The Lord blessed us with money. We did a first round of pastors book set. We were in our second conference in a town up north, 400 pastors there. After the first session, a man comes up to me and he introduces himself as Pastor Daniel. I don’t know him from a hole in the wall. I don’t know if he believes the gospel. I don’t know who this man is.

And he says, can I say something from upfront? Well, those of you who have worked in Africa know you never say yes and you never say no. You always seek for more info. And so my question was, well, if we let you go to the front, what would you say? And he told me this story that we then let him tell.

He said three weeks ago, he said I came to the conclusion ‘ I’d saved up enough money. I wanted to buy an NIV study study Bible’ and so he said. ‘I bought my way in what we call a Bush taxi,’ and he rode in that taxi for 9 hours to the closest Christian bookstore. He stayed at a friend’s house, walked into the Chri stian bookstore the next day only to find that the NIV study Bible that he wanted was going to cost him just over 100 U.S. dollars equivalent in his currency. He walked away rather dejected, knowing he didn’t have that money. He went back to his friend’s house the next day, climbed back into the taxi for a nine hour drive back home again. When he got home, a friend came to him, another pastor. He said, Pastor Daniel, there’s these people coming to town. It’s pastor’s book set. They’re going to be handing out books, I don’t know what books they are, but I think you should sign up. He Signed up, walked into this hall of over 400 pastors. The first book you received was the NIV study Bible.

Well, he told this story. And then in typical African fashion, he says, ‘You know what we do in Africa? We need to thank these people. ’And he left where he was standing up front. He ran through the aisle all the way to the back, got an empty cardboard box, ran back up, put it on a chair and said, ‘W‘We sing and we give. ’And he started singing and dancing. And before you knew it, 400 people were in the aisles walking up front throwing 10 Namibian dollar bills. Now that means nothing to you who haven’t been in Namibia. Ten Namibian dollars at that point was a taxi fare. They were planning on walking home.

So that and many other stories have been used by God to show us we are where we’re supposed to be. Even though it’s long distance, even though there’s many things that can’t be done as rapidly as you had hoped, even though you must depend more distinctly on people you know very little about in 10 different cities to help you organize. And yet, through all of that, there is an incredible ownership of what is going on. And you open yourself up to the lives of people who begin to invite you into their homes, who begin to share with you their needs, their desires, their hopes. And you begin to learn what fires God is stoking, who is near those fires, and what we as missionaries can help to stoke those fires.