George Roller dives into this episode for a compelling discussion about his awakening vision to leave everything, respond to his true calling, and quit a comfortable life in the US to start a school that can fulfill his purpose as a full-time missionary in Guatemala. His story is one of the leadership lessons for anyone seeking to serve people in need, so be motivated to give and help by listening to this conversation!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
Jesus Film Project
About George Roller
George Roller, Founder and President of Send Me, graduated from Saint Louis University with an Executive Masters Degree in International Business and works as a turn-around consultant for companies facing closure from poor market conditions and extraneous circumstances.
His insight has saved more than 100 companies small and large from bankruptcy, foreclosure and losses in a wide range of industries from fishing lures to fiber optics. He brings his unique experience and vision to help eliminate poverty within the target community of Joyabaj Guatemala and continues to help those without the ability to help themselves.
Connect with George
Connect With Us
Master your context with real results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate on His Social Media
George Roller dives into this episode for a compelling discussion about his awakening vision to leave everything, respond to his true calling, and quit a comfortable life in the US to start a school that can fulfill his purpose as a full-time missionary in Guatemala. His story is one of the leadership lessons for anyone seeking to serve people in need, so be motivated to give and help by listening to this conversation!
Key takeaways to listen for
Resources mentioned in this episode
Jesus Film Project
About George Roller
George Roller, Founder and President of Send Me, graduated from Saint Louis University with an Executive Masters Degree in International Business and works as a turn-around consultant for companies facing closure from poor market conditions and extraneous circumstances.
His insight has saved more than 100 companies small and large from bankruptcy, foreclosure and losses in a wide range of industries from fishing lures to fiber optics. He brings his unique experience and vision to help eliminate poverty within the target community of Joyabaj Guatemala and continues to help those without the ability to help themselves.
Connect with George
Connect With Us
Master your context with real results leadership training!
To learn more, visit our website at www.greatsummit.com.
For tax, bookkeeping, or accounting help, contact Dr. Nate’s team at www.theincometaxcenter.com or send an email to info@theincometaxcenter.com.
Follow Dr. Nate on His Social Media
[00:00:50] George Roller
I think that a calling is perfectly what you as an individual, what you, as your DNA was created to do and serve the Lord. And I believe that God puts you in that
[00:00:12] Dr. Nate Salah
There are distinct differences between a job, a career, and a calling. When I was young, I had a job, which means I was just over broke. When I got into the tax business, I had a career, but when I began to teach, I realized that I had a calling and it changed everything. I've invited Joe Thompson, my friend, a co-host, this very special episode interviewing an expert in this area to help us illuminate the tools we need to find our calling and live with real purpose. George Roller, who left a successful career and all the many first-world comforts here in the US to become of all things a missionary to serve the destitute in Guatemala. Get ready my friend. You are about to be inspired. I'm Dr. Nate Salah. And this is A Call to Leadership.
[00:01:02]
George, so glad to have you on the program today. Joe, thanks for being my wingman. This is such an exciting time because you and I have come so far in your journey with your ministry and I believe it's such an important topic, especially relevant today, where we are facing many issues around the globe and how we respond to the calling that we have in our lives.
[00:01:28]
And so I'd love to share, give the audience a little bit of background first on who you are, why you are here today, what your ministry's all about.
[00:01:39] George Roller
Wow. Where would I start on that? Okay. So I grew up as wanting to be a business man. I, everything about my natural giftings is leaning towards a business and negotiations, and so I start off in life owning a small business, growing it, seeing it grow. Merging a couple other small businesses into that. Then over time, I had the opportunity late in life to go back and get an MBA, which I did. And then I really finally found my true calling from a secular standpoint, which was change management or turnaround consulting.
[00:02:14]
And I spent the last 10 years flying around the country, going into all kinds of different industries and doing change management turnaround consulting, and it was, I was in my element, I just, People say, How do you work 18 hours a day and take seven flights a week and be away from your family five days a week for 10 years? It's just because, well, first of all, the grace of God. And a very understanding wife, And second of all, I was just in my element, I was just having the time of my life,
[00:02:45] Dr. Nate Salah
But there was always something missing because life was good in terms of sort of American dream quote unquote right. Air quotes where you had a very fruitful career. Right. Respectable. Wonderful family environment, community of faith, things were all, all the buckets were full in terms of how we view like what a good life should look like.
[00:03:07] George Roller
Right? Yeah. I mean, it wasn't perfect, but absolutely the boxes were checked, solid family, career, everything that you mentioned. And so the change wasn't because like I was trying to escape something or a change in life to fill something else.
[00:03:21]
It was that literally that through the process, and this kind of backs up to where the ministry started, was on a mission trip and the church had advertised a mission trip in 2008. No expectations, no agenda, no strategy, just we're, hey, we're a group of people that are gonna go down to this guy we just met and see if we can help. And we did. And that was the start of something that really, I think the biggest change changed my heart.
[00:03:48] Dr. Nate Salah
Now. That was Guatemala. That was Guatemala. So you go down to Guatemala and what were your expectations? Do you have any expectations? Like there's lots of people who have never been on a mission trip to this day. I've never been on a mission trip. Love to go, but you hear all kinds of different things. What happened? On that mission trip?
[00:04:04] George Roller
Well, I did not have a lot of expectations. I had been on three mission trips prior to that one, and each one of 'em was totally different. So I really didn't have, a good, clear idea or expectation.
[00:04:15]
And honestly, the church and leaders didn't have it either. They were trusting the onsite missionary to lead us down a productive path. And what happened on the trip was we actually ended up moving one gravel pile from one side of this concrete, of this construction site to another. Just so the backhoe could dig a footing. And that's literally what we did all week. And it was, from one standpoint, I kind of enjoyed it. And another standpoint I'm like, Let me know, and I would just hire a bulldozer to move the chat for me and I could go to Costa Rica.
[00:04:46] Dr. Nate Salah
But because you didn't consider that mission work per se, I mean, you considered that just labor work that anyone can do.
[00:04:53] George Roller
Exactly. But what grabbed me wasn't what we necessarily did during the day. What grabbed me was the people and the purpose of the school, which is now called BREA School and now educates 200 300 kids a year academically and with Christian values. And so I just really gravitated towards the onsite missionary, which was incredible.
[00:05:16]
His name was Bill Macy. He has a book out now, and he just really impacted me to the point that I wanted to see if I could be more of an impact.
[00:05:26] Dr. Nate Salah
No, no. It's really interesting you bring that up because like on the one hand, the logical site says, Hey, why don't I just send 500 bucks or a thousand bucks down and you can hire five workers to take care of this.
[00:05:36]
Right? And then you have some extra cash left over. But there's more to it. I mean, there's more to it than that.
[00:05:41] George Roller
There is, and it's a great point, Nate, because I actually have people that will say to me that, Hey, instead of me going, let me just give you $2,000. And you help someone. Certainly the money does impact certain people in the poverty environment, but the change happens in your heart when you step on the ground, when you see poverty face to face, when you're faced with it, when you rub shoulders with it, when you set at the table with it and you see it, and that's the heart change that comes. And we've seen people, and I know this might be a little bit of a rabbit trail, but we've seen people in our church and other people that have went on this trip that have maybe been marginal Christians or people that are struggling with their character, dads that struggle with their character and different things have went on this trip and it's been life changing.
[00:06:28]
We had one trip that I remember that we had 11 young people that were at that career age of college in high school, and nine of 'em at the end of the trip committed to do Christian work the rest of their life as a full-time occupation, whether it's a pastor, music leader or a missionary.
[00:06:43] Dr. Nate Salah
And so sometimes you think about like, I gotta get my hands dirty and be shoulder to shoulder with someone somewhere far off to really understand even on a minute level where they are, it's just like it's easy just to throw money at people, but that's convicting to even think about it. So you have this, Was it an instant change? Was it a gradual change? I mean, you come home, was it a seed planted?
[00:07:03] George Roller
Nate, It was definitely a gradual change. And so that was in 2008, which is I guess roughly 14 years ago. And the mechanics of it, we came back, I was all excited. I wanted to go back and experience it again. And what happened was is then I went to the leader. And then they were like, Well, we're not interested in doing it, but you could lead the trip. And so in 2009, I put a trip together and I took the youth again, and I kind of Georgeified it.
[00:07:32] Dr. Nate Salah
So wait, wait. Stop right there. All right. Georgeifying it. Was it jumped at it, was it? I was like, Whoa, I'm kind of, I have trepidation. Was it? Wow, This is what I've been waiting for. What was going on in your mind, your heart? What were you feeling? Because that's a big move.
[00:07:48] George Roller
I think for me, I was ready to jump at it. I think I had struggled in life. Where my giftings were, where my ministry was. Being someone that's been in the church all my life, I've mowed the yard, I've cleaned the toilets, I've served on the financial committees, had cell groups. I've led bible studies. I've done a lot of the service, but it never really like, this is what I want to do. I knew they were good things and they need to be done, but when I had the chance to lead the mission trip, I was just really fired up. And my wife and I just embraced it. We just really turned it into something special.
[00:08:21]
I feel like by the grace of God, I mean the first thing I did was take the kids up a volcano and active. Active, well, it is even Mount Pacaya. You can't go up there anymore. And six months after we took 'em up there, it blew up. And effects were unfortunate. Loss of life. But that was just to start with. And then we started on the trip, or talking about your question, I think that for me, it was something that just felt very natural and it was something I was excited to do.
[00:08:49] Dr. Nate Salah
What did you hope would be outcomes from that trip?
[00:08:53] George Roller
I think I was really dialed in to the change in the kids' hearts. I was really thinking, because my daughter was at that same age, she's probably 16, and my son was 14 and they were at that age where I knew they were making life choices.
[00:09:07]
They were deciding who they were gonna become. And I felt like that if I could impact them as well as 14 other kids, that I could see them change their perspective on the world and I think that was one of the driving factors.
[00:09:25] Joe Thompson
You know George when it comes to helping others, I think everyone's capable of helping in some way. Just look around your own community. I think it boils down to there's almost a fear of helping because we live in kind of a me society. We don't want our lives to change. How did you never fear like going to this place and taking this on? Or how did you get past that? Like what would you tell other people who are like, Hey, I want to help, but I'm just outta my comfort zone. I don't feel right doing it.
[00:09:58] George Roller
Well, excellent point. I never personally felt the fear. I was always approaching it like motivating. I can remember this one particular incident where we were raising funds for a mission trip. And the 14 year old girl wanted to go, and the mother just said, Absolutely not. Not unless Dad goes, and dad was there. And so I immediately went to the dad and, and started talking to him about the changes. And he really wanted, he was also feeling that he knew that his daughter would be getting at the age of going to college and now is a good time to kind of have a father-daughter time together, some memories and some depth in their relationship. And so he ended up going and that turned into maybe a 10 year relationship I had with that gentleman that actually impacted the ministry as well as the daughter. Yeah.
[00:10:47] Joe Thompson
So the family support made a huge difference in that case.
[00:10:52] Dr. Nate Salah
Absolutely. Who would you recommend going on a mission trip?
[00:10:54] George Roller
Well, I spent a week with my mother. She's 80 years old and she has some health issues and she's going, so I don't like to necessarily take someone on a trip that's under 14, but I allow the age to go down a little bit if the parents are convincing in their way of managing that child. So for me, probably 14 to 80.
[00:11:17] Dr. Nate Salah
When you say changes, what I mean, what kind of changes do you see? Do you see changes in perspective? I know that we live in an environment, especially here in the west, in the US were entitlement to all kinds of things is, it's almost becoming part of the DNA for a lot of us in the United States. I grew up poor, but like the opposite of entitlement. I didn't want anyone to do anything for me, and I don't know if it was like I was just stubborn or a combination of things, but I didn't want any handouts growing up and I always wanted to quote unquote, be my own man.
[00:11:51]
Right. But there's a much different mentality for many who think that we don't have it very good here in the United States. And I wonder, I mean certainly there are people who do not have it good, but I wonder how going to a third world country and serving others can change perspective. Cuz I've lived in, I mean, I haven't been on a mission trip, but I've lived in very poor countries as well, and it changed my worldview on, wow, this is like, I am so fortunate to be in the United States because there's so much more opportunity here than many of the other places that I've been to.
[00:12:29] George Roller
Well, Nate, it definitely changes your worldview to be in a foreign country, as you alluded to. For me, I think the one-week experience for a young person is an amazing change in what they're looking. The only way that I can really communicate that I feel effectively is to mention the results.
[00:12:47]
So as an example, many of the 14-year-olds that were on that first trip in 2009 went on to serve God and to, and to get an education in an area that they could serve people in the poverty area. For instance, one girl that's been a big part of the ministry went on that trip and she went on to study Spanish. She went on to become a school teacher and now, She's working here in St. Louis in a really tough area, and she's really affecting change in that area, and I can think of two or three other people that were a part of that. And so I've seen a lot of dramatic changes, not only in my own life, which has been at the top of the list as far as I'm considered.
[00:13:25]
As a change, but even in adult men, I've seen one gentleman that went, was struggling with his marriage. He was struggling with his identity was a man and that was causing all kinds of rifts with his family. And he decided to go probably for the wrong reasons, probably for adventure. And when he came back the whole time, being with God and being in a foreign country and being around other strong Christians literally changed him point when he came back and he confessed to me years later that it was that mission trip that changed him and he went on maybe three or four right after that. And so I've seen a lot of changes by people and some are minor changes, like say a perspective or a worldview, and others have been dramatic, like, now I'm gonna become a doctor. And serve in a third world country, or now I'm gonna be a teacher and help kids.
[00:14:15] Joe Thompson
Nate and I often talk about, especially when you listen to a leader speak or a so-called leader speak, and people, they're inspired by it, but inspiration has a tendency to wane over time. And it seems like as we talk to you about the people who've experienced this, you keep using the word change. Not inspired, they were changed. Do you think it's just the magnitude of going there and being hands on and seeing the people and seeing the results that take it from, Hey, I'm inspired to do something to I have this change in my heart.
[00:14:51] George Roller
I think that's a very insightful comment because I think that I look at inspiration, kind of like caffeine. It's a short live, something to get you over that, Hey, I need a cup of coffee to get through the last two hours of my workday, where to finish this three hour drive. And it's a short term thing where I look at the change as something that changes your entire life. It's a 180 in the road. I was going east, I'm going west now.
[00:15:02]
And I think the change can only come from the spirit of God in your life and a change I think the environment of the third world country or the poverty that you see is a catalyst that helps that change, but affecting true change has to be the spirit of God. Because we've all seen people that were maybe had trouble with alcohol or other type of addictions, and you very rarely see someone that actually changes. You have, Oh, I've been clean for three months or something, but there's always a gravity to come back because it's maybe they're just being inspired and they're not changing.
[00:15:51] Dr. Nate Salah
So you took people on mission trips. And there were heart changes, but there was a change so dramatic in you that I don't wanna say initially on a mission trip, you didn't come back, but eventually you did not come back
[00:16:07] George Roller
I'd never heard it put that way, but that's exactly what happened. And because of probably my low IQ and all these other things, it took a long time for that to happen. What would've happened probably with a normal person a couple years, took about 10 with me. But no, that's exactly what happened in 2009.
[00:16:24]
We did a mission trip. And then after leading the first trip, then sort of my business acumen kicked in. And then I'm like, What's the purpose? What's the strategy? What's our objective? What's our five year plan? All that starts just running through my veins, and we start checking the boxes on that, and then I start communicating with the missionary more often than just, Hey, do you got the hotel ready, and are you gonna feed us?
[00:16:48]
We're really talking about change in their culture. So now we're talking about change in a third-world culture and the next year, all my friends in my church said, Hey, I'm glad you're taking my kids, but I wanna go. And so then I started doing two trips a year, and that was in 10 11. And then in 2012, we started doing three trips a year because it wasn't enough for me to bring the youth enough to bring the adults.
[00:17:14]
Then I needed a week to kind of prepare for the trips. Now I had an agenda. Now I had a plan. Now I had a strategy, objectives, and that's when we kind of unveiled the ministry was in 2012 that we wanted to, the initial thrust or objective was to help widows. Hm. And to get them off the street and to, to build an environment for them.
[00:17:37]
And God used our church in that year after that and to say to us, Hey, this is great. You're doing all these mission trips, but you're doing a lot of transactions, and so maybe it's time that you create an entity. And that had never crossed my mind. And so I sat down with the group of guys that's now been going for three or four years, my wife and others, and we sit down and we prayed about it and God just delivered us the scripture, Isaiah six and eight.
[00:18:04]
And we started looking at that and we really wanted something again from the business acumen. We really want something that communicated a thought, and the thought was that I'm not asking you to do something that God is asking me and I'm doing it, and would you come and be a part of it?
[00:18:19] Joe Thompson
Did you find yourself having to recruit people or did you find people just kind of gravitating towards the excitement around what you were doing?
[00:18:27] George Roller
I think it was probably two-thirds people would gravitate towards the excitement of what was going, and then each year we would have the success of the trip. And then there would be a video that would come out, and we had a large church, so that would create some excitement. And then I also recruited people as well. When I saw someone, they have a specific skill, like, Hey, there's a carpenter over here, or there's a good song leader over here. I would also try to recruit, but I would say initially there was a lot of buzz because young people are not quiet. They come back and they go running up and, Hey, 10 people got saved and we brought this little boy a ball and oh my God, sure you wouldn't believe it.
[00:19:05]
And next thing my young people were my sales people.
[00:19:09] Joe Thompson
and they were social media spread.
[00:19:12] George Roller
There was a lot of 'em. I did not even know it until later. In fact, just recently, I'm kind of behind the technological curve here and I just recently, we opened up a YouTube channel and, and I've got videos I've never seen on trips that I led. I'd never seen the videos, you know?
[00:19:29] Dr. Nate Salah
So Send Me Is Born, Send Me is born at this time, and what a great call to action. It's very introspective, right? And it's really this call to God, right? Send me, right. Is that how I understand?
[00:19:42] George Roller
Absolutely. I mean, the thought process that I view it is, it's a combination of one being called, uh, you have to be a call, and then the second part is that you're responding to that call and the response is, Send me.
[00:19:56] Dr. Nate Salah
So you, there's so much going on at this time. And fast forward as you continue to move forward and there's so much more that you can do on the ground, full time in Guatemala, help us to understand, give us a visual of what's going on in those communities that is just so heart-wrenching, that is just drawing you to leave everything.
[00:20:19] George Roller
Well, that really comes down to one single weekend. Just a little bit of understanding of how it built up to that. So that was, we formed the organization in 01, and then as we were going through there, excuse me, 2011, and as we got to 2014, my heart was to do more evangelism. And I really didn't know how to do it, especially in a foreign country.
[00:20:42]
And so we kind of stumbled through that for about two or three years doing different things that we thought were effective when we were introduced to the organization Under Crew, which is called the Jesus Film, and they basically have a film that basically is the book of Luke. And I'd heard about it all my life. I didn't know much about it.
[00:21:01]
And so we went down and kind of again, my business acumen, we were like, Okay. Everybody's like, We’ll make a phone call. And I'm like, No, that's not the way you get on a plane and you go meet them and spend two days talking about it. And so we met with the Jesus Film in Orlando, Florida, and we talked to them about evangelizing and skipping a culture a language and getting the message of Jesus out to them. How do we do that and how does that film help us to accomplish that?
And we kind of fit a profile they really liked. It was a small language, about 160,000 people. It hadn't only been written since 1978 and the missionary with me was the guy that wrote the language.
[00:21:39]
And so they were pretty excited about that. So what normally would take three to five years? They said we could probably do it in three. And I being kind of who I am, Georgiefied it. I walked to the board and I said, I'm gonna give us 18 months. And the Bill with us that had wrote the language says, I can have the translation done in six weeks. And we finished the film and got it to the Quiche people in 14 months.
[00:22:07] Dr. Nate Salah
Oh my goodness.
[00:22:08] Joe Thompson
Which was, if someone listening wanted to see the film, how do you see it,
[00:22:10] George Roller
You would go to jesus film.org and then you would choose the languages and you'd go down to Quiche, which is Q U I C H E.
[00:22207] Dr. Nate Salah
So for us, Neophytes, there's separate dialects in that region.
[00:22:25] George Roller
Yes. So obviously Latin America speaks primarily Spanish, and within each country or each area of all the different countries, there are different dialects. And in Guatemala, I believe there's 28, and Quiche is a Mayan dialect, which there's five of. And so this particular dialect, I mean you could tell a whole story, but to kind of just build up to the event of us going full time. It was not even a written language until 78. Oh, and there’re only, there's no movies and the only books in Quiche are the Bible, which Bill translated over a 40 year period of time when it came out. Ironically, the first time we had a mission trip in 2009, so God brought this all together.
[00:23:12]
So coming back to preparation in doing the Jesus Film with our business acumen, I'm thinking the Jesus Film is saying, Oh, probably thousands of people will come to know the Lord. And I'm like, Well, if we have thousand people coming to know the Lord, how are we gonna disciple them? And so we immediately started doing pastor's conferences to kind of bring the volunteer base and make sure from a theology standpoint, make sure from just a logistic standpoint, they would be there to help us. So we recruited roughly about 37 pastors, and so we worked for a year and a half while the Jesus Film was working on the film and translating the audio to the film. We were working on the logistics of seeing a move of God in that area and seeing these salvations.
[00:23:57] Dr. Nate Salah
Are you still working full time? I'm still working about 60 to 80 hours a week. 60. Okay. So yeah, just a little overtime.
[00:24:03] George Roller
Yeah. Leave Sunday after church about two o'clock, and you get back Friday about midnight.
[00:24:09]
So my wife was basically, at that point, she was working full time in the ministry, whether it be accounting or logistics or embroidery or whatever it would take. And so as we built up to that moment in time that weekend in 2017, we received a lot of help, encouragement, training from the Jesus Film. They were very instrumental in training us on what to expect, how to do it, and we had the largest by far mission trip. We had 37 people. The whole church was excited about this event as well as the people that donated each film is $35,000 and we didn't even know who donated the money. And so we got down there on that weekend and with all that work and with everything that we had done, we started off with three teams of evangelism.
[00:24:57]
We went door to door around the property that we owned at that point in time to promote the film and say, Hey, you may not know this, but there's gonna be a film coming out in your language. It's about Jesus, and we'd like to invite you to come. And so we saw numerous salvations, including one lady that was a hundred years old during that week as we prepared for the premiere, if you would, of that movie.
[00:25:21] Dr. Nate Salah
Tell me about, do people know who Jesus is? I mean, do you have to explain? I know in some regions there's no knowledge of Jesus.
[00:25:29] George Roller
It's no different. Nate, it's very similar. You have people that maybe have went to church. You have a heavy influence of Catholicism. You have people that don't know about Jesus or the word of God. So you have a mixture of people, but most people have an understanding of them. And so we went to about 60 homes. We're advertising on television, we're putting banners up. We're just doing everything we can do to get this out. And so when it came to any opposition along the way, absolutely none.
[00:26:01]
Absolutely none. In fact, anything, we were getting favor in the country, Guatemala, and it's very open for the gospel. It's open for change and of course everything is spun in a way that you're adding character, that you're developing people. And we try to lean our curriculum that way as well. It's not talk.
[00:26:17]
It's what we're trying to accomplish. And so coming up onto that weekend that I mentioned earlier on Friday, we had a big children's, if you would be party on the land as working up to that. And during that party we had a thousand people come out. And if you knew the area. There probably isn't a thousand people in the area.
[00:26:36]
We had like four or five buses from in different communities bringing people in, and we had a thousand kids on the property. And then that afternoon, in the final, final preparations of that meeting, we had about 700 salvations of the kids that day. And then two hours later we set up for the Jesus Film to show the Jesus film.
[00:26:58]
And by then the rain had kind of came and we lost a lot of people, but we ended up with about 500 adults that stayed. And we showed the Jesus film and it was just amazing. There was 106, adults accepted the Lord, and we had all 37 pastors there to minister to them. And then that weekend just exploded. Then the next morning we had a women's conference where there was about 60 women came.
[00:27:25]
And we ministered to them and there was several salvations and people that were really working through therapy cuz their world's really hard on women down there. And then we just kept going. And we did another premiere on Saturday in the square. And same results, about six or 700 people, about 50 people accepted the Lord.
[00:27:45]
And then on Monday we handed a film out to all the pastors and then it started being broadcast on TV on a regular basis. And then we were put in the national newspaper. And it was just unbelievable.
[00:27:59] Joe Thompson
Wow. What was the moment like when you had the introspective of, Hey, I'm evangelizing, like I've turned that corner from making that plan, so to speak, like that business plan to, I'm evangelizing. What did that feel like for you personally?
[00:28:15] George Roller
I think for me, my aha moment came, I had taken two weeks off that week, and then the following week when I got back, Home is a common routine in my house. I opened my suitcase as I traveled every week for 10 years. I transferred my suitcase from Guatemala into my business suitcase, and as I was sitting there moving your cell phone charger over and all the things that you would do and adding your suitcase and stuff, it just dawned on me what happened. It was at that moment that I was thinking that we have, as a ministry turned from humanitarian work into evangelizing, but the more important thing was that was a culmination of the compassion that had been really slow that I mentioned slow moving in me. And when I saw that, I thought, I can't go back to work.
[00:29:04]
I can't leave all these people that need to know Jesus now. I can't just put this behind me and say, Well, I'll see him in six months. And so that for me was the moment that I knew that I needed to make a change because the need was there.
[00:29:20] Dr. Nate Salah
When you say that, walk us through, I mean, you're looking at people's eyes. What do you see?
[00:29:24] George Roller
I see hopelessness. I see that in our area, a generation of people and of kids that have no future. And by this point in time, we've owned that property for about five years. We had a lot of events on the property and we're very, very familiar with the kids. And you know 'em by name. And you come back year after year and you see there's no change.
[00:29:45]
There's 12 year old kids that don't have teeth, they're not getting fed correctly. The abuse on the women, it's just intolerable. It's just like they need help. Yeah, somebody has to go help them. And it was just, again, it was the change in me of understanding the compassion or having compassion. Before I could say, Oh, well, you see a postcard, you can say, Well, I'll send 'em 50 bucks and good riddance, and I'm back on the road doing my thing.
[00:30:14]
But when you're looking these people in the eye every couple months, and then you're getting back on a plane to go do your life, I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't live my life. I had to make a change.
[00:30:24] Joe Thompson
I wanna touch on the calling from my own personal experience. I was Cradle Catholic. I was baptized as a baby and I probably heard the term my calling, my calling thousands of times, and I always thought I understood what that meant.
[00:30:42]
But honestly, until Dr. Salah and I began putting together Great Summit Ministry, up until that point, I had no calling that felt like a direct interaction between God and myself. And then when I did get it, it was more like a nudge instead of a push. Like I, I thought it would be this very like huge moment, but it was just a nudge and it just began with a conversation.
[00:31:14]
And I'm interested, like it's always hard for me to explain that to people now that I understood it. How would you explain, like personally what happened to you? Like what did that calling like feel like? You know what I mean? Did it come as a feeling or was it more like an intellectual like, Hey, this is something I gotta do?
[00:31:32] George Roller
Well, I think for everybody. It's a little different and it's a great question and I'll tell you my version of it, which may not be everybody's version of it, but for me, I think that the calling was there my entire life. And I think that even as a young man, as I was serving God and going on mission trips even like 18 19, That it was there, but you're a hundred percent right. It is a nudge and I think I was not hearing or feeling or accepting that nudge.
[00:32:01] Joe Thompson
Cause it takes a little emotional maturity, I think. Great work to get there.
[00:32:05] George Roller
Absolutely. And well that's horrible because that came in when I was in the forties. What does that say well about me?
[00:32:10] Joe Thompson
I'm not gonna touch on that anymore,
[00:32:13] George Roller
But I definitely think you're accurate because for me, I was being very successful, and God had given me several options to help admissions. And I literally said the words, God, I can't go help because I got a business to rhyme. And next thing you know, I didn't have a business anymore. Wow. And so God put me in a spot, and for me, I was driven. I'm embarrassed to mention this to you, but I was driven by grief. I grew up poor and I wanted to change that.
[00:32:42]
And I felt like the only way I could change, that's hard work. And that's the model of my life. And when I got to that point and I got put in a situation, I literally surrendered to the calling sarcastically going, Well, I might as well be a missionary now cause I can't make that much money anyway.
[00:33:00]
And that was obviously my heart was changing and the sarcasm wasn't the true turning point, but that was just the result of the pressure that I was under. But he got you there. But he got me there. And so when I finally, and I know we use this phrase a lot in the Christian world, surrendered to the call. Accepted the call if you would be.
[00:33:20]
Yeah. But I wanna go back to your point of what is the call, Just a little bit, I wanna kind of dig in there a little bit. I believe that the call is your, and I wanna get off into a theology issue here, but the call is what God has designed you as a person for. So as an example, you may have a pastor that knows Theology and he maybe is called to preach in a church, in a suburb somewhere and build a, to meet the intellectual needs of that congregation. Then there may be a guy like the machine preacher man who went to Africa when they're cutting off the hands of all the kids and he was trained by the military and, and he had a 30 caliber machine gun at the edge of the orphanage.
[00:34:01]
And I could not have had that ministry cuz I was not prepared. I don't know how to load a 30 caliber. And he had mentioned many times how he would fight his way back to the orphanage. And so that's kind of your two extremes. And then for me, God has put me in a situation where there are amazingly, a lot of business decisions and business acumen that has to be in place.
[00:34:25]
And so I don't look at it as a mistake that I spent all my years in business and my training was in business because I am not necessarily the person that's preaching. And so I think that a calling is the perfectly what you as an individual, what you, as your DNA was created to do and serve the Lord.
[00:34:43]
And I believe that God put you in that. And if you using the Christian term, you surrender, you accept that call. You fill out your application. Email it to God and say, I'm on board. I'll accept. Then that's where you are accepting the call. You work in your natural gifting and that is where the peace of God comes. And that's where you understand, this is where I'm supposed to be, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
[00:35:09] Dr. Nate Salah
And it takes discovery. Absolutely. It starts with discovery.
[00:35:13] George Roller
And it's very rare that a 19-year-old says, God's called me to be a teacher, in Ethiopia, and I'm gonna go to school, and at 28 I'm gonna go through theology classes, I'm gonna go there serve as a missionary.
[00:35:25]
That's a very rare person. That's Bill. That's the guy that has helped me on the mission field that we kind of walked behind. He's that guy at 13. He knew he was gonna be a missionary, went to linguistics at Wheaton College, idoled himself off of the saint. You know, the situation that happened in the fifties in Ecuador, the five guys that were killed there.
[00:35:44]
And that's what he was his idol. And that's I, and that's what he went after. And he knew he was gonna be a missionary all his life, but that's a very rare thing, like you said, Nate, it's discovery. Yeah, and I think for me, I discovered it in my late forties and now I'm walking it out in my late fifties
[00:36:00] Joe Thompson
And there's a discovery of your natural. Gifts.
[00:36:03]
Absolutely. You think of people walking around thinking they're incapable of these kind of things, just haven't really discovered their natural gifts, and I think there's a place, even if it's not along the evangelistic lines, but a place in humanitarian work for a whole plethora of different kind of gifts that people are endowed with.
[00:36:26] George Roller
Absolutely. And you don't know to have some of those developed until you walk in them. And I think kind of circling this with the wagons here a little bit, I think that's a lot of what mission trips can kind of help accelerate that process. Kinda shake it out of you a little bit. Yeah, I love that term.
[00:36:41]
Yeah. That you can see, Oh, I can see how I can minister here. Or I could see there's several of the young people went on these trips and they went back and they, What should I do, Jordan? I'm gonna like go to medical school. They think I'm gonna say, Pack my bag and come back and dig ditches. No, we can get anybody dig a ditch, go to medical school, go become a nurse, go become a linguistics person.
[00:37:01]
Go be a law, an international lawyer. That's what I need. Anybody's listening to this, wanna know what to do, go be a lawyer, and then report in in about six years. So God needs strong people in these areas to build, to do the work and to see true change effect. Take some level of communication with foreign governments. And to be able to communicate with politics, especially in the world of corruption, and to be able to walk that line of respect, but not being tainted by the world in the process. That's not your average duck.
[00:37:32] Dr. Nate Salah
No, it's not. Especially what you're seeing today, I mean, the news has, you can go on any channel and see the border challenges we have right now. People leaving many of these countries looking for a better life, right? And it's heart-wrenching. It's heartbreaking to see how difficult people have it in other places to where all they wanna do is just have dignity and a comfort. Just the basics of life, and that's what you're seeking to provide.
[00:38:03] George Roller
Absolutely. We're trying to create even a type of economy over there that's happening kind of slow through education and jobs. And of course I see it from the other side of the fence, literally the other side of the fence that they're leaving Joyabah and they're making the trek through Guatemala, up through Mexico, and then across the Rio Grande.
[00:38:22]
And of course, as an American or as someone understands the rule of law, I'm against illegal crossing borders and just the whole idea of that. But I also from a compassion standpoint, see the cruelty in the system down there. That there literally is situations and where there is no win and we as Americans are Westerners don't see that a lot because you can take anybody, typically, I'll say anybody, let's say 95% of someone that lives here in the US and if they work hard enough and educate themselves, they can get a hat. It's almost guaranteed. But over there it's not In the third world country, even Mexico and, and Guatemala, and El Salvador, Nicaragua, that you can't, You can work hard and all you do is get that day's pay.
[00:39:07]
And there's not a GM to go to work for and develop a pension. There's no loans for schools. There's no social programs for someone that has babies outta wedlock. I mean, everything is stacked against you, and they believe, which I'm against, but they believe the many times the only solution is to pack up and come to America.
[00:39:14]
Work a $15 an hour job and send seven of that back to their family. And that's their response, which I don't believe is God's perfect will. But it is a response
[00:39:36] Joe Thompson
A nd I think it's easy to look from this side of the Rio Grand and say, you know, Hey, what are these people doing? But look at the things that even we as Westerners will do in order to support our families, and that when things going hard, I mean.
[00:39:41]
You could look around at society and you can see kind of, there's underbelly to everything. There's not much difference in the mindset to me, for someone who will maybe do something illegal, earn money or however it is, and in a western world as it is for people to seek to solitude and to get away from that.
[00:40:14]
And I know Nate and I have talked about we should view this as an opportunity. Like this is an opportunity for us to bring the word of God to people and you're at ground zero really trained. What you're doing by creating opportunities is far greater to help that problem than anything politically or socially.
[00:40:37]
You can do like if you want people that stay in their country, then they need opportunities. They need a chance to change and grow. And that's the importance of these missions
[00:40:48] George Roller
For sure. You can't affect change by building a wall. I'd be in favor of building a wall, but that doesn't affect change. And I think another perspective can be for Americans is the understanding of the rule of law.
[00:41:01]
We, maybe you're not familiar with that term, but that's built into everything in our culture is the rule of law. Hey, 55, if you go 60, you get a ticket. If you jaywalk, you get a ticket. You dating yourself. Now
[00:41:13] Dr. Nate Salah
You know that, right? Yeah.
[00:41:03] George Roller
And Sammy Hagar. There's an absolute, if you would be right, but from the Guatemala standpoint, There's no rule law.
[00:41:11]
So when I, as a pious red blooded American say, Well, you broke the law, you entered my country illegally, they can't even wrap their head around that. Doesn't register because number one, Nicaragua and El Salvador, the two bordering countries don't even have borders. So there's no border control. So you can come and go without a thought.
[00:41:44]
And number two, they don't understand the rule of law because the policemen in Guatemala are typically on the pay. And so the only reason that you're gonna stop and talk to a policeman is to pay a bribe.
[00:41:54] Dr. Nate Salah
And this is a business. I mean, let's talk about that.
[00:41:57] George Roller
And this would be a, a business within a business or the definition of corruption, if you would be,
[00:42:02] Dr. Nate Salah
I mean, are there like billboards? Hey, we'll get you across the country. I mean, is it that much of a business? I mean, how people does it go there?
[00:42:08] George Roller
There is, there's billboards on both sides. There's advertisements on our television channel in the town I live advertising. Go to America, call 1800-Coyote or whatever. Wow. And on our side of the fence on the United States side of the fence on these tracks that they take, which I don't know the actual location of it, but I think it's through mainly new, through New Mexico, the mountains.
[00:42:31]
There's actually billboard after billboard saying, write this number down, type this into your phone and call us when you get to a payphone, we'll come and pick you up, bring you to Pennsylvania or Iowa or wherever. And you go to Workforce and we have housing for. And you'll immediately get a job, no identification necessary. So it's making it really easy for them. And to your point, it is a business.
[00:42:55] Dr. Nate Salah
And so what then do you do on your end, in your ministry to, I don't wanna say keep people there, but to create a better sense of life, what's going on in your camp?
[00:43:07] George Roller
I think there's a couple things that we do to address that. Now. There's a couple plans. We have to actually move the dial on that, and then the other part of it, we're responding to the need of the vacuum of all the men leaving. So because that's a natural. So yeah, because that's a natural effect, and that's, unfortunately for me, that's a little bit more up front of my agenda because I walk into kids that aren't going to school.
[00:43:31]
In fact, I got a call today of two kids that wanted to go to college that I'm probably going to help fund them to go to college, but I gotta make sure that they're gonna keep good grades and put some checks and balances in place. But you're dealing with the aftermath of all these men leaving our area maybe as high as 60%.
[00:43:49]
And so when we're going to the country, you got widows that don't have food. You got kids that are not being educated. You got young women that are being preyed upon. You just have a slew of problems. And so we're dealing with that from a standpoint of relief. If you would be, And that's one step. That's kinda like your first step in poverty and then you from relief is the first step.
[00:44:13]
And the next step is that the development or the planning of how you're gonna get them out of poverty. And that would be maybe an education or one case we're helping a girl fund her to start a little store they call Tiana. Another plan might be to go to school and then what's that other side look at?
[00:44:30]
What are the habits that you have to change to get out of that? That's what we're doing from the relief standpoint, or to address the vacuum of the, say 60% of the people even, but to address them actually leaving. I mean, in a small case, I've talked one Christian family out of him leaving, he was gonna leave.
[00:44:48]
And I had to be very blunt with him. What are you gonna do? You're gonna leave your wife, she's a young woman, you got two kids now. You're gonna go over there, you're gonna be there for five years. The typical happens is they pick up another woman and then they have another family. They're not bad people.
[00:45:03]
It just, it's a part of nature. And then they get deported and then they go back to their original family leaving a broken family in the United States. It's just a cycle of poverty that just is horrible on the family unit and women and children really are at the bottom of that. The one idea that I've been working on, and I have got it off the implementation table and into working, has been a vocational school down there because a lot of them are not savvy academically that the vocational makes a lot of sense because they're very entrepreneurial and they're very hard working and they're very mechanical.
[00:45:40]
And so we started three different classes. We started, a chef school, which was the most popular. Motorcycle was the second, and then Modesto, or sewing was the third.
[00:45:52]
And so we funded the equipment. We developed a relationship with the local vocational program and then that was they were able to come and serve. And we were, I taught a change of behavior curriculum and because I thought it's no good for them to learn how to fix a motorcycle if they still can't manage their money or they still don't plan.
[00:46:11]
And so I was trying to teach them concepts and we're developing that into something we call Plan de Viva, or in English it would be called a Plan for life. And so the plan for Life is setting down what are you gonna do this year next year? What you need to do to accomplish that. Just basic things that our kids learn in junior high here.
[00:46:31]
Wow. And that's one of the things that we're trying to do to change that. But right now it's on a small scale, but it's also in the proofing stage where we're proofing the concept of what changes and teaching them about expectations. If I can this one last point's really critical is one of the things that's missing.
[00:46:50]
It's easy to identify like the academic portion, but the one thing that you don't see right away, and unless I was living there, I wouldn't have caught onto this, is there's no mental toughness. So that's one of the biggest attributes identified when I taught at the vocational school was that the minute they have a problem, they give up.
[00:47:10]
So the idea of working through the problem, there's little to no problem solving skills. So I know that's a bigger issue, but I just addressed one issue I felt like I could move the dial on was the mental toughness was explained that yeah, you go to school, maybe you fell or maybe you fell a class or, but they would to the point of like if it rained, they would give up on school.
[00:47:31]
And so teaching that attribute that I think is driven into us as Westerners through all kinds of different methods is probably one of the biggest gifts that we can give to them, is a mental toughness. To know that you can accomplish something and you have to accomplish it by working hard and having a goal, and setting expectations.
[00:47:36] Dr. Nate Salah
Just sharing that some of these, what we call basics on that level is it's really humbling to even think that where you have to start, I mean, you and I have had conversations around cognition. I mean, just synapse is firing. I mean, you find that you've gotta even start in places that are so extremely ground level to just help people. I mean, just tiny, tiny steps.
[00:48:12] George Roller
Well, one of the things that's so challenging, and one of the things that we've learned, because we've had kids living with us for three years, we took in from the hospital abandoned kids that we took in, and it's really taught us exactly what you just described from our past conversation is with the young kids, it's more obvious because they're more vulnerable and they're more communicative and they don't have to hide anything.
[00:48:33]
So if you ask 'em a question, they used to answer the question, and so you can get to the facts matter, but what's what is happening over there is through this or you mentioned is the fact is, is that because of A) trauma and B) nutrition or the lack thereof? You don't have the synapsis, you don't have that quick call memory.
[00:48:50]
You don't have that short term memory or that path that creates that ability to memorize something like two times, two, four times four or whatever. They are having trouble with that, and we originally thought that we're dealing with like special needs kids. But what we found out, it's the trauma and or the nutrition.
[00:49:09]
And they can work hand in hand. And sometimes you get both. Sometimes you get one. And so when I'm dealing with, when I was into vocational school and I'm teaching with, and these are probably the upper crust of the kids, and I'm teaching kids 22 to 28 and they can't memorize, they can't do simple math in their head or simple multiplication.
[00:49:28]
And when I was teaching them Excel, very few could even get the concept of multiplying a cell against another cell. You know, something that you're not looking at like the components of Excel, but just looking at doing a problem. And so you have to go way back in education to get to the ground level to build to ground zero if you would be of what?
[00:49:49]
Why They're not able to learn. And so you have to dig back that, and that's why we're going to that standpoint of trying to do what we call is a Plan de Vivo or Plan for Life for each person we're ministering to because sometimes there's psychology involved, sometimes there's nutrition involved to really get to the cause and to affect change If you wanna be inspired, not be in fliiped, I guess I am.
[00:50:13]
Give 'em a hamburger, give 'em a bag of rice and then leave them cuz it absolutely does. But if you want to affect chain, it is a long term relationship with them. That may be five or 10 years. I'm three years into the kids in our house, and we're just now seeing true transformation of life, both spiritually and natural academically, saw process, problem solving.
[00:50:37] Joe Thompson
Is there an opportunity for adoption?
[00:50:39] George Roller
It is tough for Americans because it was misused in the nineties. And there was a lot of kids that were taken outta the country and Guatemala responded with tighter restrictions. It's not impossible, but it is very difficult.
[00:50:53]
And as we even look forward to developing an orphanage as well, it's very difficult because of the abuses in the past, but it is possible.
[00:51:04] Dr. Nate Salah
George, how do people find you?
[00:51:05] George Roller
Well, our address on the web is sendme.org. And you can contact me through email, which is simply george@sendme.org.
[00:51:17] Dr. Nate Salah
Awesome. Hey George, I'm gonna put you on the spot, not that I haven't already but eventually will each be on that great summit, that very top of the mountain, where the end of our life is before us, and everything that we've accomplished is beneath us. How would you describe in memory of George Roller.
[00:51:38] George Roller
Wow. I think it's the tale of two lives. It's the tale of a life that pursued my own ambitions, what I would believe was success, and it's the tale or Act two of George fall into calling of God, and this is the second act.
[00:51:57]
And so I wish I had the energy and the strength I had in the first act, but the fulfillment comes the feeling of getting on a plane Sunday. And going back to the ministry that God has inspired is just an amazing thought, and I just feel like I tell a lot of people, our donors and supporters, that I have the greatest privilege in the world to build a stand.
[00:52:19]
In front of these people and see and effect change, whether it's the spirit of God, whether it's a bag of grain, whether it's offering a scholarship to go to school and change their life forever. I mean, think about it. Change their life forever. And I feel like that if you were standing on my grave that that's what it would be, that you would say, Well, he served himself for 40 some odd years and then he served God for hopefully more than 19 in a way that God has blessed and God has blessed it. And I feel like that I haven't done much other than answer the call of Isaiah six and eight. Hear my Lord. Send me
[00:53:00] Dr. Nate Salah
George. We are definitely on your way. Thank you brother. Thank you for joining us. What not only an inspiring but hopefully a motivating and in a moving discussion that I know will speak to someone today.
[00:53:13] George Roller
Thanks for the time.
[00:53:14] Dr. Nate Salah
You bet. Joe, thanks for co-piloting, brother.
[00:53:04] Joe Thompson
Thanks for having me. It couldn't have been in here with a better guest. You're awesome. You're amazing guy, and we appreciate all the things that you do.
[00:53:11] George Roller
Thank you guys so much.
[00:53:27] Dr. Nate Salah
Well my friend, we did it. I'm so honored you were able to join me on this episode of A Call to Leadership.
[00:53:33]
Now this might not be for everyone because you really have to be in a certain place in order to take the kind of steps to level up. your leadership, and I want you to be taking steps, and for those of you who feel like you're ready for something like this, there's a place you can go. You can go to our website, greatsummit.com.
[00:53:54]
I'll make sure that's in the show notes. But here's the cool thing that we have. We've got a masterclass. We have all different kinds of events. We even have our leadership club where you can meet other people just like you to go deeper in your leadership journey. You and I all get to spend some time together and really focus on aiming for greatness. I can't wait to see you there. I'm Dr. Nate SAlah and this is A Call to Leadership.