I’ve always been a rather passionate person.
The last two months have been a hoot and a half. And we’ve been extraordinarily blessed. We’ve been put in places, locations, and situations that have gotten those good old rusty proverbial wheels spinning in my head like Shakira’s hips!
We stayed with a Bishop last month, as nice as they come, put through the ringer for some 34 years of being a pastor, having planted over 40 churches on his own congregation’s measly tithes until a man from the states contacted him outright. He didn’t know who Bishop was, but God had told him in a dream to buy Bishop a house. Bishop and his family had been living out of his church office for years, essentially homeless.
And it was good to experience the Spirit under a man who knew and relied on Him every day of his life. It was good to stay in a house that by all earthly reasons should never have been built. And it was good to learn obedience from a man who did more with less than any other man I might have ever met. And he’s still building now, as God tells him to build, still planting away, on faith alone, that he hears the voice of the Lord – And the wheels begin to turn…
We were on the coast last month, 7 miles away from a gorgeous gold coast, stretching on for miles in either direction, not a soul in sight. The overgrown dune rose a hundred feet behind us, green as a jungle, and as the sun set over it, a mist began to rise. Abandoned beach huts sprinkled the shore, overtaken by dune bush. Somalia lay some 100 odd miles North, straight up the coast, the border town only accessible by police escort, Somali Muslims still pouring across in droves, refugees, escaping an eternity of civil war. Mogadishu lies in ruins. Bloodthirsty sharks line the shores in droves, having gotten accustomed to the taste of human flesh, from the bodies dumped in the sea. And stories of pirates, wild rumors and grave warnings, drift along the breeze in hushed whispers. And the wheels begin to turn…
Up to the horn and only 150 miles across the sea, Yemen lies as it has for thousands of years, crooked fairytale cities rising in harsh baked clay, dusty stony mountains sparking like a mirage behind them, scores upon scores of minarets piercing the hazy golden sky, and a population set to triple in the next 40 years bursts at the seems, sliding along the narrow alleys like shadows, in one of the most restrictive Islamic societies on earth. And the wheels begin to turn.
Lamu, an island 50 km north of where we stayed last month, an old Arab port, a winding creaking breaking city on the sea, stuck in time, an old fort at its heart, the local Swahili Muslim population still conducting most of its industry with the aid of donkeys. The cobbled streets click as fully cloaked women drift by in heals, the wind-worn faces of the fishermen flashing with grins, their bodies coated in sand, telling story after story of their last trip down the coast all the way to Maputo, or the biggest fish they ever saw – the salt-soaked walls winding upwards into bleached crumbling ruin; a Tortuga city if there ever was one. And with the island’s tourism industry taking off and tons of opportunity for further development… could I work here? Absolutely. Could I die here? And the wheels begin to turn, mashing together in a fury now.
We made our way to Mwanza, Tanzania’s largest city, passing under the heaping gaze of legendary Kilimanjaro, shrouded in mist, passing villages with bush rings to protect from lions, gorgeous plains, green fading to purple, herds of zebra lining the street, and Mwanza’s iconic rock piles dotting the landscape as we drew closer to Lake Victoria. We landed without a contact, without direction, and with nothing but the Lord’s voice to guide us, trusting Him to carry out His plan through us. And the wheels, they’re flying now.
Prayer became so sweet to me this month, as if every time I entered His presence, or climbed up next to Him, I could breathe again. And we sought Him hard. And He led us here, past relationships with Abdul, Najib, Mianga, hospital visits, the lady who sells peanuts, Rashidi, John, Paul. He found us a place to stay for half of their asking price, perfectly fitting within our budget. He brought us to an Anglican church, with a service in Engish, where we heard of a self-sustaining private school / girls home / farm / restaurant, a project started by a guy from Oklahoma just out of school, who started with 7 girls off the street and an initial investment of only $20,000, and who now has a fully functioning primary school and secondary school, staffed by local teachers, over 300 students in attendance, at 100% passing rate of the national exams. He has over 40 girls, from ages 4 to 17, living in family units under matrons from the local communities, single mothers or widows, developing a holistic community-engaged system that is almost entirely sustained by tuition fees set at a third of the normal private school price, produce from the farm, and a booming restaurant establishment. Seven years old now, every new project is a matter of trust and trial and error, but the Lord has begun to move the project towards replication. The property overlooks the Lake, white hot in the morning from the glare of the sun, towering pinnacles of rock rising like sentinels around us. And the chorus of the girls singing their hearts out in worship the night we arrived rings through the night, as loud as they could, every voice in finely-fitted harmony. And the wheels, the wheels, they’re turning like mad.
God has been filling my head with dreams. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night overwhelmed with excitement, every morning telling my team what Pakistani small business I started in my sleep last night, what theme park I created and where. He literally keeps me up at night, unable to sleep, looking up whatever I can find on how to start a computer skills course in Quetta, Pakistan, teaching typing, English, statistics, accounting, basic web design, Microsoft Office, receptionist skills, even basic coding. How to hire Indian Christian nationals as developing world missionaries, how to foster economic creativity in a society where literally a hundred million Muslim youth are flooding Pakistan’s cities with nothing to do, how to create incentive for Pakistani men to bring along their wives to learn as well, and how to make the entire project self-sustainable. I find myself looking up how easy it is to buy property in Pakistan and how long it takes to file for a tax code at 5 in the morning. I found myself applying for a job at a burgeoning Turkish theme park, set to open in two weeks, at 3 am. And these questions pulse through my veins like fire: How can I start a business in a city where people speak 6 different languages interchangeably? What can possibly qualify me to get approved for an Iranian work visa? How can I set up an affordable yet profitable American institute, to teach and prepare American Christians as crazy and consumed as I am, in Arabic Farsi Turkish Pashto Urdu Hindi Bengali Punjabi Balochi, and how to start businesses in all of them? What can I do to get me into these markets, how can I possibly create as many jobs as possible? What route would take me from Istanbul to Delhi while seeing as many Middle Eastern old-world ruins as possible? Would Saudi even offer me a visa to drive across it? How can I provide the most opportunity as possible for people to better their own economic condition, walk away empowered, and have as much access to whatever stability and international perspective that the economic demography of the West has to offer, with as much opportunity for them to be able to plug into the Gospel as I can afford??
These questions consume me, and praise the Lord for it! His dreams have become my own, and He’s lighting this fire in me to create, to solve, to empower, in ways that I could never imagine before now. And my biggest hope, which is shocking to me, honestly, is that some of this begins to spread, that the passion begins to spill over, and that some other people begin to catch it. And as these dreams become too big to handle on my own, that they’re passed around and something catches, and that somehow thousands and thousands of passionate believers find their way into places they’d never dreamed, preceding the light of the Gospel that’s about to set this world on fire, in ways we’ve never even imagined.
And the wheels, the wheels, they’re really going now.
Love,
Danny
