his grandparents by FaceTime. So we're not like suffering like the missionaries of old where they... They went on a boat and then they didn't see their family for decades. We're able... To FaceTime we're able to see them on a weekly basis. So it's not the same. We have it much easier than other missionaries. We're... The technology and transportation make the world much smaller. So we're very thankful and grateful for that. That's why I was waiting so long to be a missionary. I was waiting for FaceTime to develop in Guatemala. So the... On Thursday nights then we'll have a... The 68-9 study. And we'll typically have it in our house. And it's more of a welcoming... We'll pray and we'll... We'll study the 68-9 in that evening. It's in a small group setting. Usually maybe 15 people, something like that. And then on Fridays, then I'll go back to Spanish classes again for the second time in the week. I got to have my homework done by then. So I'm always... It's always good to be learning something and maintaining that. On Friday I'll work on commentaries in preparing for the sermon. On Saturday we'll have a morning discipleship time where typically it's more time with guys. More young guys are coming and then we'll go evangelizing together. And then in the afternoon then I'll work on the sermon more until the evening. Some of the times in the... In Sundays we will... Every other Sunday we will have a... Maybe half the church over at the house. There are people that maybe they can't make the midweek study. And so they want to continue to... Or they can't make evangelism. Maybe they work six days a week.  And so they come in. And so it's hard to make it from that far away during the week. And so... It makes it a degree more difficult is the traffic. The traffic in Guatemala City is... So what would be an hour away then becomes two, two and a half hours away by traffic. So we try and make it so that we have two Sundays a month for those people. They're able to come to the house, study 69 and then we go evangelizing on Sunday afternoon. Since we don't have a Sunday evening service it makes a good use of Sunday Sundays. And then on the weeks we're not doing that then we do counseling with particular people that we're helping with biblical counseling. So that gives you an idea of a typical week, an overview of the year. And then what are some of the things for the future? Some of the things for the future we're looking forward to is another baptism service. There's some people who are wanting to be baptized and become members again. And so it's exciting to be able to do that again. So we got to set a date probably in the next month to be able to go back and baptize them. And we'll continue through our study in Romans. Finishing up Romans 14, 15 and 16. Looking forward to Mark 11 where the Lord will be coming into Jerusalem and his final week there. It's a lot of very good exciting passages that are revealing the Lord Jesus Christ to the people. We're excited about the evangelism around the church now that we've moved. We've moved closer to the church where we meet at church. So typically our house becomes the center for where evangelism takes place because people end up coming to our house a lot. So since we've moved the center and the places of evangelism have moved to where our home is at. And then we're also looking forward to studying prayer this year through a book by John Bunyan and Thomas Goodwin. It's kind of combining those two authors on the subject of prayer and the book of Proverbs. We're going to study Proverbs verse by verse in some of the small group studies. And then like I mentioned, we're looking for the baptisms. So in all these things we want to be intentionally seeking to glorify Jesus Christ by taking this commission that he's given us to plant churches, to disciple, and to evangelize. And we're trying to be intentional, very intentional with all of those things to be faithful to what we believe the Bible says about Jesus Christ. So again, I want to emphasize that that's for him, that's for his glory. And anything good that has been done in those things are from him and for him and all the glory goes to him.  He's been good to us to provide for us. He's been good to us to keep us safe there. He's been good to convert people, save people. That's been a great blessing. Because when you see a picture of Cornersome Baptist Church, Eglésia Baptista Reformada Antorcha. When you see a picture of our church in Guatemala and you think, I haven't had any fruit. I haven't had any fruit in my life. I've been faithful doing this for 10 years and 20 years and I haven't had any fruit. Well, look at the picture. That's part of your fruit. That's part of the Lord working through you. Through your prayers, through your support. There's people there who have been safe. So the Lord is faithful. He's sovereign. He's sovereign for all individuals. That all things work together for good. Those who love him, those who call. But he also is sovereign in doing that same thing for churches. I used to think of that verse in a very individualistic basis. Like just for my particular plans. But it's not just that. It's for this particular church. Because it's made up of believers. The Lord has particular plans that everything works together for good for the particular churches. And so he's doing that for you. He's doing that for all his churches. And so I want to thank you as well. For, like I said, I cannot express how much your prayers have meant and how much your support has meant. And so there's a difference between doing missions God's way and doing it the way that's common and the culture common and the way churches commonly do it. And it makes a big difference. It makes a big difference. So I just want to encourage you on that. I want to leave the rest of the time open to questions. And Pete. You guys want me to wait for the mics to come to people. I'm usually watching online and eating breakfast because our service is later and we're an hour or two hours later. So normally, I don't know if Lee and Gabby are eating breakfast and watching on their phones on YouTube. But that's what we typically do in Guatemala. So I'm very thankful for all the guys handing the mics around. That's the point. Go ahead Pete. When do you have time to write your sermon? Typically the way that I preach, I don't write out the sermon. I do all my study and notebooks so you can see it's pink this week. So I'll keep my notes from the point of Mark 10 verse 32. And so then as I study, I have a very intentional plan about where everything goes so that I'm able to preach from my study notes. Different people do it different ways. So that way I'm refined enough so I'm not just going off memory. So I have notes but it's quick enough so that I'm not reading it. So I'm able to communicate and make eye contact. So it's the way that's worked best for me. I've done it that way since before I came to Cornerstone. So it's hard for me to change and do something else but I might need to start to do a manuscript though in order to make the jump from to Spanish. Right now I'm still preaching in English. I'm teaching in Spanish but I'm still preaching in English. Please help me with that. Ron, nice to see you. So the Russi's, they are living in a separate apartment. How far are they from you and the church? It's a good question. We were able to find a place where there's two homes on the same property. So we share the backyard with the ladies, their own house and yet we still open the back door and then there they are. Or we come into each other's kitchens or something like that. So we're still working on the new house balance and how that all work out. Yes, Barbie? Do you guys already have a plan for the team this coming month? Like as far as the itinerary and why is it that it's going to happen to whoever is going to come? As far as the itinerary for the next trip we're going to have a meeting today to be able to talk about those things at 4.30 with the Bishop Edgar Nazario. He's the team leader so that's why I'm referring to him as the apostle of bishop or something. Yes, in the light. If you go on the glory Troy I can't see you in there. I see the shine around your face. It's all those hours I worked. So what is it like in terms of when you evangelize and the safety and kind of you've been there for a while now so it's not used to go down for it's only to go down and evangelize for a week and then you leave, right? You come back maybe a year later you get a chance to go down again. But when you're living there it's a little different how it flushes out. So maybe what's the evangelism like? What is the tone of the people and how the conversations kind of take place and then what about the safety? Like are you able to just kind of like here? You don't worry about going into let's go to Castle Burry. Let's go down. Well you can't go down tomorrow, right? So what's that like? Thank you. So two questions and one is evangelism one is safety. Evangelism, it's like the Bible Belt. Guatemala is like one of the most Christian countries in the world. One of the most fervently religious countries everybody you talk to almost everybody will say oh yes I'm a Christian and they higher percentage than here they'll know more Bible quotes than people from here and the Catholics will be some of them will actually read their Bibles they will be more involved in their religion if you're evangelical so maybe half the country would be Catholic and half the country would be evangelical and then there's another 5% would be cults, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, things like that. But so everything's much more religious. People selling things, selling statues of Mary. It's not uncommon to see people evangelizing it's not common to see Pentecostals come and do open air preaching. So everybody you talk with oh yeah they're religious but there's more people who say they don't have assurance of salvation because those types of groups tend to cultivate like Catholicism and a lot of the Pentecostals and Neopentecostals they tend to cultivate a sense of that you're not sure about your salvation and that'll keep people fervent. That's the idea. So there's talking with everybody they Guatemalans are the most polite people in the world like they're very friendly, kind but like the south like a Bible Belt that covers up a lot of hypocrisy. There's more lying. There's more telling you something that they would think they would want to hear in order to cover up what they're really thinking. And so it's funny we joke about in traffic and some of that dynamic of the culture because in traffic, for safety a lot of people almost everyone has tinted windows or you can't see inside the car because of car jacking and stuff like that. If you roll down your window and you put out your hand and make eye contact with the driver if you're able to or even just wave the tinted window and smile then immediately things change in traffic. It's part of that everyone's very friendly to each other in their face to face but if you don't see your face then it's not that way. So what I'm trying to communicate by those examples is how friendly people are how easy it is to start a conversation and how easy to start a conversation about God. It's woven into the language to say oh thanks, gracias adios, and then say a phrase. It's woven into the fabric of society that to carry a Bible into a restaurant no one looks at you strange to see somebody praying inside a restaurant is not strange. But then when you talk to them about if they've understood the gospel then the majority are thinking that no I don't have assurance of salvation and why? Because they're relating it to a sense of works. They don't say works, they know that's wrong to say works but they say to try harder and you go back to church and you need to do better things like that. So there's a lot of works for righteousness. I don't know if that kind of gives you a brief description of a lot of the evangelism to be able to then talk to people on the street, very easy and some people are more religious than others but almost everybody in one sense or another is religious. It's very rare to meet an atheist, agnostic somebody from a different religion besides Christianity but then it's almost impossible to find somebody who knows the gospel. The people who attend our church they are the same way as you all. They're like oh this is an oasis, this is we almost never find this anywhere, they travel from great distances in order to come to the church. We're in the city from one side of the mountainside it's almost an hour and then another mountainside over an hour and people come from either side to come into the church and our church is only maybe 30-some people attending. So the people understand the difference. So as far as safety then, safety is a constant issue. You learn which areas of town are safer than others and what things to do when not to do. So you try and pick up a lot from the people from church what's good to do and what's not good to do. Typically then the ladies don't go out at night so much unless they're with somebody and it depends on where we're going and so in some areas maybe guys will go to evangelize and ladies will go in the safer areas and more in safer areas. So there's a kind of a general overview with safety. That's Mark. Based on your experience now for 18 months or two years in Guatemala City how would you encourage us or instruct us with respect to Haiti? Maybe some things you've thought about and concerns you have or how would you instruct us or encourage us now with respect to Haiti? I would encourage the basics. You have those in mind that to be working towards missions in the local church to be having that emphasis and focus that whatever work is taking place there is taking place in a church that would have someone who is taking the bull by the horns, the leader of the work in Haiti someone who has that passion and ability to be able to do those things so there's constantly a leader who's organizing and helping those things that the work would be continuing to do work of evangelism and that they'd be focusing on discipleship and how the work will go much farther to disciple a few in Haiti who are faithful and as far as for you all it would be praying and seeking how to consider how to support that work and going if you're able to. So those of you who are able to go then it is a great blessing it's a great encouragement it's a great boost to your spiritual walk to be able to see works in other places to hear people sing holy holy holy in another language is a very impactful situation a very impactful experience to be able to think about how this book didn't start in the US and doesn't end in the US and to be able to see those things firsthand is always impactful to people's spiritual walk to understand how our God rules over the heavens and the earth over every nation, tribe, tongue of people and it gives you a taste of heaven to be able to see those things so if you're able to then those things are a great blessing I grew spiritually when I was 18, 20, 19 going on a trip like that and experiencing some of those things Robert, how are you doing? Good I remember you talked about how Catholicism is very popular in the prosperity gospel now with the reform teaching and the preaching in the open air have there been any former persecution or pushback from the people there from those false churches? Most people don't know we exist we're so small so some people get offended just on a personal basis maybe I try to explain the gospel to a lady who came to church and she was more of a walk-in she walks into church and after the service tried to explain the gospel to her so people have gotten offended things like that but thanks bro but most people don't know we exist so those things will come in time those things will come in time it's more of just probably the most difficult thing is some of the family reactions from some of the people that have gone to the church so they have some charismatic family that are very much into the Pentecostal movement revelations, prophecies and it's a change of worlds to go to a reformed Baptist church from that sort of environment and so then when that takes place then there's this choque or this conflict in the family and so worse people in the church are trying to talk to their family members and say the things that they're doing trying to help them understand they're trying to cast out demons or they're looking for prophecies or just explain the gospel and the differences between the gospel so that most of the difficulty has been come from that way from maybe some families have gotten kicked out of the home but so we have an understanding what the Bible says about persecution but not to the sense in that people are throwing things at us or some sort of official persecution for the church we trust that those things will come in time and the Lord will guide us, protect us and use those things for His glory I remember a story about a guy preaching the gospel in India and somebody went to his house and they were told the story and you guys know all my stories but then somebody goes to his house and on the table he's got these rocks and the guy's like where are these rocks and he's like all these are the rocks that people are throwing at me when I was preaching the gospel and so he kept them like this on his trophy case so I mean to say that that story is just an example of somebody trusting God's sovereignty and that he has a purpose behind every insult, lie, slander or rock that he'll use them all for his glory and so they should be seen that way it should be seen that way not as if you've been lied about somebody says something about us that's not true well that's part of one of those rocks to be able to put and say thank you Lord to be able to he has a purpose behind it other questions? Pastor Michael? I do have a question but I wanted to let you know we stop at 20 till now oh 20 till? okay okay so I guess at this time just short briefly like what has been a real encouragement to the people in your church? real encouragement for people in our church is to see your faces to know you when you're able to come if you want to record a video on your phone and a 10 second video and send it to us then we show it to them we'll translate it to them so that they can see your face if you can't come so them knowing us and knowing how we pray for them for the Rousses and the Mages we talk well of you we say all these good things about you we don't lie but we tell the truth but we tell the good things about you guys and how thankful we are for you how much you pray and your everything that we want to good we want to cultivate in them we'll speak about what the Lord has done here and how we want that same thing to happen so the way that people and people a visitor comes in and they hear the gospel and a loving, patient conversation from somebody and I communicate to them we want that to be the same in our church we want new people to not leave without hearing the gospel we want the same passion that you guys have we want the same zeal so we were trying to communicate those things so what's been most encouraging is the way that you guys are supporting us in all those things and so I just want to encourage you to to pray to be continuing in those things and even grow even more thank you very much I'm very thankful to give this report I want to be able to communicate any more with you guys and see all you guys individually too let's go ahead and pray Dear Lord God we thank you for the mercy that you've had on us and we pray that we would we would look with eyes of faith on you on the work that you're doing in our own lives in this city and in others we pray Lord that we would trust you to bring us home to be with you we would trust you to make your word and your work a factual in your time and so we want to trust you and we want to be used by you help us Lord to be used by you to bring attention to you to bring glory to you to bring more people to praise you so we pray for the work in Haiti that you give wisdom patience diligence fervency to cornerstone in order to know what's best about that work I pray that you would you would plant more churches through cornerstone in your timing I pray that you would raise up more men and that you would use them mightily in that way thank you Lord so much for your kindness and love expressed through your church in Jesus name amen


The launch this week has been as successful as we had hoped for. We've managed to identify some key partners in the region. We've had obviously the political buy-in from ASEAN, and also from the European Union, with some senior representatives there being re-educated around the ambition. So what does success look like at the moment? Importantly in the first year, we've got a series of operational programmes that are going to be rolling out across the region. Ond byddwn i fyddyn nhw'n gwybr nhw'n cael ei mwy gael dyn nhw'n ajw'r pethau a'r gwned ar gyfer y Gweinidol Gymwrn Tobu ac i gafodd y Gweinidol Gymru o'r moddol o'r ffordd fe ystafell yn cyfaint o newid cyfeidliadau mewn moddol. Felly, byddwn i'n gweithio i gyrddau'r newid, oherwydd rydw i ni'n gwybod ar gyfer 2-3 wyrddai newid ystafell, ac mae'n cael ei ddwyliad ac mae'n collid y gallan, ac mae'n cael eu chyfnodol. Both in the operational context more importantly, cementing some of the partnerships in the region, bringing together a variety of policing capabilities and border security entities so that they can start developing a common understanding of what they actually want out of the development work that we're doing and how that will play into the ASEAN master plan.


This algebraic geometry video will be a review of Hilbert polynomials of graded modules over a graded ring. So suppose m is a graded module over a graded ring where this ring will be generated over a field k by various elements x1 up to x k where the degree of xi is going to be some number di greater than zero. So it will be a question of this by some graded ideal of course. So for applications we might take r to be the same as m and r might be the graded ring associated with some projective variety. So if you've got a projective variety generated by some, sorry corresponding to some graded ideal, then this gives us a graded ring and we can ask what is the growth rate of these components mn and the growth rate of the mn might tell us something about the variety. If these numbers grow big it suggests the variety is big in some sense. So we encode these dimensions as the following function fmx and we're just going to encode it as sum of x to the n times the dimension of mn where this is the dimension of mn as a vector space over the field k and we will take m to be finitely generated and we want to know what does this function look like and the basic result is that fmx is a rational function. Moreover it's a rational function with a very restricted denominator as we will see in a moment. And what you do is you just look at the following exact sequence you have nought goes to the kernel of xk so we pick one of the generators goes to m goes to mdk goes to mdk over xk times m. So here this map here is multiplication by xk and we have this exact sequence and you can now look at the graded pieces of each of them and if you've got an exact sequence of vector spaces then the dimension of this minus the dimension of this plus the dimension of this minus the dimension of this is always equal to zero so we get a relation between the functions of these four modules. Moreover this module here is a module over our quotient out by xk and this thing here is also a module over the ring r quotient out by xk. So f of mdk is equal to x the dk times fm I forgot to say m of dk means m with the graded shifted by dk so this just means shift the grading. So we see one minus x the minus dk times fm is something involving this module and this module and these are modules over rings with smaller numbers of generators so by induction these are rational functions. So this shows that f of m is a rational function. So what we find is that f I guess I was actually writing f of m where I should have written subscript. So f of m is a rational function with denominator dividing one minus x the d1 one minus x to the d2 and so on one minus x to the dk gained by induction on k. Well the most important special case is when all the di are equal to one although it's sometimes useful to have this more general version. So for instance this would just happen if you took the polynomial ring on generators x1 to xn and gave everything the obvious grading. In this case the denominator is one minus x to the power of k and if we expand one over one minus x to the k we see that it's sorry the k should be there. We see that the coefficients of the powers of x for i greater than or equal to naught are given by polynomial in i for instance one over one minus x to the one is one plus x plus x squared and so on one over one minus x squared is one plus two x plus three x squared and so on and in general the coefficients here are actually given by certain binomial coefficients which are going to be polynomials so their degree naught for one minus x to the one degree one for one minus x squared and so on. Notice that they're only a polynomial i for i greater than or equal to zero for i less than zero of course they're well they're still given by polynomial but they're given by different polynomials so there's a sort of discontinuity in the behavior of these coefficients at x to the power of zero so what this means is the dimension of m n the degree n piece of the module m is a polynomial in n for n large and greater than zero of course and if n is sufficiently small then you run into the problem that these things here are not polynomials for x negative sorry for negative powers of x so this is called the Hilbert polynomial of of m so the Hilbert polynomial describes how fast the graded pieces of m grow in large degree well this polynomial has the following rather special property in general it's got um in in in general its coefficients need not be integers however this polynomial has the following property that f of n is an integer for n an integer so this is an integer valued polynomial that's because for any number n f of n is always going to be the dimension of some graded piece of m well actually that's true for n sufficiently large but if if a polynomial is integer for large integer values then it's integer for all values so um what do integer valued polynomials look like well pretty obviously if a naught if all the numbers a i are zero then a naught plus a one x plus plus a k x to the k is always an integer if x is an integer and all the a is integers and you can ask the converse if you've got an integer valued polynomial are all its coefficients integers we're obviously not because x times x minus one over two is always an integer for x an integer but its coefficients are x squared over two minus x over two so an integer valued polynomial need not have integer coefficients so what we want to do now is to classify the integer valued polynomials well let's let's write down some integer valued polynomials well there are some obvious examples you can take one or x or x times x minus one over two or x times x minus one times x minus two over three factorial and you notice these are all just binomial coefficients so this is x choose zero x choose one x choose two x choose three and so on and binomial coefficients are always integers so these are certainly integer value polynomials and what we're going to show is that these actually span all integer valued polynomials and one way to see that is to look at the values of these for small integers so that the value for x being zero one two three four in some of these polynomials is as follows first of all this one is one for x equals one and we don't really care what it is for other values of x the next one is zero for x equals zero and one for x equals one and we don't care what the other values are this one is zero for x equals zero or one and it's one for x equals two and we don't care elsewhere and this one is zero for the first three values of x and so on so we're sort of getting all we're interested in are these values and we don't care what they are anywhere else now I suppose f of n is a degree k integer valued polynomial and now we can arrange for a linear combination so we can find a linear combination of these binomial polynomials which is zero for x equals zero one up to k and that's because um we can first choose a zero to make it vanish at x equals one and then we can choose a one to make it vanish sorry we choose a zero to make it vanish at x equals zero then we choose a one to make it vanish at x equals one and since these numbers are zero here that won't affect the value at x equals zero and similarly we choose a two to make it vanish at x equals two and and so on, so we can get up to this. And now this is a polynomial of degree K vanishing at K plus one points, naught up to K. So it is zero for all K, for all N. As a polynomial degree K can't have K plus one zeros. So this shows that any integer-valued polynomial such as a Hilbert polynomial must be a linear combination of these polynomials. A particularly important special case is that the leading coefficient of F is of the form A K X for K over K factorial where A K is an integer. So although the coefficient of X for K may not be an integer, the coefficient of X for K when multiplied by K factorial is always an integer. And this integer will turn out to give us the degree of various algebraic varieties. There's a useful variation of the Hilbert polynomial. Instead of looking at the dimension of M N, all we actually used about the dimension was additive in short exact sequences. And we can use any other measure of the size of M N provided it's additive on short exact sequence and get a sort of Hilbert polynomial out of that. So next lecture we'll describe some applications


Now that we have our prompt in Word, let's type our response. I will look at my handout and type my response. When I am typing, I need to remember to use capital letters and spacing rules. I have a space between each word, one space after a comma. This is one word, so I will not put space after the hyphens. One space after my period, capital S for a new sentence. Now I need to edit. I'm going to make the font larger so that I can see it more clearly. First, I will use spell check to check my spelling. I see some words underlined in red. Those are spelling errors. I am putting my hand on my mouse and putting the pointer on top of the underlined word. I will right click with my middle finger. I am looking at the list of words spelled correctly. Replace, replies, replaced, replaces. Click this word because I think it is correct. I think replace is spelled with a C, not an S. Let me read the sentence again to make sure. Social media will not replace this. Yes, that sounds right. Here is another red underline. I will right click on it. There are no spelling suggestions. I see the problem. I need a space after the comma. There is one space after a comma. There, that fixed the problem. Now, I have some green underline words. Those are probably spacing problems. I will look at the first one. I am going to push the show hide button so that I can see the spacing. Here, I have too many spaces between the words. There is only one space between words. Again, I have too many spaces here. There is only one space after a period. The word is still underlined. Why? Oh, yeah. I need a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence. I will make the F a capital letter. That's better. One more. What's wrong? Oh, I have a space before the period. I should not have any spaces before periods. Now, there are no more red or green underline words. I'm going to read aloud one more time to double-check. I think that people will continue to have face-to-face conversations in the future because people will always celebrate holidays and special occasions together. Holidays has a capital H, but it's not a proper noun like Thanksgiving or Christmas. I think it should just be a small H. For example, people will always birthday parties, weddings, and family get-togethers. Wait, something doesn't sound right. People will always birthday parties. People will always have birthday parties, weddings, and family get-togethers. That sounds better. So they will have face-to-face conversations during those times. Social media will not replace this. Great. I think I'm ready to post my response now.


Good evening aspirants, welcome to the Hindu newspaper analysis for the date 5th of September 2021. These are the articles chosen for today's discussion. Let us start our first discussion by discussing about an article regarding the delimitation commission and followed by that we will be seeing an article regarding mutualism and followed by that we will be seeing an important article regarding the breakthrough infections and we will be seeing about IUCN green status and followed by that we will be seeing about ethanol policy and we will end our discussion by discussing about an important article regarding the amphi nest. So with this let us move on to the first article discussion. Now let us take up this article for our discussion. The news article mentions that Karnataka government has decided to set up a delimitation committee and this delimitation committee is set up for the Zilla and Taluk Panchayat constituencies. So in this backdrop first let us understand what is delimitation. See delimitation literally means the act or process of fixing limits or boundaries and the boundaries are fixed for the territorial constituencies in a country that is having a legislative body. Here the territorial constituencies refers to the parliamentary constituencies, assembly constituencies then also the constituencies of Gram Panchayat, Taluk Panchayat and Zilla Panchayat. See if you remember in India all states have a uniform three-tier Panchayat Raj structure and at the base we have Gram Panchayat. In the intermediary level we have Mandal or Taluk Panchayat and then at the apex level we have Zilla Panchayat. So by this delimitation we fix boundaries of the constituencies but why this delimitation is done? It is done for election to the Lok Sabha, to the legislative assemblies of the state and union territories and to these Panchayat Raj institutions. So first let us understand delimitation with respect to parliamentary and assembly constituencies. See regarding these territorial constituencies the job of delimitation is assigned to a high-power body known as delimitation commission or a boundary commission and this process is carried out as per the provisions of the constitution and it includes the article 82 and article 170 of constitution. These articles provide for readjustment and the division of each state into parliamentary and assembly constituencies. Now with respect to parliamentary constituencies readjustment of the allocation of seats in the house of the people to the state is also done and readjustment of the total number of seats in legislative assembly of each state is done for assembly constituencies. So under article 82 and article 170 of constitution the delimitation commission assigns or redraw the boundary of both the parliamentary constituencies and assembly constituencies and remember these are to be readjusted after the completion of each census. See the parliament can determine which authority can readjust the constituencies and in which manner the readjustment can be done. So the determining authority lies with the parliament. So a law was enacted for this purpose. It is the delimitation act and delimitation commission is constituted under this act by the central government. So the above mention readjustment and division or the main functions of a delimitation commission that is it demarcates the boundary of the parliamentary and assembly constituencies as per provisions of the delimitation act. Note that in India this commission is a high power body whose order have the force of law. So it cannot be called in question before any court. Remember this unique fact this may be important for your preliminary examination. So you cannot call any order of the commission in question before any court and this is possible as per article 243 O, article 243 ZG and article 329 of constitution and remember the order of commission comes into force on a date that is specified by the president of India in this behalf. Also the copies of these order are laid before Lok Sabha and state legislative assembly concerned. The order of commission comes into force on a date that is specified by the president of India in this behalf. Also note that the copies of these orders are laid before Lok Sabha and the state legislative assembly concerned. But the Lok Sabha and the state legislative assembly cannot make any modification in such orders. Remember this see so far delimitation commission has been constituted four times in 1951 in 1963 in 1973 and the latest one in 2002. This latest commission was constituted under the delimitation act 2002. Next what about delimitation for Panchayat elections? Who is responsible for this? This responsibility is given to various authorities including the delimitation commission. Sometimes even the state election commission of the concerned state they also have given this authority and this is because of the decentralized nature of our constituency. But this varies from state to state. This responsibility depends on the concerned states Panchayat Raj act. For example if we take Karnataka it has the Karnataka Panchayat Raj act 1993. So the role of delimitation of constituencies of Taluk Panchayat and Zilla Panchayat was interested to the Karnataka state election commission. But now news is that an amendment has been brought to this act of Karnataka and this amendment has established a delimitation committee for delimitation of Zilla and Taluk Panchayat constituencies in the state. So because of this amendment the responsibility of delimitation which was taken by Karnataka state election commission before will be transmitted to the newly formed delimitation commission. So this is the news in this news article we discussed about what is delimitation, what are the functions of delimitation commission, powers of delimitation commission and delimitation for Panchayat elections. So with this points in mind let us move on to the next news discussion. Now look at this article see this article is based on the association between the plant root and the microbes. In the course of the article two important exam relevant aspects were discussed. I will filter only those for the benefit of the students. See commonly root and microbial interaction is called as rhizobium where rhizome means roots. See fungus associated with roots are called mycorrhiza and the bacteria that associate with roots are called rhizobacteria and this is an perfect example of mutualism in ecology. Let us understand this. See mutualism can be precisely defined as an interaction between individuals which is of different species and that result in positive or beneficial effects on the interacting population. So if a species interact with another species both of them get benefited in this interaction and this is called mutualism. The most common example of this is the partnership between nitrogen fixing bacteria and leguminous plant. Let us see another example cow possesses rumen bacteria that live in the digestive tract. They help the cow to digest the plants that the cow consumes. Like we saw earlier associations between tree roots and certain fungus are often mutualistic in nature. The fungi helps the plant in the absorption of essential nutrients from the root and the plants in turn provides the fungi with energy yielded carbohydrates. Apart from this the most spectacular and evolutionary fascinating example of mutualism is this. See plants need the help of animals for pollinating their flowers and dissipating their seeds. Animals obviously have to be paid fees for the services that plants expect from them. So plants offer reward in the form of pollen and nectar for pollinators and it offers juicy and nutritious fruit for seed dispersers. So this is very good example of mutualism in this both species are getting benefited. See a closely related concept is competition. Don't confuse this with that. See in a competitive association both the species lose. Have a look at this table. Plus means gain and minus means loss. So we already saw about mutualism in this both or plus which means both gain. Both the species gain through interaction. Similarly in both parasitism and predation only one species benefit. That is the parasite or the predator gets benefited with the interaction with another species. The species which was interacted will lose and this interaction is detrimental to the other species which is host and prey for the parasites and predators. The interaction where one species is benefited and the other is neither benefited nor harmed is called commensalism and in amensalism on the other hand one species is harmed whereas the other is unaffected. Importantly note that predation parasitism and commensalism share a common characteristics that is the interacting species live close together whereas the mutualism doesn't require that. Now moving on to the other aspect mentioned in the article it is heterosis. See the heterosis is also called hybrid vigor. It means the increase in characteristics such as size, growth rate, fertility and yield of a hybrid organism over those of its parents. Now understand this hybrid organism is where their parents are genetically different. They can be different species or they can be same species but different line. When they are interbreedered hybrid results. See plant and animal breeders exploit hybrids to obtain heterosis or hybrid vigor. They obtain heterosis by crossing two different species or genera that have certain desirable traits. The first generation of spring generally shows the desired characteristics of both parents in an exaggerated quantity. This is exactly heterosis. For example take a plant of species A and species B both are tall which is a desirable trait. When both are crossbreedered the first generation of spring will show their parent qualities which is much exaggerated. That is the offspring will be too much tall which is not required. So this extreme level of qualities are called as the heterosis or the hybrid vigor and this vigor may decrease if the hybrids are mated together. So in this discussion we saw what is mutualism, what is competition, what is predation and similar concepts like parasitism, commensalism and amensalism. And apart from this we also saw about heterosis which is also called as the hybrid vigor and the characteristics of hybrid vigor. So with this we came to the end of this discussion. Now let us move on to the next discussion. Now our next news discussion is going to be based on this FAQ article. As we all aware India is still not fully done with the second wave of the pandemic. In fact during the past weeks we witnessed daily infections crossing over 40,000. So this shows that the intensity of the virus has still not reduced. Know that Kerala and Maharashtra are among the states with a high rate of fascination. But despite that the rise in daily infection is found to be more in these states and this FAQ article is written in this backdrop. So this particular article basically throws light on the instances of breakthrough infections that is found to be occur among the people. So without wasting much time let's get into our discussion. The syllabus covered by this article is highlighted here for your reference. In order to understand this article better first let us know about what is breakthrough infection. See breakthrough infection refers to the tendency of the virus to be able to penetrate the protective barrier of antibodies. So in simple words if a person gets affected with COVID virus 14 days after the second shot of the vaccine then it is called a breakthrough infection and this two week interval signifies the time taken by the body to produce necessary antibodies following a shot of the vaccine. So when the protection barrier made by the antibodies is break the breakthrough infection occurs. See in recent times there is an emerging concern related to the rise in such infections. But however there are still no official estimate of such cases in India. One thing to be noted about the breakthrough infection is that they are not much intense that is they are not translating into serious diseases which will require hospitalization. For example in Kerala 155 breakthrough infections were analyzed and among them 151 were mildly symptomatic and 4 were asymptomatic and they did not require hospitalization. Apart from this see among all others a portion of the health workers were found to be at greater risk of contracting such infections and this is mainly because of their prolonged and close exposure to a variety of patients. In fact a study by Delhi researchers highlighted that nearly a quarter of 600 fully vaccinated healthcare workers contracted the virus after vaccination. But however the positive side is that only less than 5% of such patients needed hospitalization and most importantly no lives were lost and this indicates that vaccines are effective in preventing severe sickness and death. See one thing you should have in mind about the breakthrough infection is that it is something that is obvious and nothing to be surprised about because vaccines are basically aimed at making your body to get normal with the disease and of course so far evidences prove that these vaccines are overwhelmingly effective. But in the clinical trials all available vaccines were reported to have the efficiency rate between 70 and 90% only or in other words only 70 to 90% of the people will or can enjoy full protection against the infection. So that means between 10 and 30% of a vaccinated population will still be vulnerable to infection in spite of them having vaccinated and remember that the instances of breakthrough infection are not something that is spotted only within India because even internationally the trend is not too different since countries like Israel and US continue to report fresh cases despite their high vaccination coverage. So to summarize even vaccinated people can get infection and that is called the breakthrough infection and we should not be very surprised about that because you should remember a fact that no vaccine can provide you 100 percentage protection and that is one of the reason for the breakthrough infection and another one of the major reason for occurrence of the breakthrough infection is the lack of precautions. To understand better see once people get vaccinated they are under the belief that they are fully protected and due to this they become less strict and they fail to follow the precautions that they were doing before getting vaccinated say like that of using mask or washed hands. So precautions like that people fail to follow these precautions and most of the time they forget the fact that the virus can still attack them and know that as per a report by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention the viral load among those with the breakthrough infection will be the same as the viral load in the unvaccinator. So this is the reason why mask is made a mandate despite significant vaccination coverage and though the breakthrough infection may not be serious among those who are vaccinated still it may cause them to be carrier of infection which eventually will lead to further spread of the disease. So to conclude breakthrough infections or infections or the tendency of the virus to be able to penetrate the protective barrier of antibodies remember even the vaccinated people can get infected and it is very important to follow the precautions even after being vaccinated even though the breakthrough infections may not be very serious as you don't have to be hospitalized and the infection is very mild and shows very slight symptoms but still you can be act as a carrier of the infection which may affect the population and further lead to spread of the disease. So these are the important points discussed in this article with this let us wind up this news article and with the learn points in mind let us move on to the next part of the news discussion. Now look at this article see recently the IUCN has assessed some 138,374 pieces and it is found that 28 percentage of this number are going to become extinct. So what are the reasons for this see according to the IUCN report habitat loss over exploitation, illegal trade and climate change or threatening the wildlife. So this is the reason why they are becoming extinct. So in this context let us briefly know about IUCN Red Listing and the newly introduced green status. See the IUCN Red List is a critical indicator of the health of the world's biodiversity. Let us understand this with a very simple example take a traffic signal when it is red you have to stop and when it is yellow you have to start your engine and wait until you get a green signal to move. So this is a very simple example for a indicator. Likewise to indicate the health of the world's biodiversity this IUCN Red List is used and the IUCN Red List of threatened species is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the world's conservative status of the plants and animal species. So they provide conservative status for both plants and animal species. If you see the IUCN list the species are categorized in nine categories. They include extinct, extinct in the wild, critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, near threatened, data deficient, least concern and not evaluated. So you can see the order of these categories in this image and of these when we say a species is threatened it includes critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species. See this is the Red List but recently the IUCN has introduced a new category called the green list. So what is the purpose of the Red List? See the Red List was created to spread awareness about the threats that wildlife faces. So wildlife has a various ranges of threats and to create an awareness and to spread an awareness about these threats the IUCN prepares this Red List. So in order to acknowledge the progress a green list has been created since 2020 and IUCN recently launched it officially. So in a sense the IUCN green status of species complements the Red List. How? The green status provides a tool for assessing the recovery of species population and it also helps in measuring their conservation success. So this is all about the Red List and Green List of IUCN and note that the species have to qualify three important categories to be in the green status. The first important category is that the species have to be fully recovered no matter whether it has been distracted by human activities or not but still if a species is fully recovered and it is present in all parts of its range then it will be put into the green status. This is the first category now coming to the second category it should be viable in all parts of the range that is it should not be threatened with extinction. So this is the second category and coming to the third category it should perform its ecological function in all parts of the range. So every species has its own ecological functions and to be in the green status it have to ensure that the species is performing its ecological functions in all parts of the range. So these are the three important categories to be qualified into the green status and even if they qualify also they contribute towards a green score that is a score range of zero to hundred percentage. So this range shows that how far a species is from its fully recovered status for example if a species is at two percentage or fifty percentage so it implies how far the species is fully recovered and what can be done to ensure its protection. So this is all about the Red List and Green Status. With these informations in mind let us move on to the next news discussion. Now we are going to discuss about this government advertisement that is displayed in the Delhi edition and it talks about the Assam ethanol production promotion policy 2021. This was announced by the Assam government and know that this policy has drawn its inspiration from the green fuel vision of India. So in the slide let us see some important facts about ethanol and also about the set policy. See ethanol is a clear colorless liquid and a renewable fuel and it has been made since ancient times by the fermentation of sugars. You would have been heard about ethanol being given much importance as a fuel for internal combustion engines. So the reason for ethanol being preferred as a fuel or its environmental and long term economic advantages which is far superior when compared to the fossil fuels. Also know that ethanol is a high performing fuel in the market and it keeps today's high compressive engines running smoothly. It even allows the engine to more completely combust the fuel thereby ultimately resulting in fuel at emission. If you remember the emission is high when the fuel is not fully combustor so by using the ethanol as fuel you can completely combust the fuel and consequently you can reduce the emission. Also it helps to prevent the winter time problems by acting as a gas line antifreeze. So these are some of the important points that you have to know about ethanol and this is the reason why ethanol is used as an alternative for the fossil fuels. Now coming to the policy see the state cabinet has approved the Assam ethanol production promotion policy 2021 and this policy is said to be valid up to 31st March 2026. So basically this policy aims to achieve the overall growth and development of ethanol manufacturing industries unit in the state. So in order to facilitate the process and to create an enabling environment for investing it provides remunerative returns to investors, farmers and all other stakeholders and the list of objectives of the set policy is given below for your reference as parents can go through it. Now talking about the eligibility see only those stand alone Greenfield ethanol producing industrial units that produce 100% fuel grade ethanol and which supplies 100% of their produced ethanol to oil manufacturing companies under the ethanol blending program of the Indian government or eligible for the benefits provided under the policy. So the industry must produce 100% fuel grade ethanol and it should also supply 100% of their produced ethanol to oil manufacturing companies under a program called ethanol blending program of Indian government. So only those industries are eligible for this scheme and as I said earlier the policy offers a huge range of incentives to those investors who are investing in the sector. So on that line power subsidy, tax related incentives, exemption of land conservation fees, employment cost subsidy, skill development subsidy, capital subsidy and interest subvention incentive or some of the incentives that are provided under this scheme and know that the industries and commercial department of the government of Assam will be the nodal department for the implementation of this policy in the state. So with this we have come to the end of this discussion. In this discussion we saw why ethanol is used as a fuel and some of the significance of ethanol and a policy called Assam ethanol production promotion policy 2021 and we saw what are the objectives of this policy and who are eligible to avail this policy. So with this information on mind now let us move on to the next discussion. Now let us take up this article for our next discussion. See the climate changes around the corner and many reports predict that the consequences of climate change would be that extremes of climate that is any natural phenomenon may occur in an extreme form. On those lines Kerala flat came as no surprise and it took a heavy toll on life and property. So there are various steps being taken to mitigate the effects of climate change but there are also efforts being taken to adopt to the new normal. See adaptation refers to adjustments in ecological, social or economic systems in response to actual or extended climate stimuli and their effects or impacts that is when there is an climatic stimuli you determine to adjust to that ecologically socially or in economic systems and it depends on the effects or impacts caused by the climatic stimuli and adaptation helps individuals communities organization and natural systems to deal with the impacts of climate change. Now look at this picture the figure shows graphically the adaptation cycle under the united nation climate change regime. See there is no one size fits all solution for adaptation and adaptation can range from building flood defenses setting up early warning systems for cyclones and switching to drought resistance crop to redesigning communication systems, business opportunities and government policies. And in India we have also started the adaptation process. We have set up the national adaptation fund for climate change under NABAD. The national action plan on climate change also has components for adaptation. Now in that line a couple of citizens in Kerala have come up with the concept of amphienist. See this is the country's first working example of an amphibious pavillion structure. Now what is this amphibian pavillion structure? So we know the characteristics of an amphibian right? So amphibians are animals that can live both on land and in water. So these pavillion structures modeled by youngsters in Kerala also have the same characteristics that is the pavillion structure can sustain in water as well as on land. So that is why it is called as amphibious pavillion structure and how does it works? See these buildings typically use buoyant air filled concrete foundations. So the unique feature of this foundation is that it will move up and down with the flood water. So as the water level rises the house got it on steel or concrete post can rise up to two meters and when the water is residing it settle back to its original placement. So this is how it works and remember the very most important advantage of this structure is that it also offers double the space of conventional homes and helps us to ensure the cost viability and remember the amphibian pavillion structure is not the first of the kind. This type of buildings were existing worldwide and it is used in areas where there is a frequent flood. For example the floating houses of Netherland proves that these structures can be used even when the water level is rising. So in this article we saw what is the amphibian pavillion structure, how does it works and the very important advantage of the amphibious pavillion structure. With this we came to the end of news article discussion. Now let us see some of the prelims practice questions. Now let us take up this question. This question is about delimitation commission. It is a three statement question and the first statement states that it demarcates the boundary of only the parliamentary constituencies. The second statement states that the chief election commissioner is its chairperson and the third statement states that its members includes the members of parliament and members of legislative assembly. Which of the statement given above is or correct? See the first statement is an extreme statement and in the discussion we saw that the delimitation committee demarcates the boundary of not only the parliamentary constituencies but also for the assembly constituencies. Additionally know that it also carries out delimitation of gram, zilla and taluk constituencies. If the state panchayat raj act stipulates so. So if the state makes an amendment to the state panchayat raj act the delimitation committee may demarcate boundaries for zilla, gram and taluk constituencies also. So the first statement is incorrect. Now coming to the second statement if we see the composition of the commission it consists of three main members the chairperson and two ex-officio members. The chairperson is appointed by the central government and the chairperson should be an existing or former judge of the supreme court. One ex-officio member is the chief election commissioner or an election commissioner nominated by chief election commissioner and the second ex-officio member is the state election commissioner of concerned state. So the second statement is also incorrect because the chief election commissioner is an ex-officio member he's not the chairperson the chairperson is appointed by the central government note that and coming to the third statement this statement is correct because apart from chairperson and two ex-officio members the commission also has 10 associate members five of them or MPs to be specific the members of Lok Sabha representing the state and remaining five are MLAs particularly the members of legislative assembly of that state. So the correct answer for the question is option C 3 1 Lee. See I already said delimitation commission is a very important topic and we already had a question in 2012 prelims about delimitation commission. The question is with reference to the delimitation commission consider the following statements. First statement is the orders of the delimitation commission cannot be challenged in a court of law. The second statement is that when the orders of the delimitation commission are laid before the Lok Sabha or state legislative assembly they cannot affect any modifications in the order which of the statement given above is or or correct. See we saw both the statements during our discussion and as per article 243 O article 243 ZG and article 329 of constitution the orders of the commission have the force of law and it cannot be called in question before any court. This is also provided by the delimitation act 2002 under section 10 2 so statement 1 is correct. Now coming to statement 2 this statement is also correct because Lok Sabha or state legislative assembly cannot make any modification in the orders passed by the delimitation commission. So the correct answer for this question is option C both 1 and 2. Now moving on to the next question this question is about heterosis which of the following statement accurately describes the term heterosis. Option A heterosis is where the hybrid offspring displays diminished parental characters. Option B heterosis is where the hybrid offspring displays elevated parental characters. Option C heterosis is where the hybrid offspring is sterile. Option D none of the above. So from our discussion itself we know option A is wrong because heterosis is where the hybrid offspring displays elevated parental character. So the correct option for this question is option B heterosis is where the hybrid offspring displays elevated parental character. Now moving on to the next question this question is about the green status and dread list of IUCN. So the question is with reference to green status and dread list given by IUCN consider the following statements. The first statement is the green status is to evaluate the threats to the plant species. The second statement is the red list is to evaluate the conservation status of animal only. The third statement is the green status was introduced to recognize the conservation efforts which of the statements given above is or correct. See statement one is wrong because the green status was introduced to acknowledge the conservation efforts of any species. So statement one is incorrect. It does not evaluate the threat to the plant species. Now coming to statement two this statement is also wrong because the red list has both plant and animal species. It does not evaluate the conservation status of animals only. So the second statement is wrong. Now moving on to the third statement. See third statement is correct because we saw in the discussion that the green status was introduced to recognize the conservation efforts. So the correct answer for this question is option D3 only. Now moving on to the next question. This question is about ethanol and the question is consider the following statement about ethanol as a fuel. The first statement is it allows the engine to completely combust the fuel and will result in fewer emissions. The second statement is it keeps the fuel system clean for optimal performance because it does not leave gummy deposits which of the statements given above is or correct. See we saw this in the discussion itself both the statements are correct because ethanol is a clear colorless liquid with an agreeable order and from ancient time it was obtained by fermentation of sugars. So because of its property and the presence of high oxygen content the ethanol molecules actually help in allowing the engine to more completely combust the fuel and hence it will help us to reduce the emission. Apart from this, the ethanol blended fuel keeps the fuel system clean and it gives us a optimal performance and it has some tendency to not leave any gummy deposits. So both the statements are correct. The correct answer for the question is option C both 1 and 2. Now moving on to the next question. This question is about amphi nest. The question is amphi nest recently seen in news refers to option A turtle homes built for Oliver at least option B nesting areas for migratory birds option C adaptation house architecture option D none of the above. We know that amphi nest or climate adaptation house architecture and this is built for reducing the impact of flooding. The important characteristic of this house architecture is to float when the water is rising and stays still in the ground when the water resides. So amphi nest is one such model and it is an climate adaptation house architecture. So the correct answer for the question is option C climate adaptation house architecture with this we came to the end of the discussion. The main question are displayed here. Please write answer and post it in the comment section with this we came to the end of the discussion. If you like the video like comment and share and do subscribe to Shankar IS Academy YouTube channel. Thank you.


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