God Broke his Heart for the Orphans now he Feeds Thousands

In this episode of Jesus Studio, Ash sits down with his friend Nathanael Edwards, a man whose life is a living testimony of what happens when you simply say yes to God. 

Nathanael shares how he grew up in a Christian home, encountered the Holy Spirit as a child, and learned to recognise God’s voice through dreams, visions, and promptings. From stopping a man from taking his own life on a bridge in Croydon, to being called into missions in Africa, Nathanael’s story is full of divine interruptions and supernatural direction. 

Leaving school with a reading age of six and severe dyslexia, he never imagined the scale of what God would call him into. Yet the real turning point came when God broke his heart for orphaned children. What began as a tiny feeding programme has now grown into a charity caring for thousands of children across Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda and Venezuela. 

This is a story about obedience, surrender, compassion, and the God who provides again and again. 

Nathanael's Charity - https://www.lifesupportcharity.org/

 Nathanael's Church - https://www.lccstor.org/

Nathanael's book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Visions-Night-Nathanael-Edwards/dp/1739426002

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Transcript

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

And that night I had this dream.

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And in the dream, I saw my sister like walking into a graveyard and she was picking up corpses, like dead bodies out of graves and like dancing with them and walking around.

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And then she got more and more depressed and more and more miserable.

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And I was there like screaming at her like, what are you doing?

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Like, it was like God was allowing me to see

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the danger they were in from a spiritual perspective.

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You're listening to the Jesus Studio Podcast.

00:00:32 Speaker 2

So welcome to the Jesus Studio Podcast.

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Today we've got a good old friend on the podcast, Nathaniel.

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Welcome to the podcast, Nathaniel, and tell us your story.

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Excellent.

00:00:42 Speaker 1

Well, thank you very much, first of all, for having me.

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It's brilliant to be here.

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My story, goodness me, where do I start?

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So, yeah, my name's Nathaniel Edwards.

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I grew up in Croydon.

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So occasionally I slip back into the old Croydon ways, but I try to behave myself because I live in West Sussex now.

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I grew up in a Christian home.

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My dad was a leader in a church.

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And yeah, I loved it.

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I grew up, you know, excited about church.

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I loved God.

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I loved what I was doing.

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I guess there was never really a point where

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I wasn't a Christian.

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I remember probably when I was about 6, going to a kids group one night, came back from the kids group and they'd been talking about following Jesus.

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And I remember sitting with my parents and just saying, I want to follow Jesus.

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I think before that, I already had that in my heart.

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I already probably was a Christian, really.

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But I'd kind of come alive to this idea that I had to make a choice to follow Jesus.

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And I think, so about six years old, I kind of, five, six years old, said to my parents, I want to follow Jesus.

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I remember them praying with me at the kitchen table.

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That was a really clear moment in my life of decision, you know, to follow Jesus.

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And our church was quite open to like the Holy Spirit and God moving among us and stuff like that.

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So I remember probably, I was probably only seven or eight years old being at one of our church camps and the guys who were leading the young people were sort of, the kids groups were saying to us like about the Holy Spirit and him working and moving in our lives and did we want the Holy Spirit to move in our lives?

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And I was like, yep, I want this.

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So I think I was about 8 years old when I was, I first experienced, I guess what I would

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I would say, baptism in the Holy Spirit, I know people might use different terminology for that, but the first experience of really being filled with the Holy Spirit.

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And I was in this little room, there were probably 10 or 12 of us, and we would just said, if you want God to, the Holy Spirit, just to come and live in your life and to work in you and use you with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and stuff, like just put your hand up or whatever.

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And I did.

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And then I remember just being in this room and just having this sort of, this peace just come over me and I just started speaking in tongues.

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I just started speaking in another language and didn't know what it meant.

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But I guess because I was young and because my church, this sort of stuff was normal, it wasn't weird to me.

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It just felt really natural.

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So yeah, and I guess from that point I started to hear from God.

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I would have dreams and visions sometimes.

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God would speak to me quite clearly in dreams.

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And he began to direct me that way.

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So growing up, there was never a sense of like questioning, was God real?

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Was he really there?

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I never struggled with my faith.

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It was never kind of like, this was my parents' belief and I'm not sure about it.

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was, I saw things and I heard things and I experienced things that just caused me just to believe.

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in God and believe in the Holy Spirit.

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It doesn't mean that I never had any moment of doubt or question or whatever.

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There were definitely those like in my teen years, but I could always fall back on like, this isn't just something I've been taught, this is something I've experienced for myself.

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So probably soon after that, I remember having visions.

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So there'd be times where I'd be praying and I'd just see a picture and maybe I'd share it in church or whatever.

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And then dreams and God would speak to me really, really clearly in dreams.

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And that went on, I guess, right into my teenage years.

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So that was a massive encouragement for me just to hear from God.

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One thing that was really important for me was, so I'm dyslexic, so growing up, my reading was awful.

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I couldn't read the Bible very well at all.

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But that didn't hinder my relationship with God.

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I was still able to meet with him in worship and I could, you know, obviously listen to teaching in church and stuff like that.

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But I think more than anything else, it was that sense of knowing his presence and knowing him talking to me.

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That really gave me a firm foundation in him.

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So yeah, I left school at 16.

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I failed all my exams except for maths.

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I got a C in maths, which I was very proud of at the time.

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All my other exams were like ungraded and crazy because I just couldn't read.

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I think I left school

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with a reading age of a six-year-old or something like that.

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But it didn't really matter to me because God had been working in my heart.

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And I remember probably I was about 13 and our church had this missions conference and we had a guy come and speak at the missions conference.

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And he was talking about giving your life, surrendering your life to God.

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and being willing to go wherever God called you in life.

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And I remember in that meeting, just like my heart was pounding.

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And because I had this massive desire to serve God, but I probably thought because I couldn't read, like I couldn't, I couldn't be a preacher, I couldn't do great things for God.

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But that meeting, I really remember so strongly, like, I want to give my life to God and I want to serve God in missions.

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That's kind of like this big thing that rose inside of me.

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So at the end of the meeting, he called people forwards to, you know, if you feel you're called to missions, come to the front, we're going to pray for you and stuff.

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So at 13 years old, I walked down the front and I remember kneeling down and saying, God, I give you my life again.

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I was already a Christian, I was already filled with the Holy Spirit, but this time it was

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different.

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It was like, I'll go wherever you want me to go.

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I'll do whatever you want me to do.

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I'll give my life to serving you.

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And the guy who was preaching, his name was Ben, and he prayed for me.

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And he was a missionary working in Africa.

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And he prayed and he said, one day I'll take you to Africa.

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So from then on, it was like,

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what are you going to do when you leave school?

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Like I was, I failed on my exams, but I didn't really care because I was like, I'm going to Africa.

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That's my future.

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That's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life.

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And so that was what I was determined.

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Like that was my focus.

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I left school 16, like I said, I actually had to wait another year before I could go to Africa because there was different things going on.

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But I did some traveling with a missionary, did lots of short-term trips to different places.

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We're still learning to hear from God.

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We're still kind of walking this journey of what does it look like to be sold out for God and to serve Him with all that you are.

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Like I totally believe that we can do that in whatever job we're in, whatever capacity we're in.

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You don't have to be full-time in the church to serve God.

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We all serve God.

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But I knew for me that God was calling me to a full-time role within the church somehow, whether that was in missions or in the local church.

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So I finally went out to Zambia to where Ben and his wife Brenda were living when I was 17.

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I went out for six months.

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I absolutely fell in love with Africa.

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I just was just like, this is the most incredible thing, you know, this world, which was so different from the world that I knew, just became so amazing to me.

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And I just thought, this is where I want to be.

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This is what I want to do.

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I had a great time.

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I came back after six months to the UK and got involved just kind of in the local church, serving in the youth and young people and stuff.

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And then I actually ended up somewhere around there, like a year or two later, coming down to West Sussex, which is where I met youth, getting involved in a youth group in Storrington, and I ended up serving as sort of youth leader in the church for

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a couple of years on and off, different times, did some more travelling and stuff.

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And then moved back to Croydon full-time to be part of the leadership team there.

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But all that journey was a bit of shaping and God like teaching me and leading me.

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But within me, there was still this real passion for missions.

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And my heart was still like out there.

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And what I mean by missions is like, because you can do missions anywhere, like you can serve God wherever you are, right?

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But for me, it was very much like the nations of the world, like just feeling this call to serve other nations.

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And I think it's incredible because God does this.

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He takes unlikely people and uses them in different places.

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So you'll find there's someone, you know, that can speak into the upper class British

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group of people who has no formal education whatsoever and they've come from wherever.

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But somehow they cut through all the nonsense.

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And in the same way, you can take someone from here in the UK to another part of the world and it cuts through the culture and it's like somehow your voice is heard in a different way.

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And I just felt more than anything, I just felt like Africa was where I should spend my life.

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Africa is where I should really, really focus.

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And

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be involved.

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But I was working in the church in Croydon that I grew up in and I loved it.

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was brilliant.

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We started a young adults group in the church because we'd kind of seen a lot of young adults drift away from God and maybe go off to uni and just like lose their faith and stuff.

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And so we really started praying into that.

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When we started, there were about 10, you know, sort of 18 to 30s in the church.

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And over about a year and a half, that grew to about 200.

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We saw a lot of people come to Christ.

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We saw a real breakthrough in people's lives, people who'd been kind of drug addicts, just kind of being like really set free.

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Like one of my friends, we've been praying for him week by week.

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We prayed for him and he was so far from God.

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And one day he was totally out off his head, came into his bedroom.

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Literally, he said he just sat on the bed.

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And as he sat on the bed, he just totally sobered up and just had this

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mad experience with God who just sort of said, like, what are you doing?

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Like, why are you wasting your life?

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And that was all of us, really a result of this meeting that we started and we were just praying for young people to really meet with God.

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So we saw a bit of a mini revival, which was really cool.

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So that stirred me to be like, God can do great things.

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Like, God can do more than I've imagined.

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So where am I?

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I'm in my...

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mid-20s.

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I'm still involved in missions.

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I've been going out to Zambia regularly to visit.

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I've been learning to hear the voice of God.

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I remember around this time I was working in the church in Croydon and I'd really been praying and saying, God, like I know when you speak to me, like in visions and dreams and stuff like that.

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I know your voice in those occasions.

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but I want to learn to be led by you.

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I want to know when I walk in a room and I want to hear you say this or do this and just know it's you.

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So I was praying this and really seeking God to kind of like show me how to hear his voice and act accordingly.

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And I remember one particular

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night.

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actually, let me go back a couple of weeks.

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So over that period of time, I'd be walking through Croydon or just going somewhere and I would have this voice say to me, don't go that way, go that way.

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And this happened like five or six times.

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And of course, I've been praying like, God, I want that.

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It happened like five or six times, but every time it would be like a longer journey home or something.

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And I'd just be like, is this God or is this just like me just being stupid?

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And I kind of got to a point of thinking like, I don't know, this is God.

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Like, there's no, like, what's the point in this?

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Like, it doesn't lead to anything.

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And it got to a couple of weeks later and I remember I was going home.

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So I lived just behind our church.

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And I used to park my car in the church car park and then I would walk around the corner to my house.

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So I parked my car.

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I had an office in the church.

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I was going home and I thought, oh, do you know what?

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I'm going to go into my office and I actually had a computer game on my computer and I'm just going to go and play that game on my computer.

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And it was like a Friday night.

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It was like, I don't know, it was like after 11 o'clock at night and there was no one else in the church.

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And so I got to the front door of the church and I put my key in the door of the church.

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And I just felt that same leading that I'd had the other days just say to me, don't go into the church, go home.

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And I was so fed up of this thing, because I was just like, this isn't God.

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Like, nothing ever happens when I hear this thing.

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And nothing, like, I'd just...

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really fed up with it.

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So I was going to ignore it and I started turning the key and the same thing again, don't go into the church, go home.

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And again, I was just like, it's not God, it's just my head and I'm fed up with this and I'm going in the church.

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And so I turned the key and it happened a third time and I stopped and I thought, if it is God, I don't want to be disobedient.

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And if it is just me, then I'm not going to, do you know what I mean?

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It doesn't matter.

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So anyway, so I took the key out the door and I started walking home and our church was on a corner.

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And there was like a, there's like a flyover that goes, like a bridge thing that goes over.

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And then there's a train track that comes along the side.

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And I lived around the back.

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So I started walking towards my house.

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And as I'm walking along the front of the church, I get to the corner and I notice there's a man standing up on the bridge, on the flyover, over the railway track.

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So I look up and I can see he's not standing behind the barrier.

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He's actually standing in front of the barrier.

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So like that's the road.

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He's stepped over the barrier and he's just holding on the edge over the railway track, railway track.

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So I look up and I'm like, I'm like, what is he doing?

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Like, that's weird.

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And then so I shouted to him.

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I was like, are you okay, mate?

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And he was like, go away, leave me alone.

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So I was like, are you all right?

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What's going on?

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Anyway, so he started shouting back, just go away.

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I don't want to, just leave me alone, go away from it.

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And then a train came under the tunnel, like while I'm talking to him.

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And it's suddenly like, I was like, he's going to jump in front of a train.

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That's what he's going to do.

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So I'm shouting at this guy that was going, he's telling me to get lost.

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Fortunately, the train came, so he didn't jump in front of the train.

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And I was just like, just stay there, stay there.

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So I ran as fast as I could.

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I came back because I had to go up these stairs and then go along to where it was.

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It took me a couple of minutes to get to him.

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And I stood there probably for the next like 45 minutes, just trying to persuade this guy not to jump in front of a train.

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And so I was like telling him, what, I mean, I was just trying anything I possibly could.

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Like, don't do this to your family.

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Like, there's a reason to live, God loves you.

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And I like everything I could possibly say.

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But he was really not in a good way.

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And it was really hard.

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And so he was talking with me and several trains like came through the tunnel.

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And anyway, eventually a police car pulled out and these two policemen came up behind him.

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And he didn't he didn't see it that the sirens weren't on or anything, but because he was talking to me, they came up behind him and they literally just grabbed him and they pulled him off and they put him in cuffs and they took him to the station and stuff.

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And I was just like, What on earth just happened?

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You know what I mean?

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So, I went home

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And the funny thing was they took his name in the police car and his name just got stuck in my head.

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And I've got the worst memory in the world.

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I can never remember people's names.

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But his name was so like imprinted in my head.

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So I go home and about a week later, I'm back at church with a friend of mine.

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And I said to my friend,

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this story, and I just told him everything that happened, with the guy and whatever.

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And he was like, we need to find him, we need to find him.

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And I was like, how are we going to find him?

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Like, Croydon's a big place.

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He's like, how are we going to find this guy?

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I don't know who he is.

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I don't know where he lives.

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I don't know anything about him.

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I said, I remember his name, but that's all.

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So my friend was like, no, let's just pray and ask God to lead us to him.

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So I was like,

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Which is ridiculous because I'd been praying like, Holy Spirit lead me, do you know what I mean?

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And I had this experience and totally like, I know that God was speaking to me, told me not to go into the church, but to go home.

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And I thought about it, like if I had disobeyed that voice, I would have found a very different scene when I came out from the church.

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Anyway, so I was like, okay, cool, let's do it.

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So me and my friend, we were praying, we were walking around.

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So we decided to go one particular direction.

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So we went over the bridge and we went in whatever direction it was.

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And literally we were walking along this road and I think my friend said, like, what about that pub?

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Let's go and ask in that pub if anyone knows him.

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So we walked into this pub.

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I went straight up to the counter and there was a lady behind the bar.

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And I said to her, excuse me, do you know such and such?

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And she's like, who's asking?

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because she's from Croydon.

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We're pretty tough from Croydon, yeah.

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Anyway, that was a joke, by the way, in case you weren't sure.

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So she was like, who's asking?

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And I said, oh, you know, just I met him the other day.

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I actually met him on the bridge and I was just, you know, a bit concerned that he's all right and just wanted to check if he's okay.

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And then she looked at me and she was like,

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Are you the guy that stopped him jumping in front of the train?

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And I was, and I was like, I didn't even know that she knew him at this point.

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Do you know what I mean?

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I was like, what?

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And then I was like, wow, you know, I sit there talking to him for a while.

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And she goes, you're an angel.

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Like God sent you, you're an angel.

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And then she said, she said, he's my brother and he lives in this pub.

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He lives upstairs in this pub.

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And I literally was just like, what?

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Like, this is nuts.

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Like God had led us to the place that he lived.

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And I gave him my number and I was like, listen, I'm from the church over the road, like over the way, like this is my number.

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If he wants to talk, like I love to talk to him and just whatever, whatever.

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He never got in touch.

00:19:24 Speaker 1

I never saw him again.

00:19:26 Speaker 1

But I know that like God was doing multiple things that day.

00:19:31 Speaker 1

Like he was saving that guy's life physically.

00:19:36 Speaker 1

but he was also demonstrating to me like the power of obedience to the word of God, the power of like obeying the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

00:19:45 Speaker 1

And that has become like a massive, massive lesson in my life because it's really, the walk with God, our walk with God is all about hearing a prompt or a leading or something and just being obedient to that thing that God has led you to.

00:20:03 Speaker 1

And

00:20:05 Speaker 1

And I think sometimes that's what we miss.

00:20:07 Speaker 1

It's actually really simple.

00:20:09 Speaker 1

And it's not like God, it's not like I wake up every morning and the Holy Spirit speaks to me and I write a big long list of things that he's told me to do.

00:20:17 Speaker 1

Like that's not how it is at all.

00:20:20 Speaker 1

But there are times where he's whispering to us and he's just speaking to us.

00:20:23 Speaker 1

And if we follow that prompt, like miracles will happen, like doors will open that you just couldn't even imagine.

00:20:31 Speaker 1

were possible.

00:20:31 Speaker 1

And so that was a stage of my life really where I was, okay, I was saved, I loved Jesus, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, but I was really learning to hear the voice of God, really learning to walk according to what he called me to do.

00:20:50 Speaker 1

And it was the same time that I was taking groups out on mission trips.

00:20:55 Speaker 1

So I'd been on these different mission trips and I was loving it.

00:20:57 Speaker 1

But I was starting to be led by that, like, I was starting to, sorry, I was starting to lead groups to go and visit different places.

00:21:05 Speaker 1

And I think you came out to Zambia with us, which was really cool.

00:21:11 Speaker 1

We took a group out from down this way, but we took groups out from Croydon and stuff as well.

00:21:16 Speaker 1

And I kept visiting

00:21:17 Speaker 1

the couple, particularly in Zambia, had quite a lot to do with them.

00:21:20 Speaker 1

And then one of the particular trips that I was on, I was actually in Zambia on my own.

00:21:29 Speaker 1

And I'd been going for years.

00:21:32 Speaker 1

So like, this is probably my 10th time to visit Zambia.

00:21:36 Speaker 1

And I was staying on this farm where the missionary couple were living.

00:21:40 Speaker 1

So it's called Eden Farm.

00:21:42 Speaker 1

I was staying there.

00:21:43 Speaker 1

And one of the local pastors

00:21:46 Speaker 1

took me out for the day to visit widows in their homes.

00:21:50 Speaker 1

So we went into a local township where people are pretty poor.

00:21:56 Speaker 1

There's at this point, like there was a massive problem with HIV.

00:22:00 Speaker 1

So a lot of people who were my age, so in their sort of mid 20s, were dying of HIV and leaving like their children to live with grandparents.

00:22:14 Speaker 1

And so he took me to visit, I think we visited like six or seven widows, all of them living in tiny little houses and all of them caring for multiple grandchildren.

00:22:26 Speaker 1

So some of them were caring for like 6 or 7 grandchildren in a tiny little space.

00:22:30 Speaker 1

And I'd been to Zambia loads of times and I knew some of the problems around HIV.

00:22:35 Speaker 1

I knew some of the problems that were going on in the community, but I hadn't really

00:22:39 Speaker 1

interacted with it face to face.

00:22:41 Speaker 1

I'd kind of had it at arm's length a little bit.

00:22:44 Speaker 1

This was the first time that I was really, really impacted by what was going on.

00:22:48 Speaker 1

So I remember coming out of one of these houses and just saying to him, like, how does that old lady manage to feed like 5 grandchildren and provide for them at school and whatever?

00:23:01 Speaker 1

And he was like, it wouldn't be unusual for them to go two or three days, you know, without eating.

00:23:07 Speaker 1

because she doesn't have any means to do it at all.

00:23:10 Speaker 1

And she might go into the bush, that's the forest, cut down sticks and take them into the township and sell them in the market for firewood.

00:23:21 Speaker 1

And literally, that's just enough just to buy one meal for the family.

00:23:24 Speaker 1

And that's how she might survive.

00:23:27 Speaker 1

And I remember like just thinking, that's incredible.

00:23:31 Speaker 1

Like, I know there's poverty.

00:23:33 Speaker 1

I've seen poverty.

00:23:34 Speaker 1

I know it's like that, but I can't imagine my mum having to do that.

00:23:40 Speaker 1

Like an old, like as she wasn't an old lady then, but like as an old lady having to care for her grandchildren, like and no family support and no income, no support from the government whatsoever and literally living hand to mouth and

00:23:55 Speaker 1

And those young children, some of them 3, four years old, going without a meal for a day.

00:23:59 Speaker 1

And I was just like, I just can't imagine this.

00:24:02 Speaker 1

So I went back to the farm and I was obviously really emotionally moved by what I'd seen.

00:24:07 Speaker 1

I sat down at the table and Brenda, the lady I was saying with, she put a big plate of food in front of me.

00:24:13 Speaker 1

And I looked down at the food and I just, I just thought to myself, I have never, except for like a handful of times where I have chosen to fast,

00:24:25 Speaker 1

I have never gone a day in my life without three meals if I wanted it.

00:24:30 Speaker 1

Like never.

00:24:31 Speaker 1

I've never, I've never not been able to eat ever.

00:24:36 Speaker 1

And here I am.

00:24:37 Speaker 1

And these, are little kids and they don't have enough to eat.

00:24:42 Speaker 1

They don't, they don't have meals, you know.

00:24:44 Speaker 1

And I literally just sat there and I just couldn't, it's like my brain just couldn't quite take it in properly.

00:24:49 Speaker 1

And I felt guilty, not guilty like I'd done something wrong, but I just felt like, my gosh, I have so much and I have nothing.

00:24:56 Speaker 1

Like, this isn't right.

00:24:58 Speaker 1

And I went to, I ate my food because it had been put in front of me.

00:25:02 Speaker 1

And I went to my room that night and I just started to pray and I felt like God spoke to me and said to me, Nathaniel, I don't want you to be a tourist anymore.

00:25:12 Speaker 1

I want you to make a difference.

00:25:14 Speaker 1

And so from that point,

00:25:18 Speaker 1

something shifted, like it was missions and it was cool, but something really shifted.

00:25:23 Speaker 1

And I committed myself again.

00:25:25 Speaker 1

So if you remember back, like I became a Christian, I invited the Holy Spirit into my life, I commit myself to missions when I was about 13 years old.

00:25:34 Speaker 1

And then finally, like it actually took over and like now I'm actually, you know, this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to serve this stuff.

00:25:42 Speaker 1

so I committed myself to this thing and I started to raise money to help, just little bits and pieces, pay school fees and blah, blah, blah, whatever else like that.

00:25:52 Speaker 1

Fast forward, took a group out to Zambia a few years.

00:25:56 Speaker 1

Sorry, yeah, so fast forward, took a group out to Zambia maybe a year later.

00:26:04 Speaker 1

And we ended up with some friends of ours in another town, like working with street kids.

00:26:09 Speaker 1

So we

00:26:11 Speaker 1

we would go out and give food out to kids living on the streets and then we'd sit and talk with these kids and just, try and help them and stuff.

00:26:20 Speaker 1

And I was just massively, again, just massively moved.

00:26:24 Speaker 1

Like I just couldn't believe.

00:26:26 Speaker 1

It's really crazy, isn't it?

00:26:27 Speaker 1

Because you can know something, but until you experience it, doesn't hit you in the same way.

00:26:33 Speaker 1

So like you can know that there are kids living on the streets, but until you sit with them on the streets, it's like,

00:26:39 Speaker 1

wow, like that, because now it's not just like, that thing happens.

00:26:42 Speaker 1

Now it's like, I know them, I've got a relationship with them.

00:26:46 Speaker 1

And so we would do feeding programmes for these kids and then we would sit and talk with them.

00:26:53 Speaker 1

And I remember that night, just like the last night we did it and coming back and just being like, these kids are living on the streets, either they don't have parents or they're coming from abusive homes, they're running away or there's no food at home.

00:27:07 Speaker 1

So they're literally just out like scavenging, to get what they can.

00:27:14 Speaker 1

And no one likes them.

00:27:16 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

00:27:17 Speaker 1

They're just a nuisance.

00:27:18 Speaker 1

They're just a pain.

00:27:19 Speaker 1

They're just like beggars and whatever.

00:27:21 Speaker 1

And I suddenly thought to myself, like, this is who Jesus died.

00:27:27 Speaker 1

Like, this is who Jesus died for.

00:27:28 Speaker 1

He died for these kids.

00:27:29 Speaker 1

He loves these kids.

00:27:31 Speaker 1

And my heart was just broken for them.

00:27:34 Speaker 1

And I came back

00:27:36 Speaker 1

to the place I was staying that night.

00:27:37 Speaker 1

And I was like, God, we've got to do something about this.

00:27:39 Speaker 1

Like we've got to make a change.

00:27:40 Speaker 1

So I came home from that trip and I sat down with a few of the people who went on the trip with me.

00:27:47 Speaker 1

And I just said to them, look, we've been doing this visits to different places and whatever.

00:27:53 Speaker 1

This is cool.

00:27:54 Speaker 1

But I feel like we need to make a difference for these kids.

00:27:56 Speaker 1

We need to really, you know, help them, not just go and give them a meal, but actually make a difference in their lives.

00:28:01 Speaker 1

So we committed ourselves to starting something and we called it life support.

00:28:06 Speaker 1

And it was literally just like feeding programme for the street kids, paying a few school fees and stuff like that.

00:28:15 Speaker 1

Fast forward a little while, the couple who were out in Zambia as missionaries, they retired, they moved back to the UK and they tried to sell their land, the farm.

00:28:28 Speaker 1

But it didn't sell.

00:28:29 Speaker 1

And about a year later, I got a phone call from them.

00:28:35 Speaker 1

And they basically said to me, look, Nathaniel, it was New Year's Eve.

00:28:38 Speaker 1

I remember I was at a New Year's party and I got this phone call and they said, look, Nathaniel, we've been praying because the land in Zambia just isn't selling.

00:28:46 Speaker 1

And we're asking God, like, what's the problem?

00:28:48 Speaker 1

Why isn't the land selling?

00:28:49 Speaker 1

And he's told us the reason it's not selling is because it's not meant for profit.

00:28:53 Speaker 1

It's meant for Christian ministry.

00:28:55 Speaker 1

And it's meant to be used by God.

00:28:59 Speaker 1

And so we know that you have this heart for helping the kids in Africa.

00:29:04 Speaker 1

You've started some sponsorship and you're doing this street kids programme, whatever.

00:29:07 Speaker 1

And we feel God has told us to give you this land.

00:29:11 Speaker 1

So it's two square kilometres of land.

00:29:13 Speaker 1

So it's a massive, like for me, it's probably some farms are like way, way bigger.

00:29:18 Speaker 1

For me, it's a massive plot of land.

00:29:20 Speaker 1

And basically, they're just like, it's yours.

00:29:23 Speaker 1

It had a farmhouse on it, had some buildings that had been really run down.

00:29:26 Speaker 1

So here I am, like I'm trying to obey the voice of God, trying to do what the Holy Spirit's leading me to do.

00:29:33 Speaker 1

It's a very small thing, it's not very much.

00:29:35 Speaker 1

And suddenly I'm given this land in Zambia.

00:29:39 Speaker 1

And I knew 100% this is what God was calling us to do.

00:29:43 Speaker 1

It just tied in with everything that I'd seen, everything that I'd felt.

00:29:47 Speaker 1

And I'd really been praying and saying, God, like, I want to help these kids.

00:29:50 Speaker 1

I want to build a children's home.

00:29:51 Speaker 1

That's what I really want to do, because no child should live on the streets.

00:29:55 Speaker 1

No child should be without a family.

00:29:56 Speaker 1

No child should be without a meal.

00:29:58 Speaker 1

But I don't have the means to make a difference.

00:30:01 Speaker 1

And then suddenly, here's this land given to us.

00:30:03 Speaker 1

So we started.

00:30:07 Speaker 1

In the first year, we adopted 3 young girls.

00:30:11 Speaker 1

who were orphaned and we brought them to live on the farm in the house.

00:30:15 Speaker 1

So we got a house mother to come and look after them.

00:30:17 Speaker 1

And things just grew really, really slowly.

00:30:20 Speaker 1

Took a couple of years just to kind of get our feet, sort of get a bit of support and stuff.

00:30:25 Speaker 1

And the first few years we were like 5,000, 6,000 pounds.

00:30:28 Speaker 1

That was like our turnover for the charity.

00:30:32 Speaker 1

And then in the, probably the second year, the end of the second year that we've been working there,

00:30:40 Speaker 1

after we'd taken over the farm.

00:30:42 Speaker 1

So I stayed in England and we employed someone in Zambia to run the project.

00:30:49 Speaker 1

And I kind of, I got to a point where I'd been saying yes to God and I'd been like, God, I'll do whatever you want me to do.

00:31:01 Speaker 1

But I was putting conditions on it and I was like, but you've got to give this money.

00:31:04 Speaker 1

Like if you give us this, then I'll do that.

00:31:07 Speaker 1

And if you provide this, then I'll do that.

00:31:09 Speaker 1

And I

00:31:10 Speaker 1

It was really weird because we were really small, right?

00:31:12 Speaker 1

We only had this one project.

00:31:14 Speaker 1

We had this plot of land, which was amazing, but we only had like 5 kids that we were looking after on this farm.

00:31:22 Speaker 1

Like, we had, I don't know, 10,000 pounds a year was like our running costs or whatever.

00:31:28 Speaker 1

It's a really small thing.

00:31:30 Speaker 1

But in the midst of that, like I started to feel the Holy Spirit talking to me and saying, what you do in Zambia, I want to repeat in other places.

00:31:40 Speaker 1

and I want you to do way, way more than what you're doing.

00:31:45 Speaker 1

And so in my heart, I was like, yeah, cool, God, I'll do whatever you want me to do.

00:31:50 Speaker 1

You provide the money, I'll do this, da, da, da.

00:31:52 Speaker 1

Okay, so one night I'm in the church service in our church in Croydon and someone's leading worship and I'm stood on the front row

00:32:05 Speaker 1

And I remember in this time of worship, I'm literally standing there and I could just feel the presence of God.

00:32:11 Speaker 1

It was like a really, really beautiful time of worship.

00:32:14 Speaker 1

I'm aware of God's presence.

00:32:16 Speaker 1

I'm like, I love you, Lord, like you're whatever, singing out, whatever.

00:32:19 Speaker 1

And suddenly I have this vision.

00:32:21 Speaker 1

And in this vision, there's a woman standing in front of me, an African woman.

00:32:25 Speaker 1

And I knew that she was a Congolese woman.

00:32:29 Speaker 1

She's standing in front of me.

00:32:31 Speaker 1

And she's got this baby in her hands and she's holding this baby and she looks like she's about to die.

00:32:36 Speaker 1

She looks, she's thin, she's grey, she's just really, really ill.

00:32:40 Speaker 1

And she's holding this baby out to me.

00:32:43 Speaker 1

And I know in my heart what she's saying is take this child, like take care of my child.

00:32:48 Speaker 1

And I'm really, really affected by this vision.

00:32:52 Speaker 1

So this woman is like, it's really hard to explain a vision.

00:32:55 Speaker 1

It's not physical, like you can, like I can see you.

00:33:00 Speaker 1

But it's like my mind is imprinting this picture in front of me.

00:33:06 Speaker 1

So it's like it's real.

00:33:07 Speaker 1

It's like they're there.

00:33:10 Speaker 1

So I'm looking at this woman standing in front of me, holding this baby out to me.

00:33:14 Speaker 1

And I'm like, in my heart,

00:33:18 Speaker 1

I'm like, yes, God, I've said yes, I'll do what you want me to do.

00:33:21 Speaker 1

But she doesn't, nothing changes.

00:33:23 Speaker 1

She doesn't disappear.

00:33:24 Speaker 1

The baby's still in her hands and the look on her face is desperate.

00:33:27 Speaker 1

And I'm getting more and more distressed.

00:33:29 Speaker 1

Like I can feel inside of me, like I'm getting more and more upset.

00:33:32 Speaker 1

I'm like, God, what is going on?

00:33:34 Speaker 1

What is going on?

00:33:34 Speaker 1

Why is this woman still standing here?

00:33:36 Speaker 1

Why is this vision not changing?

00:33:37 Speaker 1

And I knew that something inside of me was saying yes, but I'm actually saying no.

00:33:43 Speaker 1

And I could feel this like tension inside of me.

00:33:45 Speaker 1

Like I'm saying, yes, God, yes, God.

00:33:47 Speaker 1

And I literally was saying, yes, God, I'll take care of the children.

00:33:50 Speaker 1

I know this is what you've called me to do.

00:33:51 Speaker 1

I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it.

00:33:52 Speaker 1

And I opened my eyes because like I had my eyes closed.

00:33:56 Speaker 1

So I opened my eyes and my hands were clenched like fists in front of me.

00:34:00 Speaker 1

So I've been worshipping God, but I've been worshipping like this with fists.

00:34:03 Speaker 1

And I realised my hands were closed.

00:34:07 Speaker 1

And I felt like in that moment, God said to me, Nathaniel, you're saying yes, but your posture is saying no.

00:34:13 Speaker 1

how can you take a baby with your hands like that?

00:34:16 Speaker 1

know what I mean?

00:34:16 Speaker 1

if I bring you a baby and I say, take this baby, or you say that to me, and I'm like this, you're going to be like, well, open your hands.

00:34:23 Speaker 1

You know what I mean?

00:34:23 Speaker 1

I'm not going to put my baby in your hands like that.

00:34:25 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

00:34:26 Speaker 1

You're going to drop it.

00:34:27 Speaker 1

And I realized, like, in my words and in my prayer and in my worship, I was saying yes to God, but in my heart,

00:34:35 Speaker 1

I was putting all these things, like, I'll only do this if you do this, and I'll only grow so fast, and I'll only do one, two, three, four, like you have to do everything else.

00:34:43 Speaker 1

Or basically, even if I was saying yes to everything, it was like inside of me, there was a part that wasn't surrendering to God.

00:34:51 Speaker 1

And I didn't know what the problem was, but I knew there was a problem.

00:34:55 Speaker 1

And I was like, God, what is going on?

00:34:56 Speaker 1

Why am I like this?

00:34:59 Speaker 1

So I opened my hands,

00:35:01 Speaker 1

And then literally in the vision, she places the baby in my hands and disappears.

00:35:04 Speaker 1

So now I'm like holding this baby.

00:35:06 Speaker 1

So I'm standing in the front of the church.

00:35:08 Speaker 1

Obviously, no one else can see it, just me.

00:35:09 Speaker 1

But I'm standing on the front row of the church.

00:35:11 Speaker 1

I've got this baby in my hands.

00:35:13 Speaker 1

And I'm literally like, oh my gosh, like this is serious now.

00:35:17 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

00:35:18 Speaker 1

Like she's gone and I'm left with the baby.

00:35:20 Speaker 1

And I looked at this baby in my hands and I said, God, how am I going to feed this baby?

00:35:26 Speaker 1

And suddenly I realised what my problem was.

00:35:28 Speaker 1

My problem was that I was afraid that I wasn't going to have enough to do what God was calling me to do.

00:35:34 Speaker 1

And I was like, how am I going to feed this baby?

00:35:35 Speaker 1

And he said to me, I will feed the baby.

00:35:38 Speaker 1

Like, I'm going to do it.

00:35:40 Speaker 1

But I knew what he meant by what that was, I will give you what you need to do this.

00:35:45 Speaker 1

And then I was like, well, how am I going to clothe and school this baby?

00:35:48 Speaker 1

And it was like, I will do it.

00:35:49 Speaker 1

I will do it.

00:35:51 Speaker 1

So it was like all those kind of like,

00:35:55 Speaker 1

I was scared to take a step because I was just like, we don't have enough money, we don't have this, we don't have that.

00:35:59 Speaker 1

I felt like God was just saying, look, you just got to be obedient to my voice.

00:36:03 Speaker 1

You just got to step out and do what I call you to do.

00:36:05 Speaker 1

And I will provide everything along the way.

00:36:08 Speaker 1

And I'm literally like, okay, that's all good.

00:36:11 Speaker 1

And then, and then I was just like, how am I going to love this baby?

00:36:16 Speaker 1

And that was like a whole nother level of stuff going on inside of me that I didn't even know was going on.

00:36:20 Speaker 1

And I literally just began like just to ***.

00:36:24 Speaker 1

Because I realised you can serve God, you can do stuff for God, but there comes a point where serving him is painful.

00:36:43 Speaker 1

There comes a point where serving him, he's like, how do I explain it?

00:36:49 Speaker 1

It's like,

00:36:51 Speaker 1

Jesus, it's not like, I'm not like Jesus, but get the idea.

00:36:55 Speaker 1

It's like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

00:36:57 Speaker 1

He'd been serving God.

00:36:59 Speaker 1

He'd had all sorts of opposition and whatever.

00:37:01 Speaker 1

He was also loved by the people and he was hated by other people, whatever.

00:37:05 Speaker 1

In the Garden of Gethsemane, he had to say yes to the will of God, even though he really didn't want to do it.

00:37:11 Speaker 1

Like he had to be like, okay, God, I'll do this even though this is painful.

00:37:14 Speaker 1

Now I've never experienced anything like that, but I will tell you,

00:37:18 Speaker 1

God has broken my heart again and again and again.

00:37:22 Speaker 1

And I've been in situations, like we now work in a refugee camp in Uganda.

00:37:27 Speaker 1

And I remember the first time I went to the refugee camp and I came out and I started travelling back to Rwanda where we were going back to stay.

00:37:36 Speaker 1

Literally in the car, it was just, I just felt like my whole body was going to shut down.

00:37:41 Speaker 1

I was just like, I just cannot deal with what I've just experienced.

00:37:45 Speaker 1

Like these people have fled war.

00:37:49 Speaker 1

all sorts of chaos going on, that they've lost their families, they've lost all sorts of things.

00:37:54 Speaker 1

And here they are in this situation.

00:37:57 Speaker 1

And actually, there were young kids that I'd been spending the day with who didn't have parents, didn't have anyone to look after them, didn't have enough food, didn't have anything at all.

00:38:05 Speaker 1

And I don't have anything to give them.

00:38:07 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

00:38:08 Speaker 1

It's like, I'm already spending everything I've got on this project over here.

00:38:12 Speaker 1

And here I am faced with another one.

00:38:13 Speaker 1

I've been in another situation where, like,

00:38:16 Speaker 1

this disabled girl who we now care for, like had been just totally neglected and not physically abused, but verbally abused and just told like you're a curse on our family.

00:38:30 Speaker 1

You need to hurry up and die and you know, whatever.

00:38:33 Speaker 1

And literally like her begged me after a church service, like just talk to me and beg me and say, save me, like save me from this situation I'm in.

00:38:44 Speaker 1

and just feel like, I've got nothing.

00:38:46 Speaker 1

How am I going to help you?

00:38:47 Speaker 1

How am I going to do anything?

00:38:48 Speaker 1

So it's like, I've had my heart broken over and over again.

00:38:51 Speaker 1

So that vision of holding this baby in my hands, it was literally like, I knew what I was saying was like, God, how can I have the love that will sustain me through this?

00:39:01 Speaker 1

Because this isn't just about, oh, let's adopt A child and help them in Africa and da, da, da.

00:39:06 Speaker 1

This is like, this is going to be their whole life.

00:39:09 Speaker 1

This is going to be not just one child, but it's going to be multiple children.

00:39:12 Speaker 1

This is just going to keep growing.

00:39:15 Speaker 1

And I felt like God just said to me, I will love the child.

00:39:19 Speaker 1

And I knew what he meant was, I will give you the heart that you need to do this.

00:39:24 Speaker 1

Like I'm going to sustain you for all of this.

00:39:27 Speaker 1

And so I literally like was just like bawling my eyes.

00:39:30 Speaker 1

I was crying and crying, crying, bearing in mind like at this point our work was really, really small in Zambia.

00:39:36 Speaker 1

We weren't doing that much.

00:39:38 Speaker 1

And

00:39:39 Speaker 1

Anyway, the vision kind of ended and I was just standing there, just worshipping God.

00:39:43 Speaker 1

And I was just like, okay, God, I give you my life.

00:39:46 Speaker 1

It's so interesting that I feel like God does this to us, that he brings us to places where we have to surrender again.

00:39:53 Speaker 1

So you've said yes to God, you're a Christian.

00:39:56 Speaker 1

You've said yes to the Holy Spirit.

00:39:58 Speaker 1

You've said yes, I'll follow your call upon my life.

00:40:01 Speaker 1

But time and time again, you come to these different places where you've got to say yes again.

00:40:05 Speaker 1

Like once again, I have to be like, yes, I give everything to you.

00:40:08 Speaker 1

I surrender everything to you.

00:40:10 Speaker 1

And even though you're living out that way, slowly you start building your own little kingdom and you start like building a reputation for yourself and start doing something.

00:40:20 Speaker 1

And I'm important now.

00:40:21 Speaker 1

I've got this.

00:40:22 Speaker 1

And you come back to this place of like total surrender to God.

00:40:26 Speaker 1

and being like, God, I will allow you to use me.

00:40:29 Speaker 1

I will be a vessel for you.

00:40:31 Speaker 1

can break me, which is literally what I was saying that you can break my heart if you want.

00:40:36 Speaker 1

If you need to break my heart, you can break my heart.

00:40:37 Speaker 1

I surrender to you.

00:40:38 Speaker 1

can use everything that I am.

00:40:40 Speaker 1

You can take what I am.

00:40:43 Speaker 1

And I think that vision, or around that time of that vision, oh yeah, so I had that vision, the baby disappeared.

00:40:52 Speaker 1

And there was a map on the wall.

00:40:53 Speaker 1

And I walked over to this map on the wall and I just suddenly saw all these different countries.

00:40:56 Speaker 1

And I felt like God saying, there, Like, what you're doing in Zambia is going to be multiplied.

00:41:01 Speaker 1

It's going to be in different nations.

00:41:04 Speaker 1

And I walked back to where I was standing.

00:41:06 Speaker 1

And this is a big, it's a big auditorium, the hall in Croydon.

00:41:11 Speaker 1

And I turned around and again, in a vision, I just saw the room like filled with like thousands and thousands of kids.

00:41:20 Speaker 1

And I felt like God

00:41:21 Speaker 1

just said to me like, thousands will call you father.

00:41:25 Speaker 1

Those are the words that he said.

00:41:26 Speaker 1

But I know what he meant.

00:41:28 Speaker 1

It's not that I am the father and I am done, but it's like through the work that we're going to do, like thousands of children will find a home, thousands of children will be adopted, thousands of children will be changed.

00:41:40 Speaker 1

And that vision basically has like sustained this journey of the work that we've been doing.

00:41:51 Speaker 1

I, where do I go from there?

00:41:56 Speaker 1

I continued working in Zambia, it grew slowly.

00:42:02 Speaker 1

We now, today actually, we just opened our 15th children's house.

00:42:11 Speaker 1

So each children's house will care for six to eight children.

00:42:17 Speaker 1

We now have home, we have the home in Zambia.

00:42:20 Speaker 1

We've in the last year built 10 new houses there that we're starting to bring online.

00:42:25 Speaker 1

So we will see another 60 children come to the houses.

00:42:30 Speaker 1

They've already started, but this year we'll see probably another 30 or 40 kids start coming to live in the homes.

00:42:39 Speaker 1

We now have homes in Malawi, Zambia, Uganda,

00:42:45 Speaker 1

We work in Rwanda and we started working in Venezuela and South America.

00:42:51 Speaker 1

And basically God has taken what we did just in one place and it's been multiplied.

00:42:59 Speaker 1

And so I'm starting to see the fulfilment of that vision.

00:43:03 Speaker 1

But really interestingly, like a couple of years ago, a lady turned up, sorry, a chief of a village turned up with a little baby.

00:43:12 Speaker 1

and basically came to one of our team and just said, the mother of this baby, and there was a sister as well who was a bit older, the mother of this baby died, like, within a couple of weeks of giving birth to the child.

00:43:27 Speaker 1

And there's no one in our village who can feed this child.

00:43:30 Speaker 1

So normally what would happen in that situation is that another woman in the village who's breastfeeding would take that child as well and feed both children.

00:43:40 Speaker 1

But there was no one able to do that.

00:43:42 Speaker 1

And so they brought this baby and the sister to our children's home and just sort of said, could you take these kids?

00:43:49 Speaker 1

And I remember receiving the message from the guy who runs our projects out in, it was in Malawi, sent us the picture.

00:43:56 Speaker 1

And I remember as soon as I saw the baby, I was just like taken back to that baby in my hands and just being reminded of like, that was the situation.

00:44:08 Speaker 1

that spurred this on for me.

00:44:11 Speaker 1

And so we've adopted that child and he's doing really well.

00:44:14 Speaker 1

He's growing.

00:44:15 Speaker 1

But basically, yeah, God has taken us on this journey, this incredible journey from really very, very small beginnings to growing into a charity that is caring.

00:44:28 Speaker 1

So we've adopted more than 50 children.

00:44:30 Speaker 1

We provide education.

00:44:33 Speaker 1

Like we've run

00:44:35 Speaker 1

two schools, we're about to take on a third school in a couple of months.

00:44:39 Speaker 1

We run 2 preschools.

00:44:40 Speaker 1

We've got more than 1,500 kids in our schools across the bases where we work.

00:44:46 Speaker 1

We feed all of those children like every day, which costs an absolute fortune.

00:44:54 Speaker 1

But especially those that are in the refugee camp, they can go without food.

00:44:58 Speaker 1

So one of the feeding programmes in Uganda

00:45:04 Speaker 1

Let me take a step back.

00:45:06 Speaker 1

So we're working in Zambia and then we started working in Malawi and we opened a couple of homes in Malawi and that's been growing and that's amazing as well.

00:45:14 Speaker 1

But then in, I was praying one day, just reading a book and praying and I had this book in my hand and literally as I put the book on the table, I just felt the Holy Spirit say to me, go to Rwanda.

00:45:29 Speaker 1

So this was like in 2020,

00:45:33 Speaker 1

two, like January 2022, so not that long ago, go to Rwanda.

00:45:38 Speaker 1

And so I didn't know anyone in Rwanda except for one guy.

00:45:44 Speaker 1

Because we work in Africa, like we get emails from people like all the time, like, oh, could you sponsor us?

00:45:48 Speaker 1

Could you work with us?

00:45:49 Speaker 1

And like, we just can't, like we can't just work with everybody, like, you know, it just doesn't work that way.

00:45:56 Speaker 1

But there's one guy from Rwanda had emailed me and told me a bit about his work and said, like, oh, you know, love to work with you, blah, blah, blah.

00:46:03 Speaker 1

And I'd kind of just been like, cool, keep us updated with what you're doing.

00:46:08 Speaker 1

I normally say that and then never hear from anybody ever again.

00:46:11 Speaker 1

But this guy was amazing.

00:46:12 Speaker 1

He kept like emailing and sharing, this is what we've been doing, blah, blah, blah.

00:46:18 Speaker 1

And so I'd been in touch with him a few times.

00:46:21 Speaker 1

And I thought, this is the only guy I know in Rwanda.

00:46:23 Speaker 1

I feel God's told me to go to Rwanda.

00:46:24 Speaker 1

So I just sent an e-mail to this guy and said, look, really feel God's told me to come to Rwanda.

00:46:29 Speaker 1

I'd love to come visit you.

00:46:31 Speaker 1

Like,

00:46:32 Speaker 1

let me know if that's possible.

00:46:33 Speaker 1

And he was like, yeah, amazing, come.

00:46:35 Speaker 1

So anyway, so literally, it was so funny because this is how ignorant I am.

00:46:40 Speaker 1

So I have a really good friend who's Congolese, but grew up, so he came to the UK when he was like 7 or whatever.

00:46:48 Speaker 1

So he speaks English fluently, he speaks French fluently.

00:46:53 Speaker 1

from Africa originally, but lived in Europe most of his life.

00:46:56 Speaker 1

And I was like, man, I've got to go to Rwanda, but my French is awful.

00:47:01 Speaker 1

So I was like, would you come with me to Rwanda and be attracted, like speak?

00:47:05 Speaker 1

translate and everything.

00:47:07 Speaker 1

So he was like, cool.

00:47:08 Speaker 1

So he came together with me to Rwanda.

00:47:10 Speaker 1

And then when we arrived, it turns out that Rwanda don't speak French anymore.

00:47:14 Speaker 1

They speak English.

00:47:15 Speaker 1

So I was like, so which just kind of like shows how ignorant I am to these things.

00:47:19 Speaker 1

I had no idea.

00:47:20 Speaker 1

So anyway, so we went to Rwanda.

00:47:23 Speaker 1

We spent a week with this guy.

00:47:24 Speaker 1

He's amazing.

00:47:25 Speaker 1

Like Sawados, his name is just doing an incredible job.

00:47:28 Speaker 1

He has all these kind of like football academies and they're reaching young people for Jesus.

00:47:33 Speaker 1

It's brilliant.

00:47:34 Speaker 1

But it wasn't really like caring for orphans.

00:47:36 Speaker 1

It wasn't kind of the same thing.

00:47:38 Speaker 1

But I knew that he had a school in Uganda and was doing some work over there.

00:47:44 Speaker 1

So I was like, okay, one day we'll visit that.

00:47:47 Speaker 1

Because of COVID, the border was closed, we couldn't go, whatever.

00:47:51 Speaker 1

Came back to the UK.

00:47:53 Speaker 1

And about six months later, I got a message from him basically just sharing, just saying like, please pray for us because the school in Uganda, we're really suffering.

00:48:03 Speaker 1

one of the little girls who's in the school died of malnutrition.

00:48:08 Speaker 1

And we'd started like giving like a couple of 100 pounds a month just to help the school or something.

00:48:13 Speaker 1

And I remember again, like I was on the train to London with a friend and I read his message on the train and literally I just started weeping.

00:48:24 Speaker 1

And

00:48:27 Speaker 1

What I've discovered is this, like the leading of the Holy Spirit can be a voice.

00:48:31 Speaker 1

It can be like a dream.

00:48:32 Speaker 1

It can be a vision, but it can also be compassion.

00:48:35 Speaker 1

And like when you are moved with compassion, for me, often that's the voice of the Holy Spirit telling me to do something about what I see.

00:48:44 Speaker 1

So I was on the train and I literally, I remember just being like, I can't allow that.

00:48:50 Speaker 1

Like this.

00:48:51 Speaker 1

How can I be saying that we're helping this school, even if it is just a tiny, tiny little bit, and a child who attends that school has died because they don't have food?

00:49:01 Speaker 1

Like, that's just not acceptable.

00:49:02 Speaker 1

Like, I can't, how can I do that?

00:49:05 Speaker 1

And I literally just put out a message on Facebook and just said, this is what's happened.

00:49:08 Speaker 1

This is what I've heard today.

00:49:10 Speaker 1

Like, I can't allow this.

00:49:11 Speaker 1

I need help.

00:49:12 Speaker 1

Like, someone help me to feed these kids.

00:49:15 Speaker 1

And by that evening,

00:49:19 Speaker 1

somebody had given us the money to set up a feeding programme.

00:49:24 Speaker 1

Not someone who is like incredibly wealthy, but just a friend who was just like, here you go, here's some money.

00:49:30 Speaker 1

And so we set up this feeding programme and there were 100 kids in the school when we started the feeding programme.

00:49:37 Speaker 1

As soon as we started the programme, the numbers doubled to 200.

00:49:41 Speaker 1

and then it was 300.

00:49:42 Speaker 1

And now there's like 650 kids in the school, basically, because these kids are so, they go so much without food that they'll do anything, to have a meal.

00:49:54 Speaker 1

And so some of them will walk miles and miles to the school to be in the school so they get a meal at lunchtime.

00:50:00 Speaker 1

And so we started, we started this kitchen, we called it Angie's Kitchen after the little girl that had died.

00:50:08 Speaker 1

And that's fast forward three or four years now, we are supporting the school, we're paying the teachers, we're building classrooms and we're running it all.

00:50:17 Speaker 1

It's a massive challenge.

00:50:18 Speaker 1

Like it's a massive faith endeavour every day.

00:50:21 Speaker 1

Like there's so many times where we just don't have what we need.

00:50:26 Speaker 1

We just don't have enough money.

00:50:28 Speaker 1

But I always come back to God telling me like he will provide.

00:50:34 Speaker 1

He is the one that gives us what we need.

00:50:37 Speaker 1

And that has absolutely been our testimony the whole way through.

00:50:40 Speaker 1

I asked one of the guys out actually in Uganda to tell me a couple of the stories of the children.

00:50:49 Speaker 1

So we have a little girl who's in our children's home who basically was in the Congo and her parents were killed.

00:51:00 Speaker 1

They were killed by, like there's fighting going on between the rebels

00:51:07 Speaker 1

and the government forces in the Congo.

00:51:09 Speaker 1

And both sides are pretty horrific, to be honest.

00:51:16 Speaker 1

And Congo's a mess.

00:51:19 Speaker 1

And most of the kids in our school in Uganda come from the Congo.

00:51:23 Speaker 1

So this little girl, I think she was probably five or six at the time, both her parents were killed and she fled, like she ran into the bush.

00:51:35 Speaker 1

And fortunately, she met a couple who were heading for Uganda who helped her get to the border.

00:51:43 Speaker 1

And she came into Uganda.

00:51:45 Speaker 1

She was picked up at the border, brought to the refugee camp.

00:51:50 Speaker 1

And really, like, no one there to look after her at all.

00:51:55 Speaker 1

And our team were made aware of this little girl and she's come to live in our home.

00:52:01 Speaker 1

And I think for me, like that sums up the heart of God.

00:52:04 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

00:52:05 Speaker 1

That we are, you feel like we're all refugees, we're all running for our lives.

00:52:13 Speaker 1

And he is wanting to bring us to a place of safety.

00:52:15 Speaker 1

And I think that the work that we do, God has enabled us to demonstrate the love of God and the heart of God and the heart of salvation.

00:52:26 Speaker 1

that what he is calling us to is a home where we're safe, where we're provided for.

00:52:32 Speaker 1

We're under his shelter and under his protection.

00:52:34 Speaker 1

And I think that kind of story really for me is just what, like, just keeps me going.

00:52:39 Speaker 1

It keeps me in money with it all.

00:52:42 Speaker 1

Yeah, so that's what we do.

00:52:44 Speaker 1

I don't know what else to say really.

00:52:47 Speaker 2

Well, that's incredible.

00:52:48 Speaker 2

I mean, that's great to hear, like, all the people you're helping.

00:52:50 Speaker 2

I mean, it's grown from, you know,

00:52:53 Speaker 2

Ben and Brenda's farm in Zambia that you inherited really, and God gave you that and now what you're doing is helping so many children.

00:53:02 Speaker 2

I've lost count, I was taking notes, you know, but it literally is thousands, like God told you.

00:53:07 Speaker 1

We feed about 15, 1600 kids five days, probably about five days a week.

00:53:13 Speaker 2

Wow.

00:53:14 Speaker 2

How much does that cost, if you don't mind me asking?

00:53:19 Speaker 1

That's a very good, okay.

00:53:20 Speaker 1

I'll give you our running costs for a month as an organisation.

00:53:24 Speaker 1

So our running costs outside of the UK monthly are about 20,000 pounds every month.

00:53:34 Speaker 1

We have a minimal staff in the UK, but that's kind of what we send out.

00:53:40 Speaker 1

And that's education, feeding, paying our staff and all that sort of stuff.

00:53:45 Speaker 1

So to feed the kids,

00:53:49 Speaker 1

the feeding programmes is probably 1/3 of that or just under 1/3 of that.

00:53:55 Speaker 1

So what's that?

00:53:57 Speaker 1

About 6,000, 6,000 pounds a month probably just on food.

00:54:03 Speaker 1

But if you think like that's pretty good when you're feeding that many, you know, that many kids, it's quite amazing really.

00:54:10 Speaker 1

So that's our feeding programme, education, the same like 15, 1600 kids that we're providing education for.

00:54:17 Speaker 1

We send some kids to university, we're paying the uni fees and stuff like that.

00:54:21 Speaker 1

And I always come back to the thing of like, I left school with nothing, do you know what I mean?

00:54:27 Speaker 1

I was like, my C in maths, that was it.

00:54:30 Speaker 1

And I feel totally unqualified for what we do.

00:54:36 Speaker 1

But I think I always come back to the, there's a passage of scripture that says he uses the weak things to overcome the strong and the foolish things to confound the wise.

00:54:46 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

00:54:47 Speaker 1

And I'm like, I'm pretty happy being a weak and foolish thing.

00:54:51 Speaker 1

You know what I mean?

00:54:52 Speaker 1

If I'm useful to God, that's what I want to be.

00:54:56 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

00:54:57 Speaker 1

I'd rather be, I'd rather be nothing and used by God than be something special.

00:55:02 Speaker 1

Like

00:55:03 Speaker 1

who are any of us really, do you know what I mean, without being used by him.

00:55:07 Speaker 1

So it's been an amazing journey.

00:55:10 Speaker 1

It's been an incredible journey.

00:55:11 Speaker 1

And I think that story of that little girl sums out for me, because we can talk about old big numbers, but they're all individual lives.

00:55:18 Speaker 1

And I think that's the crux of it.

00:55:20 Speaker 1

Like that child matters to God, like more than anything.

00:55:26 Speaker 1

And I think for me,

00:55:28 Speaker 1

numbers sound wonderful, don't they?

00:55:30 Speaker 1

Oh, we've got thousands.

00:55:31 Speaker 1

It's like, okay, but it's an individual that is touched, that is changed, is helped.

00:55:39 Speaker 1

And yeah, and we believe, and it's not, obviously we're feeding and we're educating and stuff like that, but we're also bringing the good news of that, like, Jesus loves you.

00:55:50 Speaker 1

Like, this is done in Jesus' name.

00:55:52 Speaker 1

This is done because of

00:55:53 Speaker 1

because of his love for you and his grace towards you as well.

00:55:56 Speaker 1

So it's been, yeah, it's been an amazing journey.

00:55:59 Speaker 1

We've seen quite like supernatural provision as well.

00:56:03 Speaker 1

Like, so I go back to that story, like he said, I will provide.

00:56:08 Speaker 1

100% along the way, like it has just been him stepping in and providing.

00:56:13 Speaker 1

The home we opened in Uganda, so we opened two years ago, we adopted our first children in Uganda.

00:56:21 Speaker 1

And I remember I was actually on a trip to Venezuela and I was visiting Venezuela for the first time and I was out there.

00:56:30 Speaker 1

And the last day I got this message from the guy who, so my friend Sawada, he lives in Rwanda, but he oversees the project in Rwanda and Uganda.

00:56:43 Speaker 1

And he sent me a message and he was like, there are these little children who come to the school every day.

00:56:50 Speaker 1

They're not part of the school, but they come for lunch.

00:56:53 Speaker 1

So they're too young for the school.

00:56:54 Speaker 1

They're like 3, four years old.

00:56:57 Speaker 1

And they just come on their own.

00:56:59 Speaker 1

They just walk from wherever their home is.

00:57:01 Speaker 1

They walk to the school and they feed them.

00:57:03 Speaker 1

And I'd met them when I was out there.

00:57:07 Speaker 1

And they had like these massive potbellies and stuff.

00:57:10 Speaker 1

And I was like, oh, these poor little kids.

00:57:12 Speaker 1

Anyway, he said to me, like, they turned up today and said the family that they had been living with has told them to leave.

00:57:20 Speaker 1

Like, they're orphaned, but the family they were living with has told them to leave, to go and find somewhere else to live, and they don't want them anymore.

00:57:29 Speaker 1

And he sent me this message, said, can we do anything for these kids?

00:57:33 Speaker 1

Can we do something to help them?

00:57:35 Speaker 1

Because, like, he's got a massive heart for them, but he's got no money, he's got no resources whatsoever.

00:57:40 Speaker 1

So I was like,

00:57:41 Speaker 1

this is exactly what we should be doing.

00:57:43 Speaker 1

We should be taking care of these kind of kids.

00:57:47 Speaker 1

I've got nothing.

00:57:48 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

00:57:49 Speaker 1

I've got no money.

00:57:49 Speaker 1

Everything we've got is spent.

00:57:51 Speaker 1

And I know God has told me, like, step out in faith and do it.

00:57:54 Speaker 1

But the bigger something gets and the more money you need for what you're doing, the harder it is to take on something else.

00:58:03 Speaker 1

And I was really frustrated because there was a lady in America who'd like wanted to give us $50,000 towards our work, which is just

00:58:11 Speaker 1

nuts.

00:58:12 Speaker 1

But we were really struggling.

00:58:14 Speaker 1

She had to give it via a charity.

00:58:15 Speaker 1

We were really struggling to get this money to the UK.

00:58:18 Speaker 1

We were supposed to have registration in the States.

00:58:21 Speaker 1

It just wasn't working.

00:58:22 Speaker 1

And we were just having...

00:58:23 Speaker 1

So I'm really frustrated with myself because I'm like, if we could get that money, then we could build a house and we could look after these kids.

00:58:29 Speaker 1

And I was just seeing all the problems.

00:58:31 Speaker 1

I couldn't see a solution.

00:58:32 Speaker 1

So I was getting more and more worked up.

00:58:34 Speaker 1

And I remember like the next night I'm flying back to England on the plane

00:58:40 Speaker 1

When I was reading a book by Heidi Baker, and she was talking about like kids who live on the rubbish dumps and stuff like that, and just saying like, we bring these kids home and there's always room for another one and God always provides.

00:58:55 Speaker 1

And I remember just like feeling so convicted

00:58:59 Speaker 1

because I know that God has told me that he will take care of it.

00:59:02 Speaker 1

And I know that every time he asks me to do something, there's no money and we just have to step out in faith.

00:59:07 Speaker 1

But I felt like my heart had become a bit hard and I'd kind of like, oh, it's too big now and I can't add anything else in because if we take on another project, this one's going to suffer.

00:59:15 Speaker 1

And I was like, oh, I can't do it.

00:59:17 Speaker 1

But literally, I'm sitting on this plane and I just felt really convicted and I just started crying.

00:59:23 Speaker 1

I was like, God, I'm so sorry.

00:59:25 Speaker 1

Like, I'm getting frustrated and angry.

00:59:28 Speaker 1

and being like, this is annoying.

00:59:29 Speaker 1

We can't get this money.

00:59:30 Speaker 1

And rather than being full of faith and rather than trusting you, rather than being obedient to your voice, because here are these kids and I've already said to you, yes, God, I'll do whatever, you know, I'll take the children, I'll do it.

00:59:44 Speaker 1

We'll find a way.

00:59:45 Speaker 1

And I'm saying no, because like of the issues that are surrounding me, the problems that are surrounding me.

00:59:50 Speaker 1

And I just on this plane, it was just like God was just realigning me and just saying, Nathaniel,

00:59:57 Speaker 1

Who are you going to believe, me or the waves?

01:00:00 Speaker 1

like Peter on the water, like who has the stronger voice, me or the waves?

01:00:05 Speaker 1

And I suddenly was just like, God, I'm so sorry.

01:00:08 Speaker 1

Like, I've turned into this kind of like, I haven't got enough money, I can't do that.

01:00:11 Speaker 1

Like, that's not what I'm meant to be.

01:00:13 Speaker 1

I'm supposed to just walk by faith and just be obedient and take care of these kids.

01:00:18 Speaker 1

So I literally, like on the plane, sent a text message to Sawada, even though I knew it wouldn't like go until I landed, but I just sent this message like, just I said, just take the kids

01:00:27 Speaker 1

put them with someone in the church to look after them because we have churches on all the places that we work, we plant churches as well.

01:00:35 Speaker 1

So put them with someone in the church to take care of them and I'll find a way, even if I have to pay it myself, I will look after these kids, we'll find a way to support these kids.

01:00:47 Speaker 1

So I literally, I land back in the UK

01:00:50 Speaker 1

And my message sends to him, like 5 minutes later, I get a reply.

01:00:55 Speaker 1

And it's like, oh, actually, it's not just these three.

01:00:57 Speaker 1

There's 2 little boys as well.

01:00:58 Speaker 1

So there's five kids.

01:00:59 Speaker 1

And I'm just like, oh, God.

01:01:02 Speaker 1

So I was like, okay, take the five kids.

01:01:03 Speaker 1

Like, just find someone to look after them.

01:01:05 Speaker 1

I will find money somehow.

01:01:07 Speaker 1

I'll do it.

01:01:08 Speaker 1

Like, just do it.

01:01:09 Speaker 1

So he's like, oh, thank you.

01:01:11 Speaker 1

know, this is good.

01:01:12 Speaker 1

We're going to do this.

01:01:13 Speaker 1

So they take these five kids.

01:01:15 Speaker 1

I go home.

01:01:17 Speaker 1

It's a Saturday.

01:01:18 Speaker 1

Next morning I'm at church, I'm talking to someone just sharing about the situation and be like, oh, you know, do I have them?

01:01:25 Speaker 1

That night I get a phone call and someone says, look, I've heard about these kids and I'm going to give you 10,000 pounds to build a house for those kids so that you've got a home so you can build your first house in Uganda.

01:01:38 Speaker 1

So I'm like, oh, praise God.

01:01:39 Speaker 1

Like we don't have any more like flexibility funds wise, we're just doing what we have to do.

01:01:44 Speaker 1

here's 10,000.

01:01:45 Speaker 1

So this 10,000 pounds come in.

01:01:46 Speaker 1

I'm like, this is amazing.

01:01:47 Speaker 1

Next day, like I'm in my room, I'm praying and I'm just like, God, how can we get this money from America?

01:01:52 Speaker 1

Like, how can we work it out?

01:01:53 Speaker 1

And suddenly, like this idea pops into my head and I'm like, that's it.

01:01:57 Speaker 1

We can get the money from America.

01:01:58 Speaker 1

Like it was like simple, but I just couldn't see it.

01:02:01 Speaker 1

So I was walking into the kitchen to tell my wife, like, we can get this $50,000 and then we can do so much more.

01:02:07 Speaker 1

Like we can build this and do that.

01:02:09 Speaker 1

And as I'm walking into the kitchen to tell her, my phone goes ding and I look down and it's somebody else and it says, Nathaniel, God's told us to give you 30,000 pounds.

01:02:19 Speaker 1

So literally two days before I had nothing.

01:02:23 Speaker 1

I mean, obviously we have the money that's going on running the projects, whatever, but I had nothing extra.

01:02:27 Speaker 1

I had no wiggle room to do anything.

01:02:31 Speaker 1

And I take a step of faith and say yes to adopting these five kids that we can't afford to do it.

01:02:37 Speaker 1

And in two days, $50,000, 30,000 pounds and 10,000 pounds just comes like that.

01:02:43 Speaker 1

It's just available and it comes.

01:02:46 Speaker 1

And I just kind of had to step back and just be like, God, you could have released that money any time.

01:02:53 Speaker 1

You could have just done it.

01:02:55 Speaker 1

And it's like God constantly wants to prod us.

01:02:59 Speaker 1

Like, are you still walking by faith or are you trusting in what you've got?

01:03:05 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

01:03:06 Speaker 1

So anyway, so that's what led to us starting the home in Uganda.

01:03:11 Speaker 1

And it's been like that, like the whole journey, every time God leads us to something new, every time we're challenged to take something on, we don't have the money.

01:03:22 Speaker 1

And it was, I'll tell you one more story, but we, I mentioned earlier on, there's a girl, a lady, a girl, sorry, a lady, a woman called Chisala, who we care for in Zambia.

01:03:36 Speaker 1

So this lady, her mum died.

01:03:40 Speaker 1

So she's in a wheelchair.

01:03:41 Speaker 1

She can't feed herself.

01:03:43 Speaker 1

She can't take herself to the toilet and stuff like that.

01:03:45 Speaker 1

Her mum died and her dad remarried.

01:03:48 Speaker 1

And so I go to preach in this church that she goes to.

01:03:51 Speaker 1

And at the end of the service, I always go and say hello to her.

01:03:54 Speaker 1

Like I've got to know her over the years.

01:03:55 Speaker 1

So I went, Achisala, it's good to see you.

01:03:58 Speaker 1

And she's speaking away in Bemba, which is the local language.

01:04:01 Speaker 1

So I had to call someone to like interpret.

01:04:03 Speaker 1

I was like, what's she saying?

01:04:04 Speaker 1

What's she saying?

01:04:05 Speaker 1

And he interprets and says she's saying, Please, like, take me from the rubbish dump, like,

01:04:10 Speaker 1

Help me, please.

01:04:11 Speaker 1

You help me from this place that I'm in.

01:04:14 Speaker 1

And I'm like, what?

01:04:16 Speaker 1

So I had to ask, like, what does she mean?

01:04:20 Speaker 1

And so they explained that, oh, you know, her mum's died, her dad is remarried, and the stepmum doesn't like her, doesn't want her, you know.

01:04:29 Speaker 1

And basically every day is telling her, like, hurry up and die.

01:04:32 Speaker 1

You're A curse on this family.

01:04:33 Speaker 1

You're just a waste of space.

01:04:35 Speaker 1

You're eating all the food and you do nothing to contribute.

01:04:38 Speaker 1

You need to die, you know.

01:04:41 Speaker 1

And so she's not being physically abused, but verbally, like every day.

01:04:46 Speaker 1

And she's just like desperate.

01:04:47 Speaker 1

I said, help me.

01:04:48 Speaker 1

So I said, so I remember walking out of the, I said to her, like, we'll come visit you and we'll do what we can to help you.

01:04:56 Speaker 1

And I remember, I remember just going and sitting in the car and I had to drive back and I had the car full of people, like I had a team with me.

01:05:03 Speaker 1

And I literally just sat in the front of the car just broke and I was just weeping and weeping and weeping.

01:05:07 Speaker 1

And I was like, God,

01:05:09 Speaker 1

what is going on?

01:05:10 Speaker 1

But I knew he was breaking my heart again.

01:05:13 Speaker 1

And so I went back to the farm and the next day I went when my mum was actually on the trip with me.

01:05:21 Speaker 1

So I went with my mum to visit this lady in her home to see where she lived.

01:05:27 Speaker 1

She lived in this tiny little shack with her family or whatever.

01:05:30 Speaker 1

But

01:05:32 Speaker 1

But when we saw her, she'd been left in the sun.

01:05:34 Speaker 1

So her wheelchair was in the sun.

01:05:36 Speaker 1

There was no one there.

01:05:37 Speaker 1

And she'd sat in the sun the whole day long and she stunk.

01:05:41 Speaker 1

Like she'd wet herself and everything and there was no one to take her to the toilet or clean her or whatever.

01:05:47 Speaker 1

And I just realised, I was like, oh, this girl's been massively neglected.

01:05:51 Speaker 1

Like she's in a bad way.

01:05:54 Speaker 1

And then this, our project was small then, we had 7 kids and that was it.

01:05:59 Speaker 1

we didn't have a school, we didn't have any money.

01:06:03 Speaker 1

And I remember just being like, we have to do something to help this girl, we've got to take care of her.

01:06:12 Speaker 1

And I had no money at all, so I didn't know what to do.

01:06:15 Speaker 1

So I literally went to a friend of mine who was in town and I said to him, do you know any business people in town that could lend us

01:06:24 Speaker 1

I don't know, it was like 6,000 pounds to buy a house.

01:06:27 Speaker 1

And he was like, oh yeah, there's some rich business people.

01:06:30 Speaker 1

So he took me to like a shopkeeper and the guy was like, yeah, I'll give you the money and you can pay it back into my UK account like in the UK.

01:06:37 Speaker 1

So I was like, okay, yeah, cool.

01:06:38 Speaker 1

So he gave me cash and we went and bought a house.

01:06:40 Speaker 1

I had nothing.

01:06:41 Speaker 1

I had no money in the bank, nothing at all.

01:06:44 Speaker 1

This is not how you should like run a charity.

01:06:46 Speaker 1

This is, we've learned our lesson since these days.

01:06:48 Speaker 1

Please don't follow this as advice.

01:06:50 Speaker 1

But it was in the early days and it was like, but I was just like, we've got to do something.

01:06:54 Speaker 1

There's a woman, isn't he?

01:06:55 Speaker 1

And so literally, like I borrowed this money, bought a house.

01:06:59 Speaker 1

I had no money to like pay this guy back.

01:07:02 Speaker 1

And I was just like in faith, being like, God, if this isn't you, then I'm in serious trouble.

01:07:06 Speaker 1

So this is going to be you.

01:07:07 Speaker 1

You've got to help us out.

01:07:08 Speaker 1

But literally, by the time I'd landed in the UK, we'd been donated the 6,000 pounds to like cover the cost of this lady's house that we bought for her.

01:07:17 Speaker 1

And so we still care for her even today.

01:07:19 Speaker 1

we have two members of staff that are her carers and they rotate daily.

01:07:24 Speaker 1

And that began a project which we call King's Table.

01:07:27 Speaker 1

And we look after the disabled elderly who are left without care and stuff.

01:07:32 Speaker 1

So yeah, so it's been it's been quite a journey.

01:07:36 Speaker 2

That's amazing.

01:07:37 Speaker 2

It's all so amazing.

01:07:38 Speaker 2

Everything is amazing.

01:07:40 Speaker 2

How could, people are going to be listening to this and they're going to be like, how can we help you?

01:07:45 Speaker 2

Because obviously, you need.

01:07:46 Speaker 1

Give us lots of money.

01:07:47 Speaker 2

You need money, don't you?

01:07:48 Speaker 2

Yeah, that's what you need, and you need, you need definitely.

01:07:50 Speaker 1

Seriously, but joking at the same time.

01:07:51 Speaker 2

Yeah, I know what you mean, but you, but people can help, and they can get in touch, can't they?

01:07:56 Speaker 1

Yeah, they can.

01:07:57 Speaker 2

So what, do you, what, how could they help you?

01:07:59 Speaker 1

I mean, honestly, like, the greatest, I hate asking for money, like, so that, you know, I don't like asking people for money.

01:08:08 Speaker 1

God is our provider, 100% he is.

01:08:12 Speaker 1

But of course we have, like we said, we're, our running costs are like 20 to 30,000 pounds a month.

01:08:21 Speaker 1

We need money like to do more of what we're doing.

01:08:24 Speaker 1

And I wholeheartedly believe like we're just scratching the surface of needs in the areas.

01:08:30 Speaker 1

We can only work with people that we have relationship with.

01:08:32 Speaker 1

We can only work where we know we can trust people to run the projects well.

01:08:37 Speaker 1

So

01:08:38 Speaker 1

But there is a need to continue growing.

01:08:41 Speaker 1

We've got a heart to plant another children's village in the next couple of years.

01:08:45 Speaker 1

I mean, the northern part of Zambia, all of that just requires more and more money.

01:08:51 Speaker 1

People can give via the website.

01:08:54 Speaker 1

The greatest thing that people can do is just set up a monthly giving thing that just makes a massive, massive difference.

01:09:02 Speaker 1

But putting that aside, people can pray, you know, just pray for us, pray that God gives us wisdom.

01:09:08 Speaker 1

that he will provide, that he just continues to make a way for us.

01:09:13 Speaker 1

Pray for me that I don't fall into the trap of, thinking I've got to run it all and take care of it all, but remembering that he's in charge.

01:09:25 Speaker 1

And as we've grown, obviously we've had to become a lot more serious about what we're doing and we're caring for vulnerable children.

01:09:34 Speaker 1

My heart is that they will be loved to the best possible love that they can have from those that are caring for them, but that they'll be safe, that they'll find healing.

01:09:46 Speaker 1

A lot of these kids have been through horrific things.

01:09:48 Speaker 1

I mean, if you think of the girl, the Congolese girl who's lost her parents, they're murdered basically.

01:09:53 Speaker 1

And she's witnessed that and she's had to flee for her life as a small child.

01:09:58 Speaker 1

Like that's massively scarring.

01:10:00 Speaker 1

Just a little girl, you know, and like that's massive, you know.

01:10:04 Speaker 1

pray that we'll have wisdom in how we love these kids and how we bring them through some of the traumas they've been through.

01:10:12 Speaker 1

I think for me, like the work in Zambia is amazing.

01:10:16 Speaker 1

Like also people can come and visit.

01:10:17 Speaker 1

Like we love taking teams out.

01:10:20 Speaker 1

We vet people, obviously, to make sure that they're all right, but we love taking people out, you know, on teams to visit our projects.

01:10:27 Speaker 1

And we've got great accommodation to take people and stuff.

01:10:30 Speaker 1

So you can get in touch with us.

01:10:32 Speaker 1

via the website, life support at charity.

01:10:35 Speaker 1

And yeah.

01:10:37 Speaker 1

Life support dot charity, is it?

01:10:39 Speaker 1

So it's life support charity dot org is our web address.

01:10:44 Speaker 1

Yeah, we'd love to.

01:10:47 Speaker 2

People want to give and I want to encourage you because God is clearly working in you and using you in this because, you know,

01:10:56 Speaker 2

you said you left school with no GCSEs and you had to read in age of 6 and you're running a charity helping thousands of children.

01:11:04 Speaker 2

So that is incredible what God has done in your life and you're dyslexic, you know, and God has worked through that, right?

01:11:11 Speaker 2

Because you now can read well.

01:11:12 Speaker 2

I know you can.

01:11:13 Speaker 1

Yeah, Well, I mean, that was a miracle, really.

01:11:16 Speaker 1

So the first time I went to Zambia when I was 17, literally the Sunday before I was about to travel, one of the ladies in the church

01:11:27 Speaker 1

came up to me and said, Nathaniel, I was praying for you last night and I believe God's told me that he's going to teach you to read when you're in Africa.

01:11:35 Speaker 1

So I was like, okay.

01:11:37 Speaker 1

So she was like, so he's going to do it.

01:11:39 Speaker 1

So I went home and I was packing my bag and I was like,

01:11:42 Speaker 1

if God's going to teach me to breed it, but it takes some books.

01:11:44 Speaker 1

So I just like shove loads of like books in my bag.

01:11:48 Speaker 1

And I was like, okay, we'll give it a go.

01:11:49 Speaker 1

And literally, this was like a year after I'd left school.

01:11:52 Speaker 1

So I hadn't, my reading age had not improved at all.

01:11:55 Speaker 1

My, you know, I used to read the Bible and, you know, it was awful.

01:12:00 Speaker 1

So I went out to Zambia, had all these books and I'd literally pull them out.

01:12:06 Speaker 1

I mean, I couldn't spell my own name until I was 14.

01:12:08 Speaker 1

So it was just nuts.

01:12:10 Speaker 1

So I'd literally every night I would just sit with a book and just keep going, going, going, going, going.

01:12:15 Speaker 1

Came home and I enrolled in evening classes to redo my GCSE English.

01:12:23 Speaker 1

And they did a test on me.

01:12:27 Speaker 1

And I had gone between leaving school and coming back from Zambia.

01:12:31 Speaker 1

So probably really in those six months, I'd gone from the reading age of a six year old to a 13 year old.

01:12:38 Speaker 1

which to me was a massive miracle.

01:12:40 Speaker 1

And I literally remember like being at home, like a few months after coming back from Africa and I was reading my Bible and I suddenly found like I was reading out loud, but I was reading like a line or two ahead of where I was.

01:12:55 Speaker 1

And I was like,

01:12:56 Speaker 1

It was just like fluent reading.

01:12:58 Speaker 1

I mean, I was still a bit slow.

01:12:59 Speaker 1

I'm not a fast reader.

01:13:00 Speaker 1

I'm still a slow reader.

01:13:01 Speaker 1

But it literally was just like, I can read.

01:13:04 Speaker 1

It was literally that something had changed inside my brain and I could just read.

01:13:07 Speaker 1

And I remember calling my parents and I was like, I can read, I can read.

01:13:11 Speaker 1

It was a bit ridiculous.

01:13:12 Speaker 1

But yeah, it was like, it was a total miracle.

01:13:15 Speaker 1

But it was interesting because she said to me, like, God's told me you're going to learn to read.

01:13:20 Speaker 1

when you're in Africa, but I still had to act upon that.

01:13:23 Speaker 1

I couldn't just be like, oh, God's going to teach me to read and do nothing.

01:13:26 Speaker 1

I had to be like, okay, then I'm going to take books.

01:13:29 Speaker 1

And so it's that step of faith, you know, and acting upon, like God speaks to us.

01:13:34 Speaker 1

This is what I love, like this is faith, right?

01:13:37 Speaker 1

Faith is hearing God and then acting upon it.

01:13:41 Speaker 1

If you don't act upon it, there's no faith.

01:13:43 Speaker 1

So the Bible says faith without works is dead.

01:13:46 Speaker 1

So you can say, oh, I believe God, but you're not doing it, you're not doing anything.

01:13:50 Speaker 1

if you say like, I believe God can heal the sick, are you praying for anyone who's sick?

01:13:54 Speaker 1

Because if not, you're not putting that faith into action and it's dead.

01:13:58 Speaker 1

It's useless.

01:13:59 Speaker 1

So it's like we have to, so when, and this would be my encouragement to anyone watching, like if, or listening, if, God has led you to something, the Holy Spirit is spoken to you about something, don't just sit there and wait for it to come to pass.

01:14:13 Speaker 1

You've got to move towards it.

01:14:15 Speaker 1

Like you've got to step out and begin

01:14:18 Speaker 1

Yeah, start somewhere and do something.

01:14:22 Speaker 1

Exactly.

01:14:22 Speaker 2

Yeah, just do something, even if it's small.

01:14:25 Speaker 1

Yeah, And it will unpack and grow and stuff.

01:14:27 Speaker 1

So yeah.

01:14:28 Speaker 1

So it's been an amazing journey.

01:14:30 Speaker 1

So yeah.

01:14:31 Speaker 2

And you've also written a book of dreams as well.

01:14:34 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:14:36 Speaker 2

I mean, I know that's obviously, is there like 12 dreams in that book?

01:14:40 Speaker 1

I only put five.

01:14:42 Speaker 1

Initially, I was, I think it's five.

01:14:44 Speaker 1

Initially, I had a few more.

01:14:46 Speaker 1

But it took me, because I'm dyslexic, it took me like, it took me 15 years to write.

01:14:53 Speaker 2

I remember you saying you were going to do it when I first met you, which was a long, time ago.

01:14:57 Speaker 2

Yeah, a long time ago, yeah.

01:14:58 Speaker 2

But you said you might do it one day.

01:15:00 Speaker 2

I remember you talking about a dream you had about your sister.

01:15:02 Speaker 1

Yeah, So, I, yeah, interesting, interestingly, so that's one of those dreams are in the book where basically my mum had asked me to pray for my brother and sister.

01:15:15 Speaker 1

And I was actually in Africa the first trip.

01:15:20 Speaker 1

And I remember getting this letter from my mum saying like, pray for your brother and sister because they're just not in a good way.

01:15:26 Speaker 1

They were into drugs and stuff like that.

01:15:28 Speaker 1

They just weren't in a good way.

01:15:29 Speaker 1

So I remember like going to my room and saying, Lord Jesus, help my brother, help my sister.

01:15:34 Speaker 1

And I had no, I didn't feel it.

01:15:37 Speaker 1

I felt nothing at all.

01:15:38 Speaker 1

So I just prayed and I was like, God, I don't have a burden for this.

01:15:41 Speaker 1

I don't have the passion for this.

01:15:44 Speaker 1

So give me the passion.

01:15:46 Speaker 1

And I literally woke up, I literally went to bed, and that night I had this dream.

01:15:53 Speaker 1

And in the dream, I saw...

01:15:56 Speaker 1

my sister, like walking into a graveyard and she was picking up corpses, like dead bodies out of graves and like dancing with them or walking around and then dropping this one and then going to the next one.

01:16:08 Speaker 1

And at first she was all excited and it was what they are.

01:16:10 Speaker 1

And then she got more and more depressed and more and more miserable.

01:16:13 Speaker 1

And I was there like screaming at her like, what are you doing?

01:16:16 Speaker 1

Like, and she couldn't hear me.

01:16:18 Speaker 1

She was just like in this trance or whatever.

01:16:21 Speaker 1

And then the next scene in the dream was my brother and he was on the top of our house and he had a gun in his head and he was swinging it around like this and shooting it.

01:16:30 Speaker 1

And the bullets were just like, just missing his head.

01:16:33 Speaker 1

And so I woke up and I was literally like, it was like, it was like God was allowing me to see the danger they were in from a spiritual perspective.

01:16:44 Speaker 1

And I'd only been looking at it from a sort of a human perspective.

01:16:48 Speaker 1

And it just totally changed my heart for them.

01:16:51 Speaker 1

I was just on the floor.

01:16:53 Speaker 1

I was just weeping and I was like, God save them, like working their lives.

01:16:57 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:16:57 Speaker 1

So it totally like flipped.

01:17:00 Speaker 1

And I think that's it.

01:17:01 Speaker 1

Like when you grab something from God's point of view, it totally changes the way you look at something.

01:17:07 Speaker 1

So that's one of the dreams in the book.

01:17:09 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:17:09 Speaker 1

But my brother and my sister, both Christians, they're both following God and

01:17:13 Speaker 1

He's, we all have our journeys, we all have our difficulties, but they're doing good, they're doing good.

01:17:18 Speaker 1

So, yeah.

01:17:20 Speaker 2

Out of that book, actually, just one thing that's come to my mind, is there any dream in particular?

01:17:24 Speaker 2

This might be a silly question, but is there any dream in there in particular where you just say, that is for now, or that's really sticking on me, I can't get rid of that dream.

01:17:34 Speaker 1

Yeah, that's a really good question.

01:17:38 Speaker 1

I'll tell you one of the, I'll try and make it quick, but basically,

01:17:44 Speaker 1

I was on a missions trip in my teenage years with a group from our church.

01:17:50 Speaker 1

We were actually in the Czech Republic.

01:17:53 Speaker 1

And I remember I had this dream.

01:17:55 Speaker 1

It was a bit of a mess.

01:17:56 Speaker 1

I don't know why.

01:17:57 Speaker 1

It was just a bit of a complicated time.

01:18:00 Speaker 1

And I remember again, I prayed and I was like, God, help me to understand what's going on.

01:18:04 Speaker 1

I went to bed and had this dream.

01:18:06 Speaker 1

And in this dream, I

01:18:09 Speaker 1

My parents have a house in the south of France, which before we went, started recording, we were talking about, you came out there once.

01:18:17 Speaker 1

I was in the attic.

01:18:18 Speaker 1

So the house is built on a hillside.

01:18:21 Speaker 1

So there's three openings on the ground level, on the middle, and then on the top, at the top of the hill.

01:18:25 Speaker 1

And I was in the top part, the attic part.

01:18:28 Speaker 1

And there were loads of people there, and it felt like a family.

01:18:32 Speaker 1

It was a really nice place to be, like loads of friends and whatever, and whatever was going on.

01:18:40 Speaker 1

And suddenly from this attic, we could hear people calling from the woods, which is behind the house, like calling for help.

01:18:47 Speaker 1

And so we opened like the windows to look what was going on.

01:18:51 Speaker 1

And we could see like it was on fire, the woods was on fire.

01:18:54 Speaker 1

And in the dream, I started saying to people like, we've got to go and help them.

01:18:57 Speaker 1

We've got to go and like bring those people in from the fire and save them from the fire.

01:19:01 Speaker 1

And so we started preparing to go out and to rescue them.

01:19:05 Speaker 1

But then the people in the house were like, oh, no, you can't bring them in here.

01:19:08 Speaker 1

Like, you don't know what wounds they'll have.

01:19:11 Speaker 1

And you don't know, like, you might get hurt going into the fire.

01:19:14 Speaker 1

Like, it's not safe to do that.

01:19:16 Speaker 1

Like, we need to just, you know, they're not our problem.

01:19:18 Speaker 1

Like, leave them out there.

01:19:19 Speaker 1

We need to do our own thing.

01:19:21 Speaker 1

And I was like, what?

01:19:23 Speaker 1

Like, this is nuts.

01:19:24 Speaker 1

Like, who says that?

01:19:26 Speaker 1

Whereas someone's dying in a fire.

01:19:27 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

01:19:27 Speaker 1

It's like, you don't just ignore them.

01:19:29 Speaker 1

You've got to save them.

01:19:30 Speaker 1

And so a few of us went and we went into the fire, but the fire didn't burn us.

01:19:35 Speaker 1

And we were grabbing people and bringing them into the house.

01:19:37 Speaker 1

And I noticed that when they came in the house, like their wounds were healed quickly.

01:19:42 Speaker 1

Like they were restored really, really quickly.

01:19:44 Speaker 1

But there were people living in the house who had wounds for years and years and years that never healed.

01:19:49 Speaker 1

Anyway, I woke up.

01:19:50 Speaker 1

I was like, whoa, that was an interesting dream.

01:19:53 Speaker 1

So I like, I kind of

01:19:55 Speaker 1

remembered it, came back to England like a few days later, or maybe about four or five days later.

01:20:02 Speaker 1

And this was before mobile phones and, but I think, I mean, we had e-mail, but I don't think I used e-mail back then.

01:20:08 Speaker 1

And I came back and I met with someone at our church and they were like, oh, like, so how are your parents?

01:20:12 Speaker 1

Like, how's everything out in France?

01:20:13 Speaker 1

And I was like, yeah, all right, I think.

01:20:15 Speaker 1

And they're like, oh, don't you know what happened?

01:20:17 Speaker 1

I was like, I don't know what happened.

01:20:18 Speaker 1

So there was a fire at the land.

01:20:21 Speaker 1

And it came up, basically it was the same night I had that dream.

01:20:25 Speaker 1

So I'm in the Czech Republic dreaming of a fire at our house in France, while there is an actual fire at the house in France the same night.

01:20:33 Speaker 1

Basically my brother was there and he'd woken up in the night and like gone to the loo and seen like smelt, smoke and whatever.

01:20:40 Speaker 1

And the fire had come over the back of the mountain and come down towards our house.

01:20:45 Speaker 1

It's all pine tree area.

01:20:47 Speaker 1

And he'd literally woken everybody up and they got out of the house and called the fire brigade and whatever and they came up.

01:20:53 Speaker 1

They put, fortunately, the wind, they stood in front of the house and prayed and the wind changed direction and blew back the way the fire had come from.

01:21:02 Speaker 1

And the next day they went and investigated, not one of our trees were burnt.

01:21:07 Speaker 1

All the, like it come round the outside of our land but not burnt one of our trees.

01:21:12 Speaker 1

So I'm now like, whoa, I think this dream is important.

01:21:15 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

01:21:16 Speaker 1

I'm like, this isn't just a dream.

01:21:17 Speaker 1

This is important.

01:21:18 Speaker 1

So I'm like, Lord, what does this dream mean?

01:21:20 Speaker 1

So this is why I felt like God said to me that the church has forgotten, sorry, not that that's a bit harsh.

01:21:31 Speaker 1

The church must not forget that our actual calling is to go out into the fire and to rescue the world, not to have a party in the house.

01:21:41 Speaker 1

and actually what I felt from the dream was that some people were very comfortable in church.

01:21:47 Speaker 1

And as soon as a few people come in who are a bit, they're like, I don't think I like them in here.

01:21:52 Speaker 1

I don't think you like.

01:21:53 Speaker 1

And basically our calling is to rescue the world and to bring them into the kingdom, to bring them into the house.

01:22:02 Speaker 1

And the whole thing about, I noticed that the people who came out of the fire, some of them, they were healed very, very quickly, but people who've been in the home for many, many years weren't healed.

01:22:11 Speaker 1

And it was something about like, are we familiar with church?

01:22:17 Speaker 1

Are we familiar with like this gathering and we're Christians and but we don't really like non-Christians.

01:22:22 Speaker 1

We don't really want non-Christians among us.

01:22:24 Speaker 1

We want to be separate from them.

01:22:26 Speaker 1

And it was like, God was saying, like, this is the, this is the, this is what I've called you to do.

01:22:31 Speaker 1

You're not called to be a church separate from the world.

01:22:35 Speaker 1

You are to be rescuers of the world and to go into the world.

01:22:38 Speaker 1

And I would say I really feel like that is probably, I don't know about the church globally, but the church in the UK, like we've got to wake up and realise it is our job to bring people to Christ.

01:22:52 Speaker 1

Like for years, like I like Alpha, right?

01:22:54 Speaker 1

I love Alpha.

01:22:54 Speaker 1

I think it's brilliant.

01:22:55 Speaker 1

But for years, we've neglected making

01:23:00 Speaker 1

disciples.

01:23:00 Speaker 1

We've neglected like trying to win our friends for Christ.

01:23:03 Speaker 1

We're just like, oh, let's just invite them to the Alpha course, which is great, like brilliant.

01:23:07 Speaker 1

Alpha might bring them through to Christ.

01:23:09 Speaker 1

Alpha's excellent.

01:23:10 Speaker 1

But actually, all of us are supposed to share the gospel.

01:23:14 Speaker 1

All of us are supposed to open our homes and bring those who don't know Christ into our homes and share our lives with them and be a living testament to them.

01:23:22 Speaker 1

And I'm preaching to myself because I'm a church leader.

01:23:26 Speaker 1

I love speaking to Christians.

01:23:28 Speaker 1

It's really easy.

01:23:28 Speaker 1

I don't like speaking to non-Christians so much because it's like, oh, I have to think about what I'm saying.

01:23:34 Speaker 1

But like that dream probably for me, I think is really for this time.

01:23:39 Speaker 1

Like we must not just become a separatist group over here.

01:23:45 Speaker 1

Like we've got to get out and impact the world.

01:23:48 Speaker 1

And the world's a mess.

01:23:49 Speaker 1

Like there's rubbish going on.

01:23:51 Speaker 1

Like there's a mess going on everywhere, you know?

01:23:55 Speaker 1

And it's like, we've got to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

01:23:58 Speaker 1

We've got to take the gospel.

01:23:59 Speaker 1

We've got to go into the fire.

01:24:01 Speaker 1

So yeah, don't be afraid of the fire.

01:24:04 Speaker 1

Step out in faith and do it.

01:24:07 Speaker 1

I think that's the one that, yeah.

01:24:08 Speaker 2

That sounds great.

01:24:09 Speaker 2

That's really good.

01:24:11 Speaker 2

And also you lead a church now as well, don't forget.

01:24:13 Speaker 1

Yeah, I keep busy.

01:24:15 Speaker 1

I don't like sitting around, obviously.

01:24:19 Speaker 1

Yeah, I have the absolute privilege of

01:24:22 Speaker 1

being an elder at Life Community Church in Storrington.

01:24:26 Speaker 1

And I'm the full-time church minister.

01:24:29 Speaker 1

And I, yeah, I say full-time.

01:24:32 Speaker 1

I work 3 1/2 days a week for the church and a day and a half for life support for our work as well.

01:24:39 Speaker 1

So, and it's, but yeah, it's an absolute honour, all of it.

01:24:43 Speaker 1

I love it.

01:24:43 Speaker 1

And it's hard work.

01:24:45 Speaker 1

People are hard work.

01:24:46 Speaker 1

People are difficult sometimes.

01:24:47 Speaker 1

But

01:24:49 Speaker 1

But I absolutely love what I do and I'm really grateful for what I get to do in my life.

01:24:55 Speaker 2

And are you seeing like the revival that's happening to the church?

01:24:59 Speaker 2

Like we're talking about revival because it's not happening in one place, it's happening to the church.

01:25:05 Speaker 2

Like God is moving in the church, like completely, not just in one place, which is amazing, right?

01:25:10 Speaker 1

Yeah, it's incredible.

01:25:11 Speaker 1

So I've been in the church in Sorington for about 15 years.

01:25:17 Speaker 1

I would say in the first 10 years, we probably saw, let's say, okay, if we just talk about people who come from a non-Christian background or who are like Christians who have walked away from their faith, right?

01:25:32 Speaker 1

In the first 10 years, I think we probably saw five or six people like that come into the church.

01:25:39 Speaker 1

I think that we have seen

01:25:44 Speaker 1

I would say the last month or so, I feel like I see a new person like that coming to the church almost every week.

01:25:53 Speaker 1

Maybe not every, every week, but people who are coming back to faith, people who were not Christians at all and just exploring, like in a way that I've not seen before.

01:26:09 Speaker 1

I think when I lived in Croydon, we were a big church.

01:26:12 Speaker 1

Like the church I grew up in was like when I was there in my 20s, we were about 1500 people.

01:26:18 Speaker 1

So it was a big church.

01:26:20 Speaker 1

So we saw a lot of people come in and there were definitely some of those testimonies there.

01:26:25 Speaker 1

But I genuinely, I genuinely believe that in the last year, we've probably seen 15, 20 people, I guess, come in that kind of category.

01:26:39 Speaker 1

I don't know whether, like, our church has grown so that I don't know them all intimately like I would have done in the past.

01:26:46 Speaker 1

But it's an exciting season.

01:26:49 Speaker 1

And I think what really, what really challenges me is that I don't feel any different.

01:26:57 Speaker 1

Like, I don't feel like when we're preaching or we're leading worship or whatever else in the meetings, I don't feel any different.

01:27:05 Speaker 1

And I remember

01:27:07 Speaker 1

a while ago listening to a guy, I think his name's Dan Foley or something like that.

01:27:12 Speaker 1

And he was talking about the presence of God in a meeting.

01:27:16 Speaker 1

And he was saying like he always thought that when the presence of God came in the room or when like revival was happening or whatever, like everybody be down on their face and just like out of it.

01:27:27 Speaker 1

And he said, actually, they had a real move of God.

01:27:29 Speaker 1

And he found it really interesting that like some people were like that.

01:27:34 Speaker 1

Some people were just having a chat at the back of church.

01:27:36 Speaker 1

And it's not what he thought at all.

01:27:39 Speaker 1

And I think like we have to pay attention to what's going on because you might think, oh, God's moving.

01:27:46 Speaker 1

Like we'll all be, we'll all be feeling more of the presence of God and we'll all be like, wow, there's a revival going on.

01:27:52 Speaker 1

But actually most people could carry on going to church week by week and be completely unaware that anything has changed at all.

01:27:59 Speaker 1

And I think that challenges me because it's like, well, what, like how am I

01:28:04 Speaker 1

tuning in.

01:28:05 Speaker 1

Does that make sense?

01:28:06 Speaker 2

It does make sense, but I think like what I feel God's told me about all of this, because I have had a really clear vision from God about it.

01:28:12 Speaker 2

And it's nothing to do with individual churches.

01:28:16 Speaker 2

Yes, completely to do with what he's doing and what he's been doing.

01:28:20 Speaker 2

And I think we're going to start seeing, hang on a minute, God is working and lots of people and we didn't even know.

01:28:25 Speaker 2

And it's like a sleeping tiger or something.

01:28:27 Speaker 2

A sleeping lion would be better phrase.

01:28:29 Speaker 2

And it's like he is just connecting all the dots and he's been connecting the dots.

01:28:33 Speaker 2

And when you start to see a few of the

01:28:35 Speaker 2

You're like, hang on a minute, you came from there, you went there, then you went there, then now you're there.

01:28:39 Speaker 2

And it's like amazing to see.

01:28:40 Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely.

01:28:41 Speaker 2

You see a lot of it through Alpha, like doing Alpha is good because I know.

01:28:44 Speaker 1

Yeah, amazing, brilliant.

01:28:45 Speaker 2

What I love about Alpha is it's a way of bringing someone into a comfortable environment to talk about their faith and to get them realising that, have you ever even thought?

01:28:54 Speaker 2

about this.

01:28:55 Speaker 2

Have you ever even given it some thought like we've grown up maybe in the church or you certainly have, but have we actually sat down and thought, hang on a minute, why are we all here?

01:29:03 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:29:03 Speaker 2

Is there more to life?

01:29:04 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:29:05 Speaker 2

And that's what's good about Alpha.

01:29:07 Speaker 2

I love it, yeah.

01:29:08 Speaker 2

It's a good thing, but there's lots of different ways of doing it.

01:29:09 Speaker 2

I think we should, you're right, we should.

01:29:11 Speaker 2

just be going out in the streets and doing it.

01:29:13 Speaker 2

We're chatting to Holly who is doing that.

01:29:16 Speaker 2

She's going out into the parks and telling people, just walking up to people, giving them words and knowledge, stuff like that.

01:29:20 Speaker 2

It's incredible.

01:29:21 Speaker 2

And I think there's lots of different avenues and like God is moving in all the ways he will move, like and he would do it.

01:29:26 Speaker 2

He's working in people through Alpha and then he's also working people who are just going out on, you know, it doesn't matter to God.

01:29:32 Speaker 2

It's like that.

01:29:33 Speaker 2

It's what I'm seeing anyway.

01:29:34 Speaker 2

Yeah.

01:29:34 Speaker 2

And I don't think there'll be a feeling like I think before we've seen revivers where

01:29:38 Speaker 2

someone's been knocked to the floor and people have been held and that's all great and I think we will see that, but I think this is just about people coming to the only source of the fountain, if you like, then realising the only

01:29:52 Speaker 2

that is going to fulfil me as Jesus, like the only person who's going to, the only thing that's going to fulfil me is Jesus.

01:29:57 Speaker 1

Yeah, I would say like if what we have seen in our church and what I've heard from others that they're seeing in their churches that I've spoken to is happening across the country.

01:30:07 Speaker 1

We're talking about thousands and thousands of people that are coming to Christ, which is incredible.

01:30:12 Speaker 1

And totally, like I just to echo that, like we use Alpha.

01:30:15 Speaker 1

I think Alpha's brilliant.

01:30:16 Speaker 1

It's an excellent course for people to find Christ.

01:30:21 Speaker 1

And I think just to qualify what I was saying before, so not to be misunderstood, I think my point is that we mustn't negate though and say, oh, Alpha does that.

01:30:32 Speaker 1

So I don't, do you know what I mean?

01:30:33 Speaker 2

I think we should be doing is saying, I'll come.

01:30:36 Speaker 2

I think what you were saying is that you were saying this probably more like, rather than saying you should go to Alpha, I will come to Alpha with you.

01:30:43 Speaker 1

Yeah, Is this the best way to do it?

01:30:44 Speaker 1

You be the bridge.

01:30:45 Speaker 2

I'm coming with you to Alpha.

01:30:47 Speaker 1

Let's go.

01:30:47 Speaker 1

It's going to be great.

01:30:48 Speaker 1

That's the way to do it.

01:30:50 Speaker 1

Yeah.

01:30:50 Speaker 1

Do you know what?

01:30:51 Speaker 1

Sharing our faith is one of the hardest things sometimes.

01:30:54 Speaker 1

But I, but I, we can be really nervous.

01:30:57 Speaker 1

I mean, I'm like that.

01:30:59 Speaker 1

Like, I used to go to the hairdressers and I'd be like, please don't ask me what I do.

01:31:02 Speaker 1

Please don't ask me what I do.

01:31:03 Speaker 1

I don't want to talk about it.

01:31:05 Speaker 1

But put me in front of a group of Christians and I'll be like, bold as anything and God says this.

01:31:09 Speaker 1

And I realised and I was like, man, why am I like that?

01:31:13 Speaker 1

Like, what is that about?

01:31:14 Speaker 1

Like, why am I, why am I?

01:31:16 Speaker 1

I'm not ashamed of the, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, but do you know what I mean?

01:31:19 Speaker 1

Like, why is that like that?

01:31:21 Speaker 1

And I thought that's got to change.

01:31:22 Speaker 1

And if I am a leader of a church and I'm like that, what's it like for someone who's, you know, like a member of the church, you know, might not be in the same position, but might not know like the word of God in the way that I do, the way that I like?

01:31:35 Speaker 1

It must be hard for a lot of us.

01:31:37 Speaker 1

And I just feel it's that thing of like,

01:31:40 Speaker 1

Somehow we've got to get out of that.

01:31:42 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

01:31:43 Speaker 1

We shouldn't be in people's faces and offensive or whatever, but it's like, but we should be able to speak boldly about what God has done for us.

01:31:52 Speaker 1

And I found this interesting because I was at someone's home.

01:31:56 Speaker 1

We made some friends and we were talking about life support, about the work that we do.

01:32:00 Speaker 1

And they were like, how did it all begin?

01:32:03 Speaker 1

And they're not Christians at all.

01:32:04 Speaker 1

So I sort of said to them, said, do you want the...

01:32:08 Speaker 1

Do you want the full answer or do you want the kind of like politically acceptable answer?

01:32:13 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

01:32:13 Speaker 1

There's like, because I know these guys are a bit like, they're really a bit anti-Christian, not anti-Christian, but they're like, oh, you know, and they were like, no, give us like, so I was like, okay, great.

01:32:23 Speaker 1

Do you know what I mean?

01:32:24 Speaker 1

So, and I just began to just talk, well, God, God spoke to me and God said this and, you know, but that's the truth.

01:32:31 Speaker 1

Like, I don't do this because I'm just like, I love humanitarian work.

01:32:36 Speaker 1

I do it because God told me to do it.

01:32:38 Speaker 1

Like that's why I'm doing it.

01:32:39 Speaker 1

And like sometimes it's just that step, isn't it?

01:32:42 Speaker 1

Just to begin to speak about what, you know, what you really believe.

01:32:45 Speaker 1

So yeah, but I think what's happening is really exciting.

01:32:48 Speaker 1

I, yeah, People are coming alive to Christ and I just think it's beautiful.

01:32:54 Speaker 1

And it's like you said, it's him.

01:32:56 Speaker 1

I haven't done anything different.

01:32:57 Speaker 1

Our church hasn't done anything different.

01:32:59 Speaker 1

We're just doing the same thing.

01:33:00 Speaker 1

So.

01:33:01 Speaker 2

Storrington's always been an awesome church.

01:33:03 Speaker 2

I've always loved Storrington.

01:33:03 Speaker 2

I've got a lot of love for Storrington.

01:33:05 Speaker 2

Obviously, I haven't gone there as a child.

01:33:07 Speaker 2

Yeah, You know, and it's still great, I'm sure.

01:33:10 Speaker 1

But I've got a lot of love for you too.

01:33:13 Speaker 2

Oh, thank you.

01:33:15 Speaker 2

Well, so I think the way to conclude this now is if you can pray for us.

01:33:21 Speaker 2

And pray for anyone who is maybe, I think people will be looking at this thinking,

01:33:28 Speaker 2

I want to help, but your charity, there is so much money in the world.

01:33:33 Speaker 1

Yeah, absolutely.

01:33:34 Speaker 2

And they want to give it to you.

01:33:35 Speaker 2

They want to help you.

01:33:36 Speaker 2

So I think there's that.

01:33:38 Speaker 2

And I think that would be a great thing to pray for, but also just anything you feel you want to pray for.

01:33:42 Speaker 1

Yeah, thanks so much.

01:33:43 Speaker 1

Yeah, cool, let's pray.

01:33:45 Speaker 1

Yeah, God, we just, we thank you that you are a wonderful, wonderful father.

01:33:50 Speaker 1

That you are the word of God says you are father to the fatherless.

01:33:54 Speaker 1

And that's true whether that's natural fatherless and motherless people and children, but it's true spiritually as well.

01:34:05 Speaker 1

That you are the great father.

01:34:06 Speaker 1

I always think of that, not that we say, oh, you're like a father, but you actually are the archetype of father and fathers on earth are meant to be like you.

01:34:18 Speaker 1

It's A reflection of who you are and your nature.

01:34:21 Speaker 1

You are the great father.

01:34:23 Speaker 1

Jesus, you taught us to pray, our Father in heaven, that's who you are.

01:34:26 Speaker 1

You are our Father, the one who loves us, the one who desires good for our lives, the one who desires to bring us into freedom and peace, Lord God, Father, peace with you, but peace in our hearts and minds as well.

01:34:39 Speaker 1

So Lord, I just want to thank you for all that you've done through the work that we've been involved in through Life Support, where I thank you for Jesus Studio as well and all that they're doing and just

01:34:50 Speaker 1

in just sharing the word and the goodness, Father, what you're doing in different people's lives.

01:34:54 Speaker 1

And Lord, I just pray that you would bless both these projects and that you would continually provide for us and lead us into greater things more and more.

01:35:04 Speaker 1

But I just want to ask for anyone who's listened to this or anyone who's watched this.

01:35:08 Speaker 1

And Lord, I just pray, Father, those who don't know you, that they will be inspired to seek you out.

01:35:14 Speaker 1

Father, your word says seek and you will find.

01:35:17 Speaker 1

ask and you'll receive, knock and the door will be open.

01:35:19 Speaker 1

So I pray that they will seek after you, that they will find you, Lord God, and they will find the Father, the true Father, the great Father, that will bring peace into their lives.

01:35:28 Speaker 1

But I pray also, Lord God, for those who have just this passion or something stirring inside of them to serve you in whatever capacity, whatever way, I just pray that you would give them faith, that you'd help them to step out, Lord God, and just to begin to do the things that you've called them to do.

01:35:44 Speaker 1

And I pray, Lord God, that we'll even hear testimony, a great fruit, Lord God, of others just beginning to step out and seeing you move in power and doing signs and wonders we pray through our lives in Jesus' name.

01:35:57 Speaker 1

Amen.

01:35:58 Speaker 1

Amen.

01:35:58 Speaker 1

Amen.

01:35:59 Speaker 1

Thanks for listening to the Jesus Studio Podcast.

01:36:02 Speaker 2

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01:36:04 Speaker 2

The testimonials and stories shared reflect the personal experiences and unique journeys of our guests.

01:36:10 Speaker 2

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