Christ Life Church Zambia - Pastor Mulenga Chella - Full Service

amazed at your warm welcome. Thank you once again. My story begins in Zambia. I was born in Zambia. Zambia is a country in the Southern Central Part of Africa. When I finished my high school, I heard the Lord call me into ministry and I purposed to serve him in full time ministry

as a minister of the gospel. I became actively involved in the local church, evangelism, youth ministry, reaching out to abandoned kids on the streets, you name it. The leaders in my church then saw the call of God on my life and they decided to give me the first church I led at the age of 20. When I started pastoring,

I also went into bible school. In my second year in seminary, the professor who was teaching us taught us on a subject called leadership preparation, and he said that the Lord prepares people for ministry in various life experiences we go through, which include the problems, the challenges

that we go through in life. He gave an example of Joseph in the book of Genesis and how Joseph's brothers hated him, they sold him as a slave, and later on he was wrongfully imprisoned, but through that process, the Lord was preparing him for leadership. The professor then on paused, pointed at me in the class

of 13 students, I was the youngest student there and he said, God can even take this young man here from this classroom, Mulenga, and send him off into prison to prepare him for ministry. I looked at my professor in shock, thought, why me among all these other 13 students? Why me?

That day, I went home and I prayed against it. I said, Lord, if you want to prepare me for ministry, use other ways. I'll study the bible, I'll obey you in church, but not prison. Two weeks later, I was in a house seeking for more of Jesus in our lives with a friend of mine. As we were praying, that friend stopped praying,

stood up, looked at me, and he said, Mulenga, I hear the Lord is saying he's proud of you and the work that you're doing as a minister of the gospel,

and he says that he's going to take you to a foreign country and you're going to be imprisoned there and you'll suffer, and thereafter the Lord is going to bless your ministry. I looked at him and I thought, no way, this guy must be a false prophet because there's no way the Lord would take me to prison.

Two days later, I was watching TV. On that TV station, there was a white elderly American woman teaching on surrendering to the will of God and she said, if the Lord is calling you in any way, surrender the way Mary surrendered and said, be it unto me according to your word.

And she went on and said, even if he's calling you to go to a foreign nation so that you can be imprisoned there and preach the word of God to prisoners, surrender. And those words pricked my heart.

I came to a strong conclusion that the Lord was calling me to go to a foreign nation so that I could be imprisoned there and I had to make a decision whether I would obey the will of God or not. So I remember that night, I went to my usual place of prayer and this time around, I lifted my hands to the Lord in surrender

and I said, Lord, I surrender to your will and your purpose for my life. Even if it means you want me to go to prison, Lord, I surrender, with tears dropping from my eyes. Ten months later, I'd even forgotten about all the prayers I'd prayed.

I was introduced in Zambia to a man who said he came from a nation called Tanzania. Tanzania is a nation right on top of Zambia. He said he was caring for orphans, widows, and vulnerable people there and he said, Mulenga, I like you and I'm inviting you to go with me to my nation so that I can show you the work that I do.

I was excited, jumped in the vehicle that he was driving, started off from Zambia into Tanzania. When we arrived in a city called Darasalam, to my shock and surprise, police officers pounced on us. One of them was holding a pistol to my head and he said, you are under arrest. I was shocked, scared, and confused.

Later, I asked the officer, I said, sir, what's going on here? The officer then told me that the man that I was with was not a minister of the gospel, he was actually an international criminal,

and the vehicle that he was driving that I was riding on was a stolen car. And the police officer said, because I was with an international criminal in a stolen vehicle, chances were I was a criminal as well, and they ended up throwing me in prison for two years, three months.

Before I was taken to the main prison, I was taken in a police locker. It was a small building. In that building, there was a bed a room about the size of a normal American bedroom, and there were 30 men inside. Inside that room, there was a smaller room, a toilet room,

and it had no running water. So when all the 30 men would use it, the feces filled the toilet onto overflowing and the whole floor of the room was filled with human excrement about this thick. And it was not cleaned for two weeks, so when I was being taken inside the police station, there was a bad

smell coming out of there. The smell was so bad that it hurt my nose. When I went inside, I had money equivalent to $5 in my wallet. The officer who was about to knock me up asked me to give him my shoes, my belt, and my wallet. As I was giving him my wallet, some of the men who were arrested before me were criminals.

They were about big, fat guys. They started looking through the bus and when they noticed that I had a wallet with money, they started shouting at me, telling me to give them the money. Quickly, the officer took my wallet, my belt, and shoes, and he pushed me inside the police locker.

The five big guys jumped on me, threw me up in the air, and they started searching my pockets for money. When they discovered that I had nothing left,

they were furious with me. They started cursing me, slapping me, punching me, kicking me, and finally they grabbed me and threw me inside the toilet that had this thick of human excrement and I fell on the on the floor.

When I got up, I tried to come out of there, they continued beating me, so I ended up staying inside human excrement from noon to the following day at seven in the morning, and I cried the whole night. I said, Lord, why?

Why have you allowed me to suffer like this after I've been seeking you and sending you faithfully and I've never done anything that would deserve me to be in prison?

In the morning, three of the guys who had beaten me up called me out of the toilet and they said, hey, we noticed that you prayed through the whole night. Can you please pray for us so that we can be released from this place?

And I looked at them, I thought, you beat me, threw me in the toilet, and now you want my prayers. So as I was thinking about how I should respond, the Lord compelled me to respond with grace and I ended up praying for their forgiveness of sins,

leading them to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and the Lord opened the prison doors, they were released and I was taken from there to the main prison. The main prison was a prison constructed for 1,500 prisoners, but it had 5,000 prisoners. Inside the prison, there were domes constructed for 15 men,

they had 75 people maximum. Inside the domes, there were single forms

meant to be slept on by one person, but three people slept on one form. And the way we slept, one person's head would go this side and another one this side and another one this side, crumb from one corner of the room to the other, and we all slept on our sides because there was no room to sleep on your back.

Some of the people in the prison were sick. They had serious skin diseases, fungi, there were bed bugs. The food we had in prison was bad. Every day we had rotten, partially

powdered corn with beans that was also rotten and it had a mixture of sometimes insects, sticks, stones, etcetera, etcetera, and that was our daily meal for two years, three months. After going in prison, I started complaining.

I thought, Lord, why? Why have you allowed me to suffer like this after I've been seeking you and saving you faithfully and I've never done anything to deserve to be imprisoned? When I was complaining, I was introduced to a godly man in prison.

This man was saving life in prison, and all the prisoners respected him very much, and they called him their pastor. Finally, I had the opportunity of talking to him, and I asked him, I said, sir, how did you, a godly man, end up being in prison? And the man said he was wrongfully imprisoned in 1973

during the reign of the first president of Tanzania. He said his some people had committed murder and when the police officers arrested him, they implicated him in the murder and convicted him to be hanged to death. In the prison where prisoners are hanged to death, he decided to give his life to Jesus

and he made a vow, he said, Lord, if you spare my life from being hung to death, even if I'm not taken outside prison, I'll save you for the rest of my life. And the Lord answered his prayers. Instead of being

hung to death, he was allowed to mingle with all the other prisoners in prison and the man started preaching the gospel like a mad person. He would run from one corner of the prison to the other corner of the prison preaching the gospel of Jesus. By the time I left prison in two thousand and eight October,

he had led over 40,000 men to Christ.

When I heard this man's testimony and saw the joy he had in preaching the gospel, serving the Lord Jesus in prison, and I came to learn that he had lived in prison for more years than I had lived on earth, guess what? I stopped complaining.

I stopped having pity parties and the man inspired me to preach the gospel with him. So this was our daily program. In the morning, after we were released out of the dorms, we preached the gospel to prisoners. After having our bad meal at noon, we preached the gospel. In the evening, we preached

I was locked up in a room that was called the reception where all the prisoners who were imprisoned for the first time were locked and I had the privilege of preaching

grateful that during my time in prison, I preached the gospel to men who had lived wicked lives as hardcore criminals. I preached the gospel to Muslims and men who had never entered a church building, and I'm grateful for the lives that the Lord saved, changed, and transformed. How did I get out of prison?

The man who had deceived me and told me that he was a minister of the gospel and yet he was an international criminal was arrested with me. After spending a few days in prison, his true colors manifested, the man was wicked, cunning and crafty.

He deceived some of the most feared criminals in prison, prison warders, police officers and he had plans to escape from prison, so he when his plans failed, he decided to commit suicide. He took a bottle of medication

with a hope that he would die, but instead of dying, he became very, very sick. He couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, he couldn't even open his eyes, and he had serious diarrhea. When he became that sick, the prison officer in charge of the prison called me in his office and he said, Mulenga,

we have seen your character here in prison and we know that you are a pastor, but we know that this man that you were arrested with is a wicked man. We advise you that now that he's sick, leave him alone and let him die. He's too wicked. He doesn't deserve to leave. By the way, if you do help him,

police officers will hear about it. Magistrates in court and judges will hear about it, and they will convict you because they will think that you are his ally in all the criminal activities he's done. So leave him alone and let him die.

I am grateful to the lord that when I walked into that prison, I carried my bible with me,

and I read that bible every day. I prayed through the bible every day. As I read the bible in prison, I felt the word of God become alive to me. I felt the Lord speak to me, strengthen me, and encourage me. And as I read the bible, I came across Matthew chapter five verse 44 where the bible says, love your enemy.

And I felt the Lord tell me against the advice of the prison warder to go and love my enemy. As I continued praying, the Lord gave me the grace to obey his words, so off I went to my enemy.

He was sick, had serious diarrhea, and the prison officer in charge of the prison told all the other prisoners to leave him alone so that he could die. So when I went to him and started helping him, I had to do the work by myself. I carried him to the prison clinic and I started washing him. Literally,

I nursed him the way a mother nurses a toddler for two weeks, washing his underwear, washing him, cleaning him. He couldn't even go and sit on the toilet, so I had to do all the dirty work by myself. Then I would go and line up in long queues in prison, get his food, feed him, then go and line up for my own food, and in those days, I became very thin.

Prisoners in prison looked at me with pity. They said, you know, all of us are here in prison, but you are suffering more than us because not only have you been wrongful in prison, but now you are taking care of the man responsible for your imprisonment.

And in those days, I started asking myself, I thought, what's life? What's the meaning of life when you've been wrongfully imprisoned? When you are eating bad food, when you are sleeping in a crowded place full of bed bugs, when you don't have all the luxuries that we long for in life? What is life?

And in those moments, the Lord started teaching me that life is an opportunity that God gives to us. Life is an opportunity to love, to serve, to honor God and mankind, that even though I was wrongfully imprisoned,

the Lord had given me a great opportunity in prison to love my enemy, to save my enemy, and to honor God by doing that. So as I continued cleaning that man, washing his underwear, picking up his human excrement, I started praying this prayer from the depth of my heart. I said, Lord Jesus, I love you.

As I continue to care for this man, I'm doing it in obedience to your word. I'm doing it as an expression of my love for you. I love you. And amazingly,

as I said that prayer over and over again in prison, I felt the presence of the Lord rest upon me in prison. I felt the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding, and the Lord gave me grace and strength to carry on during my time in prison.

Two weeks later, that man recovered. Even though he was a wicked man, a human trafficker, I later came to learn. Whenever he saw me after he had recovered, he would shed tears because of the way I'd responded to him in love. Finally,

after two years, three months, the time for defense and judgment came in court. The same man whom I had helped stood up in court, pointed at me before everyone, and he said these words. He said, this man

is an innocent man. He doesn't know anything about all my criminal activities. I simply carried him in the vehicle like an ordinary passenger. And those words he spoke opened the doors for me to be released from prison, and he was convicted for ten years.

After coming out of prison, I came to learn that if I had disobeyed the word of God and refused to forgive and love my enemy, he would have died and police officers would have made sure that I was convicted in his place in order to show to the community that they had arrested the criminal responsible for the crimes.

After I came out of prison, I went back home to Zambia, continued my education, continued pastoring, and in the year 2012, the former president of Baylor University in Texas came to Zambia on a mission trip, heard my testimony, and he invited me to Baylor University Texas.

After I shared my testimony, he took me around the campus, looked at me, and he said, we are offering you a full scholarship. Will you take it? I said, yes, sir. I'll take it.

So I went back to Zambia, married my wife, and we went to Waco, Texas and I finished my Masters of Divinity there and my doctorate in ministry, specialized in church planting. After that, my wife and I and child came to Arizona, served at Cornerstone Church,

and during that time, pastor Bill Bush gave me the opportunity of coming here, I shared my testimony, and pastor Bill Bush prayed for me in preparation for me to go back to Zambia to start the ministry that we started. And Lockpoint Church,

with pastor Bill Bush, started sponsoring me and helping us do the work that I'm about to show you. So in Zambia, this is what we're doing.

This is my family, that's my beautiful wife there, our firstborn son Joseph, our niece Mary, our baby girl, Lisa, and our newly adopted girl, Esther. Esther's story is interesting. She was born from a mother who was mentally disturbed, very poor, eating from garbage bins and just moving around the community.

One day, she was abused and she ended up having a baby. We don't know who the father is, so when the child was born, the mother would not let the child go. We tried to talk to her to say, let's put your child in the facility, she refused. So in the process, she ended up living with the child for over three years

as a person who was insane. So whenever she would go, she would pick from the beans and eat from there. When it was raining, the child would be on her body, and she lived a tough life. One day, when the child woke up, she tried to wake up the mother. The mother wouldn't wake up.

People who were walking by a few hours later heard the child cry, so they decided to go in the shack that they were living in, and lo and behold, found that the mother had died. They decided to come home, called on my wife who went and verified

that the mother had died, called the police officers, and we decided to take the child in. So right now, we've adopted Esther and she now has a bed, she has food, she's going to school and life is good for her. You would love a smile.

When my wife and I moved back to Zambia, we started our church near a community called Chayinda. Chayinda is a slum. It has over 40,000 people living in abject poverty in an area that is one square mile with no running water and no sewage. The

land we bought for the church was looking like a bush when we started, right now it looks like that.

This is inside the worship room, and we have two services. Our building has a capacity of 500 people, and we love it there. We do a lot of dancing during our worship services. When you go in the slum, this is life. Houses are made out of clay, and that's a home, but it's basically a bedroom.

And six family members live there. So you have father, mother, children living in there, sometimes you find grandparents living in the same house, and that's life for them. The toilet is this structure outside, and that is basically a manhole enclosed, and they use it as their toilet and their bathroom,

and when it rains, it floods in the slum, and that's what you see. So all the manholes are filled and all the dirt comes out, and kids have no playgrounds or playing area, so they play in the dirt, and there are lots of cases of cholera, dysentery, etcetera, etcetera.

During the time of COVID, life was tough for many people living in the slum because there was a lockdown and they had no savings, so it meant that the kids were starving. We decided to reach out to the kids in the slum and we rented out a home. Our goal was to bring in 50 kids, give them food, teach them the gospel,

so the first day, 50 kids showed up. The following day, 120 kids showed up. The third week, 200 kids showed up, and the place was packed. At that time, we had a donor who helped us buy land, and we were able to build this building, and now we are able to accommodate 600 kids in this building.

So in this building, kids come every week, and they have safety, they have education, they have food, and they have Jesus. They love it.

On this day, we were feeding the kids and we had meal in a round we had rice in a round pot like this, and when we looked at the rice and the number of kids, it looked impossible to feed all the 500 plus kids. So we were grateful, Pastor Bill was there, Pastor Randy, Pastor Dennis,

and they helped us save the food. So that's Dennis, that's Randy, that's Pastor Bill Bush right there in action.

When you walk into this room, there's so much joy, there's so much energy and fun, and it's exciting. As a result of the kids ministry, the parents came to us and said, hey, we also need ministry, don't abandon us. So we have started reaching out to women and we gather them every month, and

this time around we gathered three seventy eight mothers. We bussed them to the mother church, and when they came, we taught them how to be good mothers, the importance of education, loving Jesus and being a good follower of Jesus, and the women loved it. After that, we fed them.

One of the things that you notice about our community is that there are lots of kids. The government recently introduced free education, but free education in Zambia means one teacher with 80 kids. One teacher, eight zero children,

and some of the kids don't even have tables to sit on, so they sit on the floor and the rates of failure are very high because the teachers are overwhelmed. As a church, our goal is to help provide education to our community. So we've started a school. In the school, we have classes from grade kindergarten to grade five,

and we have 90 kids. By the grace of the Lord, half of the kids come from the slums and we give them scholarships. When we started giving scholarships to the kids from the slum, we noticed that many of them could not perform in class. When they came, they looked tired and after investigations,

we came to learn that the kids had no food from their homes. They didn't have dinner, they did not have breakfast, and the parents said, go to school, so they couldn't perform.

After that, we decided to give them food. So we do have a feeding program. We give them two meals, breakfast and lunch, and all of a sudden, the kids from the slum who were performing badly now are performing very, very well because of the meal they're having.

We try to make our school a fun place, one of the best learning environments that one can find in Zambia, and we also have introduced computer lessons. Can you imagine a child who comes from the slum, their parents have never been to school, but that child receives a good education and learns to use computers,

that automatically ends the poverty cycle in the family, and that's what we're doing.

This is Benson. Benson and his family were found in the slum on one of the days we were doing evangelism. They were living in a small tiny house that was there was abject poverty there, there was no bed, no pots, nothing. And we discovered that the mother had fibroids and she's blind. We took her to the hospital and

right now she is receiving support from the church in the form of house rentals and monthly food, but we knew that the only way we could end the poverty cycle was giving Benson a full scholarship. So Benson is in our school, we give him a uniform, we give him clothes,

and he has breakfast and lunch, and he's an intelligent kid, and there he is on the screen.

We are building our goal is to build our school up to the twelfth grade so that we can provide more education to many kids in the community. So we've built from the first class to the computer room right there, and we continue to build that way.

During the time of COVID, we reached out to some of the most vulnerable people, Some of them were street kids. These are kids who have gone on the streets. They live on the streets because their parents have died or because of poverty at home or abuse. The kids live on the streets.

This is a garbage bin right there, so they eat from inside of it, and they stay there, they are addicted to drugs, and life is hell for them. A car is passing by the side there, And when we reached out to these kids, we found 150 boys, but among them, they were girls. The girls were about 12, and they were

they had been through hell. They were malnourished, they were addicted to sex, drugs, life was hard for these girls. Some of them had scars on their bodies and when we spoke to them, we said, do you want a better life? They said, yes. So we went, found a house,

put in furniture and took the girls into the house and there they are.

When we took in the girls, it was difficult because they had a lot of anger issues, we had to hire psychologists, we took them to the hospital, some of them had STIs, HIVAIDS, and we started praying for them, led them to Christ. If you see them today, you would never know that they were living on the streets.

This girl in particular, Rebecca, had lived on the streets for six years.

One day, she was she she had been through hell. Eventually, after staying on the streets, she became pregnant, had a baby, and when we found her, the baby was three months old. Today, the baby is there. That's the baby. Some

of the girls we rescued were as young as 11 years old right there.

They are the girls. They love school. Their lives are transformed, and life is hopeful for them.

That's another photo. Do you recognize anyone there? Yeah. That's Randy Deal with his hands up, Dennis McMain, and Bill.

These are some of the women we help. This woman's name is Sipiwe. Sipiwe grew up as an orphan. After she got into a relationship, she had the daughter, the man abandoned her, and she was looking for means of survival, went and got a loan from a certain organization,

she failed to to to pay it back, the people were after her, and she decided to commit suicide. On that day, she locked herself in her room, took the poison with a plan of drinking it and giving some to the baby girl, and she decided to turn on the radio.

We do reach out to people through radio every Sunday. We preach the gospel on the radio station. So when she turned on the radio, she turned it on to the exact radio station where I was teaching the word of God, and the Lord led me to talk about not giving up, not committing suicide,

and those words touched her. She broke down when she heard it, started crying, threw away the poison, called us at the church, we called her in, counseled her, prayed for her, and we have employed her. Sipiwe now cooks for the 600 kids,

and her daughter has been given a full scholarship in our school, and life is good for them.

We do have an empowerment program for women. We train the women how to sew, and when they come, they learn how to sew, we give them sewing machines so that they can be empowered and have a business. So after they learn how to sew, they make clothes like this and what Bill is wearing right there.

We have a clinic in the slum which was built by the government a long time ago, it was literally falling apart, the labor room had no electricity, it had no water,

and women who were giving birth would have to go fetch water outside and give birth using a kendo. By the grace of God, we went in the clinic, renovated it, installed the electricity, water, plumbing, etcetera, etcetera, and the clinic was fully restored. We also

have a feeding program. We feed hundreds of people. During the time of COVID, we fed 2,400 people and this ministry goes on and on. Our goal is to multiply. How do we multiply? By training pastors. So this year, in March, pastor Bill Bush, pastor Randy, pastor Dennis came with the team to Zambia, and they trained three

seventy pastors. Now training three seventy pastors means that each one of those pastors will go back home and preach to their congregations and the impact is phenomenal.

Pastor Dennis, Pastor Bill Bush speaking to students in a bible school. With the help of Rock Point Church and Converge, we have been empowered to build a church in a city called Livingstone. So we bought the land, built this building, and now we have 150 people who gather to worship the Lord every Sunday.

Our goal is to build 10 churches that are strong in all the provincial centers of Zambia. Right now, we do also have other churches that we've built near our mother church, and these churches are also saving people. So we have one in Kanakantapa. This church meets in a grass structure. We have another one in Chongwe.

We have another one in India, the nation of India we started the church. And we have another one in Zambia, in Monze. We have another one in an area called Ballaston. We have another one in Chayinda. So our goal, again, is to build a strong, vibrant church in each one of the 10 states of Zambia.

When the team came, we also visited the Victoria Falls, one of the seven wonders of the world. There ends my slide.

If I was asked if I had the power to change the past prison experience and the suffering that I went through, would I change it? No, I wouldn't.

When we read the bible in the book of Deuteronomy chapter eight from verse two going to verse four, the bible talks about the time the Lord led the children of Israel out of Egypt

through the desert for forty years in order to humble them, in order to test them and see what was in their hearts, in order to teach them that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. I believe that the Lord took me into prison for two and a half years

in order to humble me, to humble me by allowing me to spend a whole night in human excrement. I believe that the Lord allowed me to go into prison for two years, three months in order to test me and see what was in my heart, whether I would forgive my enemy and help him and love him or not.

I believe that the Lord took me into prison in order to teach me that man does not live on comfortable beds, good food, but on God's word and his word alone, and he took me there to discipline me the way a father disciplines a child that he loves. As a result of my prison experience,

the Lord has fulfilled his word according to the book of Genesis chapter 20. When Joseph talked to his brothers and said, what you did against me, you intended it for evil, but god used it for good for the saving of many lives. God is using my story, my time of surrender for the saving of the many lives that you've seen.

I want to encourage you as you are here to surrender. Surrender to the plan and the will of God for your life.

I do not know what the Lord is calling you to surrender to. Maybe he's asking you to give your life to him, to receive him as your Lord and savior, or maybe the Lord is asking you to surrender by forgiving your enemy, by reaching out to them in love, or maybe

maybe the Lord is calling you to reach out to some people and share the gospel. It could be prisoners. It could be going to another country. It could be starting a church. Whatever the lord is calling you to, I want to encourage you to surrender to his will for your life. I want us to close our eyes so that we can pray.

But before I pray, I want to give someone an opportunity, an opportunity to surrender to the Lord, to surrender to the Lord either by receiving him as your Lord and savior or by giving up something that the Lord has asked you to give up. Maybe it's forgiving somebody

or maybe it's surrendering to say, Lord, I'll save you. I've heard your calling in my life. You are calling me to this specific purpose. I'll save you. And if you are such a person,

before we pray together, I want you to stand up so that I can pray with you. Wherever you are, you can stand up so that we can pray together.

Thank you for those people who are standing up.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your love to us. We thank you that you sent your only son, Jesus, to come and die for us so that we may receive forgiveness and redemption. Lord, I pray for each one of these people who have stood up. I ask, Lord, that may you, Lord, do a new thing in their lives.

May you, Lord, transform them. May you, Lord, work out every challenge that they've gone through for good. I pray in the name of Jesus that if there is anyone amongst us who's going through hurt, pain, sorrow, may you turn around that pain and use it for God. I pray that may you give them the grace to forgive,

to forgive their enemy, and the willingness to submit to you in surrender, that Lord your will be done for their lives. In Jesus name we've prayed, amen.

There we go. Amen. Hey, can we thank Malenga for sharing his story? Yeah. Yeah. Stay standing too as we close out.

If we've learned anything, it's probably to not whine about what's going on in our lives. That

was a powerful throw punch and a reminder to me too. But but I wanted to thank my friend for being willing to surrender and see what God's gonna do and inspires me and should inspire all of us. But also I just wanted to say thanks. I wanna be able to pray for Malanga really quick before we go as as as he goes out there and and and does it. Just know that what everything he shared, every one of you that gives at this church is your church. You're a part of that too is what he was trying to tell you. Because we've been supporting him for nine years. And the other thing I don't think he shared is his church is is over a thousand people

and all those daughter churches that they've already started and all that ministry they're doing. And they get he's got like four or five guys that are almost ready to go plant more churches. And and and he didn't get Christ Life Church going until what year? 2018. 2018.

And that's so that includes in the last four and a half years, that includes COVID.

So there's another thing to go, wow. We need to pick up the pace here because this guy is like and when when people go, why are we building another building? What are we doing? This guy's built a whole bunch of buildings, launched churches, all that all since 2018.

So let's get with the program. And so I wanna pray for him because I know he's praying for us, but I wanna give him something. I already gave it to him last night, I said here I'll give it to you each service.

I I gave him this rock, which you can now hold. And what that rock is, I got it from the Valley Of Elah when I was in one of my times in Israel. And if you know your Bible, the Valley Of Elah, when we went down in there, it's where David fought Goliath.

And I went down to the creek bread where the Bible says David went down into this creek and he got five smooth stones.

Well, I took more than five and brought them back. And I've given them out to certain leaders in in in in my life and said, hey, you you've you've fought battles with me. You've you've you've been you've you've surrendered to the Lord. You trusted him despite the obstacle,

and now you've trusted me. So here, I'm giving this to you as a reminder. I have one on my desk. You have one. I'll remember to pray for you. You remember to pray for me because we are in in a battle together.

And so my friend has been been very good. And then in this David and Goliath illustration, I don't know, just don't pull a slingshot out of your pocket because I guess I'm the Goliath in this scenario. And because can can you tell we should we we should know each other? We're twins.

But I just said in this power is like, guys, before time existed, I was saying this to Million last night. God knew that we would be friends. That we would be co laborers for Christ. That we would know each other and work well together and and and it's from a to z. I'm from Arizona. He's from Zambia.

And and and and here we are getting to be a part of this and that's awesome. So I wanna thank God for that and pray for Malanga before we go. Amen? Let's pray. Father God, I just thank you. I thank you for how you work in ways that we will never understand.

But Lord, I thank you that one of the ways you worked is you worked in this man's life in a mighty way, and you used his surrender to you in a mighty way. And Lord, that you brought us together and gave me the privilege of being able to know my friend Malanga.

So I pray for this man as you've called him and you've given him a story and you've made him a great leader and a movement maker, Lord. And I am just glad that you allow us to be a part of what's going on in Zambia.

So I pray for him personally as a leader, as a follower of you, that he stays surrendered and you protect him, you protect his heart. I pray for his family that you do the same for them. I pray for his church and the church leadership, and I pray for all the young leaders that he is pouring into. And Lord, I pray that because we took the time to be here, because we came here and worship you,

because we heard this man share his story of surrender, that because of that, more of us, more people will be in your kingdom for all eternity because we took this moment to do this. So Lord, we just thank you. We give you all the glory, all the praise, and we pray this in the mighty, powerful holy name of Jesus.

Amen. Amen. Hey, as as as as you get ready to go, if you said yes, if if you said yes to to to to Jesus, you could go here if you just came to know Lord and go to the rockpoint.io,

say yes to Jesus tab, click on that. We wanna know, we wanna pray for you. Also, what Malanga we didn't tell you is we are planning a small trip to Zambia coming in June or July, coming up soon. And we have a you could go to right here rockpointchurch.com

backslash africa if you might be interested in being part of that team to go serve with him over in Africa. Other than that, God bless you guys. I love you guys, and go cardinals. Thanks

for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.