We started saying yes, and the next thing you know, I'm preaching at, three in the morning from our driveway in our minivan with my telephone and my bible, and I'm preaching to a church in Kenya, the time zone, and all this other stuff. But it was so exciting to be preaching around the world from my driveway, and it started teaching us some things of, the reach that we could have here with technology and just saying yes. Well, hello again, and welcome to the Trim the Wick podcast. I'm Dan.
And I'm Becky.
And we are back with you again this week, and we are excited to share something with you. We, I know we say that kind of thing.
We say that we're excited about everything.
But this thing, this is one of those things that is our passion, and this is one of the main reasons why we do what we do. We believe very strongly at trim the wick, and we have basically kind of three pillars of, trim the wick. we want to focus on the family and marriage and the family dynamic. We also want to focus with the churches and leadership and building up the church and beautifying the church. And we also have this passion for this work overseas.
Right. We believe that the body of Christ is a whole body. When the scripture says that all the gifts are meant to build up and edify one another, that's not just the group that you meet with every single week or the group that you meet with once a month on a bigger regional scale. His body is worldwide.
We had the privilege a couple years ago, which kind of flung us. It kind of pushed us out.
That's a good word.
And just to give you an idea, Becky and I had been working in ministry for years. Becky had started her own business. I was doing some work with a church. I all of a sudden, in a meeting, got this call or got this feeling that I needed to get my passport. Now I was in my forties, this calling, basically, that I had to get my passport. I remember coming home to Becky and saying, becky, I've got to get my passport. Because, I really feel like God's calling
me to get my passport. I don't know where I'm going.
Your exact words were, if I don't get my passport, I'm being disobedient to God.
Yeah.
And I went, okay, let's get the passport then.
Yeah. So we had no means reason, but I got it and went through the process, got my passport, and within a few months after doing that, I was in another country preaching.
That's right. The lord connected you with the man that became your mentor and started traveling regularly with him.
Yep. And so I started working with a ministry called Heart of Titus. We traveled down to South America and Ecuador, primarily, and Peru and stuff. And then you got your passport.
Right?
And we got the kids their passport, and this thing started to kind of grow in us of, foreign missions and preaching the gospel around the world and reaching out around the world.
But I hadn't gone right. You know, I hadn't been to any of the south american mission trips, and this had been a couple of years that you had been traveling. You had gotten very, very involved in going. You were going four or five times a year. Each time it was. It was, I'm glad you're going, and I will pray and support you from home. And, yeah, I've got my passport, but this isn't my trip.
The thing is with tours of my travels that I was doing is that, you know, we didn't have the money, we didn't have the means, but we worked really hard, did some extra things, volunteer things that ended up paying us, and we were able to raise the money to go. So I was going on these trips, and like you said, I was going four times in a year. There was this neat thing that happened, and this is where it gets exciting for you.
Yes.
I got introduced to some guys from kenya. I helped out with a conference, and I helped out with these guys from Kenya and got talking to them, and the next thing I knew, they had.
Come to our city. Yeah, right. Again with this. This same gentleman who was your mentor also was very involved in beginning a pastor's group in our local area. And through this pastor's group, one of the pastors had a lot of connections in Africa and, Kenya among them, and he had brought some of these gentlemen that he was connected to over, and they were doing an ordination service, but they needed a sound guy.
Yeah. And I jumped in.
Right.
And just ran the sound for them.
You got to go be the sound guy. And making that connection with them began a conversation. That conversation led to an invitation. You said yes.
Yeah, well, and that's the thing is, you know, one of the things that Becky and I have put as a hallmark of our life, or just what we do, is that we say yes until God tells us to say no.
Right.
Until God tells us to say, stop doing that, or don't do that, or don't go. There we go. Okay. Yes. We're gonna keep following if the door's open to what we'll walk through it. What ministry is calling? We're gonna go through it until God, you tell us, stop. So we had that and we started saying yes. And I started doing things for this guy. And the next thing you know, I'm preaching at three in the morning from our driveway from, I'm out in the yard, or
I'm out in the. In our minivan with my telephone and my bible, and I'm preaching to a church in Kenya. It was. It was funny because the time zone and all this other stuff, but it was so exciting to be preaching around the world from my driveway.
Right.
And it started teaching us some things of, the reach that we could have here with technology and with just being able. Just saying yes and being able to minister over there. I did that multiple times. one of the times, they set up the sound system, they said there was so many people were coming to the church, and he sent me photos, but so many people were coming to church, they had to put, speakers outside
the church. So when I preached, it was just being broadcast all over the village and everything else. But this just started stirring a thing in us that we needed to go to Africa and we needed to go to Kenya. And that's where it gets exciting for you, because I was thinking, well, should I go? Should I not go? Should I go? Who should I take with me? And you said immediately, hi, I'm right here. Yeah. So she was like, I'm going with you, and we've got to work this out and figure this out.
It was a conversation, actually, because there were several people that you had been to South America with over the time period that you had been traveling, and you were like, yeah, you know, I've been praying over it, and I just. I don't think this one. And I don't think this one.
Right.
You know, I kind of thought this one. And I talked to him and he's like, no. And the whole time I was just. I was sitting there and it was a difference in my heart. Every time he had gone to South America, every time you had approached one of those trips, I was fine, with you going and going with the team that God had put together, and I was fine with being the one that stayed home, took care of our four kids, and allowed you to go and
do where God had called you to do. But this one came up and it was, you are not going without me.
Yeah.
If you're not going to think of me and ask me to be your primary teammate on this one, I'm going to tell you you're not going without me. Yeah.
So, yeah, so that was one person, and then I needed a third person because we wanted to have three in our team. Prayed and we prayed, and then there was a gentleman that I had known but had moved away to another part of the country.
We hadn't spoken in, what, eight months or so.
Yeah. It had almost been a year since we talked, and I literally called him up and said, josh, I'm going to Kenya. I want you to go with me. Are you gonna go? And he called. He actually, I left him the message. I actually didn't talk to him. I left him a message. He called me back. He's like, dude, you're not gonna believe this, but I've literally been thinking about going back to Africa. He said yes.
He said yes. And so we had our team.
We had our team, and none of.
Us had any money to go.
No. So that was kind of one of the big things that when you're doing missions and you're doing foreign missions, it's expensive.
Yes. You know, flights to Kenya are not cheap.
Hotel to Kenya, food to Kenya. The shots that you have to get.
The passport, the yellow fever shot, y'all, and $500 right there.
Yeah. So, you know, all these things, you. It just added up. And the time I was working full time, you had your business, but your business is seasonal, right? So it's not like it's income coming in, all the time. So we prayed. We prayed and we sought God, and we said, okay, God, we feel like you're calling us. We know you're calling us. We're. The team is set. We got to have the money, and we know that you can provide. And little by little, the money came in. Little by little, money kept
coming in, and it was. It was amazing because we had people who we had not talked to in years. But we got on Facebook or we got on whatever marketplace, and we were getting messages saying, hey, we'll send you $20, or we'll send you this. We'll send. We had people who were not even believers in Jesus Christ, who are not christians, who were donating to us because they loved us, and they were like, listen, we know what you're going to do is a good work.
Even though we don't even believe in christianity, we know what you're going to do because we believe your hearts. So we're gonna give you money.
Right.
I mean, amazing. And the same thing happened with Josh. Josh had some people just donating him money and had some things with his job. And it all worked out to where the money was there. And you know what? We also worked for it, and our kids helped.
It became a family thing. There was a local, triathlon company. They run triathlon races in our area. They said, hey, if your family, there's six of us, we're a crew. if your family will come and help us run these races, handing out water to the athletes, being mile markers to let them know where to go. If you'll come out and help with setup and help with tear down, we will give a percentage of the race intake to your family.
Right.
For these trips that you're doing. And so our kids, man, y'all talk about kids jumping in when they were receiving nothing from this.
No.
00 every Saturday morning to go man races.
Yeah.
And, man, they jumped on board, and they had great attitudes about it, and they were excited. When you say yes to God, it impacts your family.
That's another thing we should talk about real quick, because we were going all the way around the other side of the world, and we have four kids. And at the time, all of our kids were under the age of 18, except for one. Our benjamin was over 18, but all of our kids were younger. We kind of said, okay, God, we're gonna do what you're calling us to do, but you need to protect our kids.
Right.
And take care of them. And it was a pretty awesome thing because they got to grow, and they got to see mom and dad really.
Step out on faith, and they got to walk in faith of their own. We prayed together as a family. We sat before God and entrusted God with each other's well being. And we didn't hide the realities from our kids. We said, hey, listen, this is Africa. It's the other side of the world.
Yep. Hm.
Things happen. People get sick. Car wrecks happen.
Yep.
We are trusting that God's gonna care for you, and we are trusting that God's gonna care for us, and we are praying that he's gonna bring us back together at the end of this trip. But if he doesn't, yeah, that's okay, too.
Yeah. And that's a weird conversation to have with your kids, that.
Yes, it is.
You know, we might not be coming back from this, and we need to have a serious conversation about that. And it definitely, kind of woke our kids up on some things, but they were all for it, not us not coming back, right?
No, they weren't all.
They were all for us going. But it was a thing of, you know, you get to see the maturity in Christ in your kids. because we had been pouring into them and teaching them and now, they were getting to see us step out and they were getting to step up in a way that was fantastic.
We saw a boldness and a fearlessness begin to develop in our kids. That was different than just, yeah, I'm not afraid of stuff.
Right.
it was, I trust God because I know that no matter what the outcome is, he's got me.
Right.
So we got all the money in.
Yep.
Some, of it we worked for. Some of it God just handed to us through the body of Christ. And we bought our plane tickets and we were ready to go. We had the whole itinerary all set. We knew where we were going to be. We were going to spend some time in Nairobi, then we were going to go out to western Kenya and then we were going to come home and it was going to be wonderful.
Yep. So we're ready to go. It's all good. And I get a phone call about a week before we leave. Hm. And it's the sponsor who is sponsoring us coming. And, he's a little upset at me because he finds, out that I was going to be preaching in a church in Nairobi.
Right?
I said, yeah, I'm going to be preaching. I was invited to preach in Nairobi. This will be before I come to you because I'm going to be in Nairobi for a few days. So we're going to preach at a church and then I will be with you out in, western Kenya, right? He goes, no, I don't want you to preach in that church in Nairobi. I said, you don't want me to preach. Why?
It was a little stronger than that. It was. I didn't give you permission.
Yeah. He goes, I didn't give you permission to preach. And so I just asked him m, I said, okay, sir. Actually, I didn't ask him. I said, well, I don't ask you to preach. I take my orders from the father above, right? And he goes, no, I didn't give you permission to preach in Nairobi. So you're not going to do it. And I said, yes, I am. Which then he hung up the phone on me. So then I, get a call from him a day later, right?
And he says, you're not coming. I'm not going to sponsor you anymore, because you are in disobedience, because you will not obey me. And I said, well, sir, I'm not in disobedience and I'm not going to obey you on this because, I believe that I go where God calls me to go, not where man tells me to go. So we are, like, five, six days out from the trip, right? And, our sponsor has now said he's no longer gonna sponsor us.
We are not invited to speak in his place.
I have nowhere to preach in western Kenya. And then the pastor in Nairobi, which caused all the problem, he calls me and says, I've got an opportunity to leave and go to another country. So I will not be in Nairobi when you're here.
So I cannot receive you.
I cannot receive you. And so now we are literally six days away from getting on a plane, flying across the country, or flying across the world. And, we have nowhere to go. Let me tell you. That hit hard.
Yes.
That was a, you know, that was a crisis of faith, because we were like, God, you told us we were going, God, you got all this set up. You provided the money. You provided the funds. You opened all the doors for us to do what we needed to do. What do we do now? And we prayed, right? And I called Josh and told Josh, and I said, let's pray. And then you said, we have the tickets.
We're gonna go, and God's gonna provide somebody.
And we were like, yep, that's what we're gonna do. It doesn't matter. There'll be someone there to receive us, right? We called Josh and said, hey, Josh, we're gonna still go. Do you want to go with us? We're gonna find a man apiece. There's gonna be someone there who will receive us. And Josh was like, let's do it. Let's go. Yeah, we were ready. We were excited. We're scared to death now because we had no idea.
Well, five days away from leaving, I get a call from my mentor and said, I just talked to somebody. He knows, somebody in Nairobi who will receive you and somebody in western Kenya who would receive you. And I was like, okay, sure. So the next thing I know, I'm talking to a gentleman in Nairobi. Have no idea who he is. He has no idea who I am. And he is saying, you're welcome. Come, come, come. We'll be here
for you. Okay. That's it. And then I talked to the guy in Eldoret or western Kenya, and he's like, you're welcome. Come. We have things. We'll be ready for you. Okay, so we're going over the next couple days, we prayed hard.
Yes, we did.
And we sought God's face, had to, calm our fears and to get excited for what God was doing. See, Satan was really trying to steal our joy.
He was.
He was really trying to, turn this into something that we despised instead of something that we would love doing.
Right.
And then the next thing you know, we're on a plane.
On a really, really long flight.
On a long flight that we had a flight that we had never taken before, as in distance.
Right.
We ended up in Amsterdam and had no idea. Yeah. Had a layover there. Didn't know what was going on. It was early in the morning, got on another plane and ended up in Nairobi. And the next morning.
Yes.
And it was beautiful. We had no idea where we were going. We had an Airbnb picked out, y'all.
We didn't know what these people looked like that we were meeting.
We had no idea.
That is one place where the lord had really gone ahead of us. we had booked an Airbnb for Nairobi and we were talking to our Airbnb host and we said, we need to get there. Our plane is landing so late at night. And.
No, this was early in the morning.
Was it?
Yeah, this trip. It was early in the morning.
Okay. It was an inconvenient time. Yeah. And we weren't sure that we wanted to trust Uber or things like that. And she said, oh, no, no, no problem. My nephew. Yeah, my nephew will drive you. Her nephew. He showed a driver.
Yep. And he had a beautiful van, which was nice because cars are very small. And, we loaded up in the van and headed over to the house. The house was great. And then we were going to meet this guy who just on a phone call said he was going to meet us and be there for us. All of a sudden, Pastor Steve shows.
Up with his wife.
With his wife. We meet him for the very first time. The moment we met him, it was just like brothers.
Yes.
We just hugged each other and I was so grateful for him. And it was just like. It was amazing. That first moment where we met that time was fantastic. And we had an amazing stay in Nairobi.
Yes. He showed us so much of what their culture is. And Pastor Steve and Pastor Mary, all of their ministry is done in the slums of Nairobi. So we were not going to the biggest churches. We were not going to the wealthiest patrons of the city. We were going to the poorest of the poor and ministering at that time, Pastor, Steve and Mary, every Saturday morning they were feeding about four to 600 kids. Depended on the week. they were feeding about four to 600 kids out of whatever
they could raise. We're just loving on people and preaching Jesus.
Yep. And they had a very small. It was a small church, very small building.
nine women and one man.
Nine women, one man. And we prayed and we preached and we taught and God just did some amazing things that week that we were in Nairobi, in the slums, you know, that's where our heart just was broken and was completely molded, you know, into his form that he had for us, for Kenya, because there was so much that we saw on that first trip that it just, changed everything we thought about Kenya. It changed everything we thought about Africa. Just pulled us. I mean, it was. It just pulled us.
Yeah. One of the beautiful things that came from it is we really did go not knowing what we were bringing because the whole mission shifted, right. Less than a week ahead. So we didn't know. We had no pre planned messages. We didn't know what the Holy Spirit was sending us there for, what he was going to put in our mouths to say. And one of the things that we learned is that principle that we started this with, that the body of Christ needs each other
across cultural boundaries. we have learned so much from our connection with Pastor Steve and Mary. We didn't go there to take the american perspective. We didn't go there to take american wealth. We didn't have any, we didn't go there to just go. We're going to come in and we're going to rescue, and we're going to pour out. We came to go. Holy Spirit, what are you doing in your church with the connections that you are building here? When we first met Pastor Steve, he is
a man of great passion. Yes. He, and his wife grew up in the very slums that he ministers in. And one of the first principles that he shared with us from his perspective and what the Holy Spirit has put in him and the goals that he is working towards is that it is not his goal to rescue people up from the slums and transplant them out to more wealthy places. He said, no, no, no. Jesus Christ transforms you right where you are.
Yes.
And so he is bringing the life and the light of Jesus Christ into these dark places. And when Jesus transforms somebody, he says, hey, stick around. Let's work together. And we're going to build on the transforming power of Jesus Christ right here in the slums, so that one day the slums won't be slums anymore.
Right.
And that's his heart and his goal. And he has Jesus Christ at the base. And he is meeting the physical, tangible needs as well as the spiritual need. He is ministering to the whole person a lot like Jesus did.
Yeah. And it's, it's beautiful to see. And when you're there, like I said, it was humble beginnings. Now he's running a couple hundred in that church every Sunday and it's amazing. And we're going to talk about that. And that's something we're going to go over over the next few months and time, as you get to know us more and get to know what we're doing. We know that you've probably gone to our website, if you haven't already, at ah, Matthew two.
And you can see on our page we have a work overseas, page talking about this. And we also have areas where you can donate and be a part of the work that we're doing over there. And working with Steve in Nairobi and feeding the children is just one thing that we're doing over there. And we're going to get into all that a little bit more. But we spent a week in Nairobi, had a wonderful time. Then we get on a little prop plane and fly out to western Kenya. We meet up with another guy, pastor.
Brian and his wife Emmy.
And his wife Emmy and his beautiful daughter precious. And we had no idea what he looked like. We walk out of the airport and no one is there to greet us. And then all of a sudden we see a car pull up and we see one guy get out of the car, two guys get out of the car. 3456 people get out of this little car. And there's three of us and our luggage gotta get into that car. And they're like, they're like, pastor Dan. And I'm like, you must be Pastor Brian.
And so we give a bunch of hugs and they were. It was a bunch of the pastors.
It was the whole leadership team that.
Had come out to see us and they had all driven in the car to see us. But then we loaded all of our stuff in the car and they all jumped in the bus and rode the bus back, home and stuff. But that meeting again, it was just like when we met Steve in Nairobi. The instantaneous just brotherhood and being able to just connect almost immediately. We just loved Brian and Emmy and it was just an amazing connection.
Yes. Brian and emmy actually invited us into their home.
Yeah.
And we stayed in their home. They gave up their bedroom and slept in the living room, so that we could have a place to sleep. We discovered it's not unusual for them. They very frequently housed and put a roof over members of the congregation that were in need. Once we kind of got going with Brian and Emmy after we had spent that first night in their home, it was very different in Nairobi. We had just gone to a couple of churches. We had gone to the Kaiole slum and then to the Coragocho
slum. And it was back and forth between the two slum areas, ministering in the churches, back into the car, back to the airbnb, for safety's sake. our pastor Steve and Pastor Mary were very protective of that. Pastor Brian and Emmy, their situation is a little bit different. And so they do have their main church in el Dorado, and we were privileged to minister there. But we also got the grand tour.
Yes.
Didn't we?
Yes, we did.
We got to go up onto Mount Elgon, where they are from, and got to go work with several of the village churches that were up on Mount Elgon. And that year we were there in the rainy season.
Yes, we were.
It had rained and there were washouts and we had the little four door toyota that could.
And we had to dig it out of the mud.
We did. We've got pictures more than once.
but it was a great time and it was an amazing time. That first opportunity that we got to travel to Kenya, to go to Nairobi and then out into western Kenya, that was a total God experience because we said yes. And then when the door kind of got shut in our face, we said yes again.
Right.
And then God has opened up something that's even greater than we could imagine. The work that we're doing now, seven years later. And we continue to do now, is kind of what has spurred us in trim the wick. And it's the main focus of our overseas work.
And we were actually asked about that. Trim the wick wasn't even in our minds the first trip that we went. But out in that western Kenya area, there is a town called Soy Sambu, and there is a widow's community there. I will never forget the first time we met with those ladies. Pastor Mary heads up the widow's community, and there's a lot of backstory to that. We'll probably do a whole episode on them at some point. But Margaret looked at us and she had been
familiar. She had lived in the big city. She hadn't just spent her entire life out on Mount Eldon, and she had lived in the big city and she had encountered people that looked like us before.
Yeah.
Everybody, that she had ever encountered that looked like us wanted something. And she looked us straight in the eye after we had prayed together and said, I just need to ask you, what's your agenda?
Yeah, what do you want?
And, y'all, the truth is Holy Spirit had sent us there.
Yeah.
And Holy Spirit was teaching us that. Yeah. We came with words. We came with teaching. We came with prophecy. We came with what God has gifted us in.
Right.
but we also came to receive what the church there has. And let me tell you, the american church needs what the kenyan church has. And so that became the passion of our hearts, really, is to connect the church here to the church there, so that together we become the body of Christ.
Yeah. We want to kind of close up because we could start talking about Kenya and go on and on, hours and hours and hours. And we probably are going to do that, but we're not going to do it in one sitting. We just want this to be an encouragement to you to say yes to.
God, even if it looks impossible.
Even if it looks impossible. Especially if it looks impossible. say yes to God and trust him. You know, we're looking forward to seeing where this goes. And we are still. Just because we came back home and we've been there and been back home, we're not done.
Not even close.
The kenyan story is growing and growing and growing and continues, to be written, so we'll have more and more to share about that. Well, thank you guys so much for listening and being part of what we're doing this week. We love you all.
thank you for letting us share our passion with you.
Yep. And we're looking forward to doing this a little bit more. And we've got some stories, let me tell you.
Yes, we do.
That we're gonna be able to share with you over time. Again, thank you guys so much. We love you guys. And, we'll see you next week.
All right, love you. Bye.
Love you. Bye bye.