Sowing Seeds of Change: Navigating Poverty, Choices, and Dignity | Ep. 78 with the Founder of Orchard Africa
The podcast episode featuring Mike Tessendorf, co-founder of Orchard Africa and a pastor, delves into the transformative work of Orchard Africa in Sub-Saharan Africa. Beginning with the organization's roots in feeding children from a garbage dump, the episode highlights the profound impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and how Orchard Africa seeks to address generational change in the area.
This transformational episode intertwines spirituality with action, urging listeners to align their work with positive change. Personal stories showcase the lasting impact of Orchard Africa, emphasizing the fight for human dignity in the face of poverty. Mike emphasizes the importance of kindling hope, supported by faith, community, and breaks. He shares insights into the importance of kindling hope in the human spirit and the supportive role of faith, community, and taking breaks in maintaining one's resilience.
For more information or to connect with Mike, visit orchardafrica.org. Overall, this podcast explores the intersection of faith, social responsibility, and the pursuit of human dignity in the context of Orchard Africa's impactful work. Watch now to hear about the stories and impact of hope growing from hopelessness!
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Transcript
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Today. We have a special guest coming to us all the way from South Africa, Mike
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Tyson Dorf. Mike is the co-founder of Orchard Africa, an organization helping the most
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vulnerable
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South Africa.
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Mike, share several stories. The real truth behind what he sees
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in impoverished communities and how him
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and his organization strive to implement developmental change for generations to come.
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Get ready to be moved,
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inspired
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and extra grateful for the life
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you were blessed with.
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Listen now.
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Mike
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I. Yes. From
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Sure. So great to be here.
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right next
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us. But
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Yep,
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with that? Absolutely. I would agree. I my context is sub-Saharan Africa. And so I can speak into that. Yeah, clearly, there's lots of people in poverty in other parts of the world, But sub-Saharan Africa, other well close to 50% of the people, that's over 500 million people who live in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than $2 a day,
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less than $2
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And when that's your daily budget, your choices are informed by that to to a huge degree. So, yes, look, your choice choices, correct? That's that's like the World Bank survival mode. Every
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choice they make when they're thinking about their future, it's almost always around survival. And then, and then what? We're talking about
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the power and complexity of human choice, is that sometimes a generational issue, right?
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So
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yeah,
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little one of the children in where you're from, sub-Saharan Africa, who's living on $2 a day, that's what's his parents life and his grandparents life in his or his or her
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great grandparents. So it's generational,
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Yes. Unfortunately, poverty becomes systemic and endemic and it compounds generation to generation. I'm just for example, when it comes to choice,
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we started doing what we do in the midst of the AIDS pandemic.
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And so a lot of the families that we worked with were AIDS survivors, especially the children in the care of a grandparent. So the grandparent has $2 a day and has to decide, do I buy food? Do I send my grandkids to school? Do I use money to go and try and find a job? Or what do I do?
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And so the child typically ends up not going to school because the families go to eat or the school is too far away. And so that child then grows up without education. And generationally it impacts the next generation, you know. So absolutely, the environment and the social economic condition that we that people find themselves in absolutely influenced choices.
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Yeah.
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You know I saw firsthand what you're describing. I was in southern Uganda
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yeah,
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All right,
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Absolutely.
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Yep. Yeah.
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Yes.
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It actually started off feeding a bunch of kids in a garbage dump. And when we found out where those kids were from and started going into the village and moved the feeding program to the village where the kids were from, that's when we came face to face with the reason they were in the garbage dump was because the AIDS pandemic had wiped out that generation that you spoke about.
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And so it was children and and grandparents trying to survive. Many of the people, because of the stigma attached to AIDS at the time, were kind of ostracized out of the village living in cardboard boxes, broken down, cause kids were not allowed to have contact with other kids. If there was a suspicion that there's been AIDS in the family.
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And it was just it was a disaster, just heartbreaking disaster to see so many kids with so many elderly people trying to care for them. And
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no resources to do it.
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The first time I witnessed that story I just told, I went back there and I noticing poverty because there's poverty all over
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right.
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But when I saw it at that level, I remember I went back to my room at night and I wept.
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I wept for a long time,
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and, you know,
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on. Yeah.
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take us back a little bit, you said it actually started with you feeding kids in a garbage
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dump.
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My wife and I were leading a church, pastoring a church in a small city in the north western parts of South Africa.
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We wanted our church to be involved in ministry that was outside of the sun scenario. I heard about some kids that were rummaging for food in a garbage dump and felt like, Well, here's something we can do.
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As a church cooked some parts of food, got some volunteers and took the food out to the dump, and we found somewhere around 30 kids there that were on the dump every day looking for food. And I mean, you talk about heartbreaking and weeping to see kids when that garbage truck pulls into the garbage dump and then they like and smile before the truck is even stopped, they like and swarming over the truck to looking at other people's trash for something to eat.
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And so we started feeding the kids and, you know, committed to come back the next day and the next day and the next day. And of course, each day there were more kids. And eventually we ended up with over 100 kids, which we felt was great because we were feeding them but terrible because they were being fed on the dump.
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And so that's when we thought, well, let's find out where are they coming from and why are they here? And located the village where most of these kids were being sent by their grandparents or by surviving parents who had nothing and who were trying to deal with death all around them. And so that was the only place they could think of to find food.
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And so we then started the feeding project in the village. You moved it from from the dump to the village
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just to to bring some dignity
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Well, yes, yes. A meal would not
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have them eat at a dump.
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so then you go to the village and this is how this is how all these stories
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take place this and this is
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had something you write
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Yeah, layers and layers. So, yep, you
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Yes. So that's I mean, you've come back to the choices then
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in a situation where the the provider generation is gone, an elderly generation with no resources is going for caring for a young generation with no resources.
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So kids stop going to school. Grandparents stop providing the love that kids need. I mean, if you're a 60 something year old grandmother mostly and you've got five or six grandkids, how do you how do you care for those kids and love them? So they were kids. They were never, ever being held or hugged, you know. So there was that kind of effect.
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And then we began to discover that the systemic poverty in combination with the AIDS pandemic was just having such a huge, devastating effect on this particular village. And that's what drove us to move beyond, Well, yes, let's feed these kids. But what can we do? What how can we intervene? What sustainable programs can we develop to help provide care for this community?
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Because at the time, there was a lot of international response, even a lot of church response, and the knee jerk reaction was, well, let's put up orphanages because there's going to be millions of orphans, so let's institutionalize them. And one of the strengths of African culture is community. And we realized that if you take those kids out of the community and put them in an institution, you really creating a generation of displaced people because what happens when they age out of that institution.
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So our focus was community. How can we empower the community to take responsibility and and provide care for those within the community? And so we started training caregivers, we started training preschool teachers and developing preschools in the community from the community,
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yeah.
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along with with the feeding project, we felt like, well, let's plant a church and make it known that the reason this food and the reason is care and the reason there's a preschool is because of the churches here.
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And so that the people in the village associated the care with the church and the love of God. And so we felt like if we could provide sustainable interventions within the community, then that would last for for a generationally rather than where if we started a program, when we go, the program ends and then everything's back to normal.
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That's happened so often in many places in the developing world.
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when I when I talk about poverty issues or justice issues, one of the things that always comes up is how messy it is, right? Because it's not there's not a
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simple answer. You know, like that's what
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Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the things which was a real eye opener, but at the same time, a shock for us is this was the late, well, sort of mid nineties.
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had come out of apartheid in: ::Unknown
And we found this true to be. We found that to be true for hundreds of kids and then true for their even their grandparents, whose birth many, many years ago had never been registered. So they couldn't go and apply for a social grant. The kids couldn't go to school. And so the messiness was, well, how do we get these kids registered with the US?
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Call it a Social Security number. So that calls it an identity number. So without an identity number, you don't exist.
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And so yeah, with these hundreds of people that just didn't exist in terms of the the infrastructure of the country. So get them registered then get,
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the application into school, get the grandparent with mindset. If your child goes to school, then they can be better off in the generation to come get the grandparents registers.
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Are they going to play and then stand in line for a for a grant and all the red tape that goes with that? You know, it was
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when we started feeding those kids on the dump. I think if we'd known where it would lead us, we might have thought, Well, do we really want to do this
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often God doesn't let us see the road
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Yeah, you can. You'd say no. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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k blogs, and this was October: ::Unknown
And they write, I know poverty because poverty was there before I was born. And it has become part of life, like the blood through my veins. Poverty is going empty for a day and not getting something to eat the next day. Poverty is going empty with no hope for the future. Poverty is getting nobody to feel your pain.
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And poverty is when your dreams go in vain because nobody's there to help you. Poverty is watching your mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters die in pain and in sorrow. It's hearing your grandmothers and grandfathers cry out to death to come and take them because they are tired of this world. It's watching your insurance and grandchildren die in your arms, but there's nothing you can do.
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Poverty is watching your children and grandchildren share tears in their deepest sleep. It's suffering from HIV or AIDS and dying a shameful death. But nobody seems to care. Poverty is when you hide your face and wish nobody could see you just because you feel less than a human being. It's when you dream of bread and meat you never see in the daylight.
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It's when people accuse you and persecute you for no fault of yours. But who is they to say something for you? Poverty is when the hopes of your fathers and grandfathers just vanished within a blink of an eye. I know poverty and I know poverty, just like I know my father's name. Poverty never sleeps. Poverty works all day and night.
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Poverty never takes a holiday. I came across this in the midst of all that work that we started doing then. And man, this just hit me so, so deeply in the deepest part of my soul, because that is so true. And coming back to what you're saying about choices, when people live like this, you have to recognize that some of the choices they make are not because they want to, but because they have to.
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Absolutely
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We found. Do you mind if I just show stories?
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Young ladies, teenage girls were probably the most vulnerable of the population during that time because again, with with the absence of their parents, mothers, fathers, they were helpless. And so they became prey for men who had resources, men who had money. And so the the approach was, I will provide you with a pair of new jeans if you spend the night with me.
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So we say, well, that's prostitution. And that young girl is choosing to prostitute herself. Will, is she or is she simply choosing to have a meal or something to wear? And that's where it gets messy and complex. A grandparent has to decide, do I have got $2? Do I use that money to get a public transport to go and buy food?
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If I use the public transport, I might not have enough to buy food. Or do I use that money to pay for my grandkid to go to school because school is ten miles away and they can't walk there.
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but now they go hungry.
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And if I use that, then we don't have food. So I think when when you say if
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God gives us the freedom to choose, which I believe and that our choices make us, which I also believe, it's true, when you live in an environment that gives you the freedom to choose when you want to, but when you can't choose what you know, you should choose, I think that's when social justice initiatives and organizations and outside intervention
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becomes necessary. And you asked, you know, what we do? We started off as a as a feeding project and then evolved into education and health care and food security, agricultural development. But I think over the years we realized that the best thing that we could do is help to develop people who are in underdeveloped or underserved or disadvantaged communities to have more choices than what they would have had if it wasn't for us.
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So we're not trying to be the sort of eternal provider, the savior of their plight
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in any social justice initiative. We found the three areas these relief, this reconstruction and then these development and relief is when somebody is in a crisis and you respond.
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And unfortunately, a lot of times that's where we leave
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and that's where we stop. We give relief, but then we keep giving, correct?
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Correct. And that's happened in Africa for generations. Yeah. So the other two then reconstruction is
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helping people to recover from that crisis. So, for example, it starts getting messy. Example, people build their little shacks, mud houses, whatever it is, alongside the bank of a river because they want to be close to water. Maybe culturally they worship the god of the river.
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Or maybe that's where the ancestors always had their houses. And so they live there. But then the river floods and all their houses get washed away. So we come and we say, they need relief, they need food, then heat, blankets, they need clothes. So we provide relief and that helps them get out of the crisis. However, the houses are washed away, so reconstruction is let's help them to rebuild their houses.
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So we get all the materials and we put up the houses again. Except next year the river floods again and the houses wash away again. So development is, Well, let's help you find a place to put up your house where it's not going to get washed away. So yes, because not only do you have to persuade them that, well, we know you worship the god of the river, but
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your house is going to keep on getting washed away.
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So choose your God or choose a house that is going to last for more than a season. So let's move them up here from where the river floods and then help them get water to where the houses are, or let's help them find a way to worship the river God without being rushed by the river and simplistic. But, you know,
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gets complicated because
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you guys started feeding those kids at the dump, that was relief.
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There was relief, correct? Correct. And
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Right? Right. Development is it's complicated because it's very, very difficult to
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take a photo of development. You know, we can we can take 400 tons of food and take a photo and say, look at what we did.
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And everybody says, rah, rah, rah. But development takes time. Development is hard to measure and development. I'm going to excuse me for using this word. It's just not sexy yet. So people would much rather get behind a relief program or even a restructure, a reconstruction. They can build houses. But even you say we want to train people and develop people so that in ten years time they'll have a better choice than they have today.
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Well, we want to see instant results. Well,
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that's this is one of the reasons, Mike, I wanted to have you on here.
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this is one of the reasons, Mike, I wanted to have you on here. First of all, love it. Orchard Africa does. And we can give people the opportunity to connect with you and see how they can partner. But I think that there's so much of retraining and educating that we have to do to us as donors.
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development organization from: ::Unknown
And so I understood. I saw some of the stuff that you go through. How do you how do you help these donors understand? Because it's easy to get them to give when you can go look how much food we gave or we had these many kids go through this program. But development is very, very hard to
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track. Yes.
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Absolutely. Yes.
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And that's yes. And that's I think that we've spent 30 something years now wading through the mess. But we are fortunate because we have 30 years of history to look back on and we can see the results of development.
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So some of the kids that started coming to the feeding project back then, who were five and six years old, are now married and have jobs and have kids, and they didn't become infected with HIV. And so they healthy and they well, some of them are pastors of churches, others are leading worship and other ministries in churches, some of them who we managed to get scholarships for, have become doctors and lawyers and as well, even even overseas.
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We recently had a young girl that was recruited to go and practice medicine in Cuba, you know, so Cuba, love it or hate it. She came from a village and is practicing. Yeah. And for a lot of those kids, I mean, this particular village where she came from, she was the first child to ever go on to be educated beyond high school.
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And so now she's a doctor, you know, So
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and then her career influences all her siblings and their children because African societies community. And so we don't just care for us for no more. We care for our brothers and sisters and our parents. And the entire family becomes provided because somebody has got a job, somebody has got a career.
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Every culture has its beauty and its darkness, right? Every
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Yes.
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Yes. Yes, absolutely.
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as well. It would. It would,
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things. That's a whole other part that from what we learned up in
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with you.
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Well, South Africa is an interesting place because it's it's where so many different cultures and so many different worlds collide. Archbishop Desmond Tutu back in the day when apartheid was dismantling, called us the Rainbow Nation, just to describe of all the multicultural. I mean, we have 12 official languages in the country.
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Where does help me out? Just just out of curiosity, because I love history historically. Where does that come from? What what happened in South Africa that made it this this blending area or.
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uth Africa was settled in the: ::Unknown
and who who also brought the French into the southern part of the country to create farms and produce vegetables for the sailors that were sailing around Africa to get from Europe to the east.
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So the Dutch
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country in Africa where you
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there was around that. Right. Yeah. And so so it was a refreshment station.
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And then the British came and the British eventually became the colonizers of the Cape. And so the whites were, let's say the the Caucasian heritage in southern Africa is Dutch, French and British. But when these settlers arrived there, the indigenous tribes were already there.
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So, you know, we have Zulu and Kosa and and Sesotho and Swati and Setswana, and there's actually nine major indigenous African tribes in South Africa. And they all had and all have their cultures and languages. Right. And so when apartheid ended, it was for we need to find the way to make this rainbow work. And I think we're doing okay.
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I think we're doing okay. There's still lots of progress to be made, but we're doing good. Yeah.
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Well, Mike, let me ask you a question.
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I'm embarrassed to ask this, but it's important question to ask because
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most of our listeners are from a faith based perspective, tend church. Someone might say, I don't think we have as many that say this today, but someone might say, Well, what were you doing feeding kids? I mean, that's great. But isn't the church's responsibility to
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save souls?
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That's more of a social justice issue that you're talking about. And we don't want to mix those. Is a church
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Speak into that.
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my goodness. That was part of the journey that we or let's say, part of the adventure we embarked on when we started feeding these kids because we asked ourselves that question.
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We grew up with the mindset of our task is to save souls, make disciples populate heaven. And so we began searching Scripture. And I mean, I would I was amazed. It blew my mind. When you look for it, how much of Scripture talks about the feeding the kids side this this social justice? And I think the the mistake that we make is that we think it's an either or.
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And quite honestly, it's a both. And where I think if I could quote, paraphrase James, what good is your faith if you don't have works? Because faith that works is dead. And he talks about you. Show me your faith and I'll show you my works and you'll see my faith by my work. So our faith is evidenced by what we do, not just by what we say, because he uses the example.
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If somebody comes to you and they're hungry and they don't have the daily provision, what are you going to do? Pray for them? Or the Bible says, say God bless you, be warned to be full. In other words, I pray for you, brother and God, to provide no one prayer, one at one meal. He the Scriptures is give them what they need.
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Yeah. And again, in James, you said, you know, pure religion is caring for the widow and the orphan in their distress. And their distress is not. I want to know Jesus loves me. The distress is I'm alone. I'm afraid I'm vulnerable, I'm hungry, I'm parentless. What can you do to help me? And I can go on and on and on and.
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But
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the Bible,
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that was a journey. You yourselves had to take
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Absolutely. Absolutely.
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was almost embarrassed, ask that question because I grew up the same way you did.
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In fact, I was one of those. When we would take mission trips, I this is embarrassing for me to say, but I would come back. You know, I take a group of students. He's a teacher and a coach, and we go on a mission trip. And I would say things like, you know, when we were reporting to the church and the donors that that sent us, I would say things like, it was great.
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We were able to dig wells that day and we were able to build some some huts that that day. And we had a feeding thing and but, but the great thing was that night we were able to share the gospel.
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yeah,
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Yes.
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So I loved how you answer that. It's not an either or to the end, like
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should be doing both.
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And I agree
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Yeah. I think one of the one of the passages that kind of moves me always is Jesus taught us to pray Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
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So this might be very simplistic, but to me that means God wants people on Earth to experience what it's like in heaven. And if people are hungry on earth, surely they not hungry in heaven. If people are sick on Earth, surely they are well in heaven. So shouldn't our job then be to pray that just as things are well with people in heaven, so they should be well with people on earth?
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I love that. So much, Mike. When I would preach on justice, when I used to preach, I would always say that justice is seeing through, seeing things through the eyes of God
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or caring about what God cares about or giving people a foretaste of what that future
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Correct.
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be. Right. Because doing. Yes. And it's not just a future thing. Yes, we all agree that there's a future kingdom to come, but at the same time, there's a kingdom that is now it's one of those truth tensions that we we try and juggle now, but not yet, correct?
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Correct. Yeah. And so, I mean, as ambassadors of the kingdom then, because I will be done on Earth as it is in heaven, surely we have a role to play in having experience in not just preparing people for heaven, but allowing them to experience God's will on earth until they get to heaven itself and think that whole process of, well, we preach the gospel and the rest of it is not our job, it's and this is going to sound a little bit cynical, but it's okay for people to go through hell on earth as long as they get to heaven when they die.
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Shame on us. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
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Well, and you being a pastor to understand and again, and this is where the Bible just started coming alive to me when I began to understand this narrative, you know, I had always grown up hearing heaven and hell.
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Heaven and hell were always the same conversation. When he's Bible, heaven and hell weren't really talked about in the same parts Heaven and earth are.
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you
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right?
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Yeah,
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someone. Or
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saying that, you know, if someone has to experience hell on Earth to get to heaven, I mean, understand where they're mean, what they mean by that. But boy, that can really dilute
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what we see the narrative of God's word, right?
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Somebody, you might have heard this quote, It's not new, but just came to mind as you were talking. It could have been Francis of Assisi, but somebody like him said we should
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preach the gospel at every opportunity and from time to time use words and love them. Yeah, and you're right. Yeah. I think.
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Francis But it's not just about the gospel that we preach. And yes, we need to preach the gospel. The good news is the hope of the world. Yeah, it's the only thing that can change a person's heart. And of course we need that. But at the same time is not neglect that God is concerned about the physical and social and justice needs of people on earth as well.
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And we don't see him separating. I don't I don't
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when we had God in the flesh: ::Unknown
injustice.
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Right? Right. Both
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a
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It wasn't where do we eat? Right, Right.
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But to help us understand that a lot of people on this planet today, that's not the choice they have. It's so help unpack a little bit that poverty is more than just the socioeconomic right.
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There's a mindset, there's a worldview that goes along with it. Right. And that I think that
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quote you read helps us
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understand that. Can
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Yes. Which is why it's so important for us to focus on development and not just end with relief and and reconstruction, because you do need to.
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When people have lived in historic and systemic poverty, it does become a mindset Hope gets lost and there's no vision, no hope at all for any kind of future that's different. And so I believe to move people out of the grip of poverty, not only do you need to provide that relief, but you need to instill something in them, which gives them the ability to think and dream and hope and believe that it doesn't have to be like this forever or it doesn't have to be like this for the next generation.
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And so that's when the mindset comes in because, I mean, technically, poverty, I suppose, is a mindset of never having enough. And, you know, you can I think the rich people that have that mindset of never having enough. But if, if
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great point, isn't it? That's a
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yeah, because
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of Yes, yes,
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And so our approach was, you know, if Aletta has ten steps, it might not be likely in one generation to get a person from step one to step ten. But if we can get them to step three in the next generation, they might get to step five.
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And so suddenly, yes, let's let's think education is important because if I can get my child to go to school, they can possibly get a job and then not have to grow up unemployed like I did or if I can get my child to go to school, it means that I can have time to go and find a job because I don't have to look after the child.
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24 seven You. And so it is a mindset. And I think for us, in those early, early years, the most important thing to to break was this devastating hopelessness that had just it was like a blanket that that that overwhelmed communities where mass death and then mass need as a result of that. So last year. Yeah yeah too and so just a little thing like training somebody in the village to become a caregiver and suddenly instead of them waiting for somebody to come in to help them, they're going to from house to house just or just talking to a holding the hand of somebody else who's in a worse situation than them.
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It ignites. My wife, Michelle, used to say, when, when, when the human spirit comes alive, hope is ignited and it ignites something. And suddenly these people in really village saying, hey, we can do something for our own people. And that becomes contagious. Instead of the hope becoming the prevalent sense of darkness, hope starts bringing light. And so, yes, I do think it's a mindset, but again, development is something that takes time and it's not going to change A person mindset overnight.
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So let's get them to step two, Step three, Step four, and not say we failed because we didn't get them to step ten in our lifetime.
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How, how do you stay healthy dealing with this?
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You know, I know when I back when I was worked with anti-human trafficking for a while too, and, and when I waded into the muck and mire and the darkness of that, it I, I was, I was broke for a little while.
::Unknown
Maybe even, I might say unhealthy,
::Unknown
so my wife and I have kind of walk this road together from day one.
::Unknown
So the two of us play a huge role in each other's lives and keeping ourselves healthy. You know, two are better than one. And when the one is down, the other one lifts him up. We've had a be that for each other. Certainly our faith being able to turn to God and knowing that in spite of all the devastation action and the pain that we see, that there is a loving God who cares, and that at some point there's something better that God has in store for everybody and that that our faith in him is that that that anchor to our soul.
::Unknown
So those are two crucial things. And then having having friends and peers who understand what we do, many of them who do what we do to just have a community of people around us because it is devastating. I think it can become debilitating when day after day after day, you just see the need and the plight of the desperate.
::Unknown
You have to find that outlet. And then probably the thing that has saved us and when I say asked my wife and I in our marriage is to make sure that we actually take time off, We we were brutally, brutally determined to make sure that day out of seven, we took a break and we'd get in our car and drive some way away from where all of this was going on.
::Unknown
Just to experience something different. And we've we've adhered to that for 30 years. We moved out the sound that God wanted to give us. Right. And it's not always being holy, you know, It's not always. It's just just take a break. Yeah,
::Unknown
yeah. Just get away from
::Unknown
it. Yeah.
::Unknown
I think the best way is through our website. It's Orchard Africa, dot org and all our information, everything story, everything about us is there or there are reports of the years past and then our contact information. So we have we have an office in Arizona, Phenix, Arizona, and then we have obviously an office in South Africa and
::Unknown
we are South African.
::Unknown
My wife and I born and raised and spent most of our life there. We still travel back.
::Unknown
Well, hey, Mike, can you do something for us? Can you help? Because I think this is the danger for me and for everyone else. We hear stories like this when we hear big numbers, you know, like 4 billion of the 7 billion people on the planet live on $2
::Unknown
Yes.
::Unknown
He has this he has a story. This is a young man
::Unknown
back in the early nineties, he started coming to the early feeding project that we started as a six year old
::Unknown
with these with these with his brother.
::Unknown
and skip forward to November: ::Unknown
He's now a pastor of a church. He's in his thirties and he says this to me. He said, Pastor Mike, what would have happened if you and Michelle never came to our village? He said, I have a sister and two brothers and all four of us, of all four of our lives have been significantly impacted. Just because you came to our village, what would have happened if you never came?
::Unknown
And so
::Unknown
you could have knocked me over with a feather then, because it never struck me that 30 years after this young guy as a six old came because he was hungry, would be telling me his sister is she got a university degree, she's educated and working. He's
::Unknown
younger. Brother is a sports broadcaster, one of the top sport broadcast broadcasters in South Africa.
::Unknown
He's won awards. He broadcasts soccer. His older brother works for the government health department and is responsible for security in all the health facilities in the province where he works. He drives around in with the Minister of Health in a fancy car, and this young guy is a pastor. So these four kids are all siblings, all siblings and entire family.
::Unknown
And of course, they're going to have children and it's going to ripple down to their children. So that's one story. I don't know how many other families there are. Like his, but I have to believe that over 30 years of ministry in 60 or 70 different communities like that, there are multiple families whose lives will not be the same because somebody went there to feed them.
::Unknown
Somebody invited them to a preschool, somebody cared for them when they were sick. Somebody just showed them that they were significant enough to be loved and went to their village. So I hope that answers the question. Absolutely.
::Unknown
does, you know, and it makes me think to Mike one of the beautiful things that that Orchard Africa is doing or all of our audience is somehow involved in, in helping different organizations that are doing this kind of work.
::Unknown
It's it's believing and fighting for the inherent dignity of humans, isn't it,
::Unknown
Yes.
::Unknown
for the
::Unknown
today?
::Unknown
Yeah,
::Unknown
that that stripped away the dignity that God
::Unknown
wanted us to have and create us to have and to fight for that?
::Unknown
So I honor you for doing that. I just want to tell our audience, please, please go to Orchard Africa dot org. There's ways to give I I'll do this for you.
::Unknown
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. Doesn't happen
::Unknown
without donors. And I can
::Unknown
tell you I've vetted out this organization myself. I've met with Brian, who's on your staff
::Unknown
Yes.
::Unknown
so, okay, this is a
::Unknown
have a fantastic organization and you're doing amazing work.
::Unknown
And so I want to really encourage our audience
::Unknown
God's heart beat for the least
::Unknown
Yes, absolutely. Like Richard,
::Unknown
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's all it's all set out there of what what your gift could do. That's a dollar a day for us. Yeah.
::Unknown
That's a I mean, I go get coffee sometimes
::Unknown
and so
::Unknown
there's no way we can't find a way, you know, us as listeners. No way we can't find a way
::Unknown
to sacrifice something and go go give to an organization like this.
::Unknown
So I really want to encourage people to
::Unknown
Thank you.
::Unknown
make a difference in the world. God's heart beats for the least less and less our should to.
::Unknown
So thank you for what you do.
::Unknown
it's been an incredible adventure, but so privileged to be able to do this. I think my life is the richest it could possibly be.
::Unknown
Thank you. Sure.
::Unknown
Well, Mike, one way we finish our is with two truths and a life
::Unknown
right? Because we're not great. Yeah,
::Unknown
we've been listening to you. We've gotten to know you a little bit for 45 minutes or so. See if you can stump us, give us three statements.
::Unknown
Two of them will be truths. One will be a lie.
::Unknown
And I'll try to guess. AUDIENCE I'll try to guess
::Unknown
All right. So my history obviously is South African. So these all relate to South African past.
::Unknown
Some years ago I ran an ultramarathon 55 miles and finished in one of the towns in our in South Africa. There is a museum to the test and to a family. My younger years, well, my my entire life has been in the pastoral ministry, but in my younger years to help supplement my income, I used to go and help the wildlife people with giraffes that were born.
::Unknown
The little ones, you know, often die because the mother's so high. So I used to help them by catching the giraffes and making sure that the babies lives are preserved.
::Unknown
Well, those are good ones.
::Unknown
The third okay,
::Unknown
that.
::Unknown
That is the biggest lie.
::Unknown
no. Okay. You made the marathon. I did.
::Unknown
Yeah, I did. I
::Unknown
Yeah.
::Unknown
50% chance and he still was get one. Okay. My that was a story.
::Unknown
My son, my son came to college at Arizona State University, and that was a story he used to tell his friends about his African dad. And they all believed it. Yeah, I just thought I couldn't because you were having so much fun with those little to try to make a life. So giraffes problem, somehow they managed to survive without us.
::Unknown
I said, I grew up around farming. Yeah, yeah,
::Unknown
But okay. And so what was the middle one again?
::Unknown
n by origin, and in the early: ::Unknown
So they tend to have in America from the same bloodline. So one went South Africa. What? Yeah, but so in the eastern Cape part of one of the one of the parts of South Africa, there's a town called King Williamstown where there's a decent museum. And so all the little artifacts of little baby cribs and clothes and stuff that go back to those years.
::Unknown
Yeah. You know,
::Unknown
we don't know much more past our grandparents. So you can go back and see some of your genealogy and that's.
::Unknown
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
::Unknown
Thank you, Pat. This has been wonderful. Thank you for what you do. Yeah, thank you.
::Unknown
What an amazing discussion that was with Mike. It's incredible hearing from a man making such a generational impact in our world. Let us know how you enjoyed this episode by commenting your thoughts below. And here's a challenge for you listeners. How can you make a difference in the lives of others? This week, as always, be sure to like this video.
::Unknown
Subscribe and leave us a five star review. We'll catch you on the next episode. Have a great week.
