Even to the Uttermost Parts of the Earth

This is an all-day sermon, morning and afternoon. Anyway, it's so wonderful to see you. I never thought we could pull this off. I thought when we were first asked about this about three or four weeks ago, I thought, no way, somebody's going to leak it, and the Buchanan's will know. But sure enough, they seem to be very genuine in being surprised, both of them, both Steve and Terry. So that was very wonderful. Anyway, it's good to see you all here today.

And I thought that what I would do is to speak about something that is a little bit more unique to what I do instead of just talking about a topic that could be discussed by several people. And that's why I wanted to talk about our work in Zambia.

You say, what's the big deal about the work in Zambia? Well, we have been working in Zambia for 26 years. The first time that I visited there was in the year 2000. And I scraped together some money to go there and visit with Andre van Belkam, who was the person from South Africa who was going up there to visit the very, very few people that they had in Zambia. This is the capital city of Lusaka of three million people. The country at that time had 14 million people. And now, 26 years later, it has 24.2 million people. The country has almost doubled in population. And most families have six to eight children. Anyway, I'd like to talk to you about that today because we have now a church of 640 people in Zambia. We have four feast sites.

We have six pastors. And if you would go to Zambia and sit in a congregation, it'd be no different than here. Yes, it will be quite different because the people make two dollars a day.

They are very poor. It's about the fifth or sixth. Depends upon what metric you use. Are the poorest countries in the... Sorry. That's right. Ten.

Anyway, so anyway, it's just very, very good. I'll be talking to you about that. But anyway, it's wonderful here to honor the Buchanan's, which we will after this. I shouldn't probably talk because I'm leaking more than I should. And also Jesse and Diana Reyes, who are also celebrating their 50th anniversary. And so we are thankful to Joe and Albina Anderson, who are making this possible. I know Albina from a long time ago when I first met them. So they are very people we are very familiar with.

So let me tell you about Zambia. Let's see. Look at this working. Wow. Oh, man. Poor screens. Big time TV. I'm still trying to get my eyes adjusted. I had cataract surgery the last three weeks, so I have new eyes. And so if I have to read something, I might take my glasses. I'm not ready for that stage of having new glasses made, but I can see you perfectly. If you think I'm staring at you, I am. Because now for the first time in a long time, I can see very, very clearly at long distances. And everything is so much brighter and clearer and wonderful. So I can look at people and they don't feel like I'm just kind of staring over their heads. So that, and then after the feast, I'm getting a new knee. And after the resurrection, I'm getting a new body. That was the 1 Corinthians 15 talk, a little bit here today. So I'm always looking for the people who predict the coming of Christ, because I'm concerned that I'll get my new body. That's when that operation will take place. So we went to... I'll be basically showing you slides of a trip that we had taken there just in January when I became senior pastor once again. I was working with them in a humanitarian role starting the year 2000. And then I was senior pastor. When I became president, I gave that job to Aaron Dean, who had the job—he did a very wonderful job as senior pastor. And then now it's back in my hands. It's not an easy job. If anybody wants to do that job of managing Zambia, please talk to me, because it is really an exciting job for somebody to go over there and to visit with those people. As I said, it's like talking to people right here. They could sit here with the elders. They sound different. Their English isn't quite as good, but their heart and spirit is the United Church of God's Spirit, the truth. Here's where Zambia is located. It's in South Central Africa. It was part of a three-country coalition, you might say, administration, they call it, of the British. And Zambia used to be called Northern Rhodesia. And it wasn't even a country. It was a protectorate. Why? Because of its rich copper ore. It's one of the top places where copper is mined in the world. The other country was Rhodesia, which is now called Zimbabwe. And the third one is Malawi, the most populous country of the three, the smallest one, on the African Rift. There's a series of lakes that runs all the way up to the Nile River, and that's all part of what's called the Great Rift Valley. And it's like a big crack in the earth, and Zambia is right through there. Why am I talking about this? If you turn to Isaiah 55, in verse 11, there's a few passages that really strike deep to what this is about. And what I'm going to be talking about today is not a travelogue. It's not to get you to take this big trip to Zambia as a tour to see elephants and giraffes. It's a trip that we go there to visit people, to harvest the people that God is bringing to his fold. Isaiah 55, in verse 11, So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in a thing for which I sent it. This is truly an amazing story about Zambia because Zambia is so far away from everywhere. From here, it's 10,000 miles. About 15,000-16,000 kilometers for the Metric people to Zambia. It's a long trip over there. And you wonder, how in the world do these people hear the Word of God? We have a hard time in our own country getting people to stuff the Bible in their face to get them to understand how do these people establish churches and ministries and all the things that they have done over the years?

Well, it's the most unlikely way that they did. Back at the time of the World Tomorrow Program, being on daily, back when AM and shortwave radio was very big, the World Tomorrow Program was played on, of all places, a communist radio station called Radio Lorenzo Marx in Mozambique. It was a communist government that allowed the World Tomorrow Program to be played five times a week. And that's what caused the church in Zambia to be started. And then those people expanded out further. And they had resident ministers come from the United Kingdom who took care of that area. It's truly an amazing story about how God's Word can do whatever it wants. God's going to say, I'll do it my way. And we have to look to God to be the one that word that brings that kind of growth. The Great Commission in Matthew 28 in verse 19. Jesus Christ said this. These are the last words in the book of Matthew. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. You didn't say, keep this a local Middle East religion. Go into all the world. Who thought when the world, when it went to the Gentile areas, which most of the New Testament is about, that was kind of the end of the growth, but has gone into all the world, every place in the world. And I would say if there's any place that's the end of the world, it's Zambia.

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. So this gives us a scope of the Gospel message. It's amazing how all that is just tied up in these few verses. Make disciples of all the nations, which we have been doing, sometimes interrupted, sometimes slowed down, but nonetheless, that is what the Word of God is doing. God's water is watering and bringing His Spirit to places that we can't even imagine to give growth. And then we baptize people, the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as we as ministry do. And on top of that, we teach them to observe all the things that I have commanded you, the things that God has commanded for us to live by and practice. And I am with you always. God is with us. Amazing in these two verses that you have all this contained. Now here's the scope of the mission. You shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, which they were later on that month for Pentecost, and in Judea and Samaria. The Word of God went out in different places throughout Judea and even in Samaria. And I may break off here just for a second to another passage about the Gospel, where it went out from Jerusalem to Samaria, which was a very disliked area, a disliked zone of people that lived in Palestine. People didn't like the Samaritans. They were kind of strange people that had an eclectic religion that's a mixture of the truth of God and also paganism. But in John chapter 3, this is where I had to go to my glasses. Okay, you'll have to excuse me. So I'm still trying to get used to these. I'm not getting the real ones for another 90 days, they said. So Jesus Christ is who set the example and started going. He went to Samaria. This is chapter 4, the very beginning parts of the book of John. Chapter 3 is about being born again. Chapter 4 is about His incursion into Samaria, which nobody wanted to go to. When people traveled up to Nazareth, they bypassed Samaria because they didn't like those people. They were just nasty, the Samaritans. But Christ came to the city of Samaria, to Saikar, which is the capital of Samaria, to the ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now, Jacob as well was there. This is John 4, verse 6. And therefore, being weary from his journey, he sat by a well. It was about the sixth hour. So here's Christ, about noon, sitting there by a well in a country that disliked Jews and Jews disliked the Samaritans. And he sits down by this well, the famous well of Jacob. And I had the privilege of seeing that on my trip to Jerusalem a long time ago, to Judea. A woman of Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, give me a drink. Now, not only was it not proper or kosher—I can't see you, now I can—to be in Samaria, but to start a conversation with a woman? I mean, what a pickup woman! Give me a drink! I mean, Celina's been used. And he said to her, give me a drink.

For his disciples had gone away to the city to buy food, so Christ is sitting there all by himself.

Then the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. We don't like each other.

Jesus answered her and said, if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. And then Christ goes into a discourse about the water that he was offering. It was not just water to quench his thirst. It was water that would give life forever. The woman said to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with. The well is deep. Verse 11. Where do you get that living water?

I'm getting to the main point of what was happening here in the Gospel.

Are you greater than our Father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock? And Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this water will never thirst again.

Whatever drinks from this water, from this well, will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst, but the water that I shall give him will become to him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life. This is the Gospel message that Christ started of all places, Samaria. And the woman said, give me this water that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw. And Jesus said, go now, call your husband, and come here. Hey, bring your husband over. The woman said, I have no husband. And Jesus said to her, you have said, well, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one who you now have is not your husband, in that you spoke truly. He's not really your husband. You're not bound to him at all. You're kind of a loose woman. I don't know. You had five husbands. What have you been feeding them?

It's just, you know, what's going on here? So here, Christ chooses the most unlikely person to be the one to whom the Gospel is preached. A Samaritan, a woman, and one who's had five husbands. Now, the point is, is that I'll run down to the end of the chapter.

She starts a conversation with him. She said, I know that we know that the Messiah is coming. And then, Christ said in verse 25, the woman said to him, I know that the Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things. And then Christ, and this is a very important, very prominent scripture. I, who speak to you, am he.

I am Christ. This is the first time that Christ announces that he is the Messiah. He is the Christ. He didn't do it to an audience of people. He didn't do it to his disciples, necessarily. I probably may be happy. This is the first time that he publicly announced that he was the Messiah. And of all people, he chose to talk to the woman at the well.

A couple of lessons here is that Christ talks to the most unknowing and unlikely people about the gospel. And we too, when we preach the gospel, we look at the people who do accept it as oftentimes being, why them? How is it that they have? But that's the way it works. Christ's Word will do whatever he will. So, you shall be witnesses of me in Jerusalem, Acts 1-8, and in Judea and Samaria. And remember, the first baptism and the laying out of hands was in Acts 8, where they had the laying out of hands.

That was Samaria as well. And to the end of the earth, to all places around the world. It was never intended to be a religion that was localized or for a certain time. It was to be a worldwide, all-encompassing faith. So, we arrived in January.

This was a notable trip because I had reestablished the organization of the ministers there. We had five pastors of the churches. We have in Zambia 13 congregations. We have 11 church buildings. We own 11 properties and all four feast sites. Many of those churches have been built through life nets, some through good works, and the public works. And the people have built some themselves. Some are as small as a $5,000 shelter, which are actually quite nice and very, very practical in the outback.

And some of them are more substantial buildings. And our feast site is a major property outside of Lusaka. Bev and I will be going there for the feast in three weeks. We'll be visiting and being with these people. Our chief person here, I'll go back again, is one of our pastors, is Derek and Cherry Pringle. And he's pastor of the Mufalira Church and the one that we stayed with and traveled.

The country has 640 people and there's probably only about four or five cars. So, you know, transportation is an issue. But he is a person who owns, he's up in the mining country in the Copper Belt, and he has a business of installing security systems and security fencing.

He has 120 people working for him. He is, you know, quite well off and truly converted and really giving. He just gives of himself continually as he has now for more than 20 years. So that's Derek and Cherry Pringle. They were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary as well. They went on a cruise in the Atlantic. Anyway, this is outside their home in Pala, where they just came up to the windows and come to the doors, checked in on us.

And there's a part of us, Bev and me, and Derek and Cherry Pringle. They are both from Rhodesia and they lived in South Africa. He was in the Rhodesian Civil War or the Rhodesian War, the terrorist war. He has many, many stories to tell. He just also celebrated his 85th birthday, but an amazing person with a lot of energy. Here's his business, security center. It's a very well-known, well-established place in Kitwe, which is the second largest city in Zambia. That's him and his wife and his son, who has pretty much taken over the business, the day-to-day management. And actually, Derek lives part of the time in his home in Kitwe, and part of the year he also goes down to South Africa, where he has a home.

This is the copper belt. This is one of the roundabouts in the city, and they were given privilege to be able to advertise their business in the middle of the most important roundabout, this copper elephant. It's just painted coppers, not real copper. But nonetheless, it's kind of a landmark there in the city, their security center. They have a new home. They have, they built gardens and this pond here. When we were there about five, six years—no, no, seven years ago, they told us about a dream they had about taking this field and making it into a pond, the game reserve. I thought, how's that going to happen? And it's just dirt, you know, here. And they have successfully made this into a very beautiful location, and their son's home is there in the distance. They put rubber lining here, and it's just a very, very beautiful place. Here's Bev in a baobob tree. This is a small one, but their home, their property is filled with all types of wonderful things. You don't have to go to game parks or anything because you just stay at their house. We have thoroughly enjoyed, you know, being with them. And here's a bushbuck, also came up to the door. Then, a month later, they had horrible flooding take place, and the dam broke there at their pond, and a lot of water gushed out. Okay, never seen it like this before. Look at the water there by the palm trees.

Totally, everything's totally flooded, yeah. Totally. Brown mud, debris everywhere. Look at this.

So, we really enjoyed being there three weeks before, and then a month later, that flooding came. But they have recovered from it. They lost all their gardens, however, in that area, but it was all washed out. The area is filled with Chinese people. Thousands of Chinese people have moved in to work in the copper mines, and they basically could have owned the copper mines now. The Chinese are everywhere, and they built their own communities. They're a wall. Nobody really sees them. They never asked for local help. They brought their own workers and machinery and everything, and put everything in. They even built the roads, the Chinese. So, then this is our first Sabbath in the Mufalira Church. This is a life-ness project that we built. We bought the land, property there, and also it became a feast site for about 200 people. And this is the greeting committee of women that greeted us. It's different than you would expect in the United States. And the whole church is lined up there. So, I thought you would enjoy that. And here's the inside of the building. They built their own wooden benches, and they had a big welcome for us, which we thoroughly appreciated being with them on that day. We know these people. We've known many of them going back almost to the year 2000. And we've seen their little children grow up. Some of them were born. They became scholarship students. Now they have careers. It's just so satisfying to be able to see the fruits of labors of people. Here's Bev and some of the women. There they wear these katongas, like a skirt, which is multi-purpose. They also use it to kind of wrap things in. I mean, it's just I had to have Bev explained. And so we had dedicated this building in 2018, and when we were there for Passover one year in 2018. We bought a bus for the church up there. That bus is serviced by Derek Pringle and his business. He has a driver, his mechanics. And on the Sabbath, it makes two trips. It makes a trip from one end of Kitway, picks up people, brings them into service. Then it goes out to the other part of Kitway, picks up those people, brings them to service, and then reverses that thing again. This is their second bus. We had bought the earliest one back when Denny Luker was president because Denny Luker rode that bus. It was amazing. These buses come from Japan. They are buses that were used in public transport. The Japanese are very good as far as just maintaining that and also is very honest about the mechanical record. But they're called Rosa buses. They have a seating capacity of 28, but we get usually 50 in them.

So maybe not as much as 50, but I know that two trips for 60 people, you know, we get quite a few people in that bus. And you see Derek just loves the church, United Church of God. This is some of the best advertising there in town. People wonder, what is this United Church of God and beyond today?

And here's these people that I still remember for a long time back. They dress for the Sabbath immaculately. The British have brought in a culture that, you know, it's funny, I come to Tucson and yeah, I feel so comfortable. I go to the ambient, gotta wear a straight jacket.

And then this woman put together these flowers. I said, oh, would you like to sit here and pose with me, you know, with flowers? So she comes and just plops right down in front. And so we took this picture here. These are some of the students, the scholarship students and graduates that we have provided scholarship with LifeNets. It has made an amazing transformation in the lives of the people. Some of them were orphans, some of them were going nowhere, some of them were living on subsistence. And in Zambia, 70% of your income is spent just to survive just for food. 70% of your income. Just think of what you have to spend. 70% of what you make just to survive. That's what the conditions are that they live in. So these are students and graduates. Of course, there's a whole lot more. LifeNets every year provides scholarship for 100 students in Zambia as one country and then Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Philippines, and South America. Before services, there was a speaking meeting. They have kind of like a spokesman's club, but it's a speaking meeting before services. And so here we are, all gathered around. They took one of our...

They took the old spokesman's club manual and stripped it down to what they call the essential messages that were there. And we had two speeches that day. They spoke very articulately. They did very fine. And we're just very, very pleased with what they have done. We have three radio broadcasts in Zambia, and one emanates from Kitwe with a deacon there. It does a half-hour radio program. It's called Beyond Today. The point is that the three radio programs are all three different languages. And some of it is English, but it's made for the people locally on FM radio. So it costs us about $35 or $40 a week, which to us is very small. But we serve an audience of about 150,000 people on FM radio, plus streaming. People in Kenya hear a program. So we're trying to also start a fourth program in the capital. They work out very, very successfully. People really take to that. And when I go there, next month I'll be on one of the programs, myself being interviewed by... I'll show you a little bit later here. Then we held a conference. Got together, got all the elders together to the church hall in Mufalira and held a conference. And here are the six pastors. To the left there is Patrice Sinyenga, who is about as far as you can be. There's no air service to his place. It's 600 miles away. You can take a flight to within 200 miles of his place, but it's a very... like almost a charger flight. So we actually drove up there. The next person is Rodrik Ipomba. He's our Copper Belt pastor who has four churches across the Copper Belt going all the way towards Angola. And then you have a new person there in the middle who's James Lutaba. Jonathan Lutaba, I should say. And he was just ordained here on Pentecost. We've known him with the start of the United Church of God II, I call it, after Kogwa in 2011 when I visited there. And then we have Derek Pringle there in the back, the white person. And then you have Phileas Jerry next to Derek Pringle. He also has a radio program, and he's a well-known radio personality in the eastern province. He does a farm show every week, you know. So his voice is known. He's known as a person who does the farm program, and also he does the Beyond Today program. So that program is very successful. The church is really grown. And then squatting down is Luke Bonda, who is the pastor of Lusaka, the capital, and the Outlying Churches, which are about six or seven groups. Now people can't—let me just explain this—can't just drive to church every week. What's the attendance like? Well, some of them can only get together, you know, in small groups, you know, two, three families, and they may go through a booklet, whatever. And that's why we make the feast a big deal for them, because this is a chance for them to get eight to ten sermons. And not only that, you know, when I'm still working out the schedule for the feast, they say, what about the Bible studies? We want a Bible study after every sermon. So we have a sermon, we have a church service at ten, we'll have lunch, and then we'll have a Bible study. We expect that from you. And so this is an opportunity for us to kind of force-feed them because they want it. That's about the only way that they can. And so we try to make the feast as available as possible to as many people as we can.

Okay, just to show you again the location of Zambia. And here is, I asked them to please get me a big map of Zambia. And so we circled all the places where there are church services. The eastern province there, you see in the blue, that's towards Mozambique and the country of Malawi.

And then up to the north, that's 600 miles to the north, now Zambia is about the size of Texas. It's 15% larger than Texas. As I said, it has a population of 22.4 million people, as I checked this morning. And then you have the Copper Belt churches to the left. And then you have, of course, the Mufalira church. These are the four main areas. Oh, I guess I... Yeah, way to the upper right is the churches there in Isoka and Kala Kanya. And these are the ones that very rarely visited by anybody, but now we have Patrice and his wife, Gifft, who manage that area, doing a very, very good job. We also got all of our pastors' Starlink communications. And now talking to our pastors is just as good as me talking to Steve Buchanan. I mean, it's very, very clear. It was a very, very good investment. It cost about $1,000 per pastor to put that in, but it's worth it. And one of our pastors, Phileas Jerry, who has no electricity at home, now has solar panels and is able to communicate with us on Starlink. And after the feast, we're starting classes, a Sunday class. We're asking some pastors to come to us to talk about ministerial matters and do a class early Sunday morning for us. They're six hours later for them. But that's way up in the north. And like I said, the main highway that runs through Africa in the east runs through Isoka. And it's interesting that this area, back at the time of World War I, was very, very... war between the British and the Germans was going on here, because Tanzania is the next country over. And that was a German colony. The fascinating history of that area. So here's our three-day conference. The pastors and their wives seated. We had a lot of robust discussion. We talked about ministerial matters, management of churches, finances. We did lots of talking. And this is in that Mufalira Church Hall. See Bev there, with her white hair. And here's Derek addressing the group. But they were just... the bonding that took place between us. I look upon these people as brothers and sisters, as I would anybody in the United States. We had the caretaker made us lunch every day. See that big white blob? Bev doesn't eat it, but I do. I like it. It's like cream of wheat. It tastes like grits, which is basically this cornmeal. But that is the main staple of the people in Zambia, also in Malawi. And that's what they eat all week long with greens. They might have meat once a week. That's a Sabbath treat with a little bit of tomato sauce on top. They tell you just the kind of the way that they live. And so when we bring them to the feast, we have a special treat for them. They get meat every day. Can you believe it? They get chicken every day. And they're so happy with that.

And so there was a chance for us to fellowship at lunch, where we'd discuss some of the things at lunch. We'd discuss as much stuff as any place about church, about lives, our kids, everything. They eat with their hands, and they usually take that in SEMA it's called. It's the grits. They roll it up with little balls, and they eat it. And they hardly see forks and knives. One time we were headed for one of the outback churches. I remember our driver calling ahead, the cubics are coming, have some forks.

God, it struck me. He wasn't wanting me to hear that. But, get some forks, the cubics are coming.

Here's to the pastor's wife, Josephine, to the left, Luke Bonda's wife, and gift. Wonderful ladies. Wonderful ladies. And here's Roderick Ipomba. He's one of our newer pastors. He pastors at four churches to the Northwest. He's also, he also handles UIC summer camp, or it's actually wintertime, you know, for them. But they have camp right now. In fact, it's ending tomorrow. Tomorrow's the last day. Today's the last service, and camp is down in Varino at the home church of Lusaka. But Roderick, he does a very effective program. In fact, I did a couple podcasts. I did one with him and Derek Pringle. You can hear them, and I really advise you too, on the Cubic Report. They're about a 45-minute talk about our work over there and what they do. They have a very interesting discussion. And here's Phileas, online here, doing the Beyond Today radio program. He's the one who first got us into radio there because of his connection with Zambian radio. And he used to be a correspondent for Zambia Broadcasting in the Netherlands and in England at one time. So he's very knowledgeable about the broadcast industry. He's very articulate and writes very well. He just writes very well. I just really enjoy him. He has a really detailed program for us while we go out there for the Sabbath Before Atonement and the Day of Atonement.

But what he did was take World Tomorrow television programs like Gary Peve. He would include his English introduction. Then he would go on in one of the Zambian languages, Kowunda, and then end it with Gary Peve. He was very effective. He started off with an American preacher, went to Phileas, and ended up with whoever, Steve Myers, Darris McNeely. And he did this very effectively. And it's still very, very effective. And he does an hour program. Hour program every week. And here's Roderick. He does a program also once a week. He speaks 15 languages. 15 languages. And that's him and his wife Patricia there in front of our church hall. This person on the right, his name is Jacob Chipmbele. He's now a partner in an accounting firm.

And before this, you should read his story. It's on our LifeNets website. He was, in the year about 2009 or 2008, his mother, his father died. His mother had five children. She was taking care of them. And then she died. He was a child. So they were orphans. And then, as he was getting to be closer to the age of 18 or so, we gave him a LifeNets scholarship for accounting. And he became an accountant. And now he is our church treasure. He just does a fantastic job. He pays all the ministers. He does all the books. Whatever Bev writes to him—Bev's kind of our connection here financially—he writes back right away just extremely smooth operation with Jacob. So he's a LifeNets success story of what can be done. And this is just one of many.

There's Luke Banda. Happy-go-lucky, gentlemen. Then, after the conference, the next day, we left at 4 a.m. to go up to Isokah—14-hour drive. 14-hour drive on horrible roads. And this was the main highway between South Africa and Egypt. This is full of trucks. And here we are passing these trucks at 4 a.m. because they weren't allowed on the road till 4 a.m. and so we want to get ahead of this big group. Here we are, stop after stop after stop. Police stop you all the time. At one time, they stopped Derek and Derek, what do you want? Always wanted to say hello. Okay, but we don't normally have policemen come just because they want to say hello, but they did to Derek. When we went up to Isokah there, Pringles told us, there's just a really great place to stop for breakfast. And so this was on a previous trip, but this was similar. It's a great place to stop for breakfast. So I was expecting to come there, you know, waitress coming by here. What would you like? Number three on the menu or whatever. No, it's just this wide spot on the road where we could stop and eat.

They weren't even trying to be funny with us. It's a great place to stop. She gets out the cooler and we get sandwiches. So here we are at one of our meal stops.

But people care unbelievable loads. Here's just looks like a teenager carrying this amount of sticks, which would then be used for cooking.

This is the church in Isokah. We got up there. It's only about 30-40 miles from the Tanzanian border, and they welcomed us very warmly. And here's a water tank and borehole that we put in. On the church property, they own both their church buildings, and people from all over the community come there to get water. Some of them had to walk two or three miles several times a day to get water. Water is such a big thing. There's no city water. You have to get to a borehole. Boreholes cost about $2,000 to $3,000 to $4,000. And so we have this one here. Plus, we put a pump and we pump it into a 10,000 liter—sorry—3,000 gallon tank.

Here's a village woman that saw we were there. She's not a member of the church, and she just went to Bev and just thanked her up and down. She says, I've been walking for water two miles a day, several times, and this well has been a real lifesaver to us. You just don't realize how what to us is a small thing—a $4,000, $4,000, $5,000 gift—what it does to change the community and even the apparent visibility of the church.

Here's your church building. They have one of the highest attendances. They have about 80 people that meet on the Sabbath. That's what the report said last week. And this is the only transportation they have. They have a church motorcycle. And these are the two pastors' sons. By the way, this is the little man there on the left with the cane. He is brought into church on the church motorcycle. There he is in the middle, two of the pastor's sons sitting around him, taking him home after services.

Now, the road leading up to this road to the church is about a half a mile. They had to have a work party for the church the day before we came to make the road passable for our Land Rover, for Land Cruiser. Here you see, this is a typical scene, carrying 40, 50, 60 pound loaves on their heads. And the woman's got a baby on her back. And it's just so normal.

Then, after the Sabbath, we had another service on Sunday, because we couldn't do them both on the Sabbath, in Calaukanya, which is the feast site. And so they rented this flatbed here to bring much of the church from Isoka over to Calaukanya, and they had a little bit of mechanical problems that they fixed. Here's the pastor, Patrice, and his wife, Gif, again. When you're there in church, you have the church symbols, you've got the United Church of God, the songs are the same ones we sing. It's beautiful. Here's Derek making some announcements. And then we had a translator. Most of the men know English. The women usually don't. So we have services translated into their local language. Zambia has 49 languages, and the British said, enough, enough, you know, it's going to be English only. But nonetheless, the people locally speak their local language, and usually the women don't get English instruction. So we have, this is called Hewitt. He was his name Hewitt. He was translating our services. But you feel like I could be right here with these people. And here's special music.

So no amplification needed usually. They did a real good job. The one thing that they really enjoy the women's enrichment weekends, which for them is women's enrichment week. And so they usually make uniform shirts, usually announcing the event. This is last year, which was Unity, was the theme for that. But they wore their shirts on the Sabbath. They had their women's enrichment week in July, and camp, like I said, is still going on right now. Here's the pastor, and his wife, and his kids. Got five, four, four boys, and one girl. And see, again, the women just really look forward to these weekends. They wear these katongas. They monogram them. They put lettering on them. They just love doing it. Here's another uniform that they had for another day. So special music, as you see, is different, you know, there than here, but nonetheless. And I, it almost sounds harsh, you know, what in the world are they saying? But they're really sweet words about the kingdom of God and salvation. So then we spent the whole afternoon out there at Calacania. They're preparing for the feast. We're also putting an extra borehole there and a pump.

These you see up there to the left, and that's the Calacania Church building.

And here is what it looks like inside. They look pretty small on the outside, but then here's what it is on the inside.

Here's the minister's wives. Kids everywhere, young people. In fact, I had trouble with them. They report their attendance.

And I say, attendance 25. I said, well, was it more than that? Yeah, with 25 and 40 kids. I said, kids are people. You know, our pastors here put the whole number in. And I still know, even after two or three months now, they still want to put down the number of kids. Because I said, we count everybody, every soul, for church.

You see, just kids everywhere. They come up. They're just sweet as could be. Just wonderful.

Then us guys had a big discussion there on the grounds.

Just had a wonderful afternoon. And virtually everybody speaks English except for the ladies that you would have trouble with. But they stood by their husband, and we could still communicate with them. This is the road. Now, on our way back from the same road, but you see here's a typical pothole. They're just terrible. And accidents galore. Like this one, for example. Here's a semi-trailer truck. You saw this regularly. He had a tanker that overturned and burst into frame, and burned. They've been sitting there for who knows how long. Now, Derek Pringle is also a game warden.

And so, whenever we take a trip, he puts his game warden decals on his truck very prominently, because we get through police checks just a lot more quickly. That was the one time when the police would stop. He'd say, how are you doing? Derek's just fine. Here's another semi-jack-knifed. And I would not advise anybody driving that distance. Derek knows the roads. I mean, he's just amazing as to getting us there and back alive. On the way back, we stopped at this one game reserve area, which is a unique place on the earth, right on the African Rift. And I could show you a lot more slides, but the lions are around us. They offered a guide just to take you around.

It's quite open. I don't have too many pictures, but it's a very, very beautiful area of Africa, but so far away. No electricity there at all. And even their Starlink antenna was all solar-powered. But I could communicate back to the United States with no problem at all, just through Starlink. I'm a real believer in that. Here's some of the beautiful, wild area of that. It was thought about having a Challenger Camp, possibly, there, but it would be very expensive because it's...

you had to take that ugly road, you know, up there. And there's no... here's a bridge that we had to cross. Barely got across it. And I think it worried us that we had to cross it back.

Here's a Protea, a prominent flower from South Africa that was growing throughout the park.

There's a group of people. We were the only guests that were staying overnight there, so it's not a place with a lot of tourists. And we got to know them. We had dinner altogether with them at the restaurant. And we said, we'd like to pray. Oh yeah, that'd be great, you know. And they said, we're Christians, you know. So we traded prayers for the meals.

Anytime you stop, you have somebody come out of the bush, wanted to sell you a live chicken. Or, you know, other items. We weren't in the market for live chickens. But anyway, he posed for that picture. And boreholes. Borehole drilling is big, big, because that is their lifeline. There are a lot of borehole companies. And like I said, we have spent, for boreholes, anywhere from $1,500 to $8,000. Depends about how deep it goes and how far they have to drive out with their drilling equipment. But boreholes are big. Bev and I are into the world of boreholes here the last 15 years. I thought this is a strange name for a meat company, termites meat company.

I might talk to their advertising department to see if they understood that.

This is back at the Pringle home. They had a bunch of bananas growing there. You just got to peel your banana off. Those are real bananas. And they just had the elections just last week. And their incumbent president was re-elected. But campaigns slowly and oftentimes in those countries say no to corruption. Say no to corruption for the other guy. But with me, it's different. Now we come to the feast site in Lusaka. This is property that we bought in about 2004. We've had it for 22 years. And it's about 14 acres just outside of Lusaka. A very desirable piece of property that's gone up in value in quite a bit. And we have really developed it. And are developing it further. It's a little far from out of town. Not really by our standards. It's about 25 minutes drive from town center. But for the people there, it's pretty far. They really can't get out there. And the problem is, the only other way they travel is by bus. And that's expensive. They just can't do it. So we have to work with these problems. Actually, we bought a bus. We had one person that called me and said, I'd like to do something for LifeNets as one project. And I said, he says, we don't have—I'm not sure what he said they had, but I said, what would you like? I said, well, we could really use a bus for Lusaka. So we checked with Japan. And I said, he was offering $20,000. And I said, could you make it $30,000? And sure enough, he said, sure, sure. So we bought a bus which was arrived in Tanzania last Friday. It should be last Friday. And it's now being driven down. And it will be used for transport, for use, for church. And we will hold regular services now in the Lusaka area. Here's where the people meet. It's not really a building, but it's a shelter, but it's adequate. They've been using this shelter now for 16 years, or since the year 2004. So that's a long time, 22 years, and it works. They just have these big guards there around to keep the dust out. And here's song services. And here's Jacob, like I told you about his story. And here's the other miracle. His name is Sylvester and Jovu. He's extremely, extremely reliable. He works as a...what's it called?

Procurement. Procurement for a company. And he's the one who's arranging for our bus. We also bought a car. We bought a car so that we could have a car while we were there. The pastor has seven churches and no car. So he has to rely upon the two cars from our two graduates to get out there. And I think it's not fair to do that. He needs to have transportation. And here's some of our graduate students and current scholarship students in the Lusaka area. And here's the other leaders from the churches around when we were there. They had them come in. Everybody's dressed to a tea, you know. This little fellow's name is Victor. He named him after me. And he said, I'm Victor. I'm named after you. So...

He's a Facebook friend now. And here's Luke, his wife Josephine. And here's the last day of our visit with Derek and Cherry. We stayed at the hotel about 20, 25 minutes away. That's where we're going to be staying for the feast here next month. And we did a podcast, which you'll find interesting if you look it up. The women had a Women's Enrichment Week. This was in July. They had 77 women from Lusaka. And they also, because the Isaka was so far away, they decided to have their own. They had 44 women there. But gift, the pastor's wife, is extremely capable of organizing it. And she did a great job. Then here's U's Camp. That's big for them. We had it all in one place this year at the main festival grounds at Vereno. It's a UYC spelled out for the students. And here's a picture that was taken three days ago of volleyball there. And here's a bus that we bought, like I told you, we bought a bus for the Lusaka area and is being delivered right now, somehow this coming week. And hopefully all is in place.

So I hope that you can pray for these people. I just wanted to give you kind of open your eyes a little bit to what's going on in other places. 640 people. That's more than in Canada. That's more than in Australia. I mean, it's not just a bunch of black people who are ignorant. Who are ignorant. They're very intelligent, especially if we help them with education and to help them with things that don't... Our pastors are paid $200 a month.

That's what we pay them. Of course, we give the one in Lusaka an extra $40 because of cost of living. I mean, it's... then they also have to... they have their own farms, sometimes even another job. But we stretch our expenses out as much as we can. They tithe. But then there's a quite big question about tithing. What do they tithe? Phileas Jerry had people bring in bags of maize and stacked it up in a church hall. You know, hauled off. They don't have regular income. Some have nothing. Nothing. They just live off the land. You have to adjust for the people that are there. You can't have Western norms applied to those parts of the world. And these are areas that we cannot ignore. We have to give them support. But you'll be amazed as to how cogent and articulately sound in Church of God doctrine. So we're looking forward to having them give sermons to the feast. I'm looking forward to hearing them. I'll be speaking, of course. And it's amazing that when I put the word out, we need people to come to Zambia for the feast. We only had very few and yet to some other feasts overseas, people, you know, not that I'm complaining. I'm sort of complaining that, you know, people don't choose Zambia as their number one. Maybe it's too far down the alphabet. But anyway, it's an area that it will change your life, you know, if you were to go there. So thank you very much. I just wanted to share this experience that Bev and I have had now for 26 years.