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I want to introduce to you Joel Kirby. And where are you? There you are. Joel Kirby, Rachel, Bryn, and of course you know Grant. And please tell me again. Kirsten. Kirsten, Kirsten. And many of you know Peyton. Peyton's not here. Okay, so but the Kirbys have been with us for a number of years and they're ministering in South Africa and we have stayed at their house and their orphanage there at Antatile and many of you will remember this time last year you were in the fight for your life with COVID and if you'll remember we prayed for him quite consistently for a period of time.

He's going to tell us a little bit about that. We're very thankful that the Lord answered those prayers, that you're here as healthy as ever and so looking forward to hearing what you have for us tonight. I've asked him to come and share, give us an update on his home life situation after the post-COVID episode.

Also give us a little bit of an update on Antotile, the orphanage that they are actively involved in there and what a great work that is. Also give us a little bit of an update on Antioch. And teach us the word of God, give us a full exposition, all this stuff ahead, you know, and you just have, you know, 40 minutes, you know, 45 minutes to do it.

So it's a little tall order, but come on up, Joel. Good to have you. Say, I'll trip for sure. That would be Mr. Smith, something he would say, right? Jump up there. He wants to see the action. Yeah, right, right. I'm not sure I'm that healthy yet. But praise the Lord, I'm able to be here tonight.

Thank you for having us and our family here and just allowing us the opportunity to bring you up to date with what's going on and to thank you for what the Lord for praying for us and what the Lord has done in our life. And I'll talk about all that as we go along.

Up, our family's up there. Okay, I have a clicker here somewhere. I think I have to turn it on, right? All right, I think I'm ready. It's on, so we're good to go. Well, let me open up in prayer and then we'll get started. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this evening.

Thank you that we can come out together and that we can worship, Lord, in song. And what a joy it was to see young people up here tonight leading, singing, and hear them singing praises to you and how important that is, Lord. We thank you for a church that would place an emphasis on that.

Lord, thank you that we get to talk about what you've done in our lives, Lord, our specific family life and our ministry and our church and so forth, Lord. Thank you for what we see here and the faithfulness we've been able to watch over the last almost seven years, Lord, of how you've provided for this church family.

And every time we come back, we're encouraged each time, Lord. Thank you for that. And just may we have a blessed time as we open your word tonight. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, you can turn in your Bibles. We'll be in a couple places tonight, but turn in your Bibles to Lamentations chapter 3.

Lamentations chapter 3. So our journey with your church family started by accidents or coincidence or luck or whatever, but none of that, of course, is real. About, I think it was eight years ago, we had come back for a visit here, and then Peyton was, our son Peyton, who many of you know, was considering Texas AM University.

Thankfully, he made the right decision and came. But we didn't know anything or much of anything about AM. And one of the most important things to us with our children, we always tell them, wherever you go, the most important thing you can do is find a good local church to get involved in and that they can keep you responsible and have accountability and all those things.

And so we didn't know any churches in this area. And just so happened that my wife. Wife went back a week before I did back to South Africa, and Pastor Baber had come through to Antioch and was there, I think, on a Sunday evening. And I believe you spoke that evening, yeah?

And so my wife was there at the church service. He said, That is amazing. We were just talking about our son potentially coming to AM and talking about local churches and what a blessing it is to know that there's a good local church there. We weren't sure about the pastor at that time, but since then, no.

Yeah, we have come to really love your church family. And I want to say again thank you on behalf of myself and my wife and our family for the way that you have kept our children accountable, made them feel welcome, and walked a road with them now for over six or seven years here.

We're very, very thankful for that. So, yes, that was the start of our journey. And then our son Peyton came here and was a part of your church family. And we've had connections with Antioch for all that time at least, and maybe a little bit before. I think you were going up to Malawi, was it, for some missions things there.

And the Baber girls came and were with us for a couple weeks as well. So that was fun. Pastor asked me to give just an update on our church. So we are, I guess I should back up, we are the Kirbys, in case you don't know us. I'm Joel Kirby, my wife, Rachel, Brandon Grant, as was said before.

We started Ontitilay Children's Mission. Ministries in Johannesburg, South Africa, 10 years ago now. There's over, they say, conservatively 3 million orphans in Africa. We've heard numbers up to 5 million or seen government numbers potentially up to 5 million. They say in our city alone, about 10 babies are abandoned on a daily basis.

Usually, only about two of those babies are found surviving. Some of the children that I'll talk about here in just a little bit are some of those children that were left abandoned at a day old and came into our ministries. I think we were talking about it. One of your daughters was with us when we picked up one of our little ones, and that's quite a day in the life of our ministry, and so we're thankful for that.

But Antioch, as we had mentioned, we were looking for a good local church, and our pastor, Tim Cantrell, is from Katie, Texas. Here, my wife's father, his name is Ronald McDonnell. I'm not joking, that's really his name. He was Tim's pastor for a number of years. And Tim went over to South Africa and was there for 20 years before we got there.

And when we came, we were thankful to find a good local church there in Antioch Bible Church. And Tim has been serving as pastor there for many years. I think Robin Brown from our church also has been here. You may have heard him speak. And so you have a couple connections.

I know, too, that your church has been instrumental in sending. Books over to our church as well. I think so many were sent that we still are at the tail end, but we're still using some of those books, handing them out. Tim hands out a book every Sunday night to people in the congregation.

If they answer questions or whatever, it's one of the things that he does. And we have a seminary at Antioch as well. That a lot of those books go towards those who are in the seminary as well as handing books out other places. So we want to say thank you for that.

Tim told me specifically to make sure that I send greetings from our church, Antioch Bible Church, and to invite you to come and visit us again. Not just Pastor, although we'd love to have you and your family come. Anybody else, you're welcome to come and visit us there, and there's tons of ministry opportunities.

As far as our church family, it's been, as I'm sure for you guys too, it's been a crazy couple of years these last years. I mean, the world was crazy before that, but this is even worse, as we all know. South Africa had one of the hardest COVID lockdowns in the world and continues to do so.

In fact, they're trying to make mass mandatory in perpetuity in South Africa and give the President the capability to do that at any time that he wants to, for whatever purpose. So if anything else comes up, They can have the lockdown as it was under COVID. And so, our church, actually, is with some other churches, has taken the government to court.

And we're fighting that because we believe that that is wrong and that we should have the freedom, not just about mass. We're fine if you want to wear a mass, that's okay, but if you don't want to wear one, that's okay too. But we want to be able to meet as a church, and we think that that is important.

And so, we're thankful for the testimony that you guys have had and meeting through all that as well, because church is important, and it's amazing how many people have not found their way back to church services. We're praying that more of God's people would want to come back to church.

But on the flip side, it has shut down a lot of churches that were not preaching the gospel. And we have found a number, so we like you guys, we had started a church plant about, I think it was a year and a half ago now, at Antioch, about 20 minutes away.

And we had, I think, 40 or 50 people that went to that church plant. And God brought in new people all along the way. With other churches being closed down, we had a number of people from various backgrounds-Catholic backgrounds, charismatic backgrounds, whatever it was, that didn't have a church that was open and coming to started to come to Antioch Bible Church.

And so, we're seeing a lot of people come to Christ that maybe didn't know him before. Or they did, but they needed to be in a solid church. And so our church actually has grown to more than it was even after losing. I think at one point we had lost probably 40% of our congregation through various things that had happened throughout COVID and planting a church.

And now we're well over that. We're probably up 60% over that. And so we're excited about what God is doing. I don't know if you've ever had a chance to read the book The Insanity of God, a great book, but about God does not work the way that we think He should work or that He's going to work.

And sometimes, as human beings, it seems insane to us, and yet God does things that are way beyond our understanding. And so, yeah, I had mentioned too at Antioch, we started a seminary about two years ago. No, it's three years ago now. We just had our first graduating class this last year, and I think there were 10 students that graduated, if I remember correctly.

We had nine new incoming students this year, and these are night classes, and so these are men that are working throughout the day and then going to seminary in the evening. Two of those men have gone out and taken over churches, and so we're really excited about that.

At this point, Antioch has helped to plant, I believe it's six, maybe seven other churches throughout South Africa. Some of them were church revitalizations or church rescues, and some of them were church. Plants. And so we're really excited about what God is doing there, as well as we have an excellent resource library.

Grant was telling me about you guys, how you have books that can be taken at any time. He said they're free. I can just take them whenever I want. So I'll stack my book bag, bring those home. But it is important to have books that we can read that are theologically sound.

And so God has blessed us with that. And so that's kind of the update on Antioch Bible Church. If you have questions, I'm happy to answer those after the service. If you happen to have questions during the service, I'm happy to answer those as well. I love to talk about what the Lord has allowed to happen at our church family and in our ministry.

But Lamentations chapter 3. If you're familiar with the book of Lamentations, you know that it is a book of lament or weeping, wailing, really. Just quickly, look at chapter 1, verse 1. Starts out, the city is solitary. It used to be full of people, basically. How is she become as a widow?

She that was great among the nations and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary? And chapter 2, verse 1: How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud of his anger and cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel? And remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger.

Chapter 3, verse 1: I am the man that has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. And so he's just, Jeremiah, who wrote this, is just going on talking about all the travail, all of the things that are happening specifically to the city of Jerusalem, and how God's judgment is coming down on them, and he's in the depths of despair.

And in the middle of all that, we catch him in chapter 3, starting in verse 21, he says this: He's been wailing, talking about what God is doing righteously so. And in verse 21, he says this: This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, so I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those that wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.

So, as Pastor mentioned, last year I had a very serious bout with COVID. COVID actually complications with other things. Took my father-in-law a year and a half ago, took my mother just about a year. Year ago now. They had previous conditions as well that contributed to that. My brother went into hospital for about three weeks, and then I had come to this trip almost this time last year and headed back and then got COVID, isolated in my house for about 10 days, thought I was doing fine, and all of a sudden my blood oxygen level started to drop, as many of you I'm sure are aware, has happened to you as well.

And then I went to the hospital thinking, well, I'll be there overnight, and they'll give me something, and I'll come back home and I'll be fine. And 52 days later, I finally made it home after a journey that I'll talk to you about a little bit. But in the middle of that journey, you know, you go through all sorts of emotions, and I could identify with the psalmists who will go into a few of the Psalms tonight as well.

And with Jeremiah, and just crying out to the Lord and not understanding necessarily what's going on or why the Lord is allowing this to happen, and feeling despair, and then feeling hope, and then finally coming to a place where you just trust and rest in the Lord. Quite frankly, because there's nothing else that I knew to do.

Just got to that point where, Lord, I don't know what you're doing, I don't know why you're doing it, but I choose to trust in you. And we'll talk about that in just a few minutes. Where Jeremiah was here, and I stand before you today and I say, just like Jeremiah did, it is of the Lord's mercy that I can stand here and testify today of 52 days in the hospital.

I see you three times. They thought they were going to lose me each time. I know for sure because they would send my wife in, and that was the only time that we ever saw anybody in the hospital. Usually, it was very shortly after that that I would see the gurney with a sheet over a person's body being wheeled out.

And we would see that two, three, four times every single day of my stay in the hospital. We would see people be wheeled out. We had a good friend in our church, a lady that passed away, and a couple others that we knew as well. Finally, they told me they had run out of ICU beds because they had me in and out of ICU.

And they said I was too old, 51 years old, who knew? But they were placing people in ICU by age, and I was too old. And my doctor thankfully fought for me to just get in ICU for a couple hours, long enough for them to get a plane there and put me on a plane so that I could go to Kenya.

And you know, you say, why Kenya of all places? How is that better than South Africa? Well, in God's providence, the United Nations had set up a hospital there that was strictly for COVID patients, and really it was for instance. The president of Tanzania or Tanzania, depending on how you say it, was there in that hospital.

Businessmen and people from all over South Africa were flown into that hospital and cared for, and many of them did not make it either. But got onto that plane, and they only could go to Zambia, to Lusaka, Zambia, because of flight restrictions. And that was not a bad flight from there.

I was intubated at that time, couldn't talk, but I could write. And the guy that was in the plane with me, the nurse or whoever he was, was joking with me and talking with me. Got onto the next plane, and all of a sudden, they start putting this bag over me and they started to zip it up.

And I mean, I don't know what else to call it other than a body bag, but they said, you're a little too long, Mr. Kirby. Can you please scoot your legs up so we can zip it up all the way? So I guess they were thinking, well, this is one step less that we have to do if he doesn't make it.

And then they knocked me out from there. And next thing I knew, I woke up in Kenya, in Nairobi that I was in, in a hospital. It was a room that was just cinder block, painted blue. When the doctors or nurses would come in, they were in full hazmat suits, couldn't see anything.

They had goggles on. And I literally asked if I was in an insane asylum. I didn't know what was going on. I was delirious. It was not a fun place to be, but they took care of me. When I finally was able to get up and walk, I could walk from about here to that microphone.

I remember just sitting in bed thinking, is this real? Because I don't feel so bad if I was just sitting there and not breathing too hard. And then I would have to go to the bathroom and would get up and walk just that far, and I would just collapse and not even be able to.

Finally, I would make it back to my bed. I would just lay there on my stomach because I would collapse on my bed for about 30 minutes until I got enough strength to just roll over, lay there for about 30 minutes until I got enough strength to push myself up in the bed and then sit there until the next time something needed to happen.

But God was gracious in Kenya. I have no idea what they were giving me, but they were shooting me full of all sorts of stuff. I had at one time I counted 10, what do you call them, canticles or whatever they put medicine in. I had one here that had four things they could stick stuff in on this side and two here and one down here and I was bruised all over.

They finally started to take those out, so I knew I was getting a little bit better, but there was one here that I kept asking them to take out and they said, yeah, we'll take it out tomorrow. We'll take it out tomorrow. And that was like for a week.

And finally, on my last day in hospital, they took it out. And when they're taking them out, I don't care to look at them because I'm like, I don't want to see something coming up. Of my body. But on this one, I was looking over this way and they're taking it out.

And she just kept going and going and going. Finally, I looked over. I said, What in the world is going on? What's in there? And she said, Oh, you didn't know this one went all the way from here over to your heart, directly into your heart, so we could pump the medicine that we needed right into your heart so that it would go through your body faster.

So it was literally, I have a picture of it, it was about that long, and I could see now why they didn't want to take it out because they didn't want to have to put it back in again if they needed to. And so then my wife came, and some friends who are very gracious from our church in Antioch, a friend and his wife, came with my wife and picked me up in Kenya.

Just a whole another bunch of stories that I could tell you there. Grant, of course, came over and he can tell you some driving stories and about Peeli Pili and all sorts of things in Kenya. They're very interesting. My wife's writing a book, so you can read that if you want at some point.

But God was gracious, and I was quite frankly afraid to get on the airplane. I didn't know what being up at 30,000 feet would do. The first time I ever got to fly business class was that time. And I was very thankful to my insurance for allowing me to use business class and made it back home.

For every day, I Would walk the first day I walked out to our gate and back, and it was about a four-minute, it was about a hundred yards. It would take me four to five minutes to get there and get back and just collapse. That was it, day one.

Day two, walk out, walk back, a couple hours later, do the same thing. Day three, day four, until finally I was able to walk around our whole circle, which is about maybe a mile. And then I knew, okay, I'm on my way a little bit towards better recovery, and maybe I'm going to actually make it where it'll bring me back fully.

But the first time I met with my doctor, when I got back to South Africa, they tested my lungs. He said, Your lungs were over 88% infected with COVID. And at that point, he said, You have 50% usage of your lungs, and that may be all that you ever get back.

And he said, Don't expect any more than that. And I went back three months later after working very hard and doing a lot of physio and feeling like my lungs were better, but not knowing what they would be. And I did all the tests and went in to see the doctor.

And he said, I had to read these three times because your lungs are now over 92% back. And he said, This is nothing short of a miracle. He's not a believer. He said, I only see people of faith seem to do better on these tests. I said, well, people that believe in Jesus Christ.

And yeah, so it was a good testimony as well. And one of the things that my Physio or physical therapist said to me, and it's so true, is that what COVID took from a lot of us, it took our bravery or it caused us to fear. And we don't need to fear as Christians because we know that we are literally, I was reminded of this through all this, we are indestructible until God chooses to call us home.

Doesn't mean we need to be foolish or rash, but we get to live boldly because of who we are and in Christ. And so I'm thankful for that. And so one of my missionary friends asked me, Joel, what are some of the things that you learned through COVID?

Because through all these trials that God puts us through, there's a reason. And what has God taught you? And the first thing is from Lamentations chapter 3 that God is merciful. And it's only because of His mercies that I can stand before you here today. The second thing is that prayer works.

I want to say thank you to all of you. You can turn to James chapter 5. Pastor was mentioning, and so many others have mentioned also how much you are praying for us. At one point, my wife and I just sat down, we were overwhelmed and said, I mean, if everybody that said their church is praying for us, if there were just 50 people in their church, how many people would that be?

It was over 30,000 to 40,000 people if it was just that that were praying for us. And I know the Lord was hearing those prayers because in James, James chapter 5, verses 13 through 18, it says, Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing psalms.

Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church. And let them pray over him, anointing with him oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

Confess your faults one to another. Pray one for another, that you may be healed. The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. And then he goes on and talks about Elijah and how he prayed, and it was effective. And your prayers, thankfully, brought me back to these guys here.

I prayed. Finally, after about two weeks in the hospital, I was starting to get very anxious because they were saying there was a good chance I was going to go into ICU. This was the first time. And God graciously sent a lady from our church that lived or worked in the hospital.

And she came by and she heard I was talking to her and she heard I was going into ICU. And she said, Joel, just let me pray for you. And she sat there, put her hand on my leg, and prayed for me. I don't even know what she prayed.

I don't remember what she prayed. But I know from that point on, I had a peace that didn't make sense. Not that I was never fearful again, but from then on, I just said, Lord, okay, what are my options? Number one, you take me home to heaven. Heaven.

That's not really that bad. Get to see my mom. I get to see my father-in-law. In fact, that sounds a lot better in some ways than staying here. But also, if you would be gracious enough to send me back to my family in South Africa and all these guys, I would really appreciate it and I would love you, Lord.

But whatever you choose to do, that's okay, because I know that you are God and you are good, and that whatever you have for us is best. And so God heard our prayers and graciously brought me back. These are our guys. So this is about 10 years ago over on this side.

This is my daughter Allison, who many of you know, Peyton and Grant and Bryn, who's sitting here. She's coming back for university this year. And then this is Zach and Laylo. And these are the first two that we took in. Zachariah was left in a Walmart bag in a field, just at a day old, still had the umbilical cord attached.

They didn't think he was going to survive. It was actually two little boys riding through the field that heard him crying and went over to the bag and saw that there was a baby in there, left him because they were afraid to pick him up, went and got the police and brought him back.

And Zach went to the hospital, which is also where we found Laylo. Laylo was also left in a field, not in a bag, but just in a field at a day old, brought to the hospital. And when we picked Laylo up, because she was our first child that we took in, Zach was In the bed right next to her.

And they said, Well, we would let you take Zach home, but we're not sure he's going to live because he was premature, his lungs were not developing correctly, he was getting pneumonia all the time. Well, about five weeks after we took Laylo home, they called us to take Zach home, and we did not know why they let us take him home because we always put the babies in a cot next to our bed so we can hear them and they can hear us and get used to us.

And we sat up all night just thinking, I don't know if he's going to survive. I mean, he's barely breathing. We had to sit there and listen closely, and then his lungs were crackling. And we thought, should we take him back to the hospital? But they just released him to us.

What are we supposed to do? So we would just take care of him. At night, we would literally have to take a dropper and feed him. Layla is a great eater. She would eat her whole bottle in about three minutes flat. Zachariah, it would take me, and I do the late-night feedings, it would take me an hour and a half to get him.

And you could not not feed him because he was literally skin and bones. And if you didn't feed him, he was going to not survive. And so, but I'll tell you today, this is Zachariah here. When I left, he was jumping out of a tree onto our trampoline and doing backflips.

He's nine years old now, and by God's grace, he is mostly healed from his lung problems and is just doing great. And God has been very gracious. Laylo, here, all. Is nine years old. Right now, we have nine children living with us. So we have Kanya, Jojo, Camhalo, Laylo, Carabo, Angel, Zach, Mbali, and Junior.

And then Joanne is from Madagascar. She's one of our main helpers in our ministry. And I'll tell you a little bit of their stories as we go along. I guess I better get moving because I only have a little bit of time left. I've been talking a lot.

This is me when I was in hospital. That's Grant there, or Grant, as we say in South Africa. He was able to come over with me. One of the nice things about having the full hazmat suit was they told Grant, you can go in and see your dad for 10 minutes.

Two hours later, they remembered that he wasn't one of the doctors or nurses. They couldn't tell. And so they came and got him out. And so it worked to our favor. We were thankful that I think this was on his birthday that he was able to come over and see me.

And it was a great encouragement to me as well. And this was us a couple, about a month ago, we were able to take all the kids. We had 17 of us total and went to the ocean in South Africa and had a time away as a family.

Right now we have three new children, Kanya Mbali, and Jojo. These two are twins, and this is their older sister. They came to us. Their father, they don't know where he is or if he's alive. Their mother passed away about three years ago on the surgery table. They were staying with some missionaries, and the missionaries just Thought they were keeping them for a couple nights.

It's been three years now. And finally, they were able to get in contact with us, and we're working to hopefully be able to take these three children in. And it's just been a blessing to be able to have them come and join us. And so, these are all the kids running track, and this is on our property.

And these are some of the younger ones that we've taken in. So far, we've taken in, I believe it's over 30 foster children through our home, and we've helped with over 50 adoptions at this point. And we're thankful. And Onta Tile exists, we say, in order to save children physically so that we can present them with the gospel, so that our goal is that they would come to know Christ and they would be saved spiritually for all of eternity.

And so, pray for us, for our children with that, as you have already prayed. I'll get to this in just one minute. And so, I wanted to say thank you to you for your prayers. Prayer matters, and we continue to need your prayers for my health to continue to get better, for us as we work in our ministry, for our ministry partners, for our children, that they will come to know Christ.

Please don't stop praying for them. Some of them have made professions of faith, and we're just looking to make sure that we see the fruit there in them, and they're growing. And what a joy to see your son leading, singing, and all the others that came tonight to be up here.

And this is what we desire: to have our children coming and serving the Lord with all of their life. With their heart and putting their heart into that ministry. And so please pray for us and our children as well. Thank you for some of you who sent messages through Facebook and other various ways or calls, reaching out to my family.

By the way, some of the books that were given to us were Bibles. I was in hospital for maybe a couple days and asked my wife to bring 10 Bibles to me and started handing them out within one day. 10 Bibles gone. I said, bring 20 next time.

And so she sent through 20. She couldn't come to my room, but sent them through, and 20 were gone within a day. Over the time that I was in that first hospital, I gave away over 100 Bibles. One night I was laying in bed. It was 3 o'clock in the morning.

You know how it is in hospital. You can barely sleep. They're always waking you up to check something or another. I was finally dead asleep one night. 3 o'clock in the morning, a nurse comes in, or sister as they call them there, comes in, and starts shaking me.

Mr. Kirby, Mr. Kirby, you have to wake up. Like, what? I thought, I'm going to the ICU again or something. She said, I need one of those Bibles. Where are the Bibles? I've got a friend that's asking for a Bible. Like, it couldn't wait till 6 o'clock in the morning.

You had to have it at 3 o'clock. But she was so excited to get that. And as my mother-in-law reminded me today, she's praying that those Bibles would be working in the hearts of people. I have so many testimonies of my mother. Giving tracts, or my father giving Bibles, and years later, seeing that people came to know Christ because of that.

And we don't know what that work is that's being done. But please pray that those Bibles would be working in the hearts of people that really oftentimes can't afford to get a Bible or maybe have never seen a Bible. And maybe that's why the Lord had me there.

And then this is a building project that we're trying to start on our property. We built one house there. The governors are the family here that came to get me in Kenya with my wife, but they've joined Ontatile. They actually have professional jobs. They both work for one of the larger banks in South Africa.

And they've said, we want to serve with Ontatile. Their children are getting older. They said we want to continue to serve. We love children, and so they're going to move on property and be foster parents. They're the ones that are staying with our children for this month that we are away.

And what a huge blessing. We literally would not be able to do this without them. So pray because we're trying to build a house on our property for them. And we just need a couple things from the government to get final permission to be able to do that.

This is Nati. His name is Nati Nyati, first and last name. And he has come and his wife Lundiwe have come and started serving with Ontatile as well. This is a little girl that came that lived in their township just across the street. Her mother has seven children, possibly by seven different men.

They don't know. She was just wandering around in the township during COVID, and so they took her in. And finally, her mother said, You can just basically take her and adopt her if you want to. And so they are. And we are working with Florida Baptist Church, which is in South Africa, Florida, South Africa.

Yeah, had a lot of confusion over that one. And we're renovating. This was their church parsonage that was in disrepair. They came to us and said, We'd love to start foster ministry in our church if you would help us. So we raise funds. We're renovating that whole property inside.

And that's where Nati and his wife Lundiway will live. And they'll be a foster family there, and they'll be working in that local church. Natia, we're helping him. He is going through our seminary now and just learning a lot. He's a great outgoing guy. And his wife also helps teach in our school.

And Angela has started going to our school on property as well. This is, I don't know that this is going to work. Let me see. Ah, here we go. This is Nati reading. That's all right. We'll come back to that another time. Don't worry. So it means Yambura.

So when Yambura was so much, she was thinking deep about her thoughts, about her grandmother. She was closing her eyes. She didn't even see people when it began to read. They ran under a shed. Sheets just to cover themselves. Haibo means wow, what happened? So he was just reading from a Zulu book, and one of the things we need to make sure is that our children speak a local language.

And so he's helping to teach them Zulu. He speaks four languages. Most South Africans speak at least four languages. We often joke, how can you tell somebody's an American is when they only speak one language. And so he speaks at least four very fluently and has been so instrumental to have an African male figure in our ministry who can help with our children and be such a great example to them.

And he just jumps in and does whatever he's asked, and we're thankful. This is our third home. So we have our property that we live on where we're building homes. We have Florida Home, which we're busy renovating, and they should be moving in there in June. And then this is Sammy Labalo, who I think you met one time at the Masters University.

And so they came to us and said, we really want to help do a foster ministry in Soweto, which is one of the largest townships in the world. Over 2 million people living there. That's where Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu live there. Mahatma Gandhi lived there for a while.

So it's very well known. And they have a church in that area. And they said, if you'll just help us, we will foster children. And so we added on in addition to their home, two bedrooms and a bathroom. And so they have adopted one of those children. I won't tell you which one.

You'll never even know. Adopted one of those children, and they're busy getting ready to take in a little three-year-old. I think it's a little girl that they're going to take in next and foster there. And what an example in that community. I didn't understand, even within African culture, how opposed they are to adoption for a number of reasons, which I can discuss later.

But they have gone against the grain. They've taken a lot of heat from their family members, from others in their community for adopting children, and yet they're a light. In fact, one time somebody in his family asked him, Well, what would you do if your adopted son and another child, one of your other children, fell in a swimming pool and were drowning?

Who would you save? And he said, in his typical fashion, well, we would all die because I don't know how to swim. So he's got a very good sense of humor, and he's just a fantastic testimony. And then this is another family, the Pulais, who have started a ministry called Open Home South Africa, which we go around to churches in South Africa, primarily in Johannesburg right now, and let them know about the orphan crisis and that we need Christians to step forward.

Forward and foster and adopt these babies. This is one of the little babies that we placed about two months ago with a family in our church. And this is an adoption conference that we had at our church building, actually. And then this is Samuel Itu's church building in Soweto, South Africa.

And then this is some of our staff. We love to have interns as the baby girls came. And we have openings for different interns to come and help out at our ministry. For anywhere, we've had people from three weeks up to, I think, Joanne's been with us now for seven years.

So anything in between that, we'd love to have you come and help minister at Ontatile. I just want to close with this, Psalm 116. If you'll turn there really quickly, I know we're about out of time. I told the Lord as I was in hospital and was wrestling through this, and finally I'd come to the point where I said, Lord, whatever you do is good.

Not only is it good, it's the right thing. And not only is it the right thing, but it's the best thing for me and for my family. And so, Lord, whatever you choose to do, that's fine. And I sent out a Facebook post primarily. I wanted my kids to know that I'm not bitter with the Lord and that I'm trusting Him and that, in fact, this is a good thing, even though it's a very hard thing.

And that if I don't make it, I want you to still serve the Lord and trust the Lord and love the Lord because He is good no matter what happens. Psalmist was there as well. I'm going to read verses 1 through 9 and then 15 through 17. It says, I love the Lord.

I really got to that point where I could say that in a way that I was never able to say it before. There's a song, by the way, by that name, if you get a chance to listen to it. I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications, because he inclined his ear to me.

That's a picture of, we love that picture because it's like a father kneeling down to their child and inclining his ear and listening to them because he loves us. You've inclined your ear to me, so I will call on him as long as I live. And I told the Lord, I would read this.

I would tell people that I love him, that I will call on him, and I would call you to do the same, even in times of trial. The sorrows of death were all about me. The pains of hell were on me. I found trouble and sorrow. And then I called upon the name of the Lord.

Oh, Lord, I beseech you, deliver my soul. There was a day in Kenya where I just was at the end of my rope, and I just cried out to the Lord for hours, Lord, I don't think I can take anymore. Please either take me home to heaven or send me home to South Africa, whatever it is.

Please end this. And it was at that time that I started to get a little bit better and a little bit better. And it was only a few days after that that they told me, You're about ready to go home. I think it was because of all your prayers.

And finally, I just said, Lord, please, I can't take anymore, like Elijah talked about and others in the Psalms. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yes, God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple. I was brought low, and he helped me. Return unto your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

Jump down to verse 14. or verse 13, 14. I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all his people. And that's what I'm doing here tonight. I told the Lord that I would tell people and praise his name for his faithfulness to me and to my family and upholding us and for you, the prayers that were answered because you were praying for us.

He goes on to say, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. We know that verse, and yet we're living it in a different way. I just found out last week, two weeks ago now, that my brother, who's only 45 years old, has a glioma brain tumor, and the prognosis is not good at all.

And I'm sitting with him in hospital at night, and I'm rehashing what I went through in hospital myself and saying to him, Josh, we can trust the Lord. And he's a believer, and he knows he can. But when you're in the middle of that, that is a hard thing that you have to wrestle through and work out.

We've talked about salvation and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling as a The Bible says, but in this case, he saved me. O Lord, verse 16, truly I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your handmaid. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and will call upon the name of the Lord.

I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all his people. And that's what I feel that I'm doing here tonight: paying my vow to the Lord. Lord, if you choose to send me back back, excuse me, to my family, when I get the chance, the next time I've been in our church and I've been able to sing, we just had our Easter concert and was able to testify of the Lord's greatness and how good he is.

And I'm here to testify today that no matter what we're going through in life, when we're on death's door or we feel like we can't make it through the next day physically, spiritually, whatever it is, the Lord is good. What he does is right, and what he does is best.

Or as Rachel's father at the end of his sermons used to say, trust him. You can trust him. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you that you are a God that cares, that we can trust you, Lord. Would you just help us to trust you, Lord? Wherever we are, whatever is going on in our lives, Lord, whether it's going well or we're facing hardship, Lord, help us to trust you.

Thank you that you are so good. We are so blessed, Lord, when we look back and count our blessings. They are so many, Lord. Thank you for that. Help us to be faithful until you call us home. And Lord, we would pray, even so, come, Lord Jesus. We would love it if you came tonight and took us home to be with you.

But until then, Lord, may we serve you faithfully. Pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.