You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Monday, October 19th, 2020. Now this week we are going to continue with our Jesus study, and this week we are going to be looking at the person that paved the way for Jesus' public ministry, his cousin, John the

Baptist. But before we get there, we need to talk about the saint who is celebrating a feast

day today. Today is a feast day of St. Isaac Jokes. Now, St. Isaac was from France. He was a Jesuit. He lived in the 1600s,

but he felt a calling to be a missionary in the new world. And so he boarded a boat,

traveled across the ocean, and arrived in Quebec, where he would minister and try to bring

the Christian faith to the Huron or Mohawk Indian tribes.

Now, this was an incredibly dangerous thing to do.

Not only were the Indians not necessarily interested in the Christian faith and resentful of missionaries,

but they were also constantly at war

with each other. Nonetheless, St. Isaac set out to win souls for Jesus. He went to live among them.

However, shortly after he arrived, St. Isaac was captured by the Mohawk Indians. He was taken prisoner

and he was tortured for a long time.

For over a year he lived with them and he was treated terribly tortured. Finally, he escaped.

He ran away. He got to the coast. He begged to be aboard a Dutch ship, and he sailed all the way back to France.

Now, when he got back to France, he was hailed as a hero, because while he was in Canada, he had won

souls for Jesus. But as he was there, he really felt a calling. Jesus calling him back to minister

to these Native Americans and to win more souls for Jesus.

So very quickly after arriving in France, he went back to Canada.

He went back to the very tribes that had captured him and tortured him.

Well, on his very first mission out into the wilderness in Canada to encounter these

Native American tribes, he was once again captured, but he was almost immediately killed.

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