1 Stir Me — Helen Roseveare

It's good to be here and I hope the speaker doesn't fall asleep before she finishes, so I'll excuse you if you do, but I think I've been travelling since 5 o 'clock on Saturday morning to get here and you don't think of these things called jet lag at the moment.

My watch says around about midnight and that's what my body feels like, but still, and it's good to come and share. And then somewhere along the line, either I read the letter wrong or we got our lines crossed because I was expecting to see 12, 13 year olds in front of me, so I was terrified and I looked up and saw you lot instead and I thought, that's what I'm going to do with you.

But various other lines got crossed, I thought I was speaking six times over the other side and I'm only speaking five times, so I thought the best thing to do is to give you the sixth talk that I'm not giving over there and that'll make it all up for me.

And my thought for the week over at the main meetings is, I was asked to go to a seminar recently at one of the southern cities in Britain, Bristol, and I was asked to speak on missionary image 1890 or 1980.

And it gave quite a lot of scope to think about just what were they after and what did they mean and where should we go from there. And so in thinking about this quite a lot recently, I've lined my thoughts up alright.

The Universal Call to Missionary Service

If we want to think that the missionary work of today and going into the 1980s has changed from that of the 1890s, we need to look at why missions today at all. We knew why in the last century. Where are missionaries needed today?

What sort of missionaries are needed? Which direction are we going to go in? And the one I had to leave out because there wasn't time for it was, and who? So I thought that's fine here, it's just about right, it suits us.

So I thought just to think on this subject, who does God call to be a missionary? And I'm going to read a few verses from an Old Testament story in chapter 35 of Exodus. When Moses came down from the mountain where he'd received from God a vision of the tabernacle in very great detail, its measurements, its length, height, breadth, what it was to be made of, what colour it was to be, all the furniture inside of it, etc.

And he came down and he called together the children of Israel and tried to share with them his vision. And we have this in Exodus chapter 35, starting at verse 4, Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the Lord commanded, saying, Take you from among you an offering unto the Lord.

Whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the Lord, gold and silver and brass and blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen. And I guess by then that most of the congregation had switched off.

I mean, it didn't concern them, those were things that only the rich possessed and practically none of them were rich. So they immediately switched off thinking it wasn't of much interest, like I'm afraid happens in most church services and frequently in any service I go to which is called missionary.

They don't sort of come when they hear it's a missionary service and they switch off before I start. But then he caught them out, because he goes on, the last phrase of verse 6, he suddenly said,. And goat's hair.

And you didn't even have to possess the goat, all you got to do was to go round the barbed wire and the hedges and the rows round about and gather up the goat's hair that had been left behind and bring it in.

And he suddenly nailed it down to the fact that there wasn't anybody there in the congregation, there weren't children who couldn't do that, they didn't even have to reach up to get it, it was their level.

And his point being that every single person in the congregation had to get in on the job of gathering up what God wanted. And so he goes on through all the other things that he wanted brought in for the building of the tabernacle, verse 10,.

And every wise-hearted among you shall come and make all that the Lord hath commanded. Again he goes through all that's going to be made, up into verse 20,. And all the congregation of the children of Israel departed from the presence of Moses, and they came, whatever version you may be reading it in, note the next phrase,.

And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the Lord's offering. Verse 22,. And they came, men, women, and children, as many as were willing-hearted, and they brought the offering to the Lord.

And the whole essence of this was that everybody had to be in on it, it didn't matter what age group, it didn't matter whether rich or poor, it didn't matter whether they were clever or dull, and I believe today very strongly, in the time that you and I have the privilege of living, that the building of the Church of Jesus Christ throughout the world needs every single one of us in it.

I don't think God's got any special favorites, I don't believe that God wants to call out ten percent of his church to be missionaries. I don't see that in scripture anyway. The whole trend of scripture is this sense of all.

He throws it back at us because he says, All who are willing-hearted, there's no compulsion on you, he throws it back at you and gives you the right to choose whether you will or won't accept, but in actual fact, he invites every one of us into the privilege of being a missionary for him.

He said, in the authorised version, it's everyone whose hearts stirred him up. I deliberately read it from the authorised, because I wanted that particular little phrase, which doesn't come in the other versions, but I like that one.

Everyone whose hearts stirred him up. I just trust that God is stirring your heart up. Now, while you're still at school, and later on in all that lies ahead, to realize that you and I have an enormous privilege, you know, it is fantastic, really, if you stop just a moment to think that the almighty creator God actually invites you and me to share with him in his task.

It is unbelievable. He gives us this fantastic privilege. We're going to touch more in other meetings during this week and ask the question, can we really call it a privilege when... I don't know if you remember, just about a year ago, or June, June of last year, some of you may have seen it on your TV screens, what was known as the tragedy in Rhodesia, when 13 missionaries and their children, including a tiny baby, were brutally slaughtered.

Of course, it wasn't a tragedy at all, it was a terrible misnomer, it was a fantastic triumph, 13 people went out to be with the Lord Jesus Christ. And the effect on that secondary school has been absolutely unbelievable.

Some of us know something about secondary schools in Africa, and to be a secondary school boy or girl in Africa, they certainly weren't there to get religion. They certainly weren't there because they wanted to love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

They were there, the vast majority of them, to get education. The one great big capital word throughout central Africa is education. They'll sell their souls to get education. They'll do anything they can to get education.

And there they were, and the only school in their area happened to be the Christian Missionary School, so that's where they landed up and they took the pill with the jam. They learned the Bible verses they had to because they couldn't go on with class if they didn't.

And then one night, locked into their dormitories, and the next morning they came out and found thirteen unbelievably mutilated, slaughtered, murdered bodies of the whole of the school faculty and their families.

Stunned, horrified, not a clue what to do or which way to turn. They were only kids. And then within the week, hearing that other missionaries were coming out to take their place, to keep school going, and then hearing over their own radios, the guerrilla soldiers saying, any other missionary that comes to take over this school will be equally murdered.

And yet, within the week, the missionaries were there. Those kids will never be the same. Those are, some of them, tomorrow's leaders in Rhodesia. God knew what he was doing. God doesn't make mistakes.

But this is what we're inviting you to. When we ask you young folk to think seriously as to whether God isn't calling you to serve him somewhere overseas, we're not offering you any cushy job. There isn't any country in the world where the same thing couldn't happen overnight.

Everywhere today, this is what we're faced with. And I'm telling you that that's privilege. It's a tremendous privilege that God invites you to face up to that sort of situation and say, yes, for him, it's worth it.

He's worth it. He's worthy of it all. I remember when I was first converted, I was older than you are. I was at university as a student, and I knew just about as little as it's possible to know in this generation about the Lord Jesus Christ or anything to do with salvation.

And suddenly coming into the unbelievable knowledge that Jesus Christ, God's son, had died to save me. And when you've never heard this before, when you know nothing of it, you've grown up with it, many of you.

In some ways, you've kind of got used to it. But it's a fantastic and shattering thing when it suddenly comes into you that it's true. That God actually knew me, and even knowing me, still loved me. I knew full well at that stage there weren't anybody else who both knew me and loved me.

If they loved me, they didn't know me. But it was just unbelievable that this was true. God loved me. And the same night, within three hours of being converted and coming to put my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, within three hours that night when I went up to bed to...

I tried to thank God. I didn't know how to pray. I'd never learned anything about prayer. I certainly didn't know anything about thee and thou-ing. I was trying to thank God for this unbelievable thing that had hit me.

I was just so full of joy, I didn't know what to do with it. And I said to God that first night, God, if you could possibly find your will to do it, would you give me the privilege of letting me be a missionary?

I never had any other missionary call. Or later on when I was in mission training school and they all had their lovely testimonies and they all had their right verses of Scripture and the place where they were called and how it all happened, I used to ask God, I'd say, well, couldn't you at least give me a verse of Scripture?

It would sound better. But you know, He didn't. I just had this burning urge that if Jesus Christ, God's Son, had died to save me from my sins, there was nothing else I could do for Him but go out and serve Him anywhere He sent me.

About six months after I was converted, I'd gone to a big missionary, well, a big Christian convention in the north of England, Keswick, and on the Friday at the big missionary rally, amongst over a hundred other young folk, I stood up in the last hymn to publicly state that I would go anywhere the Lord sent me.

And we were singing a hymn, the first verse of which goes, Stir me, O stir me, Lord, I care not how, but stir my heart in passion for the world. Stir me to give, to go, but most to pray. Stir till the blood-red banner be unfurled, or lands that still in heathen darkness lie, or deserts where no cross is lifted high.

And that hymn got into me that day, it's remained with me ever since, this prayer that God would stir me, never mind my next-door neighbour, never mind the others in the meeting. God, will you stir me?

Will you make this thing absolutely, totally real to me? I meant it. I meant business with God. I remember, I guess now about eight or nine years ago, out in Africa, during the rebellion in Central Africa in the 1960s, everything we had was destroyed.

The hospitals, the schools, the churches, there was just total destruction of the whole north-eastern province of our vast country of Zaire. And when we went back after the rebellion, to this total destruction, we had to start all over again.

And we grouped up forces and a team of us medics got together to build a new central hospital to serve the north-east. And amongst the group, Dr. Becker, our leader, divided us into sets, and he said to me, OK, that's your five acres up there, or eight acres, you take those eight acres up there and build a training college where we'll train national medical workers.

And he ignored me and he turned to the next one and said, you take those eight acres there and you do this, and you take those eight acres and you do that. And there wasn't any good any one of us hoping someone else would help us, because there wasn't anybody else left.

And we each had our section. I tell you, you feel a bit of a mug when you happen to be a single woman stuck in the middle of the African jungles, and you're just given eight acres of mountainside, it was all elephant grass and brambles and briars, and told go ahead and build a training college.

And we went ahead and built a training college. And four years, it was coming up to May, four years later, and we were just about ready to dedicate the first large building. We'd done mud and thatch, we were living in mud and thatch, we were already teaching, college was in session, but meanwhile we were replacing with brick as fast as we could go.

And the main block of classrooms, auditorium, and library, and office buildings, etc., was almost finished. And it was to be dedicated at the annual meeting of the Board of Directors, very posh name for a little humble group of missionaries and church elders.

And all of a sudden I was told that the board meeting had had to be moved forward by three weeks. Well, that wouldn't matter much here, but my word, they tell you that in the middle of Africa, what happens next?

We've got one week to go. We've got nothing. None of the painting had been done, there were no chairs, let alone have them varnished. There was nothing ready. The place was still in chaos, and we had only one week to go.

So, we started school for that week at 6 a .m. instead of 6 .30. We cut out the breakfast break, we cut lunch down by half an hour, I confiscated the football, and at half past two in the afternoon, the whole student body had to get to work, and everybody had their jobs to do.

And we got any local carpenter, we rounded up everybody who knew anything about carpentry to get chairs made, and as soon as four chairs, ten, I think we did in blocks of ten, as soon as ten chairs arrived, a student was given them to get them sandpapered and varnished.

We just hoped the varnish would dry before the Board of Directors sat on them. And everything went into top gear. A couple of students said they knew a bit about painting, so they were given a large pot of white paint and a couple of brushes and sent off to paint the woodwork in each classroom.

Others were doing other jobs. Some were clearing up brick rubble. One nice thing about living on the equator, on the Wednesday of that week, we planted canna lilies around the school. And on Saturday, opening day, they were all in flower.

You couldn't do that here. And there came the moment when I went to see how the painters were getting on. I moved into classroom one, and they weren't there. I was a bit surprised. I moved into classroom two, and they weren't there.

By then I was suspicious. And the woodwork looked just as I had left it. I gingerly touched the woodwork around the door, and there was a sort of brown, sticky goo. I moved into classroom three, and there were my two prized painters, in and out of the paint pot and up and down the woodwork.

They were singing, they were chatting, as happy as could be. They were paying no attention to what they were doing. And the woodwork wasn't changing colour either. And I went and bent over their shoulder, and there in my lovely large pot of hard-gloss white paint was a solid mass of white substance, and no remaining oily diluent.

They hadn't known that you had to stir. I gave them a lecture on stirring. In fact, I got another pot of paint. When you think, I'd had to send over a thousand miles, about 1 ,300 miles for that paint.

It'd been ordered from Kinshasa, it'd taken five months to come. We'd ordered 12 pots. By the time it reached us, five had been stolen, and now we'd lost another. It's pretty desperate. We took another paint.

I demonstrated that stirring's hard work. You have to stir right down to the bottom. You've got to go on stirring until it's all one consistency. You've got to go on stirring until there's nothing solid left.

It changes colour. It doesn't go so far. But now it does the job you need it to do. I left them. I trust mollified. I suddenly thought later in the morning, horrors, I forgot to tell them you have to keep on stirring.

I rushed back, and sure enough, it had begun to separate out, and they hadn't noticed that it was no longer white. It was now cream. So we stirred again. And so next day, morning Bible study, being a teacher at heart, I took the matter of stirring, that God wants to stir us, just as a pot of paint.

Spiritual Wholeness and the Call to Give All

And he wants us stirred right through to the bottom. He wants every single bit of us stirred, so that you can't divide your lives into two parts, solid and liquid, or spiritual and secular, or Sunday and weekdays.

It doesn't work. God wants to stir us right through, so that we're just one consistency, so that everything that comes out and shows, day in and day out, reflects the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're doing the job for which we're made.

I remember at the end of prayers, one of the senior students prayed in French, which is our government language, and they're a bit hesitant. Many of them, it's their fourth or fifth language. And he was stumbling a bit, and he got so far in his prayer, and he sort of said, Go on, God.

I don't care what it costs. And then there was a pause. And then he blurted out in Swahili, his own language, very rapidly, he says, I do care what it costs, God. I care a lot what it costs, but never mind.

Stir me, God. Now, that's pretty honest. And the thing is, you and I are willing to say the same thing. Are you and I willing to say to God, Stir me. If he stirs you, as a pot of paint, he'll know where to apply you when the moment comes.

In the first verse of that hymn, there were three things it mentioned. Stir me to give, to go, to pray. And just very briefly looking at those three. Stir me to give. And I'm not thinking of cash. I can tell you lots of thrilling stories of the wonderful way God has provided for my needs over 20 years in Africa.

Unbelievable things. When the last drop of something disappeared, that very day God sent more. When we ran out of soap, that very day a box of soap arrived. Unbelievable things which happened. If I told you one or two stories, you could shrug your shoulders and say coincidence.

If I told you hundreds, you'd get to the picture and say, God, there's no other way out. And God provided because people gave. And people have given and given and given. But you know, it isn't just that sort of giving.

I think what the hymn writer meant here is that God looks to you and me that we would give ourselves. And you'll give yourself 100 to God. You know, in scripture I don't see any place for 95%. God never talks in 95%.

You start right at the very beginning, work your way through, you'll find one little word, one little three-letter word, and it comes in all the different versions, doesn't matter which you're reading.

All. He says you should love the Lord thy God with all. Heart, mind, soul, strength, body. A lot. Jesus Christ looking at his disciples, he said, if you want to be my disciples, you've got to renounce all.

Peter, when he was called to follow Jesus, he forsook all and followed the Lord. And that's what God's looking for. He's looking for young fellows, young girls, who are prepared to put all on the altar for Jesus, whatever the cost, and move out into his purposes.

You know, I think he means it very literally. Your time, your talents, your ambitions, everything that lies ahead, say, OK, God, stir me to give you all. I remember, not very long ago now, I had one of those sort of days, can't go into detail, the clock always works faster than I do, and everything had gone wrong that could go wrong.

I'd been called at about half past one in the morning, I'd gone down to the hospital and had to do surgery for a woman down, who was ill. And things didn't go very well, I stayed with her for a time, by the time I eventually got back to my home, it was almost dawn, it wasn't worth going back to bed.

I'd had a cup of coffee, I had a quiet time, I got down to school. School with us starts at 6 .30, I got there at 6 .29, the students got there at 6 .31, I thought they were late, they thought they weren't, I grumbled, they growled.

And we started the day on that footing. And through the day, everything that could go wrong, went wrong. And by evening, we had a staff meeting, and it was just one of those staff meetings. I was school director, I got something I wanted to put through quickly.

Whenever I wanted to put anything through quickly, the staff always seemed frightfully suspicious, they wanted all the details. And I thought they were horribly pig-headed, and they thought I was dreadfully stubborn.

And when I eventually got up home, about 10 o 'clock that night, not only was I dead tired, but I was very ashamed. I just felt like I'd failed the Lord pretty badly. I was out on the mission field, and I went to the back of my home, put a primer stove on, and put some milk on, to have a drink.

I went out the back to draw a bucket of water, to have a wash. Feeling pretty ashamed, I felt that I'd let God down all through the day. As I came back in through the back door, I suddenly heard, on the front door, I said, oh no God, no thanks.

That day had been long enough. I turned the storm lantern right down low, I stood dead still, I thought, well they'll think there's no one in the house, they'll go away. It didn't work. After half a second, so I turned out the stove, and put the milk off, I put down the bucket, and I walked to the front of the house, and I just time to pray, between the back door and the front door, that the Lord would take over, I wasn't in a fit state to see anybody.

And outside, there was a senior student. He was obviously in distress, I asked him in, we sat down, got us hot drinks, and then, little by little, he began to open up, and somewhere in the early hours of the morning, I had the joy of leading that lad, to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour.

Now, how nearly I'd missed, of course I'm telling you one of the stories, but I didn't miss, one dreads to think how often one did, how nearly I'd missed, I'd given God 21 hours of that day, and I thought the other 3 hours could be mine, and I could go to bed.

God wanted 24. You know, the amazing thing is, by the time that lad left me, somewhere around 2 o 'clock in the morning, I wasn't even tired. I was so full of joy and happiness, it was just thrilling.

And that's what God does to you. He wants all, and He literally means it, He doesn't mean it metaphorically speaking, He wants you to give Him all, and trust Him with it. Stir me to give. The hymn writer went on, Stir me, O stir me, Lord, till all my heart is filled with strong compassion for these souls, till thy compelling word drives me to pray, till thy constraining love reach to the poles, far north and south in burning deep desire, till east and west are caught in love's great fire.

Availability to Go Wherever Christ Sends

Stir me to go. And you may say, go where? I want just to say to you, anywhere for Jesus. You know, I don't honestly believe that God's particularly interested in geography. I'm not getting at your geography teachers.

But what I mean is that this word missionary has kind of got a tag attached to it these days of a geographical location. God wants you as a missionary wherever He sends you. He just simply wants you available to Him.

And He'll say where. You're not likely to know now where God wants you. Or maybe when some of us folk went out 30, 40, 50 years ago, life was pretty different. We did know where we were going. Things didn't change much.

But today with coups and counter-coups and all the upsets in different countries, one day you're thrown out, the next day you're invited in. It's very hard to know for tomorrow. And the country God may really want you to serve in may today be a closed land.

The country you think you want to serve in today open, may be closed by the time you're ready. That is not important to God. What matters is that you're available to Him for wherever He wants you. That you'll let Him stir you.

Because if you let Him stir you, once you're stirred right through, He can do the rest. He can apply you wherever He wants you. I think of a student in college where I was training, teaching. James. I can't tell you the whole James story now.

James Brings the Young Vandals to Jesus

One day I may get it written. It's a good story. But James turned up at our college November, the first year that we opened. We'd started college two months previously. And unlike most of our Africans, he was a great strapping fellow.

Most of them are shorter than I am and I never felt short. But he was towering up here and he was wearing a loincloth, barefooted. He was speaking a language I didn't know. We had a very interesting conversation.

He came in about nine o 'clock at night onto the veranda and I didn't understand a word he said and he didn't understand a word I said. And we chatted along. And in the end I got hold of someone to take him off for the evening and give him bed for the night.

And the next day the chaplain of the college came to me and said, I've admitted James to school. I looked horrified. Nobody admitted anybody to school but me. I was the director. I said, I beg your pardon.

He said, never mind doctor, don't talk. He said, once you've heard his testimony you'll understand he's got to come into school. I said, listen, he doesn't know any French. Never mind French, he said.

But I said, he's never had any education. He said, never mind education, he said. He's in. James came into school. And his testimony was such that it was unbelievable. Fantastic lad, really. But he didn't have any secondary education.

And they all had to have done 10th grade to come to our school. And he didn't have it. He'd just done up to 6th grade. Got no 7, 8, 9, 10. He didn't have French. He didn't have enough money for his fees.

He didn't have clothing. He didn't have anything. Well, through interpretation I told James, you're going to have to work solid hard if you're ever going to make it. You're going to have to do four years of secondary school education at the same time as you do four years medical education.

Because you're not allowed to sit the medical diploma unless you've got so many grades of 10th grade. And James worked hard. He slogged it out. And he did extremely well. He came out to his last year at college.

But he's still a long way to go. I'd said to him again, at the beginning of his last year, I said, James, you're just going to have to everything else go by the board. There's going to be no ball game.

There's going to be nothing. You're going to have to work around the clock. It's the only hope you've got if you're going to make. The grades you need in order to be able to take your medical exams. We came to the first Sunday in his last year at college.

Apparently there were some notices given out in church. I confess I didn't hear them. I was probably sitting at the back ticking off the register that all the students were where they should be. Monday morning, James met me outside of school.

He said, Doctor, what are we going to do about the Vandals? I said, I beg your pardon? He said, what are we going to do about the Vandals? I said, James, I haven't a clue what you're talking about. It's time for school.

We went into school. At the end of classes, there was James outside school with the same question. He said, you'd better explain yourself. He said, it was given out in church yesterday. I said, what was given out in church yesterday?

He said, the pastor told us all to pray about the Vandalism and what we could do about it. It was true, we'd got a gang of hooligans around who were smashing windows, smashing the desks and spoiling things.

I looked at James. I said, it's nothing to do with us, James. That's a church affair. He looked at me. Junior student to senior missionary and said, aren't you a member of the local church? I swallowed hard, said yes and played up to breakfast.

Next Sunday, I did listen to the notices. You can imagine my horror when it was given out in church. On Tuesday evening at seven o 'clock in the new nursery school auditorium, there'll be a meeting for all Vandals under the age of 15.

I'm not quite sure what effect it would have on your church and what members of your church would own up to being Vandals if they didn't hear it given out. After the service, I went up to James. I said, did you hear that given out?

He said, yes, but you'd agreed. Tuesday evening, I went down to the school to open the door and put the lights on just in case a few kids turned up out of sheer curiosity. When I got there, I couldn't reach the doors for the sea of youngsters.

By the time I got the doors open, long before I got the lights on, they swarmed in. When it's a small school, we see 120 in the hall. 180 kids poured in. They sat free to every two seats. And I'm telling you, they were the scruffiest, smelliest, dirtiest gang of kids I have ever met.

And they're all chewing mangoes. Some of you will understand what I mean, others won't. But you know, a mango, you spit out the sticky skins and then you spit out the sticky stones and then you wipe your sticky fingers down the nicely whitewashed walls.

I looked at James. I said, what on earth are we going to do with them? He says, I'm going to tell them about Jesus. And he did. And every week through that college year, James gave up Tuesday evening.

And he turned that gang of hooligans into a youth club. I remember them at Christmas, all standing up in front of the church, singing and looking like little angels. And on about the fourth or fifth week, there was a lot of noise outside during club.

And James turned to me and said, would you look after the kids while I go out and see what's going on outside? I confess, as soon as James went outside, there was much noise inside as outside. I did not know how to control 180 kids.

Reaching the Older Vandals with the Gospel

At the end of club, James came up to me and said, Doctor, what are we going to do about the senior vandals? I said, James, enough. He said, listen Doctor. When I went outside, there was a whole gang of young men, 18, 24, 30 year olds.

And they're all saying it isn't fair. You're telling the kids about Jesus. Why aren't you telling us? I said, James, stop it. I said, you'll never pass your exams if you do anything more. You cannot give any more time up.

I said, I can't. My kind dear was absolutely crowded out. He looked at me. Are you telling me, Doctor, that you won't tell them about Jesus? You won't be surprised when I tell you next Sunday it was given out in church.

Thursday evening, 7 o 'clock, in the new nursery school auditorium, there will be a meeting for all vandals over the age of 15. And he thinks all very well, kids will come, but you don't expect over 15s to turn up.

Thursday evening, every seat in the hall was taken. And they were a very sad crowd. They were all fellows with a chip on their shoulder. We discovered little by little as we got to know them that more than 50 of them were on hard-line drugs.

Practically all of them smoking and drinking heavily. Their language was truthfully so obscene that I can only thank God I didn't know enough Swahili to understand them. And you wonder, why did they come?

There was nothing to bribe them. There was nothing to bring them. I looked at James, I said, what's nothing to do with this lot? He looked at me and he said, you are going to tell them about Jesus. And you know, James and I together took that crowd every single Thursday through that college year.

And before the college year was out, we had the joy and the privilege of leading more than 80 of those young men to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior. Why? Because a 19-year-old lad went where Jesus sent him.

Way in his own school hall. He didn't go any further than that. That's where God told him to serve. And that's where he was. And he gave up two evenings a week. Even when I told him, he never, of course, of course he passed his exams.

I mean, God never lets them down, does he? And he did very well. He's now head of the anaesthetic department of our hospital. Very brilliant young medic. But he was a man who was willing, a boy, a fellow who was willing to give his life to Jesus and go where he was sent.