Speaker 2: 0:15

yeah it's like the 26th 27 oh my goodness, all right.

Speaker 4: 0:24

Is it like once a week or once a month, or how are you doing it?

Speaker 1: 0:27

It's kind of like once a week.

Speaker 4: 0:30

Okay.

Speaker 1: 0:30

Yeah, once a week release, and then there's a break. Alright, once a week, and then there's a break, at least for now. So we started it and then it was kind of a yes to the Lord that was brewing independently in both Ryan's heart and my heart and then when Warren caught word of it from Ryan, he was just like an immediate yes and I'll do all of the technical work. And so just doors started opening and then our buddy, brian, kind of said, hey, just do 10.

Speaker 1: 1:04

and make all your mistakes and see if you catch a groove. And we did 10 and it felt just as easy to do 10 more and it was just. And then people started listening and people started wanting to come and support it financially and it was just incredible. We're like, wow, god's doing something, so let's just keep doing it. And just a small sacrifice of time.

Speaker 2: 1:32

And the breakthrough like it that it brings to other people has been really, really encouraging. That's been really cool. We've had a lot of people reach out and say that that one episode really spoke to them because of whatever issue they talked about or whatever thing they talked about.

Speaker 4: 1:48

So, okay, sweet yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Tracy we have. We are very, very honored to have you on here. You were kind of like a pipe dream for us. We were like maybe Tracy could one day be on here.

Speaker 2: 2:03

And we were like who knows, maybe, maybe one day, but uh, no, it's been. It's such a humbling um experience for us to be like in the seat here hearing you, hearing your story on the uncommon path it's. It's basically just taking the interviewee through kind of tracking their path with the Lord. In a nutshell, we just kind of want to hear how your journey with the Lord started. What were some pivotal aspects in that journey, kind of the transformation from you know, owning your own faith? Um, we want you to talk about past, present, future, what the Lord has on the horizon for you. Um, we have roughly about an hour but we can go as long as you want. Um, we also are just, we want this to be a very easygoing, free flow. If you feel like the Lord wants you to share certain stories, feel free to do that, feel free to camp out in any aspect of that journey that you want to.

Speaker 1: 3:15

Yeah, and we should say Tracy Evans, you are a nurse practitioner, I'm a physician's assistant. Sorry, physician's assistant, I'll get those two mixed up. You're a PA currently as, and for a long time, missionary to Mozambique. Yes, that's right With lots of different things going on there which hopefully we'll get into, but you have been founder of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.

Speaker 1: 3:44

One of them, yes, one of the founders, a founder of that, and yeah, I'm just going off the top of my head all the cool stuff here. I probably should have formally asked you for a bio, but we're informal here, but just international missionary spreading the love of Jesus, the presence of God, the gospel message all over Right, using medical as a way to bless people and get into countries and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 4:17

You've been in Mozambique for how long again?

Speaker 4: 4:19

25 years in Mozambique and 15 years in Asia before that.

Speaker 2: 4:23

Oh, wow, okay, I didn't know about that. That's so cool.

Speaker 1: 4:27

But how did it all start?

Speaker 2: 4:28

Well, I do. Okay, I have one question to kick it off. Okay, oh okay, but then we're going to go with Chris's question.

Speaker 4: 4:37

All right.

Speaker 2: 4:39

Share a story about yourself that nobody knows, or a fact about yourself that nobody knows, or a fact about yourself that nobody knows a story about myself that no one knows why is once bitten by a, an alligator.

Speaker 4: 4:59

Anyone knows that it was a wee alligator only, oh, I guess about 18 inches long. But, he left a scar. Oh, I bet that hurt it hurt a lot, and actually it wasn't in Africa, it was in Los Angeles. I was probably about a 12-year-old girl and it was kind of living in an inner-city environment in an ethnic neighborhood and it's not safe for little girls to be walking home in that environment and this carload of guys were following me.

Speaker 4: 5:36

Oh, wow, and I knew that when I got on a quiet street that they were going to jump me. So I slipped into this pet shop and was waiting in there hoping that they would leave. But they were just hanging out waiting for me to come out and it was getting dark and I asked the owner if he would let me out the back door through the alley, but he wouldn't. And that morning I had stolen about $16 out of my mom's purse and I still had it. So I'm going through the pet store and they were selling these little Cayman alligators. So I bought one and I had the guy pin it down and I grabbed it behind the neck and stuck it in a paper bag. And so I'm walking home with my little book bag on my back. And, sure enough, as soon as I got on a quiet street they pulled up and a couple guys jumped out and came after me.

Speaker 4: 6:24

Well, I pulled the alligator out of the bag and he is quite agitated. So he's hissing his mouth's open, he's flapping his tail and I'm going, come on, come on, I dare you. And it was just too weird. You know little girl in LA with an alligator, and they just kind of backed off and got in her car and left. So I took it home. But now where am I going to hide this thing from my mother? And she had some flower pots in the back of the garage. So I stuck them in there and like, I bonded with this thing, like I called him wally wally gator and I, like, he saved my life, but I had never had an alligator before.

Speaker 4: 7:01

You know cats and dogs, yeah, but I didn't know. They didn't eat every day and he wasn't eating and I thought he's going to starve, he's going to die. So I dug up a worm and I was trying to drop it in its mouth. I pinned him down with a stick and he's hissing. And he got away from me and jumped up and grabbed my finger and I, he startled me and I flipped him up into a tree and that was the end of Wally Gator, oh my. And I flipped them up into a tree and that was the end of Wally Gator. Oh, my goodness gracious. So it was a wild pilgrimage right from the start.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 4: 7:34

I had the element of surprise.

Speaker 1: 7:39

I bet they weren't expecting that to come out of that paper bag.

Speaker 4: 7:42

No, they were not.

Speaker 2: 7:45

Oh wow, that's incredible, she's packing an alligator in there.

Speaker 1: 7:51

That's crazy.

Speaker 2: 7:53

All right, that's a great segue into where it all began.

Speaker 4: 7:58

Where it all began, guys. Okay, I'm an old lady, so this could take two minutes or 20 minutes or eternity. What do you want?

Speaker 2: 8:14

We want you We'll pivot with your permission, yeah, we'll help steer you. We'll help kind of fast forward, if that's okay with you. But yeah, just share kind of the beginning of growing up, where you grew up and yeah what God meant to you.

Speaker 4: 8:30

I always had a God consciousness just by the evidence of creation, because I grew up in Cement City, la, and I loved nature and I saw order and design in it, but I didn't know who God was. I had a sense that he was holy and just and I wasn't. So I always felt that, that rift there and I I wanted to be good because I'm I'm growing up in an environment. I mean, my earliest childhood memory was visiting my dad in prison and he was arrested when I was around two and so my mom's working in a factory, double shifts, just trying to keep bread on the table and where was this?

Speaker 2: 9:11

Los Angeles?

Speaker 4: 9:13

Yeah, so. So I was seeking and but and. Then later, you know, I was a runaway. Later, when I was 16, and went to college and lived in my car, got my associates when I was 17, drunk driver, totaled my car. So I enlisted in the army because I was homeless. And there I found a I had.

Speaker 4: 9:36

There was another soldier in my barracks that was a Jesus loving, flaming, prophetic gal. I had no grid for that. She was always telling us what would happen the next day or the next week and she was always right, very matter-of-fact, and every night before we would crash she would lay on her bunk and read her Bible. So I reasoned that she obviously had some connection to something supernatural. I had already read the Koran and didn't find any solace there. I had read the Book of Mormons and the Pearl of Great Price and some Indian vitas.

Speaker 4: 10:12

I was seeking, but the last place I was interested in was Christianity. Because the few Christians I had met well, quite honestly, they were quite boring I had met. Well, quite honestly, they were quite boring and I didn't sense love or grace or such. So I didn't even think of the Bible. But one night, when she was out of the barracks, I went over to her Bible, I go what does she see in this thing? And I opened it up and read like three words it said love your enemy. And I slammed it shut. I mean, we're in the army being taught a hundred ways to kill our enemies.

Speaker 1: 10:50

And I thought this is crazy.

Speaker 4: 10:52

I can't even love my friends. How would I ever love an enemy? But it stuck with me and the word of God is like that. It's very sticky and the Bible says that the gospel has a power in and of itself and I just couldn't escape it. And then it occurred to me I can put this to the test. So I made myself an enemy to this gal and I just tormented her for weeks and then months and she always turned the other cheek, walked the extra mile, blessed and cursed not, I mean, she was amazing and after five months of that I did everything short of physical harm Because I was afraid if her God was true. I didn't want to get on the bad side of that. But one night it was freezing cold.

Speaker 4: 11:42

We were both in military intelligence stationed at Fort Devens in Massachusetts. It was December and it was a terrible snowstorm. Out we were confined to barracks, but I was so angry and agitated I'm seeking and not finding. So I went for a run and immediately started to freeze. I'm from California. I didn't know what real weather was and immediately started to freeze. I'm from California, I didn't know what real weather was and I didn't get too far and there was a chapel on base. So I went and just started beating on the door of the chapel like God, if you're real, where are you? Who are you? And I was angry. And the door opens and it's like midnight, it's really late, and the chaplain was there and he knew who I was because I was always getting in trouble and my sergeant would give me a slip to go for counseling at the chaplain's office.

Speaker 4: 12:32

I would give him the slip and then walk away. I would never talk to him, we'd always just go back to my barracks. But he beckoned me to come in and just started telling me about the love of God and about Jesus and the cross and the blood and how he bridged the gap between his holiness and our guilt and shame and sin, and it so moved me. But I was afraid too, because I'm running around in a blizzard and I thought he's going to call the MPs. I'm kind of AWOL, actually. I wasn't in my barracks and so I took off and ran back to my barracks. My roommate was there and she was polishing my boots and my brass and ironing my fatigues after I had just wrecked hers, and it just broke me, that love, that consistency, the joy, and we were being put through some brutal training and she just glowed in the dark and I had an encounter with Jesus that night and I've never been the same since. So I wanted the whole world to know this Jesus, to know this love and this grace and this forgiveness and the freedom that we find in Christ. And so I just started going up and down through the barracks telling soldiers about Jesus. I used my whole salary each month to bribe soldiers to go on the weekend ski retreats with the chapel, because many of them, after skiing all day, they're in the lodge at night before the fireplace and the chaplain would share and they would come to Christ. And then I wanted the whole world to know.

Speaker 4: 14:09

But upon my discharge I had a five-year travel restriction because I was in military intelligence. I couldn't leave the country. So I hitchhiked up to this little mountain town in Northern California in the Trinity Alps to visit my brother who was in jail, to tell him about Jesus. That town's called Weaverville and that's where I met Bill Johnson you may have heard of him, he's the pastor at Bethel Church and Chris Vallotton. Now this is like 40 years ago, but small, poor town. You had to cut your wood all summer to keep your house warm. In the winter hunt your own deer.

Speaker 4: 14:48

Many of the people worked in the mill. It was poor, but God was there and they just informally began discipling me. And those first couple of years I lived in the woods and I was just a bum in the woods, but I would go to church and um, and they, they just accepted me where I was at, I would come to home group. I wouldn't bathe all winter long, I was smelly and had no social skills. I was always challenging them because all I did in the woods was sit and read the Bible. And they're raising their, their family, and they, you know, they just stumbled into a home group and and tried to make it happen and I would be challenging them and you're taking that first out of context, and but they just loved me where I was at and um, when you say you were living in the woods.

Speaker 1: 15:35

Yeah, we're just in like a tent and a tent, you're in a tent I was in a tent, but it's in cal, northern california, you.

Speaker 4: 15:44

It gets down to maybe 30, 29, 30 degrees. You get some snow, but it's not serious. You couldn't do that in North Dakota, or I couldn't do that in North Dakota, so it was livable. And then the summers were beautiful and I had savings from the Army so I didn't have to work for a while. So all I did was read and study and pray and go to the church and the home groups and the event. I went to every home group they had Tuesday night, wednesday night and Thursday night, because in winter it's cold, and I just went there to keep warm and torment whoever was leading the group. But Chris Vallotton you may have heard of him, you know I, I would. Everyone would be going home like nine o'clock and I would still be haggling with them. It'd be midnight and goes hey, I gotta go to work in the morning, you can sleep on the couch and I ended up like living there. So those are those. I mean they were. We were all in our 20s and that's how we began.

Speaker 2: 16:44

Wow, what was so kind of going back. Your dad went to prison when you were young and your brother was in prison. Did you have any other family members in prison? Were you able to share the gospel with your father or with your brother? How did that go? Yes, eventually.

Speaker 4: 17:03

First my brothers. I have four brothers, and two were in and out of prison quite a bit One is still homeless and on the streets. Wow.

Speaker 4: 17:11

And prison tats head to toe, no teeth, meth burnout. And so I did. And my dad? I didn't know where he was after I became an adult, but eventually I found him and, um, we began to establish a little bit of a relationship. But when I went to Africa he was furious, he said I will disown and disinherit you. And he, he was very prejudiced and so I just gave him a kiss on the cheek and said goodbye and I wrote him and I didn't hear back from him for 10 years Well after that my brothers called me up one day and said hey, come home, dad's in a coma, he's on life support, we're going to pull the plug.

Speaker 4: 17:58

So I flew back to Los Angeles and as soon as I walked in the room he woke up out of his coma. They extubated him. He could barely speak and he says oh, pull the plug, I'm in agony. And I said, dad, this will be a picnic compared to where you're going. And I knew he had heard the gospel in prison. And so I led him to the Lord and, wonder upon wonders, he walked out of that hospital three days later, got totally healed. I went back to Africa. He lived another two years. I never saw him again, but five months before he died the second time he put me back in his will, and that's actually what's supporting me on the mission field.

Speaker 4: 18:43

Oh my goodness, yeah Wild story hey.

Speaker 2: 18:47

Wow, what.

Speaker 4: 18:49

But I had, if you might, imagine I had a lot of daddy issues that the Lord had to unravel, unpack and unravel in subsequent years.

Speaker 2: 19:00

What a story of redemption. Yeah, wow. What a story of redemption. Yeah, wow. What was it like when you said in the barracks you had to come to Jesus moment. What was that like? Did your friend lead you? To the Lord, or did you have just like an experience with Jesus? A? Bit of both.

Speaker 4: 19:20

And what happened was, during that whole time when I was harassing her, I would never listen to a word, she said. I was tired of words. I wanted to see something see action.

Speaker 4: 19:36

And so it was just the witness of her life. And so when I came back from that freezing night out in the cold, I just sat on my bunk. It had been five months and she just came and sat next to me and, for the first time, just started talking about how Jesus made a way for us to reconcile. Through him, she bridged the gap with the cross, with the sacrifice, and I just had a sense. It was as if Jesus walked in the cross with the sacrifice, and I just had a sense. It was as if Jesus walked in the room, a sense of his forgiveness, and the weight of my shame and my guilt just melted away. I started sobbing. I hadn't cried in years, I was tough, and so that was kind of how it all started. I just sobbed my heart out, I felt God's love and his acceptance and fell asleep. And the next day I woke up and I thought the whole world had changed. Well, it hadn't. I had changed, and I wanted everyone to hear about it to know, about it.

Speaker 4: 20:40

So I became the Jesus freak on post. So I became the Jesus freak on post and the training at the time was quite harsh and so many soldiers were struggling. And when you're struggling it's easier to bring people to Christ. And I found that throughout my pilgrimage on the mission field I would always end up in countries that are going through. I've been through seven coups, four revolutions. I was hostage for five months. I'm in. People from my church would not travel with me. They go everywhere you go. There's a revolution. I go like I'm not causing it.

Speaker 4: 21:16

And I'm going like God why, but when, when the things people put their trust in, whether it's their bank account or their job, their economy, their country, and when it falls apart, they're very open to the Lord in those times. So it's a very rich time of opportunity, even though it's mayhem all around you, right?

Speaker 2: 21:41

What do you think was being ironed out of you going to Weaverville, like that whole season of being connected with Chris and Bill Johnson?

Speaker 4: 21:54

Well, a heavy focus with them at that time, and even now, was family. All the sermons were how to be a good husband, how to be a good wife, how to be a good mom or dad, and at first I thought this is so boring Because I'm single, right. But then I'm listening and I'm thinking like, wow, like conflict resolution, communication skills, fighting fear those are lessons, good lessons for any relationship. And I had very low social skills in those days, maybe still a little bit. I, like in Mozambique I, because we have hundreds of kids and orphan infants and culturally they want to call me Mama Tracy and I don't let them, I go. I'm your sister, I ain't your mama. I'm more like a drill sergeant than a mama, because with that title comes a lot of expectations that I am not equipped to fulfill. And so I'm in their homes, in their home groups.

Speaker 4: 22:57

I'm seeing how family was supposed to work, because it didn't work like that in my family where I grew up. I grew up in a lot of violence and in a neighborhood, in school, where there was drugs and crime right in the home and I didn't know what to do with my life, but I knew what not to do, so I made a lot of inner vows like I'm never going to smoke, I'm never going to drink, I'm not going to cuss, I'm not going to just do the thing, I'm not going to sleep around, because I saw the fruit of that kind of behavior. So I knew what not to do. But I didn't know what to do and I had a lot of anger issues, which the Army just loves Getting all these kids with anger issues and then providing a sense of camaraderie or family and then they're training you to it's the nationalistic American, you're an American soldier and because of that it's okay to kill your enemies. And I just loved blowing things up and shooting things down and hand grenade launchers and light anti-tank weapons. It was so much fun and like you're given a license to kill quite literally, which was just feeding the self-righteousness and anger and such. So the Lord had to start unpacking that in my heart.

Speaker 4: 24:18

Now I'm in a family environment in a small town where every year we're in the mountains Every year, I mean mean. You hear about the fires in california even now. So someone's house burns down and a whole church turns out to rebuild it, and or someone loses their job at the mill and they share their, their deer or their meat and it it was not just the nuclear family which was was really important, but the church, family and relationships were real and deep and we were there for each other and I had never experienced anything like that. So that was huge. And just learning too about the Father, heart of God and that he's not the big judge in the sky or the policeman waiting to lower the hammer with accusation, just accusation, and then judgment and punishment, but with forgiveness and love. And come up here and sit on my lap, let me give you a hug. You can just rest your head between my shoulders. It's going to be okay. Kind of prodigal son thing. I had no grid for that.

Speaker 2: 25:33

So that was really healing and life-changing for me, kind of the transition to you and Weaverville. When did Bethel get established and what was your involvement in that and what kind? Of transitioned you to Mozambique.

Speaker 4: 25:44

Yeah, that was really cool in that after my travel restrictions were up, I launched out into Asia and I was there initially for six years, but the last five months of that I was in a hostage situation with communist guerrillas and it was really rough, and also because of the poverty there, and I already had a bachelor's in community health care that I picked up along the way. But as missionaries we come to churches and you have half an hour and you talk about the glory stories, but often people aren't interested in the whole story.

Speaker 4: 26:26

So you talk about the kids you saved but not the ones you lost. I mean, I had buried kids in mass graves and, like God, where are you? And I was sick and full of parasites and broke, and so I had to. I was disillusioned and in that hostage situation my visa expired. So when I got free I was illegal and had three days to leave the country or go to jail and I didn't want to come back to the States. So I flew next. Ywam took up a collection and flew me next door to Hong Kong and I just started smuggling Bibles.

Speaker 2: 27:03

Were you involved in YWAM I?

Speaker 4: 27:05

was for five years, but the last year I was independent because the base I was on closed. The government shut it down, so I went out to the outer islands and that's where the communist guerrillas were.

Speaker 1: 27:18

Was that Kitibis, or where were you at? No, that was the Philippines, philippines.

Speaker 4: 27:22

Yeah, and so then I'm just smuggling Bibles from Hong Kong into China. But I was really sick and some friends kind of my parents' age kind of took me under wing and I called them and they flew me home. I had to have surgery twice to get debunked from parasites. I was skin and bones and just had a shirt and a skirt and flip-flops and like God, where are you? Couldn't go home because my family situation was a mess, and so again, I ended up getting a little job and I'm living in a car and I had to work through a lot of disillusionment.

Speaker 4: 28:03

And we love talking about the glory stories when you're healed, when miraculous provision falls from the sky, but those times when it doesn't the Job story, when everything in your life is going wrong, where is God then? And he doesn't explain himself. He doesn't have to. I mean, he never explained himself to Job. Job is going. Why am I suffering? I'm a righteous man. Why is this happening? And when God does begin to speak, basically just says where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? It's like I'm God. There was a test. All heaven and hell were watching Job, and for God to explain it would have destroyed the whole purpose of that situation and Job in his maturity and wisdom.

Speaker 4: 28:54

His conclusion was the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. And here's his response Blessed be the name of the Lord he worships. And that's what's held me over the years, like, okay, god, I don't understand why it didn't pan out like I thought, but blessed be your name, get my eyes off me, off my ruminations, off my situation, and just fix my eyes on Jesus and worship. And somehow the peace comes, the healing comes. He still turns ashes into beauty. He still turns mourning into joy. He wins with any hand. He'll work anything together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Speaker 4: 29:39

The issue mostly is timing and I just have to say, god, I, I trust you. And now, because I mean I? I know I have an unusual life and unusual stories, because I've been in unstable environments, in closed countries and deep, uh, impoverished, unstable countries, and it's this isn't unique. All the missionaries that live in those places have wild stories. America's very stable for the most part in comparison, but I've seen God come through so many times, I don't even ask why anymore.

Speaker 4: 30:16

I go okay, this is taking a turn south. It's not turning out like I want or when I want. But, god, I know you're good and I know you're just, and I know you keep score and you're going to use this very thing for my benefit. You think of David and Goliath. David uses Goliath's own sword to take off his head. Haman is hanged on his own gallows that he made for the.

Speaker 1: 30:43

Jews.

Speaker 4: 30:44

God will even turn the weapons fashioned against us. He'll put it in our hands to turn the whole situation around. So I have that confidence now, not just based on the stories I've heard in the Bible or the ones I read in church history, but my own pilgrimage in Christ, and that gives you such rock, solid faith you can carry on even though you don't know which way to turn. You just wait and fix your eyes on Jesus. Follow him and it'll work out, I promise.

Speaker 1: 31:18

What you're saying even reminds me of your first story, which is like you used stolen money sinful money I did to buy an alligator to protect that.

Speaker 4: 31:33

It was used to protect yourself well, I had made a covenant in those days with mr god, who I didn't know because I used to pray, and I said, god, if you protect me, I won't drink, I won't smoke, I won't drink, I won't smoke, I won't sleep around, I won't do those things If you protect me. I stole, I stole a lot. I stole food and I stole books to catch up in school because I reasoned that education was the way out of the inner city, out of poverty. And the Lord used it. And after I got saved. And then I went to YWAM and I went back to those. I went immediately after my discipleship training school. I got a job and worked for about a year to pay back the stores I had stolen food from.

Speaker 4: 32:20

Just out of like conviction, I knew I was forgiven but because and that's why my dad was imprisoned armed robberies. It was our family heritage and I just wanted to make a clean break of it. I knew I was forgiven, but I wanted to make restitution and to break that history in my family lineage. Wow. So that's what I did. And what stores that were no longer in existence? I just put that money in the offering plate.

Speaker 1: 32:53

That's like the was it Zacchaeus does that in the gospel. Yeah, gives back all the money.

Speaker 4: 33:02

Yes four times as much, yeah, four times as much. That's called the fruit of repentance.

Speaker 1: 33:08

Yeah, it's yeah exactly.

Speaker 4: 33:11

And there's some things you can't. I mean like if you took someone's life, you can't restore that. You just, but when we can, I think it's a beautiful thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:21

Can you share. Doesn't have to be a mirror, miraculous story. It can if you want to, but share a story about an Asia that marked you in regards to what, what God was doing in you.

Speaker 4: 33:39

Yeah, well, one thing I just. I I didn't want just an intellectual philosophy or theology about God. I wanted to actually know the guy and by nature I'm very scientifically minded. I'm kind of a skeptic by nature and I'm medical. I got my PA degree from Stanford years later but I just when I would see God touch and heal someone supernaturally, that was totally just. There was no medical help, even if that patient were in the States.

Speaker 4: 34:19

It gave me a sense that God is with us, or miraculous provision, because in those early days I was in YWAM and we were broke all the time. We didn't know where food would come from one meal to the other. We were always sick with something and sometimes God would heal and sometimes not. And just learning also from the things that God didn't do, because we can presume upon him and you know, we're all young YWAMers, so it's all youth and no wisdom. But you've got to wise up along the way too, hopefully without losing the zeal as you age. But seeing him speak and move in unpredictable ways gave us a sense of like. God is with us. He really is with us and we're not just expouncing some religious dogma. Jesus is here and we saw the evidence in our own lives and in our work and in our community together, through the good, bad and ugly.

Speaker 2: 35:28

All right. So where did God take you from Asia? Okay, After YWAM, after being imprisoned? Yeah, I lost my visa.

Speaker 4: 35:36

So I get back to the States and just I was when I, during that hostage situation, those first five years I lived on a garbage dump with 20,000 squatters, so there was death and disease all around us and there was an amazing grace all through it. But when I got back I crashed. I'm back in the States. I don't want to be back in the States. I'm at my kind of mentor's home and I was so depressed because I escaped from the hostage situation and up to that time I totally went tribal. I learned the language and lived with the host family and I really loved them and there was no closure and this is before the days of emails or cell phones. I never knew what happened to them. So my whole family it was three generations living together, the whole village I planted three churches and I just was gone and they were still stuck in that situation.

Speaker 1: 36:46

So I Were they in danger from? What was going?

Speaker 4: 36:49

on politically.

Speaker 1: 36:50

Oh yes, Okay, because of their Christianity or because of other reasons?

Speaker 4: 36:55

It was. The Philippines had seven coups and a full-blown revolution, so it was very dangerous and there were casualties, while in my six years there, I think there were nine missionary colleagues that were killed in the Philippines. Wow.

Speaker 4: 37:14

And there was Muslims in the south and communists in the North, and it was rough times. And so I come back and I was so depressed and I didn't know what to do with myself. I'm broke, I'm living in a car again. I didn't know about counseling back then. I didn't know who to talk to, and so I just locked up and I went out into a field behind a church one night with a knife to cut my wrist and then feeling so ashamed, like wait, I'm a Christian, I'm a missionary, I shouldn't be feeling this way and we're supposed to be overcomers and more than conquerors. And I was. The Philippines. That family was like the first real family I bonded with, because my family wasn't that close. And so I'm ashamed, it's dark and I'm crying out to God and the heavens are brass. And what pulled me through that night were a couple called the Austins, who were kind of like surrogate parents to me. They had been YWAMers too, and they're the ones that flew me home and I thought they would be so hurt if I did this and didn't even talk to them. But I was too ashamed or too proud to talk about what I was struggling with, and so that pulled me through that night.

Speaker 4: 38:38

And the next day I went to their house and I said, hey, they didn't know I was living in the car. And they said, hey, they knew I was struggling. But they said, if you go back and finish your medical education, we'll pay your tuition. What do you want? To be a doctor, a PA? And I already had a bachelor's.

Speaker 4: 38:57

And I thought, for the first time in my life I really understood why people drank and did drugs or slept around. Because of the pain that people wrestle with. They want an escape from it. And I was just wallowing in it but not wanting to go there. But I thought I can redirect all this pain into something productive. I'll just bury myself in school.

Speaker 4: 39:20

And I did that for the next four years, lived in my car, worked a couple jobs in you know just restaurants and such and worked my way through that medical program, through that medical program. But it gave time just to unpack those things and heal. It took a while. I was kind of really depressed for a good few years but then, as soon as I graduate, I went out of the States. I took the first job, which was in Uzbekistan. The Soviet Union fell apart, the Berlin Wall came down and five of those stands left the former Soviet Union, uzbekistan, kazakhstan, turkmenistan, kyrgyzstan, turkmenistan and so the brand new countries. On the first day the Peace Corps jumped in and US embassies jumped in and those were difficult, troubled countries. But I took that job and so I'm getting paid now.

Speaker 4: 40:20

And the Peace Corps yeah it was Peace Corps and a joint medical unit with the embassies. So I'm there. But you can imagine it now. It's a double-closed country. It's both communist and Muslim, surrounded on every side by two communist Muslim countries on every side. So it was a really dark place.

Speaker 4: 40:46

Oh my goodness, and I'm depressed and tired from school and such. So I'm just gutting through work. I had a two-year contract and during that two years the Toronto renewal, the father's blessing, all that broke out. And when I just couldn't wait till my contract was over, I come back to Weaverville and home is a place that's familiar to you, right? But nothing was the same. Everyone's laughing and rolling on the floor and I'm still depressed and I'm still saved and I would go out in the desert every day for my quiet time, and you know, and just cry. And after that, after a while, I go like God, here I am, I have no tears left, I don't know how to pray, I don't know what to say and I would start memorizing scripture. That meant absolutely nothing because my heart was hard and closed and hurting. But I go, someday you'll use this, someday I'll understand. And so it was just that naked faith and I go like here I am.

Speaker 4: 41:48

But I came back and I went to a friend's house and she was just so joyful and she was almost rabid. She's jumping around and just so full of joy. I actually thought she was high. So she goes into the kitchen to give me a cup of tea and I book out of there and jump in my car and I went over to another friend's house and I go hey, I'm just coming from Mary Ann's and I think she's high, and this other friend was the same way and it really spooked me. And I'm sitting on the couch and I go hey, go get me a cup of tea. So she starts to walk out and I jump up to leave that house and I get up and she turned around and said like and another thing, and there was this force that just kind of pushed me back in the chair, and so she was telling about this women's retreat, that Benny Johnson, bill's wife and the elders of Bethel went on and how the Holy Spirit fell.

Speaker 4: 42:52

And they've been laughing and rolling around ever since and to me it was just mob hysteria, it was emotionalism and I'm thinking how could this possibly be God? Why would he pour joy out on rich America when I know Christians in prison? Why doesn't he pour it out there? So if it is God, I'm jealous, and if it's not and I'm not like an emotionally based person anyway so I'm really struggling with this. So I go to the third friend's house and she saw that I was struggling, so she's playing it cool. All right, we eat dinner. And the funny thing, guys this is so funny.

Speaker 4: 43:31

I had a videotape of the underground church in China, and if you know anything about Chinese, they're very stoic. You never quite know what they're, they're flat plan fit. I mean, they don't reveal their emotions much, but in the underground church you know what they're doing. They're laughing and rolling around on the floor like a big dog pile, and I was fine with it. I go well, these stoic Chinese need a little joy. Okay, so I was fine with it. I go well, these stoic chinese need a little joy. Okay, so I was okay with it there, but not in my church.

Speaker 4: 44:00

And then I'm feeling bad, like well, joy is the fruit of the holy spirit. Why am I mad? This I would I, rather than be rolling around laughing on the floor in church or in a bar down the street. So I mean, it's not sin to laugh and roll around. And so I'm really struggling with all this. And and so my friend, I want to show her this video. And she goes well. Actually I had other plans for tonight. I invited Chris Vallotton and Charlie Harper some of the elders of the church to come over and pray for me, because everyone wants me to laugh, because I haven't laughed in years. I'm stoic, I'm sober minded, I'm a Christian. So as soon as she said that, I ran for the door, grabbed my shoes and was heading out because I didn't want this, as they are coming in the door.

Speaker 2: 44:52

This story is hilarious and so.

Speaker 4: 44:54

I'm going like, oh man, now I'm trapped. Maybe they want to lay hands on me and you know, holy ghost, yeah, pentecostal, something or other. They have all these expectations and they want me to laugh and nothing is funny. So I just told them that I go look. Guys, thanks for coming out tonight. I thanks, I appreciate the effort, but I don't even believe in this and nothing happens. But what happens by faith? So go home to your families and what they didn't know, my car was already packed up, I was leaving town and never coming back, and I was grieved in my heart because now I don't have a home and our home church.

Speaker 4: 45:34

And and Chris. Very wisely, he steps into the living room. He says look, let's just sit for five minutes. We won't lay hands on you, we won't pray out loud, let's just invite Holy Spirit and see if he shows up. Well, holy Spirit hadn't showed up like that for me in six years now medical school and two years in Uzbekistan. So I felt pretty safe, nothing's going to happen. And then I'll just say see, thanks a lot, guys, I'll catch you later. So we sat down and Holy Spirit showed up. But I tell you what, guys, I was not laughing, I was sobbing.

Speaker 4: 46:11

All that grief all that unprocessed stuff that I had been stuffing for years under medical school, under work, under being a good Christian. I just started sobbing and I slid off the couch and on the floor and snot in the carpet and, true to their word, they just sat there and didn't say anything. But I had an encounter with Jesus and still, the next day I spent the night there. The next day I took off. It scared me, but the Lord just started working in my heart and softening the callous parts and healing the broken parts, just pouring in his oil. I understood none of it and he just was like skipping the head part and going straight for the heart. And I don't even know what really happened. It just he healed it. He like took the thorn out of my paw and still freaked me out a bit.

Speaker 4: 47:09

I took a clinic job about two hours away, over a couple other mountain ranges. But on Friday night after work I jump in the car, run over to Bethel and come a little bit late and leave a little bit early to avoid all the people that wanted to stuff me through a fire tunnel. I was watching. The Bible says you judge by fruit and sometimes it takes fruit time to emerge. You don't plant a seed an apple seed and get apples the next day, and so I was kind of hanging back and just watching. I did that for the next year, yeah, so that's the mid late 90s when that was happening, and after I got healed up and then later I ended up in Africa.

Speaker 2: 47:57

My favorite part about that story is there's so many people who have followed the Lord, who have been in the crazy situations or have seen God move in their midst, and years later they're like what am I doing? Is God even real?

Speaker 4: 48:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 48:24

I'm in despair and I don't know why.

Speaker 4: 48:26

The wilderness times, yeah, but it's actually those times that a depth of intimacy is developed. If you remember, in the Song of Solomon she comes out of the wilderness leaning on her beloved. Egypt is taken away. You can only exist by God's provision. It's where the tabernacle was built, which is called the tent of meetings. It's where we meet God and everyone says like, oh, I want to know God more. But he prepares the table not on the mountaintop, but in the valley of the shadow of death, in the presence of your enemies.

Speaker 4: 49:05

And if we read the stories in both the Old and the New Testament, when Paul and Silas in Philippi are thrashed, they're beaten to the point of death, thrown in prison, but they don't have a royal pity party there At midnight they're worshiping the Lord, they're bleeding, they're bruised, probably awaiting their execution the next day, and they worship. And then the earthquake comes, the doors, the bars fall off, jairus is saved in his household and the church is born in Philippi. It's in the hard times which we, because we have such a sense of entitlement to comfort and ease and convenience, we want to get around those hard times. You think of the protection chapter, psalms 91, and at the very end it says that God will be with us in trouble and I go. No, god, I want you to get me around trouble, or under it or over it, not in it. But he pulls us through it and his presence is there. His Holy Spirit's name is Comforter.

Speaker 4: 50:13

But, but often in those hard places we're looking to the wind and the waves instead of to christ. We turn to false comforts like alcohol or sex or drugs or something, porn, whatever it is, when the comforter is right there, if we will just reach out, and I believe his grace is within reach. But will we reach up and lay hold of it and then apply it? There's grace for everything see you mentioned.

Speaker 4: 50:42

You don't even ask why anymore, when stuff hard stuff comes no, and that's something I learned from a good friend named buck steel. He's a mountain man in the trinity alps, a machinist, and he looks just like he sounds. He's got a beard down to his belly and he's a rough, tough mountain guy that got saved in prison. And Buck, his mind was fried on drugs, he couldn't string three words together. But he gets saved and he just starts reading the word and memorizing the word and through that God healed his mind. Our mind is renewed by the reading of the word and he becomes a flaming, just one-on-one evangelist.

Speaker 4: 51:22

And Buck would go with me when no one else would. He would smuggle Bibles with me into Eastern Europe. When this is before, in the Cold War days, if you got caught, you don't get a call to your embassy, you go straight to the gulag. And Chris Vallotton would say if Buck gets scared, you get scared because nothing scared Buck. And he would go with me through Romania and Yugoslavia and Hungary and we smuggled Bibles all over. And it's in the days before there was flash drives, when you could put the Bible on a flash. We would duct tape them to our legs under our clothing.

Speaker 4: 52:02

But Buck, whenever things would just go south, he would see it as an opportunity. He'd go wow, look what God's going to do. We had this old beat-up car car. Once and every day the clutch would break and we needed welding equipment to fix it. And every day, somehow that welding equipment. One day it was in the middle of winter. You know 10 feet of snow on all signs in Transylvania. Okay, I'm just looking for the bats, the clutch brakes. And in those days Romania was very primitive. People still drove horses and buggies.

Speaker 4: 52:41

There were very few cars and only officials had them. And so like, where are we going to get welding equipment to fix this thing? And sure enough a car would go by and the guy would just happen to speak a little English and he just happened to have welding equipment in his trunk and he would fix our car and Buck would lead him to the Lord.

Speaker 4: 53:02

And so he's an unknown. People don't know about him. He's not a conference speaker, he's a very humble machinist, mountain guy. To this day he's in his 70s, he still goes on trips with me really into mozambique based out of california yeah, he's still in weaverville. Everyone else moved to redding the big city, but he's in weaverville that's incredible.

Speaker 1: 53:29

I've mentioned this on this podcast before, but one of my favorite books of all time is God's Smuggler. Yes. Brother Andrew on all those crazy stories of him driving across these communist borders with boxes full of Bibles, guards looking in the box and not seeing them, Not seeing them.

Speaker 4: 53:47

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 53:48

The miracles God was doing to get his word into those nations was so cool.

Speaker 4: 53:55

They were so hungry for the word of God they would fall on their knees weeping like, oh, I've heard of this book for 20 years but didn't know if it really existed. How much does it cost? I'll sell my house. They go. No, it's free. It's free.

Speaker 4: 54:09

And they would weep and Bach and I we would smuggle, and sometimes we had other people with us and we were in a car once crossing the Hungary Romania border, and they found our secret compartments but they couldn't get in. They didn't have tools, they didn't know how it opened, so they had no evidence and they separated us and interrogated us and they couldn't get in. They separated us and interrogated us and they couldn't get in and so they threw us out and stamped our passports no entry. And so there was four of us at the time and we went down through Yugoslavia to the next border and tried again and they saw that stamp and wouldn't let us in. So I mean they flew all the way from Weaverville to Romania to bring these Bibles in, and now we're blocked and we're running out of time. So a third time we go, let's try one more time. And we drove to another border and we could see it up ahead and it's snowing and we pulled off at this gas station to tank up and pray because we're so nervous because if we get caught, if they find a way into those compartments, we disappear. And as we pulled into the station, another car pulled up behind us and a couple of Dutch guys get out. They go hey, we saw you yesterday at the other border. You got kicked out. Oh, and the day before we saw you at that border too. And they're looking in our car and we're looking in their car and we're talking for a bit and he said well guys, actually we're Christians, we're two Dutch doctors, we're bringing medicine for the underground church in Romania and we are out of time. If we give you our contacts, will you take the medical supplies in? It was tuberculosis medicine and such, because the government would not give care to Christians and we had no place to hide them. So we just go like all our sneakiness isn't working, so let's just try.

Speaker 4: 56:03

We put the guys in the backseat and just piled all the drugs on top of them and drove into that border. So they make us get out of the vehicle. They strip searched us in the snow. I'm getting strip searched with Bucksteel the mountain mechanic Back to back. We're freezing cold. It's just harassment. But we had to unload all the drugs onto the ground so they could sit and they didn't even like see them and they're handling them. And of course we don't bring a personal Bible or anything. And we had a cassette tape. Remember that song? Don't worry, be happy. So we're singing that because they put that cassette in while they're searching the car and the guards are trying to sing it in English. Don't worry, be happy. It's like okay, god, okay, I'm hearing you. Don't worry, be happy. It's like okay, god, okay, I'm hearing you. But don't look. We get dressed and then another guard comes, makes us strip a second time we would have wild and then they let us in.

Speaker 4: 57:09

So now we've lost so much time and you only get a five-day visa into the country at that time. Basically it's a transient visa. They're expecting you to go to Russia or somewhere beyond. And so I talked to our little team of four I think there's four, maybe five of us and I said we don't have a time now to make all our contacts and get these drugs to their contacts, so we have to split up. Are you guys okay with that? We all prayed and agreed. I go.

Speaker 4: 57:38

I know of this pastor in this town called Arad and he has access to a vehicle. If we can find him, we can split up. So we go to Arad Now. Arad isn't a little town, it's a city. I don't know, maybe there's 90,000 people there and I only know this guy's first name, benjamin. So I go God, you have to lead us. I have no idea where to find this guy and we only have like three days left. And so we pull into a gas station to put air in the tires, because now we're so heavy we need extra air in the tires and a tank up. And one of the mechanics says hey, I know you and very few people in those days spoke english, and I think it's a setup. And I go no, you don't, it's my first day here. And he goes no, you, tracy, you spoke in our church a year ago oh, he recognized oh, do you know, benjamin?

Speaker 4: 58:34

Yes, I take you to him oh my gosh. You take us to him, the guy's there. We split up, we made all our contacts and barely got out of the country in time. So God was showing up. He'd lead us to people and places in dreams. He would cover us. We would have high-speed chases, with the police chasing after us, but they're in those old Russian Ladas that we could easily outrun with our vehicle. It was wild. Now tell me, guys, how do I come back to America and just work a 9-to-5 job?

Speaker 2: 59:07

There's no way. There's no freaking way, man.

Speaker 4: 59:10

I can't. I get so bored here. No offense, I would too.

Speaker 2: 59:14

I would, man, I can't, I get so bored here no offense. I would too.

Speaker 4: 59:18

Yeah, so I have 10 things to do on my to-do list for the day and, like in Mozambique now, I might get two or three done, because we're going to town but the radiator's busted or there's a snake in the car or there's always something that happens and you kind of have to just ad lib as you go. I come back to the states with my list of 10 things to do and I'm done before noon now what do I do?

Speaker 4: 59:42

not to say there aren't challenges here, but you kind of have to look for them. But in a third world environment they just fall in your lap moment by moment it was so.

Speaker 2: 59:53

It was so interesting because I haven't been overseas but two times one was for a wedding and one was for trip, mission, trip and I remember. What's so bizarre is that I I get so frustrated at American life even though I'm caught up in it and I was so I'm so amazed at how open people are overseas. I think, what, what? When I went over there, what was frustrating is knowing the Lord had called me to the US because I like the adventure of going overseas and I like the adventure there. But it was weird. It was like, even though I was frustrated about just how people are cultural Christians for the most part over here and worried about their landscaping more than they are their neighbor, it it was weird. It just I knew the Lord called me here. It was kind of an inner turmoil I had for a long time.

Speaker 4: 1:01:10

It's and I experienced that too when I'm back for a period of time and I mean I love flush toilets and you know, and warm showers, and, and it's and I experienced that too when I'm back for a period of time and I mean I love flush toilets and you know, and warm showers, and and it's. We love comfort and and the lord loves it too, and, but not getting entitled in it and always just keeping an at that attitude of gratitude like god, thank you for this every time I flush that toilet or that hot shower.

Speaker 4: 1:01:36

I know it sounds silly, but I live in an environment where that's not always available, and then finding ways, when I have access to such really luxuries, because most of the people, most of the people in the world, don't have it nearly as good as we do. Most struggle from day to day. And how can I share what I have with others, whether it's a hug or a word of encouragement or cash in their moment of desperation or presence, or sharing a lift to someone who doesn't have a vehicle?

Speaker 4: 1:02:15

There's ways too, Like when I'm in Reading I go visit the team challenge house with some gals that had a rough start and are getting their lives set again. And there's always a homeless shelter or soup kitchen and I just have to look for it a little bit here and I don't in Mozambique. They're on my step every day.

Speaker 4: 1:02:38

So it's easier Because Jesus said in the context of it's a really bizarre context, it's how do you get to heaven? Matthew 25. Jesus says when the Son of man comes, and all his holy angels with him, he'll sit on his throne and he'll gather the nations of the world, as a shepherd gathers sheep, and he puts the sheep on his right and the goats on the left. And notice that the context is getting into the kingdom of God and it's also there's nothing like supernatural in it. He says when I was hungry, you fed me.

Speaker 4: 1:03:10

When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink. When I was naked, you clothed me when at me. When I was thirsty, you gave me a drink when I was naked. You clothed me. When I was a stranger, you invited me in. When I was sick, you looked after me. When I was in prison, you visited me. Enter now into the kingdom of God, prepared for you from the foundations of the earth. When you've done it to the least of these.

Speaker 4: 1:03:31

You've done it to me. You guys, you have kids. So if I gave your kid a gift, you would be all smiles. I go well, why are you smiling? I didn't give you anything. But if I gave it to the child, you, as fathers, would be happy with that. But imagine if I came up to one of your children and started slapping them around. What would you do? You would probably do something about it. I go well, why are you upset? I didn't touch you, but touching your child is as if I'm touching you. You would come to their aid.

Speaker 4: 1:03:59

It's the same with God. We're all created in God's image, every human being on the planet Some are. They're all sons of God in a sense. Some are lost and some are found. So, even if it's a non-Christian, you know, when we reach out, when we love our enemy, jesus takes that as an act of kindness and love and generosity to him. That's storing treasure in heaven. So when you're there, when you see him face to face and there'll be no mistaking who he is on that day he's the one with all the scars, and every scar is saying I loved you this much. You're going to want something to lay at his feet on that day to express your love back to him. And so that's why we do what we do and go where we go, and I have more opportunity to lay up treasure in heaven for that day when you propose to your wives when you're getting married. I mean you are putting money away First, you're working that double shift by that itty-bitty diamond ring for her.

Speaker 4: 1:05:03

I mean guys generally aren't walking around with diamond rings on. It's a token of your love for her, it's an expression of and it's sacrifice, but it's sacrifice with joy, because you just can't wait to put that on her finger and then providing a house and then providing for your children. It's the same with the Lord. Find someone to bless, and it doesn't have to be extravagant, maybe it's just a hug or a shoulder to cry on or your presence. I mean I'm so glad the Austens were there for me. They didn't know what to say or what to do.

Speaker 4: 1:05:43

They just knew I was struggling and they were there.

Speaker 4: 1:05:45

They said hey, you can stay here whenever you want. Hey, let's help you get through school. And now he is 90 years old and she is 80. I still visit them whenever I come back to the States, and I wouldn't be here if it weren't for them. And in our clinic in Mozambique we have saved well over 9,000 orphaned infants from certain death. And then they lived in our nutrition program and then we started preschools and kindergarten gardens and there's a Christian primary school down the road that some Irish missionaries developed, and then a high school and a Votek Center and public health and church plants.

Speaker 4: 1:06:29

I mean that wouldn't be there if it weren't for the Austins, and it is a team effort. There were other people involved along the way. But, what a privilege I mean to be able to do something that has a rollout like that.

Speaker 1: 1:06:46

I could listen to these stories all day. They're incredible.

Speaker 2: 1:06:50

I do feel like.

Speaker 1: 1:06:51

I have a question that I want to ask you, which is like you live in the face to fit like with a immediate sense of need medical need, financial need, in the people around you and maybe in your own team and in your own self, and everything. How, how does that, how does your relationship with the Lord, like the Jesus and Tracy relationship, work in the midst of all that? Because I find myself, and when I feel, overwhelmed with the quote needs that I have, Sometimes that dictates what I talk to the Lord about, and I've been in a very small sense of need. Here in America. Things are going fine, but you're in so much need, yeah, does it ever distract? How does that look with you and him?

Speaker 4: 1:07:55

It's a very good question. Yeah, because it's everywhere and it's easy to burn out over it or to get compassion fatigue or to harden your heart, and it's important that we. When I go to a new place, the first thing I do is find a hideout where I can just get with Jesus. Sometimes it's in a car. My team knows that I'm sitting in a car and it's not going anywhere, just leave me alone. It's the most comfortable seat in the place. It's padded and in some places it was up in a tree, but I find that Jesus did the same. A tree, you know, it's just, but I find that Jesus did the same. He would go up on the mountain or go out on the lake or sometimes walk across the lake just to get away from the crowds and reconnect with the Father.

Speaker 4: 1:08:44

Sometimes it's not a place, it's a time you get up at 3 am or 4 before the kids and to have that quiet and also not just seeking god, like elijah with with the earthquake and the wind and the fire, but in the stillness, sometimes just being in his presence without saying anything I'm just here and and noting that he is here, with whether it's those times where you you're overwhelmed with the, uh, like that tangible sense of his presence or that audible voice, or the many times where it's not and it's just naked faith, but you know in your knower that he's with you and that helps us recalibrate. But often, for me, I often find Jesus in those I'm with, if I'm willing to look, and the missionaries with us. We come from all streams. We've got Antioch people there and Bethel and conservative and holy rollers and it's quite a mix and it's a beautiful thing because God is so colorful in how he expresses himself even with us sitting here in this room.

Speaker 4: 1:09:59

You have a relationship with the Lord and you express him in unique ways. So if I, for example, get offended at you, chris, and I cut you off in relationship, I'm also cutting myself off from the Jesus in you and from the unique ways you express him, and I can't afford that.

Speaker 4: 1:10:19

So, I have to get over my offense and either repent or forgive or whatever the situation calls for. And so the team of missionaries we have there. It's a really tight group because we live together, we work together, we're in a crisis environment all the time and we cross-train and make room for each other to get away, whether it's just stay in bed all day because they're getting over malaria and their fever or cleaning up each other's vomit.

Speaker 4: 1:10:48

We really we know each other inside and out. And I remember once I came to dinner. We eat communally and Irish Ursula goes oh, tracy, are you feeling okay? I go, yeah, why she goes? You look a little pale. Two hours later I'm heaving my guts out and she knew I was sick before I did. We really know each other. And so then I come back.

Speaker 4: 1:11:13

I'm from California and California is very transient and Bethel Church is very transient. We have all these conferences and a school of ministry, people coming and going, so it's harder for me to find a depth of relationship. And if I'm really hurting, will you even notice? And it's the same with our witness there, because we're there to bring the gospel and the kingdom of God. So if I get up I mean I'm the founder of the organization there, I built the clinic and if I go to the clinic and I'm in a foul mood, the rest of the team can challenge me. They go like hmm, you look a little cranky today. Did you have your quiet time? Yes, well, it doesn't show, go do it again.

Speaker 4: 1:11:59

And they can kick me out of the clinic I built and because if I stay there all day and I'm cranky, I'm going to misrepresent Jesus to every patient that's brought to us, to every child. And so we give each other freedom. Hopefully, the goal is being mature enough to know, like, well, I'm really having a bad day today and, guys, I'm just going to stay home you really you don't even want me there and to self-check ourselves. But if we don't, the team has the right to challenge us, say, hey, what's going on with you? Come on now and we all break down now and then, whether it's physically, with the tropical diseases and the malaria, or it's emotionally, your favorite kid died and you fasted and prayed your guts out and the brat you don't like lived and the one you loved died, just to be real.

Speaker 4: 1:12:52

Yeah, that checks to be real, that checks, and we just give each other space and we help each other as we can. If we can't fix the issue there, there's help out there. Maybe you have to fly down to South Africa and see a doctor because you didn't get healed, or maybe you need some counsel, or maybe you're broke, your finances dried up, your church, you know, forgot all about you and the check didn't come in the mail and you're hurting. So there's a depth of camaraderie and I find jesus in that, where two or three are gathered in my name there. There I am in the mist, but as Americans we're so independent and self-sufficient and we developed a whole culture and economy to support that independence that often we don't have that depth of relationship.

Speaker 4: 1:13:48

But every poor country I've been in and that's like 72 now all poor people are relational because they can't afford to be independent so they have to work out their marriages, they have to work out their community or tribal issues, so they often have more social skills than we do as a people group that's fascinating.

Speaker 1: 1:14:11

I've never thought about it like that.

Speaker 4: 1:14:14

So actually I come home and America's like the only place I come to, that I get lonely and we're loud, we're fun, fascinating, but often there's a superficiality to it and it's well. Let me know how that works out for you. But out there we have each other's back and Jesus is like that. He has our back. But often how does he minister to us? Often through those around us, but if you're independent and self-sufficient, you don't have a lot of people in your circle and guys. Just to be honest, why I love coming to North Carolina? Because it's the South. To be honest, why I love coming to North Carolina? Because it's the South and there's a deeper relationship quality that I find here In California. We say it's part of our greeting hi, where are you from? We just assume you're from somewhere else, because most people are.

Speaker 4: 1:15:12

I went out of speaking engagement Oklahoma and I'm greeting people hi, where are you from? And they look at me and go Oklahoma, of course. Why do you ask? I mean, we're in Oklahoma, why would you ask that? And after the third time I'm thinking like oh, people actually live where they grew up and they have long term relationships. So it's just like the nuances of culture right here in our own country. That is funny, wow yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:15:50

I'm just taking this all in.

Speaker 2: 1:15:53

I know I feel like we've just scratched the surface.

Speaker 4: 1:16:00

I think we have in that I think of, like, who is that person on planet Earth that is the nearest and dearest to Jesus Christ right now, that Enoch of our generation? But God is so big even that person has just scratched the surface of all he is. So church should never be boring, our relationship should never be dry because he is so big. And if you're bored, if you're dry, there's something wrong, and the wrongness is on our side. It's like God, help me, where am I missing it? Because he's exciting, he's big, he's colorful, he's adventurous, he's supernatural.

Speaker 4: 1:16:39

Yeah, yeah, but we, we have an environment where we can get spiritually lazy here and and I don't have that much opportunity to get lazy in a third world environment and I like that. It keeps me on my toes and it deepens my relationship with God.

Speaker 1: 1:17:00

If somebody were to find themselves in the situation like you said, you were where, you're just like memorizing scripture, like God will use this later, I don't know what for I don't feel inspired, I don't feel near, I don't feel close to him. What would your remedy be for that? I don't feel inspired.

Speaker 2: 1:17:19

I don't feel near, I don't feel close to him Like what would your remedy be for that? That was man. That was almost the exact question I felt like asking her earlier too.

Speaker 4: 1:17:28

Yeah, what I do is kind of what I see David doing in the Bible. You read a lot of those Psalms and often they start out a bit negative and he's distraught or distressed or angry and then midway through it's like he grabs himself by the lapels and he looks at himself in the mirror and says why are you downcast? O my soul, hope in God. And the whole tone of the Psalm kind of turns around, because we get in those situations when we're looking at ourselves and our problems and and again. If we could just like slap ourselves and say like stop it. Rejoice isn't a suggestion, it is a command. And sometimes I mean I'm naturally more melancholy, I'm I'm just really envious of those people that are perpetually optimistic and joyful.

Speaker 4: 1:18:17

I have to work at it and sometimes I go, I'll just do something ridiculous, I'll just start dancing, which and I have no rhythm. It's really pathetic, but it even gets me laughing. Even our team, like Mozambicans, can dance. They've got rhythm, they stomp dance. And when the whole team's kind of in a sump'll just start dancing, and it's so ridiculous it gets everyone laughing. But rejoice, oh my soul. Hope in god. Those are commands get my eyes, get out of my self-pity and and look to god. We are more than conquerors. And okay, doesn't feel like it right now, but feelings, get in alignment and seek out whatever it is I need, whether it's a person or just going to one another and say, hey, I'm really down, I'm really discouraged. Pray with me. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:19:10

Instead of wallowing in it.

Speaker 1: 1:19:14

Yeah, speaking to your own self is something that's not taught in a lot of you know theology.

Speaker 4: 1:19:21

Well, we get away with murder in our minds. Literally, it's like disciplining your thoughts.

Speaker 1: 1:19:27

Oh man, Well, I've shared this on the podcast too. But like battling anxiety, yeah, and me going through that like you actually have to learn how to think yes and you have to, you have to. I call the the idea of having a bouncer at the door of your, of your mind. It's like thoughts come in and that oh, that's good, yeah you have to either have a thought that's good or godly, or it shouldn't be there right so. Oh that's good.

Speaker 1: 1:19:54

So you kick it out, because a lot of anxiety is just you're letting thoughts in. Ruminating, ruminating on them. They're not even godly thoughts, they're not even true thoughts. Right, they're just whatever. And you're getting anxious about something that's not even true.

Speaker 4: 1:20:09

Or even forbidding yourself from certain thoughts, like I told you about that suicidal situation. I go like I am not. I have given my life to Christ. It is not mine, I have no right to take it and I have no right to even think on these things. And renewing your mind with the washing of the word, get into word, and I love what Bill Johnson says. He just reads until it speaks to him, and that might be a verse, a chapter, or three books or the whole book of Psalms or what. Just keep reading until it lands.

Speaker 1: 1:20:40

That has blessed me too, that concept of what he does.

Speaker 4: 1:20:45

But I'm not allowed to think these ways and the trick is catching yourself. So disciplining your mind, disciplining your thought life. If you've given it all to the Lord, you don't have a right to think that way about someone else, about yourself. Yeah, so reordering your thoughts.

Speaker 1: 1:21:04

And your emotions too. Yeah, that's a hard thing because I think we're very emotionally driven, very thought driven, but we need to be really spirit driven as a people group. Yes, it was christians, but I don't know. I need, I need to grow in that area a lot. Yeah same.

Speaker 2: 1:21:26

How did you get to mozambique?

Speaker 4: 1:21:30

totally accidentally, it was god's okay you guys know some of the players, so this might humor you a bit and that my heart was in Asia.

Speaker 2: 1:21:41

And then when Bill and Chris wanted to start the school of ministry, when you say your heart was in Asia, was it because you experienced and poured your blood and sweat there. Or was it the Lord said Asia kind of early on?

Speaker 4: 1:21:56

Well, I just assumed you know you. Um, it's important. Sometimes we get momentum behind us and I want to be spirit led, not momentum led, and momentum's good. But until the spirit takes a turn and you miss it.

Speaker 4: 1:22:11

And so I had been in Asia 15 years. I learned a language. I had um things I wanted to go back to it. In Asia 15 years I learned a language, I had things I wanted to go back to. It was home 15 years. But then we did the school of ministry and I wanted to go back to that. But during that year this lady came to speak at Bethel. Her name was Heidi Baker. First time wowed us all because again you got 30, 40 minutes to speak and so you tell the glory stories.

Speaker 4: 1:22:38

And so Bill and Chris says, oh, take a team to Mozambique. And I go like I'm not going to Africa, I'm going back to Asia. And they go no, it's God, I go. Great, you take them, send me a postcard and we fussed over it Mostly, chris and I fussed over it for five months because she was starting an orphanage there.

Speaker 4: 1:23:00

I looked it up Mozambique was, according to the World Bank, the poorest country in the world, coming out of 16 years of civil war and before that 450 years of a brutal colonialism and before that hundreds of years of the Arabic slave trade. I mean it was a devastated country, landmines everywhere, very snaky, and in those days the school of ministry. I mean, we were just starting. They were all like 18, 19, right out of high school, never traveled and no skills, just again. All zeal, no wisdom, and we don't speak the language, we don't know the culture, and when an outreach goes badly, who do they blame? The leader? And I know nothing about Africa and so I do not want to go.

Speaker 4: 1:23:44

And Chris says just pray, would you just pray about it? And I go well, yeah, I'll do that. Sure, god would say no. So I'm taking a couple of days, I'm praying and I'm fasting, and then this guy calls me up, steve Jellicorse, a friend I had met in a parking lot years ago. He just calls me out of the blue and says hey, where are you going next? And it surprised me because I thought he would assume I'm going back to Asia. And I says well, Steve, I'm actually I'm praying about a country, but I don't want to say he goes, it's Mozambique. That's hilarious.

Speaker 4: 1:24:20

Dang right when I'm asking God for a sign or something. So then I think, all right, all right, okay, god, I get it. I'm going to Mozambique. It's a two-week outreach. Just get them there, keep them on the orphanage, keep them safe, bring them back, and then I'll go back to Asia. So that was my plan. We gather all there was about 22 outreachers going. We gathered all our finances together for the flights and the outreach fees and it was like 50,000 bucks. It was a lot.

Speaker 4: 1:24:50

Just before we buy our tickets, there's a cyclone that devastates Mozambique. I mean, thousands die, it's just mayhem there. And so I'm thinking to myself I go like Heidi Baker. She's got 500 street kids, you know, on an orphanage in a catastrophe and she could probably make much better use of this $50,000 than a bunch of green American teenagers coming over. So I gathered the team together, and that's likely true, but I'm also trying to figure out a way out of it. All right, true confessions. So I I gathered a team that says, hey, really, it's about helping iris ministries and heidi bakers, not about our cross-cultural experience. At the end of it all, what if we call her up and just offer it? You know, would you rather just send the money in this dire time of need, uh, or do you want us to come, and I am sure she's going to take the money so they all agreed, we're sitting in a circle you're like great, they'll take the money and I, they all agreed.

Speaker 4: 1:25:58

We're sitting in a circle, you're like, great, they'll take the money and I'll go to Asia. Yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking. Put the phone on speaker and say Heidi, this is Tracy, we're about ready to buy our tickets, but none of us speak the language and we're young, we don't have really skills that you could use. And we heard about the cyclone and the flooding and crocodiles eating people. So why don't we just send you the money? What do you think? And she says, well, let's pray about that. So she prays and she says, no, you've got to come. Someone on your team is going to stay long term. We need staff. And I'm looking around the room, I'm I'm thinking, like, lady, you wouldn't want any of these guys. They don't, they're young, they have no skills. Well, it was me.

Speaker 4: 1:26:46

So that was 25 years ago, that two-week outreach I'm still there but I was only with iris about four months and then I launched deeper into the country and um, but that's how I ended up in mozambique that's crazy jehovah sneaky right that's a very heidi story, like you know having

Speaker 1: 1:27:09

heard many stories and my little exposure to them. But like I got to heidi's base the one summer we went the one summer I went, andrew went two summers but it was crazy Cause we got. We do all this travel. You get to to South Africa and you lay over and you fly to Maputo and then it's hot and you're taking riding in the back of a pickup truck to to Iris. You finally get there and she's got like cold coca-colas for us and snacks and she's just like welcoming us, like so happy for us to come, and I'm thinking I have nothing to offer this place.

Speaker 1: 1:27:52

I am here, I'm probably a burden on place. I'm using their water and sleeping in their bed and I'm going to what am I going? To do and they're welcoming and so thankful that we're even there and I don't know that's a special place. It was run by some special people. You're in Mozambique. You're doing nutrition program and prison ministry and the vocational stuff. You kind of touched on it a little bit. Where's your heart at now and where do you see the, the team and the ministry headed into the future?

Speaker 4: 1:28:29

Well, the core really is for me, evangelism, discipleship, church planning. However, you can't get a visa doing that. You have to do something entrepreneurial or humanitarian. So that's why we started the baby clinic and the schools and such, and that took. Initially I did church planning, but every month I had to leave the country to renew my visa, and so once we were able to register an organization and get official standing and get long-term visas, then we were able to do more of the evangelism part. So those ministries, the humanitarian ministries, the vocational school, they're well-established and now it's just recruiting missionaries that have a heart to evangelize and disciple. In the early days we planted 22 churches. Then we had to stop to build the clinic and build the schools and such. So we're just now getting started again with just more proactive discipleship, and we built our clinic right on.

Speaker 4: 1:29:44

I bought this piece of land and found out a month later that it was a designated mosque site and it was a Muslim village right over the hill. I didn't even know it was there. So they were very upset that I got their mosque land and so they bought the property right next door and built a mosque. But uh, so we're in a muslim area and. But there's freedom of religion in mozambique and uh, just, we're just leading them to the lord bit by bit. Wow, so that's the thrust now, uh, carrying on with the schools and the clinics and the public health and such. But really, someone said, preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words. Well, you do need words.

Speaker 4: 1:30:24

Otherwise they just think you're nice white people. You need to tell them why you're there. They want to know why you're there and it's quite easy. In Mozambique it is that country's season for harvest. Everything in their life has not worked out very well, so they're very open, they're humble because of their circumstances, they're teachable, they're receptive, and so we just lead them to Christ. And it's been fun, it's been challenging, and so that's the thrust right now. It's just every staff member proactively finding ways to communicate the purpose why we're there. We have no competition. I mean, jesus is good news, right. Poverty isn't good news. Islam legalism isn't good news. Disease isn't good news. I have no competition.

Speaker 1: 1:31:15

I got the only good news out there.

Speaker 2: 1:31:17

That's so good.

Speaker 4: 1:31:18

And so they come to the Lord. Yeah, it's easier there, that's so great. Countries have seasons, whether it's plowing fallow ground or sowing seed, or watering or reaping the harvest. It's harvest time in Mozambique, so we're moving as fast as we can because seasons change. We got ISIS up in the north lopping heads off and there's political unrest and environmental. Every year we get cyclones blowing through. It's hard but it's fruitful.

Speaker 1: 1:31:56

You mentioned earlier, all of us have kids, we all have little kids. Actually all of us are have little boys, straight up, just boys in this, with this crew. But what would you tell your own kids? Because I have a 14 year old nowold now and a 12-year-old and they're starting to think about what they want to do, how they want to commit to their life and to what they want to commit to their life, and they're starting to think about those things and I think a lot of that's just the age that they're at. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:32:34

What would you tell them?

Speaker 4: 1:32:36

Well, this might come off a little strange, but you guys are dads and you're godly men and raising godly families, and I think the greatest ministry on planet Earth is being a good husband and a good dad, being a good mom and being a good wife. God good dad, being a good mom and being a good wife. God doesn't call himself missions director.

Speaker 4: 1:33:02

He calls himself Father and that's what Jesus came to reveal. There was very little mention of God being a Father in the Old Testament, just a few verses. They knew him as El Shaddai and Elohim and God Almighty. They didn't have the concept of him as a father. And Jesus comes and says Abba, abba, father, and prays to God as Father and says and by the way, guys, when you pray, pray like this, our Father.

Speaker 4: 1:33:28

That is a huge ministry that's undervalued in our Western Christianity and I've even seen remember in the Old Testament when it said when I think these pagans were offering their children up to Molech, killing their own kids as a sacrifice, and it says that God speaks and says it never entered my mind, such wickedness would dwell on the earth, kind of thing. But I've seen Christians sacrifice their kids to ministry. They're out every night and not paying attention to the needs of their own children. So parenting well, being a faithful and present spouse, that Jesus calls himself the bridegroom, and those are great ministries, whether they do it here in the States or they take that overseas with them. Yeah. Wow.

Speaker 2: 1:34:30

Tracy, thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 4: 1:34:35

Pleasure.

Speaker 2: 1:34:35

Thanks for the invitation.

Speaker 4: 1:34:36

Huge yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:34:37

Thank you so much for your time Pleasure. Thanks for the invitation. Huge yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 4: 1:34:39

It's always a highlight for me to come and visit here. I love the church here. I love the way you guys do life and ministry. It's very refreshing to me where I live there's so much fatherlessness and and I see the fallout of that in every child.

Speaker 4: 1:35:01

I mean every child in our clinic all 9,000 plus of them are orphans and when the father isn't present, neither is the mom, because then the mom has to go to work. She's not in the house and your kids are raised by hirelings or or grandparents or such. So that's why they're orphaned, because if dad's gone, mom's gone too. She's out in the field, she's in the workplace. In fact, in the Old Testament they don't. I think the word fatherless is only mentioned. Orphan is only mentioned twice. It's usually fatherless. If you, in the biblical term culture, if your father was missing, even if your mom was present, you were an orphan.

Speaker 1: 1:35:45

Wow yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:35:48

And. Jesus said I do not call you orphans, I'm going away, I'm coming back, I'm going to send you a comforter. Wow, so carry on being good dads and good husbands. I'm going away, I'm coming back, I'm going to send you a comforter, wow.

Speaker 1: 1:36:00

So carry on being good dads and good husbands. That's good, that's refreshing to hear.

Speaker 2: 1:36:05

So good.

Speaker 4: 1:36:06

Yeah, it's so encouraging for me to hear it too, so I get a lot of attention like speak in churches because my life's unusual. But you know who my heroes are? The single moms, because they're doing double duty but no one says well, you speak in church. The courage, and even their kids aren't grateful for this. They're laying their lives down to raise these kids but they can't do it all. It's all diluted because they're pulling double duty. Those are my heroes because I was raised by a single mom. It's hard work.

Speaker 1: 1:36:39

That is hard work. Amen. Well, we will have you back for part two when you come back through Raleigh.

Speaker 4: 1:36:46

Sounds good. Oh, I would love to.

Speaker 1: 1:36:49

We'll do a deep dive into some more of the stuff. All right.

Speaker 4: 1:36:53

Grace upon grace to you guys and to this podcast. I love what you're doing yeah, thanks, just like.

Speaker 1: 1:37:03

We feel like we're just kind of fumbling in the dark a lot, but Thank you.