InsightSpring 2015

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How You Can Help

We want Insight to tell the story of WMUMC. We need your ideas, your articles and your pictures. Here’s how you can be a part of telling the story of WMUMC...

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Contributing WritersRev. Brad Morgan, Rev. Brian Brooks, Lorie Son, Beth Morgan, Mindy Zwirn and Russell Martin

Pastoral Staff

Senior Pastor Rev. Brad Morgan

Executive Pastor Rev. Brian Brooks

Associate Pastor Rev. Sherri Waters

Associate Pastor Rev. Dale Vickers

Associate Pastor Rev. Ron Drye

Church Address4000 Moores Lane Texarkana, Texas 75503Tel: 903.832.8663

Sunday Worship TimesTraditional 8:15am and 10:30am

Contemporary 10:30am

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04 Letter from the Pastor

05 Upcoming Events/Sermons

06 Relationships in God’s LoveRev. Brad Morgan

08 Come Holy Spirit ComeRev. Brian Brooks

09 Williams SchoolLorie Son

10 I Am Not A GeekMindy Zwirn

11 WMUMC Angel QuiltersBeth Morgan

12 Impact Student MinistriesRussell Martin

13 Faith Insights InterviewRev. Brad Morgan and Gaston Warner

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Welcome to the Spring Insight. We hope that this edition of Insight empowers you on your faith journey as we approach Easter. The gospel of Jesus Christ empowers the believer. We who were broken, lost, and hurting become renewed, strengthened, and healed by the miracle of Easter. While resharing the old, old story, that we know to be true, we inspire one another to become empowered followers of Jesus the Christ. The day of resurrection confirms our hopes and lets us know that even in the darkest hour, the light of Christ still shines in the world.

Recently, I spent eight days in and around Maua, Kenya. There, I experienced Easter in a new way! The Easter spirit was filling the lives of orphans and giving them hope and empowerment. I wish you could have walked the cornfields with us and heard the orphan’s stories of transforming hope. I wish you could have sat under the beautiful Acacia tree and learned that God’s love changed everything. Together in Swahili and English, we were reminded of the Lord’s prayer — Our

Father… If God is our heavenly Father, we can never be orphaned. When we feel outcast, we have someone on our side. Like that tomb that was found to be empty, our lives in Christ are never without hope. As the hope of God’s providential love entered our hearts, Easter smiles filled our faces. Our faith was moving from thoughts about God into an experience of God that warmed our hearts as we experienced the profound significance of Easter.

This experience of God is not just found in far off places. Right here in Texarkana, USA, people who have long felt asleep in their faith are waking up to God’s love and grace. People who have known God their whole lives are reaching out beyond themselves to love others and provide grace to a broken, lost, and hurting world. The people of Williams Memorial United Methodist Church are being continually renewed in the Easter spirit as they behold the transformative grace of God at work in their lives and families.

As you read this issue of Insight, I encourage you to look for God in your life and in our Community of Faith at Williams. I hope that the faith insights found in these pages inspire you to find where God is meeting you in your daily life. And, that God would renew you in love this Easter.

Grace and peace, Pastor Brad

Letter from the Pastor

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March 1 Going Forth Luke 10:1-16March 8 Learning to Pray Luke 11:1-13

March 15 Reducing Anxiety Luke 12:22-34March 22 Lost and Found Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

March 29 Into the Storm Luke 19:28-40April 5 He is Alive Luke 24:1-12

Upcoming Events

Sermons Series

Feasting From the Tree of LifeLearn how God’s love gives you more than

enough. Each of God’s commandments in Holy Scripture is a veiled promise of the gift of God’s love. Through amazing grace, those who follow Jesus are given life abundantly and feast from

the tree of life.

April 12 Recognizing the Risen Lord Luke 24:13-34April 19 Seeing Beyond the Tears Luke 24:33-53

To listen to past sermons, please visit williamsumc.org/media

Signs of LoveHave you ever wanted to know Jesus and

experience the reality of his presence? Jesus appeared to his disciples after the resurrection

in ways that allowed them to see him as he really is and be in his presence once again. Explore how God’s presence made known through signs of love can be with us today.

March 29 Palm Sunday Services10:30am Children’s Processional

March 29 Impact Youth Mission Lunch11:30am Wesley Hall

March 30 Holy Week6pm Sanctuary Service

March 31 Holy Week6pm Sanctuary Service

April 1 Holy Week6pm Sanctuary Service featuring the Williams UMC Impact Student Ministries

April 2 Holy Week6pm Sanctuary Service featuring the Williams Memorial UMC Choir

April 3 Holy Week7pm Sanctuary Service of Darkness

April 4 Easter Egg Hunt11am Williams Memorial UMC Pavillion

April 5 Easter Sunday8:15am & 10:30am Sanctuary Services10:30am Xperience Service

April 11 UMW Annual Plant Sale8am-3pm WMUMC Parking Lot

May 3 Confirmation Sunday10:30am Sanctuary Service

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How could I possibly begin to describe what has occurred? In a distant place, I have found peace and rejuvenation. In the eyes of the poor, I have seen my own dream. In worshiping God, I have met my Lord again and been made new.

Why did God draw me to Kenya? It is difficult to explain. I saw the ZOE team being publicized and heard Reverend Daniel Harding mention it when I visited The Journey in Houston, but Kenya was not on my radar. Busy with pastoral responsibilities, a doctorate I’m pursuing and family, it was the last thing on my mind. But, I made the mistake of looking at the website and watching the videos on www.zoehelps.org. How could I not go? I had to meet these children and find out for myself if their lives were being changed.

So, hesitantly I applied. I kept thinking I’ll go, I won’t go. But, in my prayers I felt drawn. I felt compelled. Surprisingly, I was accepted on the team. Now I was committed. What would we do? Empowerment was the

mantra, but how would this be different from the other missional experiences that I have had?

Our meeting at Lakeview was useful. Gaston Warner, the director of ZOE ministry, outlined what would be involved in our journey. The most significant point was that the work of the trip would be very different than other mission trips I had been on. We were not going to Kenya to build something physical. We were going to Kenya to build something permanent and spiritual — relationships in God’s love.

One day, we picked some corn with a working group. That is about as close as we came to working in Kenya. Instead, our work was loving orphans. We visited the groups and heard their stories. In the sub-saharan African culture, visitors are important. The further the visitor travels the more important and honorable is the occasion of their visit. Our traveling across the ocean and two continents to visit these orphans gave them status in their community.

Relationships in God’s Love...

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Relationships in God’s Love...

The children are without parents. So, on each visit, like a proud college student hosting distant parents, they would show us their work and homes with great pride. We would smile, offer words of encouragement, hug them and like proud parents, offer our gratitude for their hard work. It was amazing. We saw agribusinesses in many forms; hair salons, barber shops, and even a motorcycle shop under a tree. These orphans were industrious entrepreneurs who just needed an opportunity. ZOE gives them that opportunity.

Samson had been successful planting and raising trees. Samson, now a graduate of the program, was so self-sufficient that he has begun helping other orphans in his

own village. Susan is now a tailor, and also raises 2 cows, 5 goats, and a pig. Susan has earned enough money to build a house for her family. Yes, like Samson, in her teens she is raising other siblings and is the head of household. She pays another girl from the village to watch her younger siblings when they come home from school and to care for her livestock while she is at her shop working. She also makes a school uniform each quarter to give to a child who cannot afford it. The stories went on and on. Each young person was growing into a sustainable leader in their community.

Meeting the orphans, one of their greatest challenges is dignity within their community. Often with parents

who died from AIDS, they have a great stigma around them. Our visit and encouragement helped break down that stigma. The work of ZOE is to elevate the status of orphans within the community. They are lifted up and honored as important members of the community.

In the upside down nature of God’s love being revealed in the world, the orphans taught me more than I could give to them. God is with us in our time of need. God does not leave us without hope. And, when we gather with other Christians into community, we truly become more than we would be by ourselves. The blessing of God takes and multiplies our offerings from ourselves to truly transform the world. It is good to be home in Texarkana, USA. And, I feel very blessed from my time in Kenya and the experience of God’s love being known in the world.

Sunday, April 19th, I’ll host a luncheon following worship to show video clips and pictures from my trip and share with you more about my experiences in Kenya. I hope to see you then.

Rev. Brad Morgan

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Everyone has a gift to share within the body of Christ which is the church. Whether people use these gifts to make a difference in changing outcomes or whether they sit silently with their hands folded waiting for the Holy Spirit to enter

their body when it wishes is the decision we have to make. Letting the Holy Spirit take control of you is not always easy to do.

In Western culture today, we often have a problem with knowing too much. This knowledge leaves us powerless and so we hold our tongues and stay mute. We in Christianity also forget one very important thing. We are all Christians who are called to spread the gospel. Instead, we get tied up with different views of church power and denominational objectives and what the church should be doing, and how it should be done. When we get absorbed in the idea of it’s my church’s way or the highway or it’s my group’s way or the highway, we lose our sense of what being a Christian is really about. Why should we care if other churches do things differently than ours does as long as they are winning souls for Christ?

Do not be afraid to bring to the table what you have because, with God and His calling and reception of the Holy Spirit, you can do your part to help build God’s kingdom. We are all called according to our gifts. When we use what we have been given to build the kingdom of God, we are answering or calling. What gifts can you bring to the table of Christ?

There will always be many gifts in the body of Christ, but only one Holy Spirit who leads us. Let us also remember that is important to have everyone represented in the body of Christ. We need everyone represented in the body of Christ. Not just the ones

we agree with or share the same views as. We need people to challenge us and get us to reevaluate our ideals.

What I’ve always believed is that the church needs to be responsible not only for their little neck of the woods, but also for the whole of God’s marvelous creation. I wonder when we will care more about the world and less about what changes are happening in our churches.

We should be careful when we try to repress the Holy Spirit in our churches or even in our families. I remember when my youngest son Parker was 2 years old and sitting quietly in church being a perfect little angel. Parker was paying attention, praying when he was supposed to pray, listening to the music when he was supposed to be listening to the music. Occasionally, I look down the pew at him to see how things were going. He would smile at me and look back. Towards the middle of the service, however, he began to gain energy. I tried to repress his energy as much as I could. We fought over him dancing, talking out loud, wrestling with papers, crawling under the pew. It wasn’t until I got a little farther from the situation that I begin to wonder if it was saten that I was trying to repress, or was it the Holy Spirit. It is possible that day many years ago that the Holy Spirit could have been trying to get out and tell our church something very important that day. Perhaps it was telling us that the church is not dead, but is full of children and thus full of the Holy Spirit. I, like many people, fell into the trap of trying to get my son Parker to conform to the standards of what church should be in our minds.

We need to regain the Holy Spirit that many of us have lost or put away on a shelf somewhere. We need the Holy Spirit to spread the gospel to the four corners of the earth. We need the Holy Spirit to rebuild our churches and our lives. We need the Holy Spirit to help us regain our footing in general. Come Holy Spirit Come, and give us the direction that we long to have. What will we do as a church or as an individual moving forward to relight the fire of the Holy Spirit here at Williams?

Come Holy Spirit Comeby Rev. Brian Brooks

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“New studies on brain development indicate that early exposure to more

than one language builds more powerful brains, with better and faster synaptic

connections.” Newsweek

Children are exposed to new ideas each and every day. Here at the Williams School, we try to make our exposures count and give our students experiences that will extend their thinking skills. One particular opportunity we like to take is to expose each child to more than one language. We see the advantages of sending our Williams students on to their next educational destination with Spanish basics. Lori Rochelle has many talents she shares with

Lori Rochelle has taught at theWilliams School for the last 11 years.

During this time she has taught in both three and four-year-old class-

rooms. She has served as ourSpanish teacher for the last six years.

“I love teaching Spanish because it gives me a chance to be with former

three-year-old students and help them learn something new!”

~ Lori Rochelle

Spanish Class

our Williams students, one being her ability and desire to teach our four-year-old students Spanish. Our students have Spanish worked into their weekly curriculum. During this time Ms. Lori teaches William’s students colors, days of the week and months of the year... all in Spanish! She also uses this time to have our little ones not only identify body parts such as head, ears, eyes, nose, mouth and hands in English but in Spanish. By the end of the year, students can count from 1-30 and even count by 10’s to 100. We strive to make Spanish class an exciting time for our young learners. If you ask a four-year-old student his or her favorite part of Spanish time, he or she will let you know that learning the alphabet in Spanish is the highlight of the class. The kids enjoy singing the Spanish alphabet and every time getting a little faster and faster! The students end their Spanish journey at Williams with singing the days of the week at graduation in Spanish.

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I am not a geek.

I just wanted to mention that up front, because you might get misled into thinking that I am a geek based on some of the things I am about to share with you. But I am not a geek. Don’t get me wrong. I know my way around the names and crews of all the starships and I know the difference between a blaster and a lightsaber and I have always secretly hoped that a blue police phone booth would suddenly show up in my back yard. But I am not a geek. I know that, because I married a geek. And nothing I ever do or say for the rest of my life will ever make me as big a geek as he is.

I met my special geeky husband when I was living in Los Angeles, California. Though I had been raised in a very devout Christian household, I had gotten disillusioned and decided to turn my back on every kind of organized religion. I would ultimately end up spending about ten years like that, completely unchurched, refusing to associate with Christ at all. David had been raised by a mother who had basically the same at-titude, so he was raised with no kind of church background at all. He and I both agreed that there was... something up there, kind of in charge. And we both agreed that we would rather not belong to the Dark Side of the Force, so we’d better do good things for other people instead of bad. But otherwise? We had no religious convictions at all.

You might think that there is no road that would lead this woman who was so angry at religion and her husband who was so unfamiliar with it to a place where both were deeply intensely involved in Christian ministry. But as a child, I was Jesus’s Disciple, and amazingly enough, as an adult, I am His Disciple again.

It really was love that led me back to Christ. In order to understand how, I will need to tell you something sort of embarrassing about my beloved husband. He cries at the movies. Our friends all know it. It’s like clockwork. As soon as the music rises, we all turn to look at David, because we know he will be crying. That doesn’t stop him. He does it anyway. One day I was thinking about it, and I realized that there was a pattern to it. He always cried when a certain character appeared on the screen. Oh, he teared up at all kinds of sentimental moments. But when this character came on the scene, he completely lost it. Every time.

That character was Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, Dumbledore in Harry Potter, Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, and Obiwan in Star Wars. And there are many more like him.

The character had four defining characteristics. He was a fatherly being. But old. Or alien. Or otherworldly. In any case, he was in possession of knowledge that went above and beyond the world we knew. Second, he inspired the hero. He gave him his purpose and his mission and sent him out to fulfill it. Third... he sacrificed himself for the good of every-one else. And finally... he returned after death somehow, proved that there was something after death, and gave the hero wisdom and guidance to carry on.

I remember when I finally saw this pattern for the first time. A voice spoke to me and said... “You know who he is looking for. You have known me your whole life. How could you deny this man you love so much the relationship with me that he is so desperate for?” I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I felt so ashamed. I had become so wrapped up in my own disillusionment that I had missed what my husband really, desperately needed. Something in me woke up. I remembered who and whose I was. As soon as I could, I went to my husband and said, “I think you may be looking for Christ. And if the only reason that you don’t go looking for him is because of me, then I will go with you. And we will find him together.”

My husband’s journey to Christianity was like a man running downhill over a grassy meadow right into his father’s arms. He had no hesitation, and he was filled with joy. He had been searching for Christianity his whole life, and he was overjoyed to have found it. And, like any good geek, he dove all the way in.

I am Not a Geek by Mindy Zwirn

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I am Not a Geek

The Angel Quilters quilters in our community bless cancer patients with warmth, comfort, prayers, and the love of Jesus Christ through their ministry. Since this group started creating handmade quilts for cancer pantients in fourteen years ago, they have distributed over 1,400 quilts.

First Baptist Moores Lane, Williams Memorial United Methodist, and First Presbyterian Arkansas continue to join to-gether as sister churches to make sure these cancer patients know someone cares and is praying for them. With over 50 quilters all together, the quilts are always there when someone makes a request for a quilt to comfort their relative or friend who has been diagnosed and is going through some type of treatment or regimen. Angel Quilts has also been able to provide quilts to the cancer treatment centers that handle the large number of chemotherapy patients in the Texarkana area. When it seems that the number of requests becomes too large for the quilts available, miraculously the quilts are finished in a timely manner. The quilters have seen first hand that with the Lord in an endeavor he pro-vides the people and resources to make the project successful. As Angel Quilts starts its 15th year, the evidence of the presence of the Lord is evident. Many recipients of the quilts have written to us and shared their stories of the power of the prayers sent with the quilts. They tell of how during a very discouraging and depressing time in cancer patients lives, they have been able to draw hope and healing by just wrapping up in the quilt.

If you are looking for a way to give back after receiving blessings during a difficult time, want to witness first hand the miraculous way the Lord works, and would like a group that not only supports cancer patients, but also reaches out to each quilter with a group of support, you will find a home in Angel Quilts. Sewing skills are not a prerequisite. You only need a passionate heart that wants to reach out to the Texarkana area with God’s love. Williams Memorial UMC Quil-ters meet every Tuesday from 2pm to 4pm. First Baptist meets Thursday mornings 9am to 12pm and First Presbyterian Arkansas meets on Thursday mornings from 9am to 12pm.

Angel Quilters Beth Morgan

Mine... mine looked a little different. I felt like I was stand-ing on the edge of a giant canyon. One that I had dug myself. And Christ was on the other side of it. And that in order to get to him I would have to repel down this side of the canyon and crawl through the murky jungle below and then scale the sheer cliff on the other side and beg Jesus to take me back. All that distance was my fault, I knew. I had brought it on myself. But I was really not look-ing forward to starting that ugly journey back to Christ.But while I was standing there pondering my quest, some-thing incredible happened. I felt a hand on my shoulder. Jesus was standing beside me, looking out at the canyon too.

He had never left me. He had guided my steps out of California and into Texas. He had brought me and my husband to the door of a church for a community activ-ity. He had put us in the path of a pastor that spoke our language, but also spoke His. He had been with me every step of the way... his hand on my shoulder. Guiding me. Loving me. Forgiving me for ignoring him.

I will never be as big a geek as my husband is. Because, you see, the defining characteristic of a geek is that they dive all the way into things. They don’t just like some-thing. They learn everything there is to know about it. They find ways to tie it into every part of their personal

lives. They make it a part of who they are.

I would love to be a geek for Christ. To know everything there is to know about Him. To be thinking about Him when I am working on other things. To believe that His world is more important than anything in my world. I am striving for that. But for now, I’m just gratefully working on being a disciple. A disciple is someone who has said yes to Christ: to his love and to his vision.

I have trouble describing how I felt that moment when I came back to Christ and dove all the way into disciple-ship. I’m not a geek. But I do love my science fiction and fantasy. So I will borrow words from a great fantasy novel written by that great geek for Christ, C.S. Lewis.

If you haven’t read the Chronicles of Narnia, you really should. This won’t quite spoil it for you, but at the end of the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia, a wildly joyful Unicorn has just stepped into King Aslan’s country, which would be like going to heaven.

He says “I have come home at last! This is my real coun-try! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!”

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This Spring an amazing process will take place as a group of students will become adults in the church through the process of Confirmation. The process began February 6-8, as students attended Confirmation Camp at Lakeview. The confirmands spent a weekend with over 180 students from the Texas conference. They were led in worship by our very on Impact Youth Worship Team. They learned about grace, and forgiveness, and what confirmation means. Through their continued weekly classes they are learning about how to be a Christian, about

the Methodist denomination and what it means to be an adult member of the church.

The confirmands will come together with their mentors and parents for a special

confirmation dinner on the evening of May 1, 2015. This will be a time where

we can celebrate the journey of these confirmands. Confirmation Sunday will be May 3, 2015. The confirmation class will be confirmed at the 10:30am service. This will be a special time of communion, worship and dedication as these students become full members of Williams Memorial United

Methodist Church.

A special thank you to our confirmation teachers, Susan and Roger Waldrep, and to

Suzi Mercy for making the confirmation stoles. Please be in prayer for our confirmation class, their

teachers, mentors and parents as they go through this process.

IMPACT Student Ministries Russell Martin

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PASTOR BRAD: Gaston tell me, what is ZOE ministry?

GASTON WARNER: ZOE is an orphan-empowerment project. And it didn’t start off that way, but God has led us down a path of discovery to find this empowerment ministry that helps. Basically what it does – It’s a Christian ministry that enables orphans and vulnerable children in some of the most poverty-stricken places in the world to move from extreme poverty to self-sufficiency in three years or less. What we do is help children to help themselves.

BRAD: Wow, that’s awesome. Tell me more about that pathway to discovery.

GASTON: ZOE started off in 2004 as a Christian response to this humanitarian crisis of tens of millions of orphans on the African continent, mainly through the HIV/AIDS pandemic, but also with wars and famine. A church in the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church became aware of this crisis through a 15 year old girl who felt called by God to minister in this crisis, and they started a relief ministry. People were very generous, they saw these children dying, and they wanted to do something, but we didn’t know what to do. So, we just started off with relief work, because it was all we could think of: feeding programs, medical relief teams. ZOE did pay for some children to go to school, so they could get an education. So we could have called it empowerment at that time, but it wasn’t really transforming lives. And then in 2007, we had this interesting problem arise. People had been so generous in responding to this incredible need that they overfunded all of ZOE’s relief programs. It was a great problem, but still a problem, because we wanted the money to be put on a ground and not sit in the bank. So we put the word out that we were looking for something truly effective in Africa, and we were introduced to this Rwandan social worker named Epiphanie Mujawimana. And she had come up with an entirely different way of approaching orphan care and orphan empowerment.

BRAD: Wow, that’s just amazing. So this young woman is called by God to start a ministry. It won’t let her go. She gets empowered to do that. People begin getting behind the effort and finding it beyond what could have been

imagined. Then, that leads you to discover this new way of empowerment through somebody local there in Africa, Epiphany, who then leads you onto this new way. What is that new way? Tell us about this model?

GASTON: Well, Epiphany has an incredibly powerful story of her own. She survived a genocide in Rwanda as a Tutsi. And on the other side of that tragedy in her country, she wanted to dedicate her life to helping her country recover. So she went to work where the resources were. For some large Western aid organizations that are popular names. But she became disillusioned with the work after working with each of these for several years. And this is what she would say in her own words. She said, “I would watch as these generous people would come to my country and give things to my people that my people desperately needed. And then I would watch as my people became so good at receiving that they forgot how to do anything. And then when the grant dried up or the focus shifted, my people were actually worse off because they had developed these dependencies on this Western relief.” And so Epiphanie and a team of like-minded Rwandan social workers said, “we want to empower our people and not disenfranchise them.” So they started this new way of doing it. And it’s – it’s definitely a model that we in the west would have never designed or thought would work. We haven’t given the children enough credit for that kind of thinking. And it only has – it has about one staff per thousand orphans and it has no orphanages. ZOE doesn’t own buildings anywhere in the world. But what it is – it’s a locally based community care. So it starts off with a village. The village has to invite us in. The first invitation to come to the first ZOE meeting to the children comes not from ZOE but from the village chief, so we have full local support. We use all local employees. So anywhere in the world that ZOE is active, it feels like a local ministry, and is in some important ways, and that solves a lot of problems before they start for us. Then, the other thing that Epiphanie and her colleagues found is that it needed to be comprehensive. ZOE is focused on one or two things: education or medical relief or food security, but the poverty is an entire system that holds us in poverty. And to break free of that system, there have to be multiple interventions. ZOE and her staff found that they need to

FAITH INSIGHTSWITH PASTOR BRAD

98.5FM sunday mornings at 7:30am | williamsumc.org/faithinsights eries

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provide access for these children to have sustainable food and safe housing and clothing and health and hygiene and all of those basic things that they needed. But they also needed education, formal if possible; vocational if formal is no longer a possibility. They needed to know their rights as children so that they wouldn’t be taken advantage of, have skills to start a business and capital to follow that up with, so they needed some of those practical things to make their life better, long-time. And then, they needed some of the squishy things. That’s as far as I descend into technical language. But the squishy things would be things like hope. They need to know it could actually be better. They needed to know that God loved them in ways that weren’t coercive or trite. Because they are children over the years who have been abused by Christians or neglected. And so just someone coming in and saying God loves you doesn’t cut it. They need to see the gospel as well as hear. And the ZOE program enables that kind of gospel and action, where they both see it and hear it together. And then they needed to be a part of a community. These children that often feel self-segregated and isolated from their communities, because of the stigma of AIDS, because of the stigma of poverty, because of disease, because they might steal food in order to survive, they become pushed away from other people. So they need to be reintegrated into a family group that can love them and accept them and care for them.

BRAD: There are so many different facets that y’all are caring for. It’s pretty amazing. Just to give our audience an idea of the scale of this... one 15 year-old girl inspires a program that now – how many orphans are being helped?

GASTON: In 2015, we expect that the enrollment will be 28,000. And it’s a three-year program. Every year a third graduate and they graduate into self-sufficiency. They’ve got multiple businesses, access to education, access to health and hygiene, and their lives are on an upward trajectory after graduation. So the 28,000 in the program for 2015 is our expectation.

BRAD: Oh, that’s amazing. And as far as those 28,000 that are moving through the program, what are their ages?

GASTON: The basic unit of ZOE’s program is a working group. And a working group is anywhere between 60 and a hundred children in a working group. And the ages in that group of children range everywhere between infants on up to the college age. So there’s a wide-diversity of age in that group. But what we’ve found is that those working groups of 60 to a hundred children, they come together and that’s the group that ZOE supports over that three-year journey of empowerment, over all the

different inputs and training in the various areas. They come together like an extended family, so the older children take care of the younger. ZOE focuses the training on the older children, who can then teach the younger ones and show them how to make that work. And it’s nice because in that way, the children are not just charity cases. They’re receiving some things, but they’re also sharing amongst themselves. They’re receiving training, but they’re also training one another. So they are active participants in their own journey out of poverty.

BRAD: One of the things you said that I really loved was, the turn of phrase you used. I don’t know if it was borrowed or something, you just came up with on the spot. But I loved that. They needed an experience of the gospel that is not – you said, not coercive or trite. I need that too! Right? What a beautiful statement of something we’re all in desperate need of - a gospel that is made real in our lives and not just, trite, happy-clappy feel-good with no service or coercive, forcing us to do things that we shouldn’t be doing. So beautiful.

GASTON: The one thing about the program that has made it distinctive, at least in my experience, is that I’ve never seen a program focused on children in particular that is child-led. And that, that I think is a thing that would have kept me from ever designing it. I would never have given children enough credit to be able to take responsibility for their own journey. But ZOE’s program – the reason one staff per thousand orphans actually works for us, is that it is a sweet spot in that the social workers or program facilitators are active in their lives, but the children have to take responsibility for themselves. So the children will make all of the decisions in the group. They’ll be led by the program facilitator; they also elect an adult mentor in the community that can give them some advice. So we come around them with access to advice and access to training, but the children themselves decide on what businesses they do. The children themselves decide on where they meet. They decide on how to solve problems in their own group. So that, allowing the children to make those decisions is why, in three years, they no longer need ZOE. Because they are a fully functioning group that can make financial and social decisions as a group, kind of like an extended family, and so it allows them to put ZOE out of their lives before those dependencies form. We’ve had over thirty thousand graduates from the program. We kept in touch with these groups, and one of the fascinating things about them: there are two fascinating things about the graduates of the program. One is that they continue to meet together weekly, and that’s a powerful thing. One of the things that ZOE does is give – in the second year, we give a micro-loan in the group. And we don’t police that loan. It stays with the group past

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graduation. They choose the interest rate they charge each other. They manage it. And so, past graduation, they keep meeting together weekly and keep giving loans to each other from the common pool, and the common pool keeps growing. But the other thing that the groups do that is incredible, is as soon as their own lives begin to stabilize, what we see is that they begin to adopt other orphans in their group, either into their own biological families, or they adopt other orphan families into their larger group, and kind of pay for their first business and pay for their animals and help them to learn how to farm land or start a business. So, we see the children replicating the program beyond the program itself.

BRAD: That’s amazing. I think there’s so much to be said for this model of empowerment. It seems that once someone is empowered, they continue that in their own lives and continue to model that. It’s wonderful. As a radio audience, there are people listening to the show right now, some of whom are church goers, other people just driving down I-30 right now, right through town. What are ways they can help ZOE in accomplishing its mission in the world?

GASTON: Well, we always like spreading the message of empowerment. That’s one of the things that we see as important. Americans are one of the most generous countries on the face of the earth. Philanthropically, we lead the world. But we don’t always think through as carefully about how we’re doing that. Internally, we’re a very entrepreneurial country. We believe in starting businesses. We believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, but so much of our aid is just the opposite of that. And it doesn’t really work. So what I encourage people to do is to start the conversation in their churches and their social groups, and their own families, about what it means to move from relief to empowerment. And that’s something that ZOE very much wants to push the conversation on. Now, of course, we would also love for people to learn more about ZOE and see if they like this particular model, and we’ve got a website and contact information that I’m always happy to give out. The website is ZOEHelps.org. We always love to hear from folks. We want to continue that conversation.

BRAD: How many trips a year do you make into the continent of Africa for this purpose, or are you always going between here and there?

GASTON: Last year, I made five trips. It was a little much, probably, and that included India and Guatemala. So it started in Africa, and we’re in five countries in Africa, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Kenya, Malawi and Liberia, which has been a wild ride this last year, but great partners there.

And we also expanded into India and Guatemala with this African model, which is just part of God’s vision for the world, I think. So, last year I went over five times. Really all the work is done by indigenous staff, so they don’t need more work. They just want to show the program to people whose hearts and minds might be drawn to this vision of empowerment.

BRAD: In this process of back-and-forth between continents and God’s blessing of seeing this broader vision and empowering local peoples to do the work of development right there in their own back yard – where does your heart weep with God? Where do you see joy and celebration? I mean, it must be quite an emotional range as you do this work.

GASTON: It is, and frankly, the need is so enormous, many people that go on mission trips and see these children – and the children I’m talking about in Africa and India, children actually starving to death. All the pictures you’ve seen of children in destitute situations, these are those children. So I’ve been on some of those. You go over and you do something and you feel good about engaging, but you feel horrible about the children’s situation once you return. What’s going to happen to those kids? One of the things I like about ZOE’s model is when you return you know that the children you visited will be better in five months’ time than they were when you saw them, because you see this upward trajectory that they’re able to care for themselves. And that situation offers so much hope in the midst of so much despair, that you end up feeling that God is in control in the middle of this humanitarian crisis. And that’s something that’s just powerful to me. The other thing that I like so much about seeing ZOE’s model in action is that the physical and the psychological and the spiritual are all held together. We care for whole people’s souls and their bodies and we see all of that as part of the gospel’s work. So there’s just a holistic good feeling about a child that’s been made whole, has food to eat: both spiritual and physical food. And I think there’s something in our church that we lost when we started splitting the people that care for the souls and the people that care for the bodies. We’re struggling to reintegrate that again, to see them embodied and powerful.

For more information visit WWW.ZOEHELPS.ORG

4000 Moores Lane Texarkana, Texas 75503