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0:57But this is my youngest biological daughter, Bryn, and then my wife, Rachel, of course, Peyton and Grant, and Justin, who is my son-in-law from South Africa. He married my oldest daughter. She's not in this service right now. She'll be here a little bit later. Our oldest daughter, Allison, and they live in Columbus, Ohio now. Then we have my mom and my dad are here, Rich and Pat Kirby. They flew in this weekend from New Hampshire to be with us, have a little bit of. Family time together. My wife's parents hopefully will be here tonight. So we're adding, helping to pad the numbers here and all that. Yeah.

1:39And then we have four little ones that we brought with us as well. We have three five-year-olds and one four-year-old. So I have no sympathy for my boys in the core because you have to do with four little ones like that. You're as tired as anybody on earth. So we have Zachariah. Are they in any of them in here? Okay, all right. So Zachariah, who's five years old, Zach was literally found in what we call a packet, or basically a Walmart bag in the field in South Africa when he was a day old, less than 24 hours old, still had the umbilical cord attached and the fluids all over him. And some boys were riding through a field, heard a baby crying, saw this packet moving, and went over and looked and went and got the police and came back and brought him. He was in hospital for seven weeks and then finally was able to come home and be with us. We remember the first night we had him, he had had breathing issues, and that first night in our house, we always put our babies right next to our bed in a pack and play.

2:48And we thought, I don't even know if he's going to make it through the night. His breathing was that bad. We didn't know, should we bring him to the hospital? But they just released him from the hospital. So what do we do? Just sat up with him all night, got him through, and then he struggled for the next really four years pretty heavily with his breathing. And I remember we went to the doctor when he was four years old, a little after he was four years old, and he had a hundred and four or a hundred five degree temperature. And we couldn't get it down. We brought him to the doctor, and she said, actually, this is good news because he's never had a fever before, because he would literally go in less than two hours from nothing to having a little bit of a cold to having bronchitis and pneumonia without anything in between. She said, when he has a fever, it means his body is actually trying to fight whatever's in him. And so now, this year has been a little bit better. He's not having to take as many medications and struggle with that. So that's Zachariah, Chalalelo. We call her Lelo, but it's KG in the beginning. You have to say, you can practice Acha. It's a sound that we use a lot in Africa, in African languages, but also in Afrikaans, which is a Dutch people group. And one of our friends says, Afrikaans is not really it's a language, it's a throat disease. Because you say a lot. You're always trying to get something out of there. So her name is Khalalelo, and she's also five years old. She was also left in a field, just laying in the grass, less than 24 hours old. And she was, a couple was walking through the field, heard her crying, and brought her to the police and to the hospital, and ultimately to us when she was two weeks old. She is a good, strong, healthy young girl. We're happy for that. And then we brought Kimahalo with us. He came to us when he was 13 months old.

5:01His dad and mom are alcoholics. Mom was in the Shabin or the bar, and dad couldn't find her, and he was drunk and wanting to drink more. And he had his 13-month-old, and so he handed Camahalo to a stranger and said, I can't take care of him. I can't find my wife, so you please take care of him. And so that's how he came to us. And there's some complications with him staying with us, so just pray for that. His parents are still alcoholic and live in abject poverty, can't take care of him, but want him back. And so have been fighting a little bit to get him back. So just pray for wisdom with the social workers. And at one point, they were saying we're going to reunify. We said, well, have you ever visited the parents and seen where they live and how they live? Oh, no, don't worry about it. We'll take care of that. And we insisted, and they finally went. And the next time we saw, Them, they said, Oh, he's not going to go back there. So, just pray that they continue on in that. So, that's Camhalo. He's been with us, he's now five years old. And then, Carabo, he came to us when he was two weeks old, had a bad, very bad family life. Some things happened there that they removed him from his home. And so, he's lived with us since he was two weeks old. Now, he's four years old. I don't know, was he? He wasn't probably talking that much when you guys were there, and now he talks a mile a minute, and he's one of the funniest kids you'll ever hear. He just comes up with these things all the time. So, that's who we have traveling with us. They keep us running quite a bit, pray for us in that, pray for them. And as in everything, our ministry is a gospel-centered ministry. So, we don't just go to Africa or South Africa just to help kids physically, although that's a big part of it. James chapter 1 and 2 and 3 even talk about that and helping people physically, but it's really to get to them spiritually. And we want our children to come to know who Christ is, to know Him personally as their Lord and Savior, and then to disciple them, continue to disciple them all the way up through their life, so that then they can become Christians, who have a solid foundation in Christ, who can go out and reach other people in the world, whether it's in Johannesburg, South Africa, or Malati.

7:30Or Guatemala or America or Canada or Europe or Asia, wherever God has them. We don't care. We just want to raise up, just like we do with our biological children, kids that will come to serve Christ. And so just pray with us for that. Okay, so all that to say, our ministry is called Ontatile. Lots of people, Americans in particular, look at that and say, that says on the tile. It does not. It says ontatile. It's an African word that means he loved me. And that's our goal, is to let our children know God loves you and he wants you to be part of his family. And so that's ontatile children's ministry. We've been there now for seven years. We started out on this journey eight years, maybe almost nine years ago now. I was a businessman. I owned an insurance agency and some real estate that we rented out. And through a series of events, God just started working in our hearts that maybe he had something different for us. We thought it was going to be short-term missions, like maybe we'll spend three weeks a year or something helping out a missionary. And God had other plans. So in 2010, we visited Turkey, Guatemala, Argentina, Zambia, and South Africa. And South Africa was really a throw-in, kind of like what you do going in to jump out there to go to Malawi. Well, we were going to Zambia and thought that's where we were going to end up.

9:00Through God working, directing our paths, we ended up going back there to South Africa. Our pastor in South Africa grew up. My father-in-law, who hopefully will be here tonight, was his pastor in Katy, Texas. So, our pastor in Johannesburg is from Katy, Texas. He went to school with my wife. He was a couple years behind. I won't tell you how many years behind he was, but he was. And my father-in-law, who you'll meet tonight, you won't forget him because his name is Ronald McDonnell, the original Ronald McDonnell. So, when you greet him, you can call him that tonight. And there's a whole story, a message I preach, actually, how God has used his name. It's amazing how God has used his name in a very dramatic fashion in his life. And so, anyway, I could get off track with that. So, Onta Tile, we're very excited about what God has called us to do. I don't know where I'm supposed to point this. Do I point it? Oh, well, is it on? Yes. Here we go. There we go. All right. Oh, wait, wait one second. I'm going back. Okay.

10:12This, I'm going to show you a video. This is one of our favorite verses, Psalm 68:5. Father of the fatherless, judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. And these people here that you're about to see are all personal friends of ours. In fact, they're members. Our local church, Antioch Bible Church, which is where we attend and we serve through that church as well. This is one of our good friends, Duncan. We went and had a video made of people in our church. Our church is very multicultural, which we love. We have over 20. After we showed this video, there, our pastor asked the crowd how many people have a different home language, how many different home languages are represented. It was over 20 different home languages that people spoke. You'll see, I think, 12 of them here. Okay, do I just press Psalm 68 verse 5? A father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows is God in his holy habitation.

12:00The Shirikazi Die Mari Paugaro Wake Utrene. Psalm 68, verse 5. A father of the fatherless and a judge of the widow is God in his holy habitation. Amahuva 68, verse 5. Unguiyise wisintandani, umehulil webufellogasi, unkulungulu enginyake, and goali. The Pisalome 68, verse 5. Kerrewa di Kutzana, Le Muatu Ledi, wabatulohadi, Mudimu mobua honjoana, Jabuwi tempo. Arsatke eye panchme likahe, permeasure apone pavitrastan me anat hong capita or with waunga nyai hai. Ui se wazintandane ungule webafe logas, unkulungkulu and viniya ge nueli. Pasalam otten sisa ver five. A father for fatherless in a karakta kafri virbias. Askot and saloch bona. Masalimu sixty eight, verse five. A datea wa ana amasie, and tetis wa akazi amasie niemulungu amene amakala malu oila.

13:08A father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows is God in his holy habitation. Psalm sixty-eight, verse five. So I preached this morning about adoption, and that's who God is. That one of the great privileges of our salvation is that God is a father of the fatherless and he cares about. Us as a father cares for his child. And so that's exciting for us. Let me just see. There we go. Okay, so here we are.

13:40Now you can see what Grant and Payton looked like years ago. You could take pictures now and use this later. But this is us when we were just about to leave for South Africa. Bryn in the bottom there, Grant, Payton, and Allison. And as good New Englanders, you had a deer mount up on the back there, and I know many of you have as well here. But we wanted to, as it says there, do more than just provide for ourselves, provide for our children, and die. And I want to be very clear that it doesn't mean that everybody is called to the mission field or a full-time job in ministry, but everybody is called to do missions in our area here in College Station, in this area here. You're called to do missions. When we were in New Hampshire and living there as a family, we were called to serve in our local church there and reach out to our community around us and tell them about Christ.

14:44And then God started to work in our hearts. And it started out when we said, well, our children are getting a little bit older. We want them to know not everybody is as privileged as we are and gets to live the way that we live. And so let's show them a little things that are a little bit. Different, thought we would take him on some missions trips and ended up just making it permanent. So, that was us about seven years ago now. And then we added to our family these three, and then you'll see in just a second. Here we go. This is one of our most joyful days in our lives: our wedding of our oldest daughter. All of our kids were able to be back, and our little ones are there. They've grown up a little bit from there. And then, this is us most recently. I think we took this in May, just before Grant left to come here. This is on our property that we were able to purchase in South Africa, about five acres there. Tell you a little bit more about that in just a minute. So, we've expanded, and now we've contracted, and now we're kind of holding steady with the five at home right now. And hopefully, we've told Bryn she's not allowed to ever leave us. So, we'll keep her there. This is little baby Panchu. Was Panchu there when you guys were? Okay, so baby Panchu came to us.

16:07Her social workers, I remember getting the call, they were crying on the phone. It's unusual for social workers. And they said, Can you come and take this baby, please? So, we went to their office and got there, and they told us what had happened. They had gone to court, they had worked for this baby to be able to be adopted, and when they got to court, the family was there. And they saw that she had club feet, and they said, No, we don't want to adopt her. And they sent her back with the social workers. And they put so much work into it, just emotionally, they were really pretty distraught. So they called us and said, Can you take her in? And we said, Sure. And so this is us taking her home for the first time in the car seat there. It shows, I think the next one is showing my wife, yeah, bringing her the first day we got there. And she was just a tiny little girl and continued to grow as she was with us. Her club feet, to get those corrected, you had to put them in the cast that you saw in the beginning there. And so we would bring her to the public hospital, go through the whole deal of waiting and everything, get her there, and they would wrap her feet in casts. But you could, your bones are still malleable enough, I guess, at that point that you're able to twist them into how they should be. And so they would take her little legs at one month old and kind of twist them. Of course, she didn't like that too much, get it just right and put the casts around them. And so we came home one day, the first time that we got the cast put on, and a couple hours later, my wife is changing her and picks her up from the changing table, and one of the casts falls off. And so go back and get it done again and bring her home. And a couple hours later, same thing happens: pick her up, and her cast falls off. Finally, they got it just right the next day. They didn't want it to be too tight. Because they don't want it to cut off the circulation, but you can't have it too loose because it won't do what it's supposed to do in correcting that bone. And so, through that process, her feet have been corrected. This is her now at three years old, three and a half years old. I think she's over four years old now. This is her family, and we know that God was working here, took her from a family that was going to adopt her, which was a Muslim family, and put her with us. We were able to place her into a home with a born-again Christian family that is raising her for Christ. And we pray that she will come to know Christ one day as well. And just a lovely family that she's with. We have a table here, and there's a book of all the adoptions we had finished up until May. And her story is in there. And if you get a chance, read it. Her mom wrote how they knew that this was the little girl that they wanted to take in, specifically because of what had happened to her feet and other things they had had happen in their family. So, just neat to see God work in specific instances where children come and we're able to place them in forever families where they can come to know Christ. Just to remind you a little bit of the crisis in South Africa, and it is a crisis. 18.5 million children in South Africa, 3 million total orphans. That's what the government tells us. That's a very conservative number. We've heard numbers as high as 5 million. So, you're talking. Almost one-third of the child population in South Africa is orphaned. 500,000 children in foster care. The reason for such a high level of children who are orphaned is because of the AIDS crisis. They tell us that South Africa is the number one country for incidences of AIDS anywhere in the world. We have more AIDS, people with AIDS, than any other country in the world percentage-wise. Of course, when you die in South Africa, when you die from AIDS, you don't actually die your birth certificate, or yeah, your death certificate will not say, generally speaking, that that's why you died because what AIDS does is it strips your body of its immune system, and so you'll die really of tuberculosis or some other disease, and that's what they'll put on your death certificate. And then, of all of that, so three to five million orphans, and there's only 1,100 adoptions happening every year in South Africa. And you wonder, well, why is that? Well, one of the heads of the Department of Social Development, which heads up adoptions in South Africa, was quoted on TV as saying, Adoption is a Western concept, it's not an African concept. And so, we do not promote adoptions, and in fact, oftentimes they will work against being able to adopt. And the issue comes. Down again to theology, and it's Africans believe, many Africans would believe that they have ancestors who intercede to the gods for them. Well, if you bring in somebody into your family that does not have common ancestors, their ancestors might be enemies of your ancestors, or they might cause problems with your ancestors. And so, we don't want to adopt because we don't want to cause those problems because we want to have a clear relationship with our gods. And so, because of that, adoption is frowned upon in many circles in South Africa. People ask, What do you do on a daily basis? Well, this is just a little bit of what we do. I'm not going to go through each part of this, but we love to help with adoptions. We have a baby home, we're planning to have another baby home on property. We've helped three other baby homes get started at some point in their process of starting. We've started a Christian school this next year. We'll have, what is it, five or six children in our Christian school, and we're hoping to be able to open that up to others as well. We work through our local church, Antioch Bible Church, lots of ministries in there, gospel outreach through our ministry and through our local church as well, and then Children's Village as we continue to expand. And let me just go over some of those things with you. As I mentioned in the message, adoption really is our favorite part. Of ministry that we have been able to do. We didn't think we would be able to do that, and so we're really excited to be able to help with adoptions. These are some of the families here that we've been able to help adopt. And what happened is in our process of adopting Zach and Laylo, the first two that you'll see here today, it took us three years. And, you know, we were, there was pushback at every point of the way. And so we had to learn what the law actually said. And every time a social worker would tell us something, we would have to point them to the law. We would have to question and say why, as kindly as possible. We didn't want to make enemies of them. But we would push and push and push. And then we got an excellent private social worker who helped us along in that. And because of that, we learned what it takes to adopt in South Africa. So we believe God put us through that so that we could help others. And so the list that you see there is actually front and back. And we had some people come to us in the beginning, and friends would say, well, the Kirbys have adopted. Why don't you ask them how to do it? So after about the fourth couple coming to us, we said, well, maybe we should put something official down that we can help walk people right through the process. And so that's where this came from. And now, very often, we have couples come to us. We've had over probably 40 couples that have come to us. Well, no, much more than that. Over 50 or 60 couples that have come to us. Either we've helped adopt or they're in process to be able to adopt, and we just hand-hold them through the process. So, what we've seen is three things. Number one, people who are just overwhelmed at the thought of adopting, but they think they want to do that. So, we walk them through the process and say, We'll help you. It's not as difficult as you're imagining it to be. Or couples that have tried the process and have been unsuccessful, maybe even taken in a child, and that child was taken back. And so, we help walk them through the process and say, Well, here's what happens. And then, couples, probably five or six of the children we've helped get adopted, have lived with their family for three to even as many as eight years and have been told they were adopted, and then they find out it's not, the adoption was not finalized, or told they can't adopt, or whatever. And we've gotten involved, and in all what, five or six of those cases that we've been involved with, within a month, all of those children were adopted. And so, God has been able to use us in a neat way there. So, we love to be able to help with adoption. Oftentimes, we think, well, you know, how can we do this? We thought, you know, how what is what is a when we started out, what does a missionary even do? And what could we do? I'm just an insurance salesman.

25:18How can God use me? And so, sometimes we get paralyzed between the great things we cannot do, the little things we will not do, lies the danger that we shall do nothing. From Tim Cassie, who hopefully you've Seen his videos, Dispatches from the Front. Excellent videos. And just spurring us on as Christians to want to do more for Christ in our daily lives. And so we've had some ministry partners that are coming alongside of us. Ruth in the top left-hand corner is there and has been with us for about two years now.

25:50Joanne is not up here, but you saw her in one of the other pictures. I noticed you guys nod when she came on. And then these are other couples. The Prince down in the right-hand corner just got into country on the 19th of this month. The couple in the top middle, there, they're Afrikaans. They're from South Africa, and they'll be our first foster family on our property. And then in the top right, the Kerbos are from Dallas. He's an Aggie, so that's a good thing. Actually, both of them, I think, are Aggies, right? And so they'll be coming over and be a foster family and help us to expand the school as well. That will be one of their primary roles. They come with us. And then the baby home, you guys recognize this area here. Again, our goal is to raise children to know Christ. And sometimes that's an emergency placement, and then we're able to get involved in their life and their family life somehow, or it's a long-term placement with us. We have six other children being fostered in our home in South Africa right now, and then the four that we have here, and then children going out. Out into other homes, some homes that will foster and others that will adopt. But Christian homes. So, when we first started in the process, we had a child go to a home that we would not have wanted that child to go to. And so, we met with our social workers and said, We're a Christian organization. We understand legally we can't deny a child going to any particular home, but how can we direct them to homes that are Christian homes? They said, Well, if you have families that are through the process and are willing to adopt, then we will be happy to place your children with them. And so, we started to go around to one church a month somewhere in South Africa and tell them about the need for foster families and adopting. And through that, now we have over 20 families in the queue, as we say in South Africa, waiting for a baby to come along and be able to be adopted. And so, since then, we've been able to place all of our children in Christian homes, which we're really excited about. We do a lot of medical care with our children. This is Carabo in the top right-hand corner. He had triple hernia surgery at a public hospital about a year ago. The big long line that you see there is us at Barragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Soweto at one point was the largest township in the world. I think it's in the top five still. This hospital is the third largest hospital in the world. There's two hospitals in China that are bigger, and this hospital. is one that we've had many people from overseas come and they say we want to serve in this hospital and do surgery because you'll do more surgeries in six months there than you would in six years in London or New York or Houston or it's just basically like a war zone. In fact on New Year's night they had they said I think it was 27 finger surgeries or removals because people were taking firecrackers and there's a game now that they play to see who can hold the firecracker, the big ones, the longest. And so people were literally blowing their hands apart and they're coming in and doing surgery on that. So this is where we're taking, we took one of our children who has some special needs and the process works like this. You get up at a little bit before 5 in the morning, you go to the hospital, hopefully you're there by 5.30. That puts you somewhere between 20th and 70th in the queue and you wait there until they open up at 7 o'clock and then the queue actually starts going. And usually by about 10 or 1030 you get to the window where they give you an appointment to come back in about a month for your actual appointment to see the doctor. Then you come back and sit in a seat to wait for the doctor and hopefully the doctor has made his rounds and you get there at about 5.30 again and about by 1030, 11 o'clock they come and see you and you go through the whole process. So one of the things Things that we do is to go to hospitals and spend a lot of time there with our children. And I guess it's quality time. You see little baby Ponchu there. Her name now is Izzy. We had a little baby Amanda come to us. And by the way, I don't have, okay, I've got time. The clock's not up, so I wasn't sure what time it was. Is there one here? On the TV. Well, it's on the seller. Okay. Oh, I can't. Okay, that's fine. I'll look here. Or you guys can just stand up and walk out when it hits. Had a little baby Amanda come to us. Man, she had the worst case of conjunctivitis I've ever seen. She had had it for, I think we got her when she was two months old, and her face was just swollen. Her eyes were swollen shut. It took us another month, month and a half, to get her clear of that. We thought she was a special needs baby. She had flat back of the head because she had just been laying so long on her back. And so we thought there were going to be issues. And so I was talking to this lady in the bottom right-hand corner here. She goes to our church and she's a physio, and she said, well, bring her to me. She's only two months old. She said, bring her to me and I'll do physio and I'm sure it'll help. And I thought, what in the world? How can you do physio on a two-month-old child? That's ridiculous. So I was thinking, I don't think that's going to happen. But she convinced me, at least bring her. And see what happens. And we brought her, and literally within 10 minutes, you could see a difference in this child. I can't even tell you. I don't even know how to explain it, but it was amazing. And so we brought her back, and many other children. She had her on, you know, one of those big balls, the big plastic bouncy balls or whatever, had her on that.

31:54From the trauma in her life, even at a young age, she was all tight, would sit like this and clench her fists and clench her hands, and just wouldn't loosen up. And so now she's in our church. A lady adopted her. She's four and a half years old. Beautiful, beautiful little girl, running around and just such a testimony of what God can do and what a little care can do for these children. And now her mom was on that video that I showed. So, what is her, well, no, what is the daughter's name? Because they changed her name Nklancla, yeah, but I'm butchering it. So, Nklancla is what her mom changed her name to.

32:45So, her mom quoted that verse for us on the video that you saw. And she said, Just that week after, my little daughter, Nklankla came to me and said, Mom, who's my dad? Because this is a single lady that had adopted her. And she said, I didn't know what to say. And then all of a sudden, the verse popped into my mind: A father of the fatherless is God. And it's just a real testimony of who God is and what He does for the fatherless and how He cares. And you go through the Old Testament and you see that God cares for the fatherless. And so we're just really mirroring what He does in that. Our interns, of course, we've had two interns from here and then many other interns. We encourage you to come and intern with us. Like I said, we just got a man and his family who have come over to help with our building projects. And so soon we'll be able to use some young men to come and help with those things as well. And we've had now probably 25 or more interns that come through, and we're very intentional. We try to have an internship program where they come in, they do reading, we have devotions with them, Bible study with them, reading that we have them do in the Bible throughout the week as well. And then getting out into ministry. And we'll show you some of those ministries in just a minute. But were you girls able to make it to the Menash Bible study with the college students and all that? Yeah, so we have a college that's about a minute away from us, and there's probably anywhere between 20 and 40 students that come. To the Bible study every Thursday night. On Saturday mornings, we go to a church plant that we're helping start in one of the townships or shanty towns in our area. And so, lots to do for interns, and we love having interns come over and work with us, particularly now in the school. So, this little girl up in the top right-hand corner here, her name is Angel. She came to us when she was four years old. Her brother was already with us, he was two years old, and she came in and did not speak any English at all, not one word. In fact, I remember the first time she was near a toilet and somebody flushed it, she ran away. She had never heard a toilet flush in her life. That's where she had grown up in a shanty town. And so, yes. Could you explain what a township is?

35:17Yes. Thank you. So, there's basically three levels of living in South Africa: there's your shantytown, your township, and then what we would commonly know as middle to upper class. They tell us South Africa has the largest gap between rich and poor of any country in the world, and we're smashed right up against each other. So, your shantytown is basically your immigrants coming from other countries, and they're finding anywhere that they can to live. And usually, one person, there's a law in South Africa: if you squat on a property for three days or more, then they have to do legal proceedings to get you off that property, and it's hard. So, somebody will squat on a plant. Plot of land. Squatting is going and setting up a house basically, except it's just a little shack. And then many others will come and continue. And so this shanty town that we work in, in about one half-mile square, there's 200,000 people living in a half a mile square in this shanty town. And it's just row after row after row after row after row of metal shacks that people have gotten metal and put it together. No plumbing, no electrical running water. There's one or a couple spigots throughout the half-mile square that you can go to to get your water. So that's a shanty town. And people are coming there because we have 40% unemployment in Joburg or South Africa, but the countries north of us have over 85 to 90% unemployment. And so they're coming in just to find a job. Well, then you have your townships, which is basically the government has come along and said we were going to help with some housing. And were you ever in the Cosmo City township, I think, in Soweto? You can Google Earth It and look and see these things. In Soweto, there's over 2 million people living in that township. It's very famous. It's where Nelson Mandela came from. Desmond 22, Mahatma Gandhi actually spent some time there as well. And so that's a township the government will come and help with some housing. And usually, you'll have some running water, maybe a geyser on your roof, which we found out is a hot water heater. We didn't know that. Somebody said there's a geyser on our roof the first time. We were like, I don't think that means what we think it means. So they said it's our hot water heater. So, in the township, and then electricity, and a small house, you know, maybe the size of this stage area here, but the government has helped in some way funding that. And then you have areas that are, you know, houses like we would see here up to within a half a mile from us. We have some mega mansions. One of them was being built. We literally thought it was a hotel, and it ended up being just for a couple that were living there. And so, massive, massive houses. It's not uncommon for us to see Lamborghinis and Bentleys and all that on a daily basis. Mercedes and BMW in South Africa are basically like Toyota and Hyundai are here. They make them, many of them in-country, so they're not that expensive. And so, you'll see those all the time on the road. So, thanks for asking that question. So, yeah, so in the shanty towns, we have people going in there. Angel came from a small shanty town, and our interns have been working specifically with her over the last year and a half to the point now we think she's going to be able to join the other five-year-olds in first grade this year. And so we're really. Excited about that, and so those are some of the things that our interns do. By the way, are there other questions that some of you have? Because I can keep talking, or I'd rather answer questions as we go along. Or please feel free to raise your hand. And yes, in the back, right? It's mining. So Johannesburg actually means the city of gold. So massive gold mines. In fact, they're still pulling gold out. We're the largest city in the world that's not on a major body of water, and it's because of the gold mining. In the greater Joburg area, they tell us about 14 million people or so, but it's all based on mining. So now we have large platinum mines. The number two producing platinum mine in the world is in the Joburg area. Diamond mines, the crown jewels came from the Joburg area. They just found a blue diamond mine. So lots of mining, so incredible wealth, but it's just not getting to everybody. You know, few people keep it basically within their group of people. So, yeah, so some major issues with that. Other questions?

40:14Okay, just raise your hand and pop one out as you go along. But again, just pointing everything back to evangelism. Otherwise, if we're not evangelizing, there are some other groups in Johannesburg and in South Africa that are helping children physically, and we're very thankful. Thankful for them, but that's where it ends. You know what happens? The Bible tells us we have this time to live, and after this comes the judgment. It's appointed to man once to die, and after this, the judgment. Well, that's what we're concerned about. We want to help these kids physically, but ultimately to point them to Christ spiritually as well. And so we go out and do gospel outreach. This is one of our interns in Zansfritt, shanty town in our area. She's doing Bible study with kids. Well, there's a church plant going on inside. The adults are there and being taught something that I'll teach tonight: Christianity explained. We go through the Gospel of Mark and tell people how they can know who Christ is. What is Christianity? How is it different from every other religion in the world? How is it different from your charismatic church where your pastor has said, Here, take this bottle of petrol or gasoline and drink it, because I've just declared it holy. And if you do that, then you'll gain health and wealth and prosperity. Or, you know, every week there's one of these. Go outside, and a pastor out of his whole congregation go out, get on their hands and knees, and eat the grass, and say, This will help make you healthy, wealthy, and prosperous. We had a pastor just before we left, pastor, say to his congregation, If you pay me the equivalent of five U.S. dollars, I will show you on my phone. I was in the throne room of heaven last week. I took a selfie with God on his throne behind me, and I will show it to you. And he had people flocking to him. It's a false gospel. Well, what is the difference between that and true Christianity? Because actually, a lot of the same things are said in the... Uber charismatic churches as would be said in a gospel preaching church. So how is it different? Why is that a false gospel? And what is the true gospel? What is true Christianity? We'll talk about that a little bit tonight. And so that's what we're doing, going out and helping. This is Zansprit, you know, sewage obviously running in the streets. And so in that area, we do that Bible study, and it's on a hillside and goes down into a gully and then up the other side. Well, for the longest time, there were trees blocking down in the gully, and you couldn't really see what was on the other side. And then they finally cleared them. And it was such a stark representation of South Africa and what we face. And it was on this side, 200,000 people living in shacks in a shanty town with no electricity, no plumbing, no running water. And then on the other side, down in the gully, those trees are cut down and there's a fence. On the other side, there's a golf course, beautiful manicured golf course. People, you know, riding on their golf carts, manicured.

43:30People parking their BMWs and whatever up on the other side. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it just showed that contrast that's so stark, right up against each other, which is why we deal with so much crime in South Africa and all that. But we want to reach people on both sides of that fence. We want to go into the shanty town and tell them about Christ and He can save you. And it doesn't mean immediate health, wealth, and prosperity. In fact, oftentimes it means the opposite, means persecution. But why should we follow this Christ? And then on the other side of that, it's a very cultural Christianity, probably much like what we would face in the Bible Belt in the South here. Everybody, 78% of South Africans, claim to be Christian, especially the wealthy, and say, Of course, I know who Christ is. I grew up in church and whatever. And yet, they don't know Christ as a personal Lord and Savior. He's not something personal to them, he's a cultural icon in their life that they go and do their Sundays and then go on and move on with their life. And so that's who we're reaching out to. David De Brane, a good, if you get a chance to listen to his messages, he's a South African preacher. Our pastor says he's the best South African expository preacher he's ever heard. He says, more and more people are converted to less and less Christianity. Isn't that true here in America too? Where people are thinking this is what Christianity is. And if I'm successful and do all this, you know, that means I'm. I'm right with God. And it's not true Christianity, and we want people to know that. Okay, let me close with this. We do a lot of outreach into our community. This is our plans to build on our property our five acres. Construction costs for us just continue to go up, and we're praying the Lord will provide for that. We have internships, volunteers that come and help, church missions teams, ministry partners that have come with us. And then just some prayer requests: pray for us that godly families will come to adopt, new babies will be brought to our ministry for our building growth and plans, and then ministry partners to come over and work with us. And thank you for having me this morning. I look forward to preaching in the next service and excited to be able to be with you guys. Thank you.