Transcription

00:10

Emily: Welcome back to the 4:18 Podcast. If you’ve listened before, you likely know that the name of this podcast comes from Luke 4:18. If you’re new here, Luke 4:18 is a verse in which Jesus announces his mission and it reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.”

00:35

Today, Doug and I are in the studio and Doug, would you like to share what we’re doing today? 

Doug: Yes, I’d love to. So, Emily is very good at interviewing other people about how they partner with the ministry and even some of our staff in Africa. But we just recently returned from a trip to Africa about just a few weeks ago. And so I thought it’d be fun just to sit down and share some, just some thoughts and some takeaways that Emily and I have

01:05

from the trip. So yeah, we’ll just share a couple stories each and then some takeaways. And so to start that, Emily, what’s one of the stories or the people that stick out in your mind as you have had a couple weeks now to reflect on that? 

Emily: The one that is sticking with me today is Pastor Richard’s Church. And this was the first church that we went to in Kenya. And something that hasn’t left my mind that he said was, “The promise is that someone will come, but they never do.”

01:33

“We cannot wait for the promise of the Koreans or others, but rather pastors and community members to build it little by little.” And what he’s talking about is the concept of waiting for handouts or waiting for someone else from a different nation to give the people of Africa something to live on, which historically has been true for decades and decades. So in this specific church, it’s a beautiful picture of what Possibilities Africa does because

02:01

what he has been doing is connecting everything in their lives, their economic situation, their social interactions, how they interact with their families and their children in the community with what the scripture says and calls humanity to live according to. So he’s bringing the insight of the Word of God and the teaching that he received from Possibilities Africa training. He attended the training, so he returns to his community and he shares these insights and this teaching with the community.

02:31

So, the members are given this gift of newfound knowledge that it is not ungodly or unspiritual to work and earn money, which culturally is a huge issue of spiritual poverty.  So it might seem common in our American context to think, yeah, it’s godly to work, it’s godly to make a living. But for these people, especially pastors, in particular, it is believed that it is unspiritual to do anything besides pastoring the church

02:58

to make money, but the problem is that most of them cannot make money by only being a pastor of the church. So it’s just this huge awakening to realize, okay, “It is godly to steward the giftings and resources that we have,” whether it’s a skill or the land that they have available to them to earn money. And this multiplies into the community and is really valuable for others who are waiting for handouts, even if there’s not a spiritual belief that

03:28

they can’t work, it’s just kind of this concept of being stuck in poverty that they were born into. So what Pastor Richard does is teach his church the theology of work, that God has called them to work with their hands so that they’re not just expecting a miracle to fall from above or come from somewhere else. And he even said, you know, this is something that God wants to bless. He wants to bless the work of our hands and he wants to bless

03:55

us through the experience of doing work. So this is a really good example of what spiritual poverty looks like. And even more than that, they are discipling believers through their church.  He shared with us, on Wednesdays, they call it home fellowship. The members of the church meet in several homes and then they also do spiritual disciplines of fasting and praying. So it’s really beautiful to see them doing this as a community, as a whole church. And the other thing that’s really beautiful is to see

04:24

the impact of Shalom groups. So Pastor Richard returned from training and then started three different Shalom groups. And a couple examples of those Shalom groups of what has happened since–one would be Sophie, and she is a tailor and a mother of five. Her husband works in a larger city and is gone often, which is common in these communities because they can sometimes make a little bit more money in that scenario. But

04:53

it still wasn’t enough for their family. So, Sophie becomes a tailor and she took a loan from her Shalom group in which they often do table banking. And in December, there was so much business that she had the money to buy another sewing machine. And she now has a Muslim student who is paying to be trained. And then Sophie’s expecting even more students. She’s teaching a few others who want to learn how to sew and do tailoring. So it’s beautiful to see her not only,

05:21

you know, have income for her children to live a full life that is free of the chains of poverty, but also see her having the potential to share the love of Jesus and just be such a light through her business. And then just a couple other examples, there’s a couple named Alex and Selena and they have tea plants and tree plants that we got to visit. It’s just beautiful to see them using their hands in that way. And then another woman named Elizabeth also has plants and

05:50

she had a hut-like structure that her plants are enclosed in, and I was so fascinated to see a mosquito net. The mosquito net is there to keep critters out. She doesn’t really need it to take care of her, but she uses it for her plants. 

Doug: Just to interrupt you, that’s an interesting story… hadn’t thought about that for a while, but one of the first trips over to Africa, we were driving around and Martin, he said, do you see all this blue netting

06:20

around gardens? And I said, yeah, and I said, what is it? And he said, well, some nonprofits gave a lot of money to buy mosquito nets for people hoping that that would cut down on malaria because malaria is a huge problem, but their greatest need is typically to keep the rabbits and chickens out of their garden. So they take this mosquito netting, put it around their gardens, and so it’s just so fascinating to see so many gardens in this case, we saw it again,

06:50

this blue netting used for something other than intended for. Again, it’s kind of maybe an illustration of what we think they need, and what they think they need are two different things. 

Emily: Yeah, that is such a good statement. Yeah, that is so, so true. It is interesting too, because  Martin told me we were taking our malaria medicine when we were there, which is what we always do. But he said, I’m not worried about malaria. It’s just immunity and a lot different when…

07:20

they grow up exposed to it. 

Doug: Well, that and I think malaria over there is just people get it and if they have access to medicine, they can just take that. You talked about Pastor Richard and I just wanted to go back to that. It’s a kind of foreign concept for us to think that it’s not good for a pastor to work, but there is this culture that they grow up in. And I think it goes back to when

07:47

Christianity was originally shared with the continent of Africa. The people said that the pastors need to focus on only being a pastor. So the intent was good. It’s like you need to give this 100%. But the problem is when you pastor a church where the average income is less than $2 a day, there’s just not much money that comes in the offering plate. So they just can’t live. And so it’s really just this vow of poverty that they take. And it’s almost like,

08:14

When something becomes a pastor, other people and their families are going, oh no, now we have to support our family members. even, you know, there’s been stories of pastors going, they didn’t want to bring shame to the church or their family, so they would go out and work their garden at night when nobody could see them. And so we, Possibilities Africa, teach the Bible and the Apostle Paul was a tentmaker. And so there’s nothing wrong with having a small business

08:43

to support your family and still be a full-time pastor.  And so we see that. Another example of that is Pastor Mwakavi, and that was one of the stories I wanted to share. Just a vibrant… Emily has a great video of him on our Facebook page if you want to go actually see the interview. But he just lived in poverty. He lived in the church compound and

09:11

you know, with not much money coming in the offering plate to support his family, he would borrow money from people. So he found out that, you know, he owed everybody. He owed people in this congregation. He owed the school where his children went to school at. And what happened in time when he couldn’t pay it back, like the teachers would mock his children, like, you know, you can’t pay, or got to a point where they couldn’t go to church or school. I’m sorry. And so then

09:40

they’re at home, they’re sad, the children aren’t, because they want to be with all their friends at school. And he said, it’s really hard to preach to people that you owe money to. And he had said he had people that would leave his church because, you know, if the pastor can’t pay back his loan, then how can we listen to him preach? And so it’s things like that that were really hard. So he’s going through our training. And so like, again, we teach that you can have…

10:07

like an income. And so he moved out to the country. I don’t remember how many acres, a couple acres maybe it was, or something like that. 

Emily: Yeah, I feel like that seems right. 

Doug: Something like that. And so he first bought some chickens and then he said from selling the eggs, his kids could go to school and would help pay the debt. And then he bought a goat or a few goats and he was milking them. And then again, was producing income and reduced debt, so, you know, he doesn’t owe anybody anything

10:36

now, he has a garden as well. And wasn’t his wife that bought a dress for the first time? 

Emily: Yes! 

Doug: And she said to think that a pastor’s wife could buy a new dress. And she was just beaming. So it was just stories like that, that like, again, not wealthy. I mean, if you saw his house, you’d say this is poverty, and it is, but just that…

11:05

inner, I don’t want to say accomplishment that he had done this is not a handout.  It’s something that he worked hard for and through that hard work he was able to… now he’s still a full-time pastor and preaches and yet just so much more joy. 

Emily: Yeah, I think when you…

11:29

say the inner accomplishment, I’m also like, man, that just is restoring dignity. Like, the problem also with handouts is that it’s taking away people’s dignity and their ability to, you know, do something for themselves. And when we prepared for this trip, we read the book When Helping Hurts, but we watched videos that go with it as well. And I remember something that was so key from the videos. It talked about how much

11:53

people that live in poverty often talk more about the psychological effects more than the physical effects. And I think that is such a good example of the belief systems of “I can’t do anything for myself.” And then when someone gives you a handout, it just reinforces that belief.  And I feel like it’s just so amazing, like you said, to see the transformation and then also know that it’s restoring dignity. Like that’s what God wants and it’s so godly. 

Doug: Yeah. Well said.

12:21

I just think that is the key to, really, Possibilities Africa, what we do is it’s more teaching, it’s more education, it’s challenging. You know, the Bible says if you don’t work, you don’t eat. So there is a good thing about working hard and accomplishing things, and God gives everybody skills and abilities to do things, and it’s really just calling them into that,

12:47

calling them into what God has already prepared for them to do or inspired them. And I think it’s so cool that it’s led by people that are born and raised in Africa because they can say really hard things that you or I, Emily, couldn’t say. I mean, it would come across very rude as a rich American trying to, “Well, just do it.”

13:14

Emily: And we don’t know anything about their context of daily life. 

Doug: We don’t. No, we don’t. So to challenge somebody, and I’ve heard Martin say, tell people, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” And that’s biblical. it’s so much more, I want to say, coming from somebody like Martin, it’s more doable. 

Emily: Appropriate. 

Doug: Appropriate. Yeah, that’s good word. Yeah, well said.

13:44

So what’s another story? You got any more? 

Emily: Yeah, I loved meeting this woman named Anne and she is in a rural community in Kenya. And I also recently shared a video about Anne, but one of the first things she said when she shared her testimony with us was that her husband left her in the year 2018. And she said, “I told God, now you are my husband.” And she’s just such a bold and strong woman of faith.

14:13

She did say, you know, there’ve been moments of despair, but she testified how much God has carried her through that. And she said, “I must press on.” The children must eat. They must go to school. They must have clothes. And with Possibilities Africa, she was able to purchase goats and expand the number of goats she had. She’s able to feed her family with produce she’s planted. She uses milk from the goats to feed her kids. And she also

14:42

has sold soap and so she sells the soap to the school and then that has kind of made it more cost-effective for her to pay for education for her kids. And I just think it’s such a full picture because, you know, here she is also being a spiritual leader in her community. She is so rooted in God’s word and just emphasized how much God’s word has power to…

15:06

inform their daily life and equip them as a community in the body of Christ. And she is so loving in the sense that she’s been really welcoming in her Shalom group to invite not only church members but the larger community. And it ultimately glorifies God. You know, if they were to deny those community members, what does that show them? You know, that feels really exclusive, amd not like Jesus. And then it’s like, okay, they welcome them in. They have the opportunity to encounter

15:35

Christlike love and hear more about God’s Word and who this Jesus is. And then they also get to have the physical benefits of a better life through the businesses that they do together. So there’s so much about Anne, but yeah, I think the line that said, you know, “I told God, now you are my husband” is just so beautiful to me and just such a testament of her faith and willingness to seek him in that. I think there were

16:03

a lot of options she could have chosen, you know, like she has children to feed and her husband leaves, you know, that could have easily been a place for her to react really differently, you know, and to hear her say that’s what she chose in a heart posture and in her prayer was really powerful. 

Doug: That’s a great story. You mentioned Shalom groups and there’s probably someone that’s listening that doesn’t know what that is. And so what, what we do is

16:30

we realized that Possibilities Africa can’t train everybody in Africa. So we have chosen to work with pastors in rural areas that have a church. So even if somebody said, want to be a pastor,  we’d say, you know what, this isn’t for you. We work with people who already have a church audience, as somebody they’re influencing. So we work over two years training these pastors.

17:00

And then they’re required to go back to their churches and to teach their people what they’re learning. And they put them into groups, probably 10 to 30 people, and they call those Shalom groups. And so in those groups, they’re learning Bible theology, they’re learning how to teach the Bible, they’re learning how to start a small business, support themselves, they’re challenging to educate their children. And so that’s going on. So there’s this multiplication process, that’s very biblical,

17:30

that we teach one and then they’re required to go teach others. And so there might be multiple Shalom groups in their church. And then, those people are also impacting their community. So there’s this multiplication process going on that is touching just a lot of people, which is really cool. But we focus on the pastors and then we say, okay, now it’s your job to go train your people. And so it’s being multiplied.

17:59

Emily: So effective, too. 

Doug: Yeah, it is. It is. It’s a great plan. It’s one that’s biblical.

Emily: Yeah. 

Doug: Yeah. Who would have thought? Yeah. Praise God. 

Emily: Yeah. So what else do you have? Do you have any more? 

Doug: Yeah, there’s another guy, Pastor Musyoka and he was very, very excitable.

18:22

He had a passion. And so he’s going through our training. And so we often ask, one thing is what’s your, one of your economic challenges? What’s some of your spiritual challenges? What’s some of your challenges with your educating your children? Well, economically, he said, we are so dry, in regards to rain. So they live in an area that gets about four and a half inches of rain. So, Emily and I live in Nebraska and I live in the central part of Nebraska that gets 24 inches of rain,

18:52

which we have irrigation. that, I was just visiting with one of our donors in Western Nebraska and they get 14 inches and it is really dry there right now. So, this part of Kenya that we were in, the Southeast part, they get four and a half inches of rain a year. And so it’s really, really dry there. Like we would drive by and all the river beds were just dry. In fact, they would go down to the river bed, dig a hole, 

19:19

wait for water to seep in, and then they would bucket it into these barrels and put it on the back of donkeys, and head home. One of the pictures I love, we would see donkeys just walking with no people. And I said, what’s going on here? And they said, well, the donkey knows where home is. The donkey, they’d fill the water in the donkey and head home. They might be filling up another

19:42

barrels that they put on donkeys.

Emily: Did someone say that on this trip? 

Doug: Yeah. 

Emily: I did not know that.

Doug: Yeah. So there’s these donkeys that are just walking by themselves. They go, yeah, they know where home’s at. 

Emily: That’s awesome. 

Doug: Yeah. I thought that was pretty cool. So the biggest challenge is water. So he went home and through the, you know a lot of times what we do is we have them brainstorm like, okay,  you’re lacking water. Okay. Well, we don’t have this unlimited resource. Well, the depth of, I asked them, how deep would you have to drill well,

20:11

to get good drinking water? They said 600 feet. And that is so far. mean, like here in Nebraska where I live, mean, 100 feet to 200 feet catches a really, I mean, that’s a really good well. And so 600 feet is very, very costly. And so I’m not saying that there’s not wells, but more for a school or a town. So these rural people that live out far from a town, they just have no access to clean drinking water. So,

20:38

he said, what can I do? So he brainstormed and he said, I’m gonna build a tank. So he went home, he made a concrete tank. My guess, it’s about a thousand gallons. And then he put a pipe that caught the water off of his roof. And so when it rains, they only get four and half inches a year, but it rains hard. And so then it comes and it had water in this tank and he had a valve on the bottom. He showed us that water coming out of it. And then,

21:04

he said, that works so well. He goes, how can I collect more water? So there’s kind of a, I don’t want to say, there’s water that runs through his property. I believe he had like maybe three acres. And so he’s like, how can I catch more water? So he dug a hole and this is a big hole.

Emily: Yeah, I was going to say it’s a massive hole. It’s like pond size. 

Doug: Yeah. mean, like the first hole he dug,

21:31

you could fit several cars in it. I mean, like, so we’re talking, and he dug it with his children, just by hand. So there’s no tractor, there’s no backhoe, there’s no, and so he dug this and he put plastic in it and that hole actually has water in it from the rain. And kind of a cool story, he said there’s fish in that one. And so we said, how’d you get fish? He said, well, when it rained, he went to this river that had fish,

22:00

and he caught some fish and they put them in a container on the back of his motorcycle and drove as fast as could back to put these fish in this pond. And he’s raising these fish to eat. And he’s also using that water to water his garden. And so he was showing us and that one, there was probably maybe five, six feet of water in that one, because he stuck a stick down there. And he thought that works so well, I’m going to dig more holes. And the others are bigger yet. I mean like,

22:30

you can put a couple trucks in them. They’re probably eight feet deep, six to eight feet deep, and maybe 20 feet wide by 30, 40 feet. I mean, there’s some big holes. And his goal is that when it rains, this will catch all the rainwater that runs through his property, and he can use this to water his garden. And it was just so fascinating. He was so excited. It was just, again, it was no money

23:00

that was given by Possibilities Africa or even anybody. It was just what could he do to take care of his needs with the resources and skills that he has. And he’s still a full-time pastor. And one of these things, he said, I need to balance. He said, I need to balance working here. I need to balance working at church and doing other things and tending for his family. And so just so inspiring and he’s working hard. 

23:29

So Pastor Musyoka. 

Emily: So much manual labor. It’s amazing to see. And I think the other thing I love about his story is that when we were leaving that community, a few of us were talking, I think in the safari vehicle that this was kind of like a Noah’s Ark moment in the sense that he’s digging these holes and he’s doing this. And the other people in the community are like, this guy’s crazy. Like, what’s he thinking? What’s he doing? And then we’re there and we’re like, this is amazing. And what vision! And this is so incredible.

23:58

I feel like that seems to be a trend when, you know, other people in the community are like, this is so different, like this doesn’t make sense. But then over time they see the impact and then they want to be part of Possibilities Africa because they’re like, this is, this is working, this is doing something. But the other thing I think that’s so cool about what you just shared is that he and Anne, who I just mentioned, belong to the same community. So

24:23

we’re in this community and I just was so blown away and I was like, these people are incredible and to see them doing this in the fullness of who God has made them to be is just really awesome. So yeah, that is such a good story. You told that so well. 

Doug: Well, it’s so fun and so inspiring. And that’s the cool thing is, you meet the church and you meet the pastors and they’re, you know,

24:51

they’re more biblically sound, but they’re also doing something to produce an income, which then inspires their congregation to do something to produce an income, not wait for a handout.  And so it’s, it’s multiply, you know, it’s shown by example. And so, you know, so many times we think that we have to give somebody something, but…

25:18

You know, in reality, like you said before, it’s their dignity that is kind of thrown under the wagon and just gets trampled on because, you know, the handout doesn’t inspire them or give them like this, wow, God created me to do something. So yeah, it’s great stories. Another story is Polly. She’s the one, who her pastors went to training,

25:47

and then came back and she’s part of a Shalom group and they said, know, our biggest thing is water. So her and some of her friends in these women dug a well and by hand.  And it’s like, wow, they’re down like 10 feet when we were there and they put concrete blocks around it. And then they want to go down another 10 feet. But they were taking ownership of what they need.

26:16

And she was so inspiring that, you also did a video on her, and she’s just inspiring and she’s, you know, taking care of a couple orphans and she’s helping send, you know, was it her daughter going to college or who was somebody going to college? You remember? 

Emily: She said there were two young women who belonged to their Shalom group, their school. So she had a storefront, she was selling things. And it’s a tiny storefront, but with it, it’s amazing what happens through it. Like it’s not that big

26:46

by American standards anyway. 

Doug: Well, that’s the crazy thing when you’re in these rural areas, there’s no stores you walk into. You just walk up and you can kind of stand at a counter and there’s a little, like an office-size space that they have things hung around. It’s like, I want that or I want that. And it’s totally different than our shopping here. 

Emily: Yeah. 

Doug: Yeah. Polly, she was very, very impressive.

27:13

You know, these stories, and we could go on and you know, I walk away so encouraged. It’s weird because… and this is mission trips. This is you know, why do we go? Well, I think the reason we go to Africa, one is for accountability. We send money over and like, okay, are they accomplishing what they say they accomplished?

27:42

Not that we don’t trust them, but it’s just good accountability. It’s like, okay, we’re gonna go see how this is working. And it’s working. I mean, we come back and we say, yes, it is working.  But the other thing is we go over, hopefully, to encourage them by our presence, meeting them,  giving them… They’re people, they’re God’s creation. And so hopefully we’re encouraging them as we meet with them and we sing with them, we pray with them.

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What’s amazing is we always come back more blessed, I think, than probably were a blessing to them. And we come back encouraged in our faith, knowing that God is doing something in them, but using us as a part of it. Maybe a small part of it, but still a very valid part of it. It’s a partnership. 

Emily: And that’s a wrap for part one. Stay tuned for more in part two of “Stories From The Field.”

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