Focused and Faithful - From Africa with Love - July 27, 2025

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6.19, Pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

Thanks for your vote of confidence, Eldon. first

time I met Eldon was in a board meeting where we were

talking about me coming as your interim pastor and I

said well I don't know who's in charge here or Eldon it must be you

you're the chairman of the board right now he said I'm not in charge I knew

we were in trouble right then good morning church boy it's good to be with you

today and I've been looking forward to this now since Pastor Mike asked me if

I'd come and just share some with you when he called me,

I got to confess, I was not only grateful, but pretty excited about getting back here.

You know, this, well, after all, we were interim pastors for almost two years, right?

And some of you tried to get rid of me two or three times. I just stuck my heels

in and, uh, you know, I'm a joker, so that's okay. All right.

And, uh, what a wonderful journey we had.

It's good to be here. It's good to be back. It feels right. Cause it feels like family.

And I just imagine if it wasn't for our own grandkids and our kids who demand

that we're with them in church every Sunday, we'd be right here,

worshiping with you every Sunday.

Some of you might have forgotten who I was, so I thought I'd bring a little

reminder that might just help you, because I wore this probably most of the

time I was here. Anybody remember me now?

Okay, now you recognize me.

And so, as you know, I had some pretty significant head surgeries.

And by the way, since I've been with you, I've had two other major surgeries last year.

I had a hernia surgery, and I had cancer surgery and prostate cancer.

Somehow, God continues to heal me, and I just keep going back to Africa.

And I've told Linda, I'm going to go as long as I can.

And the Lord has been really good to me.

So pastor mike this guy that guy uh pastor mike

man have you ever gone fishing and you wanted

to you know land the big fish have you

ever done that tom have you ever no not tom tom's not a fisherman what's wrong

with you tom you know you go fishing to land the big fish well i think you guys

landed the big fish when you got pastor mike curry he's he's the right guy and

don't don't you just love his spirit, his heart, and his attitude.

And, you know, Linda and I never come to an environment like this that we don't

just remember and are so grateful for the many relationships that we have,

not had, but have, even today.

I mean, Mary, how do you outdo Mary? Look, she just walked into the door right when I said her name.

That's a God thing. You know, don't come any better than Mary.

They do not. They just don't.

I pastored four different churches that have been an interim in five churches

and was a youth pastor or associate in five churches before I started all that.

I've never met anybody like Mary. She's amazing.

She's just there in season and out of season. And she came up to me and gave

me a big hug and said, Pastor, I love you. And I love that. I love that.

And then what do you do with these guys that put up with guys like me,

like Steve Beshears back here in the sound and Larry.

Those guys are covering the whole base this morning.

And man, I'm very grateful for him. And, you know, if you could only be on Steve's

end of the line when I'm getting ready for a Sunday morning,

because I'm throwing all kinds of stuff at him.

In fact, this last week he said, are you done with the pictures yet?

You've already got 39 of them. And I said, no, I've got a few more to go. Oh.

I said, grace required. He said, grace given. How do you beat that? How do you beat that?

So, boy, I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be here.

Now, Pastor Mike, when he called me, he asked me, I said, what do you want me to speak about?

And he said, I'll take as long as long as long as to speak about two or three hours if you want.

So, no, I said, Mike, Mike, I mean, any topics.

He said, no, do what you, he said, I'd like you to talk about your recent trip to Africa.

I said, okay, I'm always willing, more than anxious, to talk about my trips to Africa.

I've been going for 16 years now, taking teams.

And, you know, I used to say to the Lord, Lord, I don't know if I can handle

this anymore. It's too hard.

It takes parts of three days to get over there. And then as soon as you land,

I mean, Doug and Dathan can tell you, you land and the next morning you get

in a car and you drive 10 hours to your first assignment.

No restaurants, no restrooms, no nothing. You just go.

You're out there in the furthermost parts of the earth, and you're trying to

reach people with the gospel.

Some of them have never seen a white man.

And you're trying to tell them about this Jesus who came to earth that God sent

to die on a cross for their sins.

It doesn't get any better than that. Oh, sorry. Was I yelling there for a moment?

And you get to tell them that God has not forgiven them, I mean,

forgotten them. He's forgiven them.

He's not forgotten you. You might live in grass huts and dirt floors,

and you might have to walk four, two hours every one way to get water every

day and figure out where you're going to get. But God's not forgetting you.

He's not forgetting you. He wants to forgive you.

It's a wonderful privilege to go to Africa every year.

And I got to tell you, I'm humbled, humbled more than I can say. Words cannot express.

How grateful I feel in this stage of my life that God's allowing me to fulfill

a calling that I had when I was eight years old. Think of it, eight years old.

And I pastored churches for 50 years, and the last 15, God's blessed me to go to Africa.

He's fulfilled his calling in my life in a beautiful way. Now,

I want to give some context.

This can't just be about pictures and about a trip to Africa,

because I firmly believe whenever we come together, God always wants to do something

in our lives that's fresh and new.

If all you get is a bunch of pictures and a bunch of stories,

those are great. Those are good.

But what is it God wants to do in your life today? What does he want to do?

I believe when we come here, we don't come by accident. And I believe that God's

Holy Spirit wants to do something in your life that's fresh and new, just as he does mine.

So whatever it is, would you be open to what God has to say to you?

I want to be open to what he has to say to me, because I don't come here to

preach. I come here to learn.

And sometimes my preaching convicts me, and I got to go home and get on my knees

and say, God, help me, forgive me.

Lord, make me a better person. So I want to give some context.

Now, if you know me much, you know that I like to talk about the big idea.

What's the big idea today?

So when we walk out of here, we all know what that old guy up there talked about.

What did the preacher say? What did he talk about? So.

If someone asks you could you say it in one or two words so i'm going to give

you a heads up all right are you ready.

I'm going to give you a heads up of what I'm going to talk about.

Two words. Here they are, right on the screen.

Focused and faithful. So what are we going to talk about today?

Being focused in life and being faithful. Look, I had a call when I was eight

years old. By 10, I wrote a little note why I want to be a missionary.

I still have that note today. I typed it out. I didn't even know how to type,

but I typed it out on some typewriter.

And it's just a little paragraph or two of why I felt God called me as a child

to be a minister. Isn't that crazy?

And all these years, that was a focusing point for me. The call of God in my life was a focus.

How do you get focused with what God wants you to do? I mean, in your own life.

I mean, have you ever noticed how many distractions there are out there in the world?

You can't go anywhere without a thousand distractions. How do you get so focused?

You say, okay, God, I'm doing what you want me to do today. I'm living the way you want me to live.

I'm accomplishing what I feel you want me to accomplish.

So focused. And then to be faithful. So now, those of you who know me,

you know that I'm not just going to stand up here and talk.

We're going to take a scripture, and we're going to talk about a scripture a little bit.

And we're going to talk about how this applies in our lives.

And you're going to see it enveloped in my own life as I continue to go to Africa.

I trust that's what happens today.

So you know the Word of God this morning. We're going to read from 1 Corinthians

4, just two verses. So we got two words. What are the two words?

Focused and faithful. And now we got a scripture, two verses.

Are you ready for the Word of God, the reading of God's Word?

Okay, let's read. I know what you're going to do before I even look at you.

You're going to be standing for the reading of God's word. That's what you always do.

And Lord, we honor your word today. Lord, it's your word.

Two verses of chapter four of 1 Corinthians.

Paul writes this to the church of Corinthians of Corinth.

So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ.

And of those who are entrusted with the secret things of God. Can I read that again?

So then men ought to regard us as servants of Christ.

Those in the world, everyone around us, when they look at us,

they should see us as servants. Amen?

We're all servants. Look, just because I got a degree and I'm a preacher doesn't

mean I'm a servant and you're not.

You got your own callings just as I do. It's a different calling. But God's called you.

And because he's called you, we're all servants together. We serve Christ together. Amen.

And none of us are better than others. We all come to the foot of the cross

the same. I love the gospel.

Jesus loves us all the same. I'm getting ready to preach. I just came to share

some pictures about Africa. I'm sorry. Okay.

So, men ought to regard us as, what's the word?

Servants of Christ. And as those entrusted with the secret things of God.

Oh, what a powerful thought that is.

Entrusted with the secret things of God. Verse 2, now it is required of those

who have been given a trust.

Here comes the second word. They must prove to be faithful.

Well, God, your word is a lamp unto my feet. It's a light unto my path.

Your word, God, we have hid in our heart that we might not sin against you.

There is nothing like your word, O Father, and we bring your word that's been

anointed, it's been authorized.

It's been spoken from the very lips and heart of God, and it's given to us for a reason.

I pray, God, that you would hide the messenger behind the cross,

but may we see the message for us today individually and as a church,

that we might be servants of Christ and faithful in all we do.

And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You may be seated.

Well, praise the Lord. Just let me say a few words about this,

and then we'll look at some pictures, okay?

Notice the word servants and notice the word ministers in verse,

well, servants is in the verse one and then minister to verse two,

or servants and minister, sorry, is in verse one. Depends on your translation.

So I think what Paul's doing here is he's describing a job description.

Have you ever had a job description?

You go to interview for a job and they say, well, here's the job and they give

you a piece of paper, and on the paper tells you what you're supposed to be doing, right?

So I think this Paul is telling us what his job description is.

And he uses a very specific word.

In our translations, it's ministers or servants. Does anybody have a different

word in your translation?

There's probably three or four of them out there, but stewards, somebody has stewards.

Pardon me? Manager. So we're getting an idea.

This context is a little broader than we think. But here's the interesting thing.

The true translation, I mean the literal translation of this word ministers

or servants or whatever we said, is the word under rower.

Can you say that word with me? Under rower. It's kind of hard to say.

A belly slave. and it comes from their world. I mean, Corinth is very close to a Roman port.

A shipping port, where every day a lot of ships come in. And guess who propels

those ships? It's not sails.

It's not rudders. It's not motors, diesels.

It's servants. It's men. Where do you find these men? You find them at the lowest part of the hull.

There's two rows of them. They have oars, and they're all rowing.

And they are under rowers on a ship.

And Paul uses this word, under rower, a belly slave is some translation,

as the literal translation.

And for us to understand that we, it's been translated as ministers and as servants

and all the other ones you said,

to get a grasp of what God has called us to as servants of Jesus, under rowers.

And we've all seen movies, haven't we, of those guys with the roars down at the bottom.

It's sweaty, it's dark, it's hot, it's lonely, it's tough.

And there they are down there, all rowing for one purpose, so they can go forward in the same direction.

I love that. I love that image. So I guess if the truth be known,

we're all a bunch of under rowers.

That's what God's called us to. We're just down there doing the task,

doing what God's called us to. And we're just staying faithful to the task.

So there's two or three things that this has significance for.

And I'm going to say them very quickly because I want to get to the Africa a

trip, but I'm giving you the context of what I believe we're doing.

We're not just doing something for ourselves. We're not doing this because we

like to do it or we want to do it. We're doing it because God has called us.

Whatever God called us to do, we should be doing. Amen?

And I believe even though I turned 74 this year, I'm not through with my calling.

In fact, my calling to go to Africa is as strong, if not stronger than it's

ever been. And I got it when I was eight years old.

And granted, again, this is after five churches as a youth pastor,

or an associate, and I said five lead pastors, four lead pastor churches,

and I'm getting ready to do, I think, my fifth interim pastorate again.

I'm not, God's not done. I thought I was done. I thought I was retired. I'm trying to retire.

People like you won't let me. It's not my fault, and you know,

when I told God, I don't think I can do this anymore. God literally hit me over

the head with a two-by-four.

He said, you quit saying this is too hard, and you don't know how I'll tell you when you're done.

Literally, I feel God say that. I'll tell you when you're done.

And my gracious wife has allowed me to go.

It's when you go three weeks away from mama, and the irrigation goes down, it ain't fun for her.

And I come home to pay the piper. I've been in the garage ever since.

Not really, just so to speak.

You get what I mean? There's sacrifice on everybody's part. Those who give, those who go.

We're all rowing together. Amen. So let me throw these at you really quick. The first one is this.

The under rower or the belly slave, they always rowed to the captain's beat.

We do what the captain tells us to do. And the captain is the great shepherd

of the sheep, Jesus the Christ, who died on the cross for our sins.

Amen. And he's the captain.

And when he speaks, we say, yes, sir. We're going to do what you say, God.

We're going to row the way you say. Secondly, they always row together.

As they say in my vocation, that'll preach. We always row together. Amen.

I'd like to stop and preach, but I can't. I got to keep going.

Third, they had to trust the captain.

Now, let me tell you, not everybody's worthy of trust. But our captain is.

He said, I'll never leave you or forsake you. I don't know what you're facing

today, but catch these words.

The captain of our ship says, I'm never going to leave you. I'll never forsake you.

You may feel forgotten, but you're not forgotten. I know who you are.

I got your name. I got your number.

And I'm walking with you. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow

of death, I will fear no evil because thou art with me.

And whatever you're facing today, I don't know what it could be.

It could be health stuff. It could be divorce.

It could be a sickness of a child. I don't know. But I'll tell you what.

You can trust the captain of our ship, Jesus the Christ. Now,

I'm not going to preach about this stuff.

I want to, but I can't. Okay, fourth, they're committed for life.

This is not just a little one and done thing. When we signed up to be a belly

roller, we're going to be a belly rower the rest of our life.

We're just going to do it. We're not going to complain about it.

We're going to take the task that God lays in our life and we're just going to go do it.

Finally, they received no honor themselves.

The only honor gets to go to the one who runs it all. That's him.

That's why we always say, thank you for blessing, honoring me,

whatever, whoever you are. But really, I give all glory to Jesus.

Amen. How many times have you heard that?

Dave and Betty, you guys sing every Sunday. You don't do it for your own honor.

You give it glory to Jesus. Amen. It's all to him.

Glory to his name. So in short, I've always felt this is what God's called me to.

There was a time when I argued with God. I was still pastoring full time.

And I said, Lord, what about my call to Africa? Literally.

Because I felt called as a missionary. And God literally said to me,

he said, well, you are a missionary. I said, what do you mean?

He said, well, look around you.

You're seeing people come to Christ right and left. That's what missionaries do.

When I was in Idaho Falls, we had over 200 people in Idaho Falls coming to the

church by profession effect.

When I went to Eugene, I saw hundreds and hundreds of prostitutes and drug addicts

and gang members come to Jesus and sit on the front rows with half their teeth

missing and their search should be clear up here.

And they'd be so hungry for God. The church had abandoned them,

but they found a church that loved them right in the downtown heart of Eugene, Oregon.

And they'd come and at times they'd weep during the service because they'd hear

the message of the gospel.

God said, you're a missionary now. And I said, well, Lord, what about Africa?

And then 2008, some guy walks into my office in Eugene, Oregon.

Hadn't met him yet. Had been in my church, I think, three months.

He used to be a music guy here in Emmett, Oregon, in the Church of the Nazarene in Emmett.

Now he lives, excuse me, Emmett, Idaho. Now he moves to Eugene, Oregon.

And he walks into my office, makes an appointment. He says, my name's Dave.

And he said, I've been to Africa one time. I feel like God wants me to go back.

And I told him about my call to Africa.

We partnered. That's the short story. He was a tire flipper for Les Schwab.

His goal was to have his own franchise, and God ripped that out of his hands.

He sold his home. He and his wife, they moved to Africa and became my point man for all these years.

He's no longer there now, but boy, was that a great start.

And somehow, God has blessed that in my life, and you've been a big part of

that because some of you don't know this, but you gave thousands of dollars

the last couple, two or three years to Africa.

And I want to tell you, every dime you gave has gone directly to that.

Everybody that goes with me. Last year, we took 12. The year before that, 11.

I don't even know where the teams go. Every year, it's fresh manna for me.

I say, God, I got no church. I got no team. I got no money.

And it's people like you who go, okay, we'll support that. We believe in this.

So everybody that goes, they pay their own way. It's about $4,500, right?

Doug, Dathan? Yeah. And then we always do some on top of that.

You got to have ministry money.

And then you go in faith that God's going to use you. Now, let's see.

I want to watch my time. It is now 1123, and I've got till one o'clock.

Is that what it is, Spectre?

Just teasing. I will respect your time. I've had three priorities that God's laid on my heart.

One is raising up leaders. We need leaders in the church. Amen?

If you don't have the right leaders, nothing happens. It all starts with leadership.

That's one of my convictions.

So we got to raise up leaders. So we do teaching at our schools,

like our college and NTCCA.

Northern Theological College of Central Aquinas.

And boy, if that's not a blessing, you were responsible two years ago to finish

a huge building there that has become a blessing. It's become the foundation

of supplying funds for the teachers, for the students.

Students come from three or four different countries there that have no money

at all, just based upon their call to ministry.

And they get ready to graduate. They can't graduate because they can't pay the bill.

I don't know how many students we paid their bills over the years.

I could not tell you. And some of those students over the years now are our

district superintendents. They are our pastors.

They are our compassionate ministry directors.

These men and women that you support and you raise up, they didn't even know

where the money came from. They just believed God gave them a miracle.

And they did because you gave.

So this is what it looks like. You raise up the leaders.

This last year, I met two or three leaders out in the middle of nowhere.

These jungles that are in the farthest parts of the world.

And all of a sudden, a guy comes up to me, one of them, six foot four.

A big black guy looks at me and he goes, Dr. Lesh, you remember me? I said, I sure do.

He told me the year he graduated, he took me aside. He said,

can I talk to you? I said, sure.

He takes me aside. He said, I want to tell you before I came here, I was hopeless.

I didn't think I could do this. I was under so much pressure.

I did not even want to come.

But after this class all week long that we've spent together and understanding

how God provides for us, I believe God's equipped me now to go back and do this ministry.

This last year we put a well in his

village and you gave money for that well last

year you did you don't even know it but you did and two years ago we came back

with money we didn't we didn't spend all our money we they weren't ready for

the wells and you can't just leave money when people make a dollar fifty to

two dollars a day did you know that a dollar fifty to two dollars a day if you

give them a thousand dollars that's like you becoming a millionaire there.

And now temptation seeps in. Amen?

What do you do with that? So you got to be wise. You got to operate with wisdom.

All these principles are very important for us. So now catch this.

This is kind of where we go. I'm ready for some pictures. Let's start with number

one. So here's the continent of Africa.

I don't know if you can see there's 11 different countries here and they all

fit in the continent of Africa. It's a huge country.

If you look at this, this is where we go. Every year, we

go to Malawi right in here and to Mozambique right in here this

is where we go it's it's kind of central south Africa

the continent we go all the way

up here to the top of the Malawi river all the way down this way to Mozambique

to Timoyo almost here's Johannesburg South America South Africa we are all around

in this area so that's where we go and here's our priority so we raise up these

it's a beautiful country as you travel through it there's nothing out there if you want to get gas,

you look for a gas can sitting in a tree and you pull over and two guys come

out with two liter bottles of gas and they pour it in your gas tank and you

move on. That's the gas station.

Raising up leaders, planting churches in these places like that,

planting churches, and then putting in providing clean water and wells.

Here's our team last year.

By the way, God's doing something in my own family.

Eight of these people are my own family members. My grandkids have caught the

vision, and now they're being called to missions.

You see, if we don't get our young people there, it's why I love to take young people with me.

I don't care how young your kids are. If you want to go to Africa with me,

I'll take them, because that's where God grabs their heart, just like he did

me at eight years of age because my church was so mission-minded.

They had missionaries coming to the church all the time, didn't they,

Sandy? We would hear missionary and they'd always come to the children's groups.

In fact, I wish the kids were here because although they don't understand everything,

they get a picture of who missionaries are and what they, and that's when God

gets their heart when they're young.

And I don't think any missionary ought to ever come to the church without going

to see your kids because that's what they do in my life. And that's what made

a difference. And that's when I got a call.

And then we saw movies about missionaries and how God brought kids in Africa

to Jesus who were beaten up because they came from another religion.

And you can do the math on that.

There's our team, my grandkids, one of them.

This one right here. Two years ago, she met an African boy.

This last year, he proposed to her in Africa, in Malawi.

We flew him here, not knowing any of this was going to happen.

Two years ago, a year ago, we tried, didn't happen. He just flew here about three weeks ago.

Oh, one week ago. He's already been up to camp, our camp. What's our camp ground up here?

Trinity Pines. I knew you'd know the name. He was up there all week. He speaks good English.

He's got a call of ministry. My granddaughter has a call of ministry.

They're going to be missionaries in Africa because you gave. Yeah.

So here we go. I got to get going now. There's our team. Here's our team with team members.

These are all of our leaders in Malawi at our school, NTCCA.

By the way, that's the building you helped me finish when I had no money,

but I had the call of God to finish it, which I don't usually do is a bunch of buildings.

I go to raise up leaders and plant churches and put in wells.

God laid this on my heart, and I came to my last board meeting in this church,

and I was driving with my hands on the steering wheel to this church on a Tuesday night.

And I had no money for this building. And God said, just ask,

just ask. And I said, God, don't tell me what to do. I preach this stuff all the time.

And the literally God said, just ask. And so when I got here,

I asked, I told them my heart and your missionary president,

Bob stepped up on the plate and he said, pastor, we're going to give you $10,000.

And then your men's ministry guy said, you know, you raised half the money that's

in our men's thing anyway. We had a great wild game thing. We're going to give you $5,000.

When I called the missionary leaders that night in Africa and said,

let's get this thing started.

We dedicated this building last year with a whole bunch of graduates,

45 of them, that are now in the mission field because of you.

And that building now, yeah, give yourself a hand. that building

now they rent that building out every single

week to the government to different groups to

churches and those monies support their entire

staff their entire school in ways that would never happen had we not finished

that building in fact when we were there they wanted us to come and do a celebration

in the building they couldn't because they were doing college testing and and

they had men outside this building with submachine guns and they wouldn't let

us in who owns the building,

who did the building, because they had to have privacy, and they didn't want

anybody messing with the area.

That's the arena we're in. That's because you gave.

So I told you I got to keep going now. Let's see, forward here.

Okay, so here's how we travel. A Land Cruiser. It's a bench seat.

Inside, it's packed. There we are.

And when I hop in this thing, I usually drive the entire time, day in, day out.

We'll go 10 hours in one day, and we'll get landed at a church and we'll have a service for two hours.

Then we get up the next day and we start all over again.

It's a wonderful camaraderie. Here we are. Water, water, water.

You got to have water. You don't drink the water.

One of our guys drank water out of a well that we put in two years ago.

He got so sick. I told him, don't be drinking the water.

Oh, I thought it was good because we just pumped it. It's good for them. It's not good for you.

But you understand how important water is, don't you? Okay, here we are teaching, raising up leaders.

This is a school that you helped us put your we're putting in a well in this

school most expensive well we've ever done eighteen thousand dollars because

the government required that we do that so we're raising up leaders here here's the group.

There's Cliff Fisher. Cliff, in a minute, I'm going to have you come up here.

I'm going to have you say something.

See this guy on the right, on my left, this guy here?

About five years ago, we planted a church called Moulanguzi outside of Tete, Mozambique.

A team of three men met us on a hill.

They set up the Jesus film. They set everything up. A storm came in.

We showed the Jesus film. I didn't think it was very successful.

And Sunday morning, we preached the gospel. They'd put up a bunch of fence tree posts.

They put Black Miss Queen up there. I was preaching the gospel.

The Black Miss Queen would fall down because it was so hot. I'd put my finger

here to keep it off of my head.

And you know, I'm a pretty tall guy, so you got to do that.

And then I'd switch and I'd go like this. Finally, I said, would somebody please

hold up the church so I can preach?

Our point guy, the guy had sold his house, he went out and fainted.

It was so hot. I didn't think much happened. And God literally did a miracle.

And one of the wells we put in last year was because you helped put that in.

Because we brought money back, gave it back to the church, said, we'll use it next year.

And it was an amazing story. I don't have time to tell you.

But this guy here that I just pointed out, this guy right here,

he was one of the guys that came, one of the three guys.

And Sunday morning after I preached, they put me in a car and they ran me all

the way up to southern, down southern Mozambique to a church we'd planted a

few years ago because the people wanted to see me.

And our staff and our people that were there, the Americans stayed with these guys to have dinner.

And they asked this guy, hey, would you like to go to have dinner with us? You three guys.

They said, yes, we would. He doesn't speak a lick of English.

And they said, are you guys hungry? Oh yeah, we're hungry. Oh really? Okay.

When was the last time you ate?

Well, we haven't eaten since we left home and that was three days ago.

That's the poverty. This is a pastor. Now he's in training with us.

And he tells me the story. He says, he's in this training thing that I just showed you.

So here's the class. Cliff is teaching there.

And there he is. He's listening to us teach. And this guy, he says,

I was one of those three guys.

And of course, our team said, well, come to lunch with us. We want to feed you. And then me.

We gave them some money. They rode a bus two days just to get there.

That's the poverty and their commitment. Here's the building again with the

class last year, 2024, the graduated.

Dr. Cliff, there's Cliff right there helping me.

He's been an amazing blessing to me as we've taught these students who now go

into ministry in the Church of the Nazarene. Pretty, pretty cool, eh?

Let's see. Here we go. So I'm going the wrong way. Let me get this thing straight.

Here they are, graduating in that brand new building. What a great day that

was. There's the class again with the garb on.

Oh, this is a group of, well, these people, we had to preach the gospel quite

hard, and we started a church on Muvu Campground there after camp meeting.

Oh, this guy was a board member.

He's rather contentious. We named him Eldon. Anyway, so now clean water.

Let me ask you a question. If you went home today and you didn't have any clean

water because of a storm, what would you do?

You'd have to find water and you have to boil it. What if you didn't have any electricity?

Here we are at our first church. This is in Malawi, Southern Malawi.

It's called Malanje Boma. Here's where I met the six foot four guy that said,

hey, your ministry saved my life. Here's the well.

We did this well. Here's part of our team there as we're getting ready to cut the ribbon.

This has Chicka Lele, we call it Church of the Nazarene, March 2025.

The reason I'm showing me this is because after you put this well in last year,

and we dedicated this this year, this well is in a Muslim area.

We didn't have anybody to drill the well except Muslims, and they drilled it,

and they started telling everybody in the community that they're the ones that provided the well.

So the DS, the district superintendent, and the pastor decided, we'll fix them.

We're going to put our name right on the well. So they did. First time I've ever in this.

So anybody in the community who comes, who's Muslim, will see this.

It's the Church of the Nazarene well, and they'll know who put it in.

It was the Church of the Nazarene.

You helped put this well in. I'm just telling you right now.

That's how it works. So here we are cutting the, here we are with the ceremony.

It's loud. It's ruckus.

So going back, if you went home and there's no water, what do you do?

Well, hundreds of people die every day because of cholera dysentery.

And one of the things we do, we raise up leaders, we plant churches.

And for the churches out in the middle where there's no electricity,

they have to be hand-pumped, very rarely is there electricity. We put in fresh water.

You ought to see the women who have to carry water two miles one way just to

go get water every day. It's dirty water.

Then they got to come home and boil it. And still the children die,

the women die because it's not purified.

You put in one well, you save hundreds of lives.

You impact, I've seen it up to 10,000 people You impact because of the villages

All the villages around you that have a thousand apiece Come to you,

the Church of the Nazarene well And it's the Jesus well That's the impact of it.

Furthermore, the women no longer

get molested on the way. You have to walk through very dangerous areas.

And you think of what the molestation looks like. And it's not just grown women.

It's all the women, all the females.

If you're this high, you'll carry water. It might only be a gallon,

but you'll start carrying water.

Sometimes you're this tall and you got a baby on your back because of the kind

of area you're in. You've already had your first baby.

You're carrying a baby on your back and you got water on your head.

And if you put in one well, you save that little child from molestation.

It's a powerful thing when you offer water. I'm just telling you.

Here's a subsistence labor. If you're a woman, this is what you do. You carry wood.

Here's a church plant. This is in southern Malawi.

There's the bathroom. There's a speaker system. How do you like that for a speaker system in a tree?

The pastor of this church is a former Muslim. He was one of my first students in 2010.

Graduated. He had no money to graduate. When I found out about him,

we gave them some money for several graduates.

He never knew where the money came from, but I've heard him tell the story. It was a miracle.

He wept before God the night before graduation because he said,

God, I've been diligent and you're calling in my life.

If I go home, my brothers who are Muslim have said, we'll kill you if you come home.

He wound up going back to his home church and God did a miracle in his life.

Now we helped him plant this church. It was a wonderful time.

There's some of the people. You got a temporary tent you put up,

and you worship. There he is. His name is Pastor Evance.

Now his mother, his grandmother, and some of his brothers have come to Christ.

The same ones who were going to kill him because he left the faith.

I'm telling you what. Now we gave him money for a well. We gave him money to

help him with his church.

And that's all part of what you've done. Here's a church that was a former district

office. It was the very first district office in all of Malawi.

And there are witch doctors around this who have cast spells on this church.

When we were there, we, well, I'll tell you the story in a minute.

But we had to come in and we refurbished.

There's Cliff and there's an 83-year-old man who's gone with us twice to Africa,

chipping out concrete because these people had broken out the windows,

they'd broken down the doors.

So we had to, they have no money, $1.50 to $2 a day. We came in,

we supplied all the funds to do this church. There we are painting.

Here's some of our young people playing with the children. Here's the girls

carrying water, learning how to carry water on their heads.

And Sophie discovered a black mamba in the church.

She didn't know it was a black mamba. She tried to kill it with a stick,

a broom handle until one of the African guys heard about it.

He ran in. He said, get back, get back.

It was a black mama bites you. You know what happens? You're gone in seconds.

There's no doctor out where we are. And there's the black mama.

She's pretty proud of herself, isn't she?

Sophie, she's from Oregon. And there we are celebrating before we go in this church.

There's Pastor Evans right there, who is the leadership of this team in another

area, The one we just planted the church. Wonderful, wonderful time.

Now, Cliff, come on up here. I want Cliff to tell you something.

Hey, guys, I apologize. I forgot to tell you I could use another mic.

Which one should I grab? Black one over.

Am I getting hot or cold? Oh.

Green one. Green one.

Cliff, here's a black one. Oh, boy.

I'm colorblind, I guess. Now, Cliff, I believe God gave Cliff to me because

the teachers that I had with me, when you teach six or seven hours a day at

a college, you get tired pretty fast.

I'm not getting any younger. Two years ago, Cliff went with me.

He knocked it out of the park. They loved him. He did great.

He's also a treasurer. He's been a district treasurer.

He's served in the military for years. He's also been a pastor.

He was at 9-11, served in the Pentagon for a number of years after 9-11.

God's given him some unique skills, and he's been our primary treasurer.

And this last year, one of the grandkids, who's six foot three,

he has a heart for numbers.

And Cliff began to, remember, you're raising up leaders, right?

How old do you think he is?

He's not a whole lot younger than me. And we have a shelf life.

We can only do this so long. You got to raise up leaders.

And my grandson, who's actually married to my granddaughter,

he loved the numbers. So Cliff gave him the responsibilities.

Now, Cliff, tell them what happens in this car. You remember that car?

That's a Malawi. Yeah, that's a blacked out windows.

If you want to get the most for your money in Malawi, you don't go to the bank.

The bank will give you 1,750 kwacha per dollar.

I went to this car, sat in the back seat, made some negotiation,

and I got 3,200 kwacha to the dollar.

It's it's a little intimidating to go to the back seat and you know and so i

got a whole i brought a stack of dollars and i came back with a backpack full of kwacha,

so for every uh hundred dollars let's say a hundred dollar bill the stack will

be how big in kwacha or metacash and there are five thousand kwacha per bill stack that big,

So that's both the same in Malawi and Mozambique. Now, this happens to be in Mozambique.

My first time to do this years ago in Mozambique, we hopped in a car.

We meet some guy in a dark alley, literally.

Three guys run up to the car. You got to have people there you trust,

right? Leaders you trust. Otherwise, you're sunk. You might as well not go.

And these guys rush to the windows. We've rolled the windows down this far.

Our African leader, Albino Banda, he starts speaking Portuguese.

They come to a deal. All the rest of the guys leave. One guy stay.

They start fiddling through money.

We pass the money through the windows. They check it out, and we drive off into

the dark. I felt like I was part of the mafia.

It's crazy. So Cliff has helped us with that, taken a huge burden.

We have three or four people on our financial team.

So whenever we have money, I try to give the money away. I don't like to mess with the money.

And they take that huge load. They determine what we can do, how much we can do.

This last year, we had to buy four truckloads of bricks we were not expecting

to buy to put in a church building in Mozambique.

That takes a lot of quasars. Not bricks. Cinder blocks. Cinder blocks.

Cinder blocks. Now, Cliff, this is his accountability sheet for two years ago. Well, this, yeah.

Here it is. This is what Cliff does.

I'm a sucker for spreadsheets.

So this is every dime we spend, every dime you give, we account for it,

and it goes where it needs to go.

And I'll tell you what, I'm so grateful for these guys because it's not my wheelhouse.

You can tell he's not a detailed guy. He's a dreamer teacher.

Kind of like a Joseph, that guy. Yeah. Yeah. The dreamer. So Cliff, thanks.

Now let's see, let's just stay up here with me and let's go through these fast. Okay.

So here is a school. You might've heard me talk about this school.

There was a women's prison.

It was abandoned and probably 11 years ago or so, maybe 10 or 12,

probably more like 12 years ago.

I was there for the first time. This school was broken. This is what it looks like today.

There was nothing there, but that one building. I think there's what it looked

like in the beginning. That's all that was there.

A woman's prison, abandoned.

Someone bought the property. Nobody

wanted to do with it. And our district superintendent was a man of vision.

We stood there and prayed over a vision to turn this into a school.

So we started supplying funds from Eugene first. The first couple of years,

they were stealing this blind.

They took a hammer to the DS's son's knees because they thought he had money.

And two years into the project, we stood there with half the material we'd done gone. And,

And I said, we can't continue to do this anymore. We got to find a solution

if we're going to make this happen.

I said, can we hire security? He said, oh, yeah. I said, well,

where do you get security? Oh, you just go to the police department and tell them you need it.

I said, what would that cost? He told me.

I said, okay, we'll commit to two years. We just felt like we'd get going.

We get the thing open. It'll take care of itself. And it did.

That's where we started.

And now there's over 1,000 kids in this school. We put a well in Or we left

money for a well That's going to be put in the property There's two buildings

like this now Three stories high that go out from that prison,

And it's full of children Children everywhere, right?

More than a thousand Tell them about these leaders that came from Aputo These

are some leaders that came to Evaluate

the school for The whole country of Mozambique And they had, you know,

come A day's journey just to get here They went through everything,

and they said it looks like they are going to be accredited as the first teacher

training college in the country.

Of Mozambique. Of Mozambique. Pretty amazing, huh? 15 million people. Yeah.

So we're going to have Nazarene influence on all the teachers getting trained for the whole country.

That's influence, and you helped do that by help building some of these buildings.

And putting in this well this year, the funds you gave two years ago that we

brought back and stuck in your office, and then Kerry gave them back to us, Ron,

to take with us, put the $18,000 well in here because the government would not

approve adding another thousand students.

Part of them going to be teachers that teach children in the Nazarene system.

They come from Zimbabwe, Zambezi, Mozambique. Let me go back.

So I want you to see this all started with a woman's prison that had no doors,

no windows, no roof, nothing but dirt on the floor.

And because of your giving, we started this school and now it runs a thousand

students and you ought to see those kids.

Those are the future leaders. I wish we had time to show you all these kids, but we don't.

So here we are now in Southern Mozambique, planting a church.

This lady here, tell them about the lady.

That lady is going to be installed as the pastor of this church.

Which one, the black one or white one?

Black one. Okay. The black lady on the left. The other is Tara.

This lady right here. This lady right there.

And we got there and did the Jesus film the night before this.

And then we came to this property. We told everybody that got saved at the Jesus

film that we're starting a church at this property.

We get there that morning and there's no church.

They've got poles up, but they don't have a roof on yet.

So while we're getting ready for church, they're putting the roof on the church,

and they were still doing it as we began the song service.

Can you imagine a little distraction if they're putting up buildings?

So they put in that beam right there, and the guy shimmies up that beam.

He hangs on these beams, pulls the tarp across.

Of course, this is all OSHA approved. It's all perfectly, yeah. Oh, boy. Anyway.

And how many truckloads? Here's where we put these bricks in.

We show them. Do you have the load of bricks?

Oh, that was the Jesus film the night before. I don't have the load of bricks. Oh, the load of bricks.

We did more than... Four truckloads.

Four truckloads, 2,000 cinder blocks.

We had to load them on the trucks, take them to the property,

load them off the trucks, stack them up there so they can use after we started building a building.

And after loading the fourth one, the DS comes to me and he goes,

he says it just like this, can you pay?

So the finance committee... We didn't have this in my budget.

We didn't have it in our budget. And he goes, can you pay? And I go,

well, now I knew he could pay, but you don't want him to know you can pay.

You remember $1.50 a day and you've got thousands of dollars because this has

got to spread for a lot of stuff.

So you go, well, how much is it going to be? Well, I don't know.

Well, can you find out how much it's going to be? So you're doing the negotiating.

I see my time is about up. What does it say? Okay.

10 minutes still. Thank you, brother. We're in good time. So I say,

well, tell me how much it's going to be. He didn't know.

We get all the bricks. They're all unloaded. They've counted them all.

We own the bricks, whether we're going to pay or not.

And he comes to me again and says, can you pay? And I said, well,

do you find out how much it is? No, I don't know.

Well, you got to find out how much it is. I don't know if I can pay until you tell me how much it is.

Four truckloads, flatbed trucks that we loaded ourselves on these flatbed trucks.

And late Saturday night, and now we got to pay.

And finally, he brings the guy that owns the bricks.

They counted them all. And I said, how much it is? They told me in MediCash, which is Mozambican.

I said, I don't want to know in Mozambican.

Tell me in American, how much is that? And Cliff or Joseph starts doing the

calculation. How much was it?

$163. Oh, that's more than we can afford. We'll have to go back to America and get some more money.

It's amazing what you deal with. There's the church.

Now, this is Cliff preaching the night before at the Jesus film.

Two Jesus films at this place. Not the Jesus film. Anyway.

Okay, so here's sewing machines. So catch the vision again.

We raise up leaders. We plant churches.

My personal goal for all these years since I retired is to put in two churches

every year. and two wells.

We've stayed on target with the churches.

We've stayed on target with the wells. But because of the funds you gave two

years ago and some of the funds we brought back and we took with us this time,

we didn't put in two wells. We didn't put in three.

We thought we put in four. We had little money left over, so we left enough

for another well in Malawi.

And on our way home, our Compassionate Ministries Director, Chinsensi,

who is a major player for us.

We couldn't do the wells without Chinsensi. He was the chaplain my first year

at the college in Malawi, one of our first graduates.

And now he's the Compassionate Ministries Director.

He covers all of Malawi. He covers parts of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambesi.

He's got a huge job and I trust him like my own brother.

And now we got to put up wells. So we leave them money for one more well.

And he texts me on the way home. And he says, hey, Doc, he said,

the kwacha has taken a hit all of a sudden.

The money you left, I think we can do two wells instead of one.

So this year, this year alone, we didn't only put in one, I mean,

two or three or four, which we thought we were going to be put in four.

We thought we could do two in Malawi, two in Mozambique. We did.

But we put in two more. So we put it in a total of six wells this year. Praise God. Praise God.

Now, Cliff, tell them about the sewing machines. This is an incredible thing

that just started happening a few years ago.

And it's been amazing. Go ahead.

Three years ago, when he was in northern Malawi, they had a problem.

A lot of the men, even those that are married in the church,

would say, okay, I can make $1.50 a day here. I can make twice as much down

in South Africa working in the mines.

And they say, I'll go down to South Africa and I'll send you money back.

They go down to South Africa and the wives with three kids or whatever,

never hear from them again.

So they're in desperate straits because they have no education.

They have no job they can do. They just have babies.

Well, one of our district superintendent's wives said, you know,

if I had a treadle sewing machine, we could sew, teach them how to sew and do that.

They did it with a couple, three, two years ago. And how many do they train on those three?

I think she said something like they had 50 people, 50 women working on those three machines.

And what they do is they say, if you come up with a business plan at your church,

We'll get you a sewing machine.

You buy the material, you buy the thread, they make it and they sell it.

And it's enough to support them and keep them and their kids alive.

And so now we've asked for some more sewing machines. So we gave them...

A dozen more sewing machines. They use them for evangelism. People that don't

know Christ, many of these are Muslim ladies.

If you'll come and sew with us

and come to our church, now they hear the gospel and they come to Jesus.

So the sewing machines are an evangelistic tool. I just got a text yesterday

from our district superintendent where these sewing machines are,

those right there. He said, we're already using these.

And he said, the well that you provided for us this year, all we have to do

now is put the concrete in. they got it dug. All they got to do is put it in the concrete.

Again, these are areas that are out in the middle of nowhere.

There's no electricity. So how do you do sewing machines like this?

So the women use their feet.

And this is where these shirts came from. They make us shirts as gifts to say, thank you for coming.

This last year, for the first time, Cliff and I got chickens.

So here we are with chickens.

What are we going to do with chickens? Well, the DS stole them is what he did.

No, we gave them to it. Oh, we gave them to him. Okay, I thought he stole them.

Okay, well, anyway, they gave us chickens to say thank you. It's a bartering system.

So if you don't have any electricity, you give a woman one sewing machine. One of them was a pastor.

She was married with children. This is Mozambique.

She's a cousin to our district superintendent there, who's now our regional leader.

Or actually our national leader, he left her to go make more money.

He never came back. That's a very common story.

So you have women with children, no way to feed them. And the only answer is the church.

And if the church can provide them a way to make money, come on,

bingo, they can make money.

And guess how much a sewing machine costs that you do this to?

Right now it's about $145, $150.

So we bought dozens and dozens of sewing machines all across Malawi and Mozambique

for women who have no way to raise this income.

And you're a part of that. These funds go a lot of different ways.

We bought church property.

We put two or three churches up. We put the foundation in for a district office,

part of those cinder blocks.

We planted a church there. We installed the pastor all on the same Sunday.

And it's because of your faithfulness. So let's go back to our two words.

What's our two words? Focus and faithful.

Seems to me like for each of us, God has given us a plan, a direction.

Calls us to be focused on what he's calls us to do. How do you do that?

Well, you strategize, you plan.

Linda and I save money so I can

go every year. We always try to give a little bit more than we have to.

So for projects, there's always projects, the need never ends.

When you have nothing, a piece of paper or a pen, everybody wants it because they got nothing.

It's absolutely amazing when you have nothing and you work every day,

you get up and you say, how are we going to eat? How am I going to feed my kids?

And we can make a big difference there. And you have. And I'm here just to say thank you.

I'm not here to raise money. I'm not asking for a thing. I would ask for your

prayers because I'm going to stay focused.

If Cliff will go back with me, as long as he'll go, I'll take him.

And we need leadership to go with us to help. Doug and Dathan went,

and they can tell you the stories of what we've seen.

The children, the thousands of children in our schools, the one in Mozambique

and Malawi, those children used to live on the other side of the wall.

You reach them one at a time. You invite them in. They come in through your

churches. You give them a hope for tomorrow with an education.

And then they become your pastors and your leaders and your workers in the churches.

It's a beautiful thing God's doing.

So I got to stay focused. I just covet your prayers.

We need more leadership. I need a team for this next year. We're going this

April and May this next year.

And by the way, I think Cliff and Myra are hosting a thank you.

We did this last year. You guys, they did a thank you for all those that supported

us. When are you guys doing that?

Next week sometime? Oh, August?

Oh, get a date for us so they know. But we just want to say thank you.

And last year, we had about 30 folks from our area that have helped us.

And we just want to report if you have any accountability questions,

how the money is spent, anything we do, August 28th at your house.

Well, if you want to know, we'll get that to Pastor Mike, and you guys can figure it out.

But thank you for your support. Thank you for your prayers. I want you to know

you've done this. These are your churches.

You're doing things you don't know because you've blessed us in being able to help us to go.

If we don't have money, you can't do it. So thank you, thank you,

thank you. The Lord has blessed it. We give God's word.

So let me wrap up this way. It is now 12 o'clock, and I want to honor your time.

I want to pray over you and your own life personally and where God would have you to focus.

Where does God want you to be faithful? I look at some of you when I look across

your congregation and I think of your lives.

And I know some of you fairly well.

I'm so grateful for you. I look back there at Rudy. He sits on the back row.

He's a man of God who loves God's passion. Did you notice this morning when

we opened the altar, it was lying full of men except for one little gal?

That was a beautiful sight.

Usually there's a lot of women down here too. But this morning it was all men.

But I think one little guy down here.

What's your focus, guys? What's God calling you to do? All I know is when I

die, I want to stand before the Lord and hear those words.

Well done, thou good and faithful servant. I'll confess to you,

as I had before, I'm not perfect in what I do.

If you're looking for a perfect person, I'm not it. In fact,

I know this church was perfect until I was a young pastor, then it all went down real fast.

There is i don't i'm not worried about perfection i'm worried about efficiency

being effective and making it happen where are the results so so where's your

results what's god asking you to do,

i've been thinking all morning long about morgan morgan stand up where are you brother,

i've always said i think this this young man god's got something special in

his life i don't know what it is that's between him and god but i've heard this

guy pray i've heard him pray he's got the heart of God.

That doesn't happen by accident. Thank you, brother. You may be seated. I love you, man.

I want to take you home with me, but your dad would shoot me. Oh, he says no.

Look, every single one of us, God's called us to be an under rower.

We don't need the glory. We don't want the glory. We don't do it for us. We do it for him.

And we do it to hear the words someday when we die, well done,

thou good and faithful servant. Oh, did I say that word again?

Thou good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of your master, the captain.

And I know you well enough to know many of you are very focused on what God's calling you to do.

I applaud that. If you don't know, ask God this morning.

He's no respecter of person. He'll give you as much focus as he gives anybody else.

If you just say, Lord, show me where, what to do, where to go.

And you got a great church here. You got a great support family who will help

you, counsel you, walk with you.

We all need that. I use it to this day in my own life.

I get counseled all the time because I need it and God will bless it.

So now let me pray over you.

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe what we ought to do is, if you would like

special prayer, would you just stand where you are?

And I'm not going to call you out or anything. just, if I can just pray for

you specifically this morning, just stand where you are for direction,

for focus, for faithfulness, and I'll just pray over you as we pray. You want to just stand?

Go ahead. Yeah, there's a bunch already standing. Go ahead. Okay, let's pray.

Jesus, we come under your authority today and give you all praise,

honor, and glory for you, the captain of the ship.

And we know our place, Lord. We are under rowers, and we are pleased just to

be a part of the house of God, to be a part of something that is bigger than

ourselves, the kingdom of God,

the grace and blessings and glory of God. We thank you, Jesus.

And we thank you, God, for your faithfulness to us, as we desire to be faithful to you.

I thank you personally for this church, and for her faithfulness to you,

and the call upon her life as a church body.

They've been so faithful, Lord, and I've seen that, and I've experienced it

in my own life, as their interim pastor and a part-time missionary,

who simply has a passion to fulfill the call of God in my life? I know they do.

So thank you for them, Lord. I thank you, Jesus, for these that are standing.

God, you know each and every heart. You know their need. You know how you want

to speak into their life today.

And I ask God a special hand upon their lives today as they have acknowledged

their desire to be focused and faithful to you.

Lord, we all desire that today. But these who have stood have said,

God, I need special prayer.

So we as a body of believers, we gather around them. And I, as a pastor, I pray over them.

And I ask God, your hand of anointing upon their lives, that you would speak

clearly, that they might see, oh God, what you would have them do and to be.

Lord, if they struggle with issues or problems or they're facing challenges,

God, I pray you'd come alongside them and be the shepherd of the sheep in their life.

Now, God, this morning, we give you all praise and honor and glory for you who you are to us.

And in Jesus' name, Jesus' name, we pray all these things.

And so all God's people said, amen. God bless you. Have a wonderful day, church.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon as well as other sermons and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.