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Emily: Welcome to the 4:18 Podcast. God is moving through partners, pastors, and entrepreneurs in African countries. This podcast shares the untold stories of what God is doing through the ministry of Possibilities Africa and testifies to the power of Jesus as described in Luke 4:18, which reads, “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” I’m Emily Frenzen, and today I have the pleasure of welcoming John and Carla Watson to the studio. Welcome, John and Carla! We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary this year, but this concept was still relatively new 14 years ago, so I’m curious what comes to mind that made you say yes to partner.

Carla: I know it was Doug Shada, who is no longer with us. He was our pastor but he also was a very good friend. And we trusted Doug. He said it’s going to go and so I guess that’s a friend and so that’s what we did. And then we saw it. He had us go to Africa in 2010. And we saw it. And that convinced us even more to start supporting them.

John: I think if you’re interested in Possibilities Africa, you need to make a relatively modest investment to go see what’s going on over there. It’s not a fancy trip, but it’s a very good trip. It’s a good eye-opener. So that’s one thing that I think is really, really important. And then the later years, why… It was probably pretty easy to see PA’s vision and how well it was working in spreading out to other countries. It wasn’t until 2020 that we went into Rwanda that year. It’s quite a bit different country than Kenya was, and it’s a little more advanced and things, but all the same basic needs were there. Educating pastors—it’s so fun to watch these pastors go through a seminar for three days to a week and then hear them preach. That’s a real eye- opener. So I think that, you know, for us, we’ve seen this expansion and the fact that now I think we’re in what, seven countries, I think. They hope to do seven more shortly. It wasn’t until about 2007 or eight when our youngest son joined us in business that we learned about Possibilities Africa. David’s wife, Jamie, was one of the early people that went over to Africa to see the operation over there and she definitely wanted David to go over. David’s kind of a visionary and I’ll always remember him saying that he visited a hut with a fellow trying to take care of his family and the area was in the midst of a drought and he did not know how he was going to feed his family and they were very poor. David saw what was happening through Martin and the organization over there in Africa and became very excited about Possibilities Africa and thought it would be good for us to go over there. So we did in 2010, we took a trip over to Africa and it was a game-changing trip. We could see how effective the work was.

Martin was doing a great job in Kenya. That time it was only in Kenya. And we were out in several villages. We love the people showing us their small businesses. I do mean small, but Africa is kind of an interesting place in Kenya, in a lot of these countries. As a whole, the population’s fairly poor. And at that time, there were people living on less than a dollar a day, and that’s pretty tough. But the cool thing is that it doesn’t take much for them to live a lot better. If you go from one dollar to two dollars or three dollars or four, and you’re used to handling one dollar, you know how to make money stretch. And you’re also willing to work and learn. And these people were very, very interested.

Carla: We’ve traveled four times now to Africa, and that was probably the most exciting trip of the four. But we have seen Possibilities Africa grow, not only in the leadership, but in the number of people that they are reaching with Christ throughout Africa. And that has been a dream of Martin since the beginning. And we see it now after, I guess, 14 years we’ve been involved with Possibilities Africa.

John: I think it’s kind of important to know that and think about the unusual opportunity that PA provides through Martin. All nonprofits have to be monitored and they’re as good as their leadership. And there’s always the danger, just as we have in Christianity, that they’re only one generation through a bad leader to go bad, or one generation of someone not passing along, Christ, to children or grandchildren to lose it. So what Martin has done is amazing. He was an on-fire Christian, came to this country on faith. And that’s another interesting story. I mean, he came without enough clothes to keep warm in the winter. And a group of seminarians rallied around him and figured out how to put him up and give him enough clothes to, to get through because he thought it was free. Cause the tuition was free. Well, it takes more than tuition to go through school as we all know. But anyway, um, here’s a guy that grew up in rural Africa without much, a tough family background with his father being murdered. And he had a situation where his heart said, I want to go back to Africa and make things different. And we grew up in an environment where we were taught to support missionaries in our early church days and as adults. And we would see this—Nothing wrong with this, but it’s just reality—takes a long time to get people ready to go to the mission field. It’s also very expensive. There’s health insurance, there’s retirement considerations, there’s training, there’s language issues, there’s cultural differences. All these things were put away with Martin. He was ready to go.

And he was smart and had good vision. So he was a leg up. He was the right man for this job. It became very obvious. And the money that was spent over there would go so far. The return on investment, I’m a business person, was extremely high. A lot of people came to know who God was. A lot of people were improving their lot in life. They could sustain themselves, even though it was still very basic. There’s no sense running over there with fancy equipment and fancy buildings. They didn’t need that. They didn’t want that. But they liked the simpler things that they could do in life. And we didn’t grow up with much on farms. And we could identify with that. But we liked how much could happen with a relatively small amount of money. We hadn’t heard that in missions too much.

So we thought this has got to be a good plan for God to go across to Africa. So that was probably one of the big reasons we became more and more interested in it as we grew. And we were back in 2012. In 2015, we were back and then the last time we were back was 2020. We have seen a lot of water under the bridge over there and people are very excited about what’s happened. And we’re seeing groups come together to take these small economic loans and reinvest them in people. They’re paid back. It was a novel concept over there. Needs to happen in this country. You have to pay money back. These are small loans, maybe $100, $500. You have to pay them back, and they do. The payback record is phenomenal and in a few years, Martin learned that it is even better when a small group of ministers in a community monitor these things and are the source or granting the re-loaning of this money back to people. And they want to pay it back. These people start. They learn about Martin, come to the initial meeting, and they wonder if they can get a sitting fee because the government pays them to come to meetings. We don’t do sitting fees and some of them get up and leave. But then they start seeing what people who stay, what’s happening. Some of them come back. But before it’s over, there’s a group of them that are learning how to sustain themselves. They’re learning about God and Christ. And it’s a very powerful movement. So it’s been interesting to watch. And like I say, I think the return on the invested dollar over there is just off the charts. I haven’t seen any missions that I feel are that what I would consider successful in both in terms of the numbers of people coming to Christ, but also giving them hope and love and seeing them turn around and help others. That’s the ultimate, and it happens over there a lot.

Emily: Over the years, what decisions have you made about how you live in order to give generously?

John: I think you have to realize that we both grew up in very conservative families. So, we didn’t grow up used to real high standards of living. And we grew up where you didn’t have a lot of extra spending money. So I think a lot of those kinds of decisions impacted our whole lives. It’s something that we’ve tried to teach our children not to have too much for funds because you learn the value of money a lot better, take better care of money, and make better use of money. So I think part of it goes clear back to when we were growing up, then in our later years, or our adult years. Why… we almost went broke with the high interest rate. You couldn’t sell any real estate. You couldn’t do anything, hardly. So, you know, those kinds of things sear your mind, like I always liken it to the farmer that went through the depression.

Some of our ancestors did, and that changes you. So I think that… I always liken it to following the herd, but we don’t always like to follow the herd. The kind of cars we drive or whatever else. We love to travel a lot. We do travel a lot and see the world. But other than that, we always joke about watching out for the environment. Well, one of the best things you can do is do your dishes. That’s true. My wife makes most of our meals and you know we don’t bring in all these other containers or have cars coming to our house bringing food and all of that. I think the money people make today could go a lot further if they lived a little differently but it’s not glamorous. What is the old saying about saving?

Carla: Saving is not glamorous because no one sees what you have and you live below your means.

John: That’s a real key for everyone. Probably could live about how we want to, but I don’t think we’d be any happier doing that.

Carla: But God has blessed us because we’re not any smarter than anyone. We don’t work any harder than anyone else. And for some reason, He has blessed us and so it’s time to give back.

Emily: Thanks for tuning in. We will be back for another episode soon. Until then, you can connect with us by going to our website, usa.possibilitiesafrica.org and subscribe to our email newsletter list. This is the best way to stay connected with us if you want to hear the latest updates on how to pray, how you can partner, and untold stories of what God is doing beyond this podcast. Until next time, God bless!