Life at the Waterhole - Sermon, 21 Jan 2017

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to his early— his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. To him be the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Good morning. I don't know if you could see what I could see, but the young man Jeremy, who helped with the children's story, his hand was on the other microphone the whole time. And I thought to myself, one day we will hear some great sermons from Jeremy. Where are you, Jeremy?

Looking forward to that day, young man. Okay, so life at the waterhole. For the last 3 years—

3 years, that's a long time—

3 weeks. For the last 3 weeks I've been in Kenya. I got back on Wednesday and I think I'm over the jet lag. Last night I slept through, so if I fall asleep, wake me up. And if I just keep going on and on and on, it's probably because I feel like it's It's just the beginning of the day. So just point me back to my notes. I've actually written notes so that I try to tell just a few stories because there's so many amazing things that have happened during the last 3 weeks. And it's been a year in the planning going to Kenya. I met Carol and Leon. They're the 2 on the end.

And they— I've met them at camp meetings years ago, at different camp meetings.

Both of them were there talking about their work in Kenya. Carol is a retired schoolteacher in the Adventist school system, and they live in Molumba. And Leon is a very hardworking— still very hardworking builder, and he's actually building a school right now at one of the two sites we went to.

And the other place, they're thinking about building a school, but they're hiring right, right now.

They're hiring one so that they can give the children an Adventist education. So That's what I want to tell you a little bit about today is this idea of life at the waterhole. And it started for me at the end of the journey, this idea of life at the waterhole, because at the end of the 3 weeks we did a 2-day safari in Masai Mara, which is a beautiful part of Maasai land that many people tour all the way to Kenya just to go to Masai Mara.

They don't see anything else.

They just fly to Nairobi and then fly to Masai Mara and see it and then fly home. And the safari was amazing. We saw all the Big Five and the other big five. We saw lots of animals, and I'm not even sure exactly which are the Big Five because there are so many.

We saw— yeah, well, you'll see some of the pictures, but we saw the rare ones as well. We were able to see a leopard in a tree and walking later, and we were able to see two cheetahs that were brothers, and they were so well fed.

Their stomachs were just full up. But on the trip, we had this experience on the first day. What you can see here, I've zoomed in a little bit on the lion because he is in that corner up there, and you can see him sitting up there in the picture. Because what was happening here was, you can see some wildebeest down in the bottom, and they came running down in a group and drinking from the water. The lion, we had been following him for about an hour because he had been a long ways away, had been stalking a gazelle and failed. Turned around and he must have smelled these wildebeests coming to the water because he turned around and he made quite a long journey to get all the way to the water from where he was out in the savanna and he hid behind this bush and we drove up right as he was walking up and the guide said, "Oh my goodness, it's not migration time but those are wildebeests coming down that hill." And he said, "I promise you, you're going to see a kill." We didn't see a kill because what happened was after the wildebeest came down and the lion came up and hid, you can see those water buffalo walking across the back of the picture.

They are like the defenders for the animals.

And they came across, they could smell. And the front one, if you can tell, you can't really see it, but if you could zoom in on him, he's got his head back and his nose and he's smelling and he's walking straight towards the lion. And what these water buffalo do, and we saw them do it to the leopard as well, there was a water buffalo that followed us. He was walking on the track already and we passed him, and he was walking towards the leopard that was in the tree. And they stalk out the big cats, and then they just wait for them to try to annoy another animal, and then they just walk at the big cat. And they're bigger, so the cats run away. And sometimes there's a fight, but this time there wasn't. Those water buffalo just walked straight up And the lion just stood up and walked away because he was a young male and he didn't want to take his chances against the water buffalo. So after seeing this happen, there's also down in the water, you can see a little rock in the bottom corner here. Just this side of the rock where you can't see, there's two alligators.

They were all waiting.

They were ready. And I called it a non-event at the waterhole because it felt so exciting. It was going to happen. And then it didn't happen. But Carol, the lady that I showed you before, she was hoping for a non-event. She said, "I don't want to see something die. I just want to have a nice safari." And so we didn't see anything die the whole trip, actually. And at the end, Courtney said— Courtney was the young girl.

I should go back and introduce you to the people.

Courtney is the young girl there. And that's me. And then Leon and Carol are the— The people who started Education Care Projects Kenya, and they go to Kenya at least once a year.

This year, Leon's going back in just a few months to finish or continue building his school.

So the water buffalo scared the lion away, and then we watched for a little longer. The lion walked right past our car, and I got some footage. If you go— if you're an Instagram person or a Facebook person, you've probably seen them all already.

But if you want to look me up on Facebook or Instagram, you can see all the pictures and videos and everything that I put up as we were there.

And write.

I wrote lots and lots of blog entries because I'm putting together a book about the work that Education Care Project Kenya does.

And so as we were driving away, you've got 4 passionate Christians in the car, so they're all going, "Okay, what are the spiritual applications from that?" And Courtney said, "It's like the Holy Spirit.

The water buffalo are like the Holy Spirit because he comes in, he sees the devil," and the temptations and the evil lurking, and he walks towards it and he scares it away sometimes before we even know, before we even know that the devil's there.

Um, the Holy Spirit, if we're right with God and if we're asking him to send his protection, he does.

And the Holy Spirit scares things away.

He sees the enemy and defends us.

But what about the times when this doesn't happen? Sometimes bad stuff happens to good people. What then? And this is what I experienced lots and lots of in Kenya, is bad stuff happening to good people.

This little boy is Angelo, and this man next to him is my new hero named Joseph. And Joseph is a Maasai man who rescues children from ridiculously dangerous situations. Angelo, when he was born, he was born to an unwed mother, and in ancient times in Kenya, that meant that they would die the minute they were born. Sometimes the wife would die before she even had the child because it was a shame to everyone. And Angelo was allowed to be born, but then his father paid the midwife to poison the baby. And Angelo didn't die, as you can see, but he had severe fits until he was 5 or 6 years old. And his family, the people who knew him, reckon that was because of the poison. He doesn't have them anymore now.

He's—

I think he's 7 or 8 years old. But what happened was then his mother was shamed, and she had a baby who was having mental problems, and she was young, and she got so distressed that she sent Angelo off to live with his uncle when he was only 3 or 4 weeks old. And he got to his uncle's house and his uncle kept him until he was able to be weaned and was able to sell him. And this is something that they do sometimes over there. And they sold Angelo to a very rich man who sent all of his children off to boarding school, which is a very common thing in Kenya. It's the way to get a good education. But because all of this man's children were gone, there was no one to look after the cattle. Children, very, very small children walk around with sticks and cows obey them. And the little Maasai boys are amazing to watch as they just herd the cattle and whatever livestock that they have. And Angelo was purchased to be this rich man's cattle minder.

He was 2.5 years old.

He was not allowed to live in the house and he lived in just under a bush when Joseph found him. Joseph has what he calls his women in the— under the ground, and his English is fun sometimes. He has his women under the ground, and his women under the ground call him. And these women, he said, they're, they're community members in various communities. They're all Adventist women, but they, they know the people and they befriend the people because that's what Christ tells us to do, is to be friendly to our enemies. And then they learn the stories, and they often are able to go right into the house of these children and prepare the children. Well, Angelo didn't have a house, but the story came to Joseph that Angelo was living on this property that was very hard to get to. There were no roads, and many of the people in Kenya live just over rolling hills and stuff, and it was 47 kilometers of just bushland. There was a track that the rich man used to drive his car in, but Joseph knew that if he walked in on the track, he would be seen and driven away by the rich man and his servants. And so Joseph decided to go on foot through some of the bushland, or the jungle. And to do this, he did it in one night. And I said to Joseph, "47 kilometers in one night?" And he said, "Is that a long ways for you to walk?" I said, "Yes, that's a very long ways." And he said, "Well, I didn't just go there.

I came back as well in the one night." And these Maasai men, they can walk fast. I figured it out. It's like, um, just under 7 kilometers an hour and steady.

And I said, "But what about the jungle?" And he said, "Oh, that's easy." He said, "You just— when you get to the jungle," he said, "giraffes can see a long ways and they can see ahead of them and they also have very good sense of smell and a giraffe will not walk into danger." And I said, "So you ride a giraffe?" And he said, "No, you just herd the giraffe like you herd cattle. You just make a little noise behind them and they move along and you just get them going in the right direction and if it's a wrong direction, the giraffe will stop." or he'll swing at you with his head, so you back off, let him go, and you follow him, and you just keep going in the direction you want to go. And he did this, and he did it multiple times, because when he got to little Angelo, Angelo was 5 years old, and when Joseph told him that there's a better place where children get an education, where he can be cared for and be fed, and would he like to come, because Joseph says, "I always give them a choice.

I don't steal children.

I rescue them." And he said, Angelo said, "Why? Why would I want to go there?" And he said, "Because you'll get as much food as you need, and you'll get an education, and you'll be with other boys and girls." And I wrote down what he said here, because Angelo said this: "I am free here. I suck milk from the cows whenever I want.

I eat berries off any bush that I want." He had no idea what the rest of the world was like and what a child's life was supposed to be like.

And Joseph told me his speaking wasn't that good because he was alone most of the time.

But that is what he said. He pointed at the cow, he pointed at the bush, and he was talking about them and saying, I have everything I need. So Joseph left and he went back to the village and he prayed for Angelo and he talked to the women's underground. And then he came back the next night and he came back. I think he said 4 times during the next 2 weeks. And finally, the 4th time, little Angelo said, okay, I will come with you.

And so Angelo, there he is now, and he is— we put them in school because it's the school season's just starting up over there, and we went by their school at the end of the trip and on the way to the safari. And Angelo— they all have to do an entrance exam because it was a new school.

Angelo had the highest marks of all 13 kids in that school, and he's in grade 3, we would call it. And he, he had like— he's a bright young man.

But I saw him once and I told Joseph and he said, well, he did that a lot when he lived by himself. We were out on this ridge on a walk on Sabbath afternoon and I looked over at Angelo and he had just caught something.

And I looked over and he ate a grasshopper.

And I said, and he just ate just part of it. And then he just held onto the legs. And I said, Angelo, is that a grasshopper? And he just looked at me like, so? And then, Ate the rest of it.

And I said to Joseph, "He just ate a grasshopper." And he said, "Yeah, well, he likes the things in nature. He grew up on those." And so he just saw it as a little snack for trail mix, I guess.

But Angelo now is in school and just hearing story after story from Joseph. This is Lakini. Lakini I actually met before. He was put into school. He walked into the village with his uncle and his uncle had listened to one of the whole talks that Joseph—

Joseph translated for me.

And when we finished the week of me speaking and him translating, Joseph said, "I never thought I could be a preacher." But he would, like if I had a microphone, he would hold the microphone like this. If I set my Bible down, he would set his Bible down. He was copying everything exactly and then translating it.

And he said, "Now that I've done a week of preaching the way you preach," he said, "I want to be a lay preacher." And I said, "Well, Joseph, you have so many stories to tell.

You can change the world by telling people these stories." And so Joseph introduced us to Lakhini as he walked in afterwards with his uncle after one of the meetings. And Lakhini was asleep with his brothers in bed when 7 men broke in and attacked them with machetes.

They thought they were all dead and they left. And this just baffles my mind, but the 7 men stood outside the house and sang a song together when they were done. Because their mission had been accomplished, and then they went off into the night.

Lakhini, Joseph was called by a neighbor, and he rushed down there and picked up the body of Lakhini, and Lakhini was very— his head had big— basically Joseph said the way the knife had gone on one of the cuts on his head was that the back of his skin was just hanging off of his skull, and so he put it back and he laid him in a way, and they went to hospital after hospital.

10 hours later, they got to a hospital that said, "We can help." Somehow this little boy had not bled to death, but the doctors said, "We think he's dead," and they poked him in the bottom of his feet with needles to see, and he had the reaction. They said, "He's still alive." So they fed blood into his system, and Lekini came back to life.

As he was sitting there saying, "I would like to have an education," and his uncle— he lives with his uncle now because his parents were gone.

The 3 boys were in their grandmother's house. When that happened.

And so the grandmother's terrified of the 7 men and doesn't know when they might come back.

So she said, "If he's alive, they're going to come back." So she sent him off to his uncle. And his uncle, when Carol heard this story, Carol just said, "This boy has to go to school.

Even if we don't have a sponsor, we're just going to send him. We're going to see what happens." And so they told him right then that they said, "What's your English name? You'll need a Western name." And the uncle said—

he looked across at me and he just listened to the talk. And he said, I think David. We'll call him David.

And—

sorry.

He said, or Joseph. And Joseph said, no, David's a good name. And so Lakeni is now David. And he's at school. That night Carol—

normally I was blogging every morning and I was going to write the story up. Of the day and Carol put up that night, she said, "I couldn't wait, Dave Edgren, I just had to put it online and just send it out to some, just my Facebook friends." Before we woke up the next morning, Lekini had full sponsorship, David had full sponsorship to go to school that year because that's how the spirit works.

So Joseph, there's Joseph and he has rescued now 15 children, are full-time in school. 'Um, some from child marriages, some from horrible abuse like I've described.' He said, 'I receive about a call, nearly a call every day, David. I have 15 children in the program right now.

They're fully sponsored to go to school. They have food, clothes, education, and most important, they're safe.' Joseph paused, and then he asked, 'Do you want to know how many children are on my list right now, children that I have verified their stories and I know that they need safety. And I said, how many? And he said, 161. That many need the safety of our program to be on the program, he said. And what, what he does, because they don't have a school yet, they're building it, but he just rescues them and he takes them to boarding schools.

And so there's, there's Adventists, there's not Adventist ones in that area, there's, there's Catholic ones, there's Pentecostal ones, but they're all Christian.

And they hear the story of Christ and they, and he tells them the story. And this whole community of many Massais are Adventists.. And this whole community teaches them during the holidays about the faith of Jesus and the Adventist message.

And Joseph just has—

I said, if your heart was any bigger, it'd be on the outside. He's got such a huge heart.

So after saying that, he said, can you help us get these sponsors, David?

Is that something you can do?

And I said, I will try, Joseph. I'll tell your story. When Western people's hearts are touched, they are very loving, kind, and generous.

But in the West, we are asked for money all the time. So we need to hear real stories so that we can believe that we're actually helping. And he said, "Thank you, Dave Edgren.

Thank you so much." So Carol says to me, "If the devil was defeated at the cross..." And this was a conversation, we're driving a lot. We spent about 4 days in the car, which is terrifying in Kenya. And then we spent a lot of time at meals sitting together, and it was kind of the collective time we'd come together and these conversations would start back up again.

Carol said, "If the devil was defeated at the cross, why are there such horrible things still happening?

Why doesn't God act now? He knows who is evil and who is good.

Why does he wait?

If God is all-powerful, why doesn't he use that power to act now?" And in one of the long conversations as we were driving, I had formulated an answer.

I said to her, you know, Carol, God's As followers, we have a habit of getting God's nature wrong, and we teach these wrong things about God to our children.

In Old Testament times, a few millennia after leaving Eden, they had warped the promise of a Messiah to mean that God would send a deliverer who would defeat the oppressors and rule with an iron rod.

He would be a warrior king.

Now, in 2017, a couple millennia after Jesus returned to heaven, we are convinced that Jesus came to show God's power.

If this is true, God has ultimate power. All that happens on earth ultimately is his fault. It's part of his plan. This is a wrong view of God's nature, Carol.

This is not what God sent Jesus to show us about himself.

God's power is not his defining attribute. If it was, he would take control.

And Carol said, I see. So Jesus came to show us God's love. And I— and she said, so God's defining attribute is God is love.

I said, yes.

And within the bounds of God's perfect love, his power lives. Love gives freedom. Freedom of choice is the ultimate expression of God's love.

The perfect love of God allows choices to be made and then honors those choices. But ultimately, love will win. God's love is patient. It is long-suffering, and it can be seen everywhere while we wait. Ellen White says this: God is love.

This phrase, God is love, is written upon every opening bud, every spire of springing grass, the lovely birds making air vocal with their happy songs, the delicately tinted flowers in their perfection perfuming the air, the lofty trees of the forest with their rich foliage and living green.

All testify to the tender fatherly care of our God and his desire to make his children happy. In the Holman Treasury of Key Bible Words, it says this, and I just loved it, I just want to read it to you, the whole thing. John made a wonderful proclamation when he said God is love, which is 1 John 4:8.

This means that God creates and sustains all things in love. Love is the very essence of God. No one could possibly be described as being love itself. Only God is completely loving because love is his very entity, nature, and character. When John writes, God is love, he is giving the reader the clearest, briefest, most comprehensive expression possible of the nature of God. This divine love motivated God to give his Son to the world to die for our sins.

God loves, and as a natural consequence of this love, he gives us his son, forgiveness, salvation, fellowship, eternal life. Believers can see the love of God most clearly in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So the disciples— if we look back at the disciples just before Jesus died, they all had the wrong idea about Jesus. Even though they knew him well, when they came to the waterhole with Jesus, the disciples knew about the devil and his angels. They knew about the lion and the crocodiles. But they thought Jesus' power would dominate. They thought Jesus, the Deliverer, Warrior, King, would walk unscathed through this world, like an elephant at the waterhole. Jesus would be unable to be touched and would set up his kingdom. And so they looked for power.

Power in the life of Jesus, and they saw it.

But what they didn't realize was that Jesus's power was confined in a greater reality: God's love. So they watched what they thought was an elephant walking through the streets of Jerusalem and wondered how others could miss it, and asked, when, when will he demonstrate his power? But they were looking for the wrong animal at the waterhole. John Godfrey Saxe, in 1816, or somewhere between there and 1887, wrote this.

He wrote this fantastic poem, "The Blind Men and the Elephant." It was 6 men of Indostan, to learning much inclined, who went to see the elephant, though all of them were blind, that each by observation might satisfy his mind.

The first approached the elephant, and happening to fall against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl, 'God bless me, but the elephant is very like a wall!' The second, feeling of the tusk, cried, 'Ho, what have we here, so very round and smooth and sharp? To me, 'tis mighty clear, this wonder of an elephant is very like a spear.' The third approached the animal, and happening to take the squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up and spake, 'I see,' said he, 'this elephant is very like a snake.' The fourth reached out an eager hand and felt about the knee. "What most this wondrous beast is like is mighty plain," said he. "This is clear enough. The elephant is very like a tree." The fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, said, "Even the blindest man can tell what this resembles most. Deny the fact, who can? This marvel of an elephant is very like a fan." The sixth no sooner had begun to grope about the beast— sorry, the sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope, then seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope, "I see," said he, "the elephant is very like a rope." And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long, each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong. Though each was partly in the right and all were in the wrong.

All 12 disciples had the wrong understanding of Jesus and thus of God's nature. Jesus said, if you have seen me, you've seen the Father.

And yet the disciples were still looking for Jesus to swing his massive tusks, call 1,000, 10,000 angels to set the world right. Judas and Peter both took a step in this direction. Judas sold the location of the praying Jesus, hoping to startle him.

Into defensive action.

Peter drew his sword and took the first swing.

Jesus, on the other hand, picked up the ear Peter had removed and replaced it, healing the head of the man who'd come to take him prisoner.

Peter and Judas both fled the scene, each when the heat got too hot. Judas couldn't live with what he'd done.

Peter couldn't see where he'd gone wrong.

Both men acted out the doubt and confusion of the Twelve.

Jesus was supposed to win, wasn't he?

But they had misunderstood the nature of Jesus.

He hadn't come to show power, but love.

He hadn't come to fulfill the wishes of the disciples, but to reveal the nature of his Father. He hadn't come to the waterhole as an elephant stomping his way to victory.

He hadn't come to the waterhole as a buffalo sniffing out and scaring off the devil. Jesus said, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father." He hadn't come to show God's power, but God's love.

And Jesus showed God's love by entering the waterhole as a wildebeest. Like many others before him, Jesus was lifted up and nailed to a cross.

Rome had crucified thousands. Even on that day, 3 were crucified.

Jesus entered our waterhole like any of the millions before him. The roaring lion looking for someone to devour leapt upon Jesus, driving his clawed nails into hands and feet.

The crocodile Leviathan, roused from despair's depths, took a hold of his side and beginning the death roll, pulled Jesus under into murky darkness. And Jesus died. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

I give you a new command, Jesus said.

Sorry, there's the wildebeest. Here we go.

"I give you a new command," Jesus said. "Love one another just as I have loved you.

You must also love one another.

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." So Carol says, "So we just love these kids and that's enough?" I told her the story about one of the principals— she's just retired—

at one of the schools where I'm the chaplain.

And she said to me one day as I was sitting in her office, she said, you know, Dave, I've been to a lot of funerals recently.

And I said, I'm sorry. She said, I like your kind better. And I said, what do you mean my kind? And she said, well, there's only two kinds of funeral. There's the Christian funeral and the non-Christian funeral. And she said, I like the Christian funerals better. And I said, why? I told this story to Carol, and Carol— and I said, Carol, so she says, why, why do you—

or I said, why, why a Christian funeral?

And she said, because you have hope. She said, your funerals are bathed in this belief that you're going to see your loved one again, and you tell the same stories about the life of the person and the good things that they did and how they meant things to people, but then it's not over. It's not over. You have hope.

There is one major thing other than just rescuing children that's being done by these two men. I haven't told you about the second one yet.

We're going to look at him in just a second.

Being done on the ground in both places. There are disciples who understand that living among the wildebeest is the best way to reach the wildebeest. Just like Jesus lived among those he came to save. So do Joseph and Nestor. Joseph is living in his community and reaching to its borders, saving children as he hears about them. But Nestor has actually left his home in Rwanda.

Here's Nestor here.

He's the one who runs Hands of Hope Academy in Eldoret, which is a city. And he moved to Kenya because Nestor, when he was 8 years old, he was one of the children in the Rwandan genocide. And he and his family fled. And because there were so many people fleeing, when he finally stopped and looked around— it's just like the story of Jesus when they left the temple, he looked around and he couldn't find his parents. But it wasn't 3 days later that he found his parents.

It was when the genocide was over, a year later, he went home and his parents had just got home as well, and he reunited with his brothers and sisters and parents.

So Nestor knew the life of an orphan. One year of what it was like. And when he came to Kenya, it was with the health message because Nestor's parents were Catholic and they sent him to a Catholic school, but next to the Catholic school was a police station with a really good soccer team, and Nestor is a really good soccer player. And the police saw this kid playing soccer and they said, "Come play on our team. We'll give you a little money to play on our team." He said, "Sure." He's a teenager, so he's off playing soccer with the police, and his mom said, "You are not going to become a police officer." And he said, "Mom, I'm only playing soccer." And she knew that by beholding we become changed, and she said, "No, no, no, no, no." You're gonna go somewhere else to school.

And they looked anywhere and they found an Adventist school.

And so this Catholic school sent their little boy to the Adventist school, and he discovered the health message and how it tied in with his sporting life. And he said, man, when I eat like an Adventist, I'm much healthier. And then he listened in Bible classes and he became an Adventist. And so he came to— from Rwanda to, um, to Kenya because he was asked by the conferences there to come and do his health lectures that he was doing around the all around Africa, and he spent a long time in Kenya until he got to Eldoret. And there's these children, many of them who live on the dump in Eldoret, and they sniff glue, shoe glue, the kind you put the soles on with. And once you started sniffing that, it just destroys your brain.

So Nestor would meet kids who hadn't started sniffing glue yet, and the kids who sniffed glue would say—

one of them said to him after he did his health talk with them and, and was helping them by doing tests and giving them— I don't know what he does, but just teaching them about healthy living.

One of the kids said, "Thanks for that, but can you help me go to school?

And I have no parents." And he said, "Oh, I don't do that. I'll see what I can do." So he talked to some people and he found a school for this kid and he found a sponsor.

So he put this one kid in this Catholic boarding school.

And then another kid came and said, "Hey, you helped my friend. Could you send me to school?" And so in 2 and a half years, Nestor had put 46 kids— he's like a management genius, this guy. He's only 31. And he really— I said to him, have you studied management? He said, no, I really must do that. You're doing it, buddy. Because he would find sponsors and put these kids in school and just bang, bang, bang. And about 2 years ago, he met Carol and Leon, and he said, wouldn't it be amazing if we had an Adventist school where we could not just teach the kids the health practices but apply it, where these kids could live an Adventist lifestyle? And his Carol and Leon said, "Yes, that'd be a great idea. Let's see if we can find somewhere to rent." And so this is the school that we went to here, Hands of Hope, and they've been there for 2 years now. And Nestor said that, uh, Hands of Hope Academy is like an Adventist home for kids who don't have homes. I allow them to choose. I provide the healthy options and the reasons why they are the best options, but when the children are off campus, they can choose their lifestyle. But he said, I know that more than half of them are vegetarian no matter where they are. Because they know it's healthier.

And he said, and last year we ran a special evangelistic program just for the kids, and 28 of them were baptized.

So Carol says, so we're giving them a hope, giving hope to the children we save because we're teaching them about Jesus, and that gives them a hope for the future beyond this world of pain and death.

I said, yes.

She said, and, and we're giving them an education which will provide a chance for a happier life than they would have had on this earth.

"I just wish we could help more," she said, "save more, change the lives of more children." I told her, I said, "You are, because you're doing it God's way." She said, "What do you mean?" I said, "You see, God doesn't think the same way we do, like about time, as Aaron was saying before.

When he rescued the children of Israel, he waited 400 years before mounting his rescue effort." And when he did rescue them, he took 40 years to complete it.

When changing lives of many, or the many, God works on a generational timescale rather than performing quick fixes. Carol said, "How's that like what we're doing?" I said, "You're educating these kids.

When they grow and get married, they will teach their children what they've learned.

You're taking entire families out of poverty." One child becomes one generation becomes, in time, one nation, Kenya. You're changing the world, Carol, God's way.

And she lit up and she said, "Like Amos." And Amos, we met at— I met, they already knew him because they put him into a foster program.

He was their very first foster child.

And he was just a boy when he was put in under Nestor's care and sent to one of those schools, and then he was brought back No, he actually was already in university by the time they started Hands of Hope, but he had been coming back to Nestor every holidays, and he's been studying mathematics and statistics. And they're asking him, "So, you're almost done. 3 months left." And he's like, "Yeah, and then I have to get a placement." And they call it an attachment there. "I have to get an attachment." He said, "But it's really hard. All the attachments in statistics are for the government." He said, "I guess I'll work for the government, but—" The government's corrupt, but maybe I can be a good influence. And, and so they were talking, trying to give him some encouragement. He said, maybe I'll go do further study and then I'll have more options. And then the next day— that was at breakfast— the very next day I come into the cafeteria early to do my writing, and there's another man sitting there at a computer and he's typing away. And I just walked up and introduced myself and said, what's your name? And he said, my name is Hezbon.

And I said, I said, "What are you doing, Hezbon?" He said, "Oh, I work for the hospital. I have a meeting soon and I'm getting ready." I said, "So you're a doctor?" He said, "No, no, no, not that kind of hospital.

I don't do that kind of work at hospital." He said, "I work in statistics." And I said, "Statistics?" He's like, "What?" Two statisticians in two days. And so I said, "Well, what do you mean? What do you do in statistics?" He says, "Well, I go to all the different hospitals in Kenya and I keep statistics on the things that are working, the things that aren't working, the medicines they use, everything." And he said, "And we put it all together and we give them a snapshot of their hospital in comparison to other hospitals." and I said, "Do you ever take apprentices?" Or I said, "What do you call them, attachments?" He said, "Yeah, my attachment is just finishing. He was so good.

I'm looking for another one." I said—

and Leon was walking right there— "Leon, come meet Hesbon." And Leon and Hesbon sat down together and later that day we got a phone call from Amos, the boy in the middle here, And he said, "He called me. He called me, and I'm going to become— if I can't be an attachment for him, he's going to find another one for me with a hospital statistician." And these are the kind of things that— we just sat down at breakfast after that, and Carol and Leon go, "Yeah, God does this kind of stuff all the time." God loves his children. Life at the waterhole. 1 Peter 5:6-11, which we read at the beginning.

Let's just have another look. Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God so that he may be exalted in you at the proper time, casting all your care on him because he cares about you. Be serious, be alert. Your adversary, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for anyone he can devour.

Resist him and be firm in faith, knowing that at the same—

knowing that the same sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world. Now the God of grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will personally restore, establish, strengthen, and support you after you have suffered a little. The dominion belongs to him forever. Amen. There are thousands of children— this is a group of a few of them, like wildebeests heading into the waterhole.

It is a rare person who can live among them like Jesus or Joseph or Nestor.

This is a very special calling. Very few of us are saviors, but all of us are disciples.

And like the disciple Peter, we are still alive now, now that we understand it, because we have accepted the rescue Jesus offered on the cross.

And the eternal life he promised by conquering the grave.

We have hope because we know the rest of the story.

May we make this hope of a better life a reality for many, and as many of God's children as possible. Dear Lord, we thank you for your love.

We thank you that you hold back your power so that your love can reign.

So that this world might be changed through love, we ask that you would help us to choose each day to live within your love.

Thank you for all the children of the world, and thank you for people like Carol and Leon who are making a difference, people like Nestor and Joseph who are living among them, and people like each and every one of us who have hearts churned by your Spirit.

In your name, amen.