Josh & Christy Wohlgemut

Well, good evening.

I'd like to thank my man up in the sauna there, Edgar. It's only about 150 degrees up there, but he's doing a good job. Thank you for showing your love to us. We've only been here for about 24 hours, but we have felt every ounce of your love and your hospitality.

And even to our boys, thank you for loving our children. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Speaking of our children, first of all, we are Josh and Christy Wolgamud, if you missed that. We have three boys, Eenie, Meenie, and Miney, and we hope to have no Mo.

So that's them. Oh, that's not your name? Sorry, Jack. Let's make sure this is working here. I don't pretend to know what everyone's experience here has been in life, especially your Christian experience.

The Call to Missions and a Family Raised in Papua New Guinea

But for those of you who have felt the Lord calling them in a certain direction, especially if it were to drastically change your life, I imagine you may have felt a little bit like this picture of Peter going to meet Jesus walking on the water.

It might be absolutely terrifying if you went through that. But there's just something about it. You see Jesus doing something amazing, and you just want to be a part of that, no matter what the cost, even if it scares you to death.

And this is sort of where we found ourselves the last few years as a family, as a couple. And so that's just what we want to share with you tonight. My story started before I was born. I was born to godly parents who were missionaries in the unreached country of Papua New Guinea, very unexplored, very wild, jungly place.

I love my childhood. I got to have cool pets like this. We got to play in the dirt like any other boy would want to do. Well, you know what dirt looks like, right?

There it is.

We got to eat things like grub worms. Everyone wants to do that, right? I loved every second of my childhood, especially as a boy growing up in the jungle. But the coolest thing I got to do is I got to watch people like my parents share Christ with people who had never heard of him before.

They've never read a book. And they had to teach them an alphabet. They had to write an alphabet, learn their language, share Christ with them. And these were the sort of people that I grew up with as my pillars of faith.

And that was probably the biggest thing I grew up walking away from my childhood from.

I also got to grow up with missionaries for parents, but not just missionaries. My great-grandfather was a missionary to the Sudan back in the early 1900s. My grandma was a missionary. And I know some of you here have read her story, her first husband was martyred in the jungles of Bolivia, something similar to Elizabeth Elliot.

And I grew up hearing these stories. And I went overseas with my parents in 1986. And I loved that, that they would give their all.

For the Lord.

And I used to tell my dorm mom, I said, I want to be a single missionary authoress when I grow up. Because I just admired my grandma so much.

I would've done that for her.

Yeah.

Thanks a lot. God had other plans. And so my parents were also church planters in a village. And so I remember at night, we would hear the people talking to their spirits. And my dad was always very good to explain to me, you know, that's a spirit out there, that's a kazoo.

Or he would talk me through it and say, our God is stronger, and we're here to help these people. So I had a real strong understanding of what darkness these people were living in. And because you guys have supported my parents and prayed for them over the years, I just think it's such an amazing thing to, I wanted to tell you this story especially, because you guys have had an impact on my life as well.

Not just my parents and the people that they have brought to the Lord in the village, but me also. I knew that God wanted me to be a missionary. It was real to me on the very last night when they finally presented the gospel to the people in Sifoniaca.

They had started at the end of December. And for two or three months, it must have been three months, five nights a week, they would meet. And they started in Genesis, and they went all the way through so that the people had a firm understanding of why Jesus had to come, who Jesus was, where Israel was, how he had been promised all the way from the beginning, and how he was the fulfillment of that promise.

And every night, they'd have about 200 people there. And they let me skip the start of my spring semester in school so that I could be there to watch. And I just remember that last night, my mom said, if even just one person accepts the gospel, this will have all been worth it, all 12 years of learning the language, building a house.

And so I thought, okay. So we were up there, and they did the crucifixion and the resurrection. The people were crying after the crucifixion. Their hero was dead, and then they heard that he had come back to life.

And that first person stood up, he interrupted, and he said, I believe that this is true, and they have brought us the truth, and I don't have to be afraid anymore, and that's my God too. And I remember thinking, there's that one.

And then that second person stood up, and the third, and the fourth. And all the next day, people came down to my parents' house, and they said, we've accepted this as truth, and I burned my fetishes, and I'm not gonna do animal sacrifices anymore.

And I remember thinking then, there's nothing better that anyone could give their life for than to help these people come out of that darkness. And that was when I knew that I wanted to be a missionary as well.

And you guys had a part in that, in those people coming to the Lord and burning their fetishes and walking away from sorcery, and now the next generation of me going back as well. So I just wanted to say thank you for your faithfulness in all of that.

It's meant the world. So knowing that I wanted to go into missions as well, I went on to Bible school, and that was where I met Josh, and my dream of singlehood ended. No, we had told a story this morning of how we met, and God definitely brought us together and made it clear that he wanted us to be a team for him instead of going on alone.

But it was there in Bible school that I remembered all the ways that my parents had shown the gospel to these people before they ever spoke a word of the Bible or of Jesus through compassion. My mom did a lot of medical work out there, and I was always amazed.

I loved to watch her because people would come down to the house, and she had no medical training, but she would open this book called Where There's No Doctor, and she would say, okay, here's your symptoms.

Let's try this. And sometimes it worked, and sometimes we would have to do medical runs, but I got to go along on that too, and that's where I was introduced to this hospital. I remember one day, this man came down with a dislocated shoulder, and she just put a bucket on his elbow and kept filling it up with water until the joint popped back into place, and I thought, oh, I just thought she was the most amazing thing since sliced bread.

So I went on after Bible school. I got my nursing degree with the hope that I, too, would be able to show the gospel to people as well, to bring the words of the Bible and to be able to tell them about Christ but to be able to show them long before I would be able to tell them.

So we did take a six-month trip about five years ago just to see how God would use us as a couple. Josh had shared that he wasn't really sure how God could use his skill set, and I knew as a nurse that it would be easy for me to plug in anywhere pretty much, but I really wanted to go back to this hospital where two of my brothers had been born and we had done all these medical runs.

And while we were there, it was just amazing to see God show up in so many ways. We were praying, is this what you have for us? And he showed us yes, but it was through a lot of struggle as well. I really questioned and had to fight through, is God good?

Because the darkness is so dark there and it was dirty and it was hot and people would die. And I had not really seen that here in the States. I had never really struggled through that. As a nurse, I would see people struggle through cancer and then pass away surrounded by loved ones, but I wouldn't see kids or mothers die.

And the people over there, they're very fatalistic. And I remember one day they were all gathered around because that's how they do over there. The family takes care of the patients and they said, oh, God is good, right after someone had passed away.

And I remember in my heart, I got a little bit angry. I thought, this isn't good. How can he let this happen? And I had to work through that. Can I stay here and work? And do I believe that God is good even when things are so hard?

And he showed me, he said, if you just want me to act in a certain way, the way that you expect me to, you might as well just carve me out of wood and put me in a corner and worship that idea of that God because I'm not that, I am unexpected.

I'm not always safe, but I am always good and it's gonna look different than what you think. And for me, that was powerful and I thought, okay. And after a couple more days, he said, you know what else?

He said, I'm gonna work through you and that's why you're here so that you can show me to these people. So that was one amazing way that he showed up. Another amazing thing that was really cemented for us was just how vital long-term missions are, not just to go for a couple months, but I was able to witness to a man over there through an interpreter.

And at the end, he said, you know, you could put a picture of a sheep on the wall and tell me that that's Jesus. He said, I would believe you. He said, who am I? I grew up in the bush. I've never been to school.

I'm sure you know what you're talking about. You're from America. And I was just really struck at how necessary it is to be there to show them who Jesus Christ is and that I do care and that you can trust what I'm saying.

So that was a really amazing journey for both of us,.

I think.

God’s Goodness, Long-Term Missions, and the Call to Serve in Ivory Coast

God really had to teach us a lot as a couple through all this trip that Chris was talking about. He had a lot of stuff that we had to learn individually as well. And I feel like we really went through two different battles almost, if you will.

We set foot on the ground in Ivory Coast for that six-month trip. I really thought, God, we left our jobs for this and we really don't know what you're gonna do through this trip. What's gonna happen?

How are you gonna show yourself? And we had no option but to trust him. And so we set foot in the ground. I'm like, all right, God, let's do this. Let's see what's gonna happen. I had my accounting degree at the time.

And so that's really what I plugged into is the accounting department. I did a lot of bookkeeping. But it really didn't seem like the whole picture of why God wanted us there. I was doing payroll one day and someone knocked on the door and they said, we have three broken washing machines that keep the hospital running, the linens, the scrubs and everything just to keep everything sanitary and stuff like that.

And they said, two of those washing machines are broken and one is on its way out. Would you be willing to look at it? We know you like working with your hands and we don't have any other options. And I said, sure.

I mean, where in the world is a washing machine gonna shut down a hospital? Well, Ivory Coast apparently. And so with just limited tools, we tore into that thing and we're able to get those up and running again.

And I thought, huh, that was fun, that was cool. And then I went back to doing some bookkeeping. It was about a couple of weeks later, someone knocked on the door and said, the internet's down. It's been down for a week actually and it's hard to function as a hospital, even in Africa without communications and stuff like that.

Josh, we know you like working with computers. Would you be willing to look at it? Absolutely, it's more exciting than payroll. So we fought with that and we were able to get that up and running again.

And it was just one thing after another, God laid in my lap and it's like he was saying, Josh, you've been stressing out about how you were gonna serve me. I've been preparing you for this your whole life and you didn't even know it.

And so it was just an amazing aha moment of God's faithfulness of how he's always directing our paths even when we can't see it. I've been reminded in this process of Moses in Genesis. You all know the story.

What? Exodus, sorry. When he comes across the burning bush and he's having this conversation with God and God speaks to him and says, I have plans to deliver Israel from the Egyptians. And Moses says, great, that's awesome.

And God says, I wanna use you. He's like, oh. And he gives all these different excuses why he can't help out God. I'm not gifted with speech, any of that stuff. And God said, Moses, stop. What do you have in your hands?

Like, well, I've got this staff. And God basically said, that's enough. I've already given you all you need to serve me. And it was sort of like that in my life too. It's not an amazing staff. I'm not gonna be the best at anything I do overseas, but it's enough for what God's gonna do through us.

And so it was just amazing to see God provide and be faithful. With that in mind, to make a long story short, we knew then and there that God had us going back to Ivory Coast in a long-term situation.

So we came back to the States from that trip and went back to school. I said I'd never go back to school again. I think I've said that four times now, but I just keep going back. There's just so much I wanna learn.

But we wanna be faithful in the resources that God's given us. The ministry that I'm gonna have, I wanna be the best I can be. As long as it's up to me. I told someone before, I wanna be the Swiss Army knife or MacGyver of missionaries.

So we're just gonna continue that. A lot of people ask, which organization are you going with? You're going with New Tribes, you're going with Southern Baptist. We're actually going with an organization called WorldVenture.

WorldVenture doctors, about 50 years ago, they started the hospital that we're gonna be serving at. And WorldVenture itself, they've been around for 70 years. There's about 500 of us that will be serving overseas.

And all those countries in red, over 60 different countries. And we really just appreciate their heart as an organization for not just reaching people that are often overlooked and unengaged or just completely forgotten about and unreached, but they have a really big heart for caring for missionaries and keeping them overseas on a long-term basis.

So this is where we're going, Ivory Coast, or in French, they would call it Côte d 'Ivoire. It's about the size of New Mexico or Arizona. And it's located in the armpit of Africa, is what they call it.

And it smells about as good on most days. The thing that is so striking about Ivory Coast right now is there are about 80 languages spoken just in this country alone. And there are 7 .3 million people who are unreached.

If they have even heard of Jesus Christ, that there's no church and there's no possibility of there being a church anywhere in that 7 .3 million people. It's definitely sub-Saharan Africa. It gets pretty dry and dusty when the winds blow down from the desert.

The people there, especially in the northern part of the country where we're going to be working, they're farmers. So they spend a lot of their days just trying to grow their own food just to live on.

They max out their resources. I love that picture of the truck because it's just such a perfect example to me of what they do because they don't plan ahead very much. If they do manage to get ahead in their daily lives, they're obligated to give it to their family if their family asks them for help.

So there's not really much incentive for them to try to do well in business or whatever it might be. They are very friendly. They're not very time-oriented like we are here in the States. They often asked me when I was there, why are you walking so fast?

And I would tell them, we have to get this stuff done before you leave. And they'd say, well, we have to get it done before noon, but they didn't care. For them, it's more about relationships and community.

And if you show up to somewhere two hours late, you're more than likely you're going to be on time. So that's kind of the people that they are over there and it definitely takes some getting used to. So as I said, a lot of their days in the villages are spent just in preparing food.

They start the kids off when they're really young to helping them out in the fields. It's backbreaking work unless you happen to get rich enough somehow to buy some cows to help you out. But all these pictures are just of them just trying to plant food.

And then they'll pound it into, it's kind of like Play-Doh is what it looks like. They call it Futu. And it's about the consistency of Play-Doh, but they all dip it in sauce and then they eat it and it fills them up pretty quick.

When we say that we're going to be doing medical missions in Ivory Coast, a lot of times I feel like it's pretty self-explanatory. You already kind of have an idea of what medical work might look like in Sub-Saharan Africa.

But to me, when I started doing some research on it a little bit, it still was a little bit shocking. In this country in particular, they are 10 times more likely to lose a child in childbirth than we are here in the States.

And that's 20 times as likely to lose the mother in childbirth. They're five times more likely to have HIV over there. And their life expectancy rate is only 58. So they're facing a lot of malnutrition, a lot of malaria.

And on top of that, when they do get sick, they have a hard time finding doctors. Here in the States, we have about one doctor for every 400 people, where they will have one doctor for every 7 ,000. So often, especially with nurses, they have a wider scope of practice because they're often the only ones in that area who are able to give any kind of medical care.

So you will see mothers walking for hours, carrying their babies on their back with fever, just looking for anyone who can help them get the medicine, and then often don't even understand the instructions for the medicine when they do get it.

So that's really my heart's desire, is to be able to help lessen that struggle for them, but even more than their medical and their physical needs or their spiritual needs.

The physical hardships that they're up against is obviously overwhelming, as you heard. The spiritual darkness is just as bad. To illustrate, behind me, this is a big, huge Catholic church, Basilica, right in the middle of Ivory Coast.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it's the largest church in the world, in the middle of Ivory Coast. Poverty-stricken Ivory Coast. This church cost $300 million to make. Apparently, it doubled the country's deficit when it was made.

It is beautiful.

Those are the front doors there. You can see guys at the bottom of the pillars there standing.

It's beautiful. It's huge.

There's the inside of the sanctuary. They can seat, or they can fit, about 18 ,000 people in the sanctuary. It's absolutely huge, absolutely gorgeous. But it's a little bit misdirected as far as the resources that went into it, and also not to mention the fact that it's a Catholic church, so we feel like spiritually that's misdirected as well.

It just makes me think of the verses in Matthew 9 where it says, "'Jesus saw the crowds. "'He had compassion for them "'because they were harassed and helpless, "'like sheep without a shepherd.'". I just thought, you know, all this, by the way, there's air conditioning on each of these seats in there, too.

For a church that's that large and beautiful, they're fortunate if they get 200 people on any given Sunday, so it's just a waste, and it's the same story in so many different areas of their life in that country.

We do see a lot of this in the villages where they don't have access to the basilica. It is kind of crazy to see something so huge and so beautiful, and then just like a kilometer down the street, you have people digging in the streets just for anything to eat, and it's kind of like that in their daily lives.

About 40 of the country is Islamic, and that number is growing, and the other percentage is mostly animist. They believe in spirits in the trees and in the ground, in the water. There is sorcery. They will go see shamans to pray, you know, why aren't my crops growing?

Can you help my little girl feel better? And they pay money for these charms. Then they can hardly afford that money, when they're making $1 to $2 a day themselves, and here they are putting everything they have into something that's not gonna help them, just like the basilica.

And we know that if somebody doesn't go to tell them, their kids are gonna grow up in the same paths, washing five times a day, answering the call to prayer five times a day, believing that if they misstep, or if their chicken doesn't die in the right way, that they're gonna have a horrible, awful year.

And that's why we are so excited to be able to go over there, and to use compassion, use medicine, use technology as a way to be able to bring Christ into their lives. The hospital, it is amazing. It's run mostly by believers, so we are free to share the gospel there, even though almost half the country is Muslim.

They are very open to expats coming in and sharing the gospel. They wanna see the country grow and do well, and so they're very welcoming at this point. There's a missionary over there right now. He said, not only are the doors wide open in Ivory Coast for the gospel right now, they're off their hinges, and people are just ready and thirsting, ready to hear.

So the hospital, it does give medical care. They have a really good program for preemie babies, which, as I said, is a really big problem over there as well. They offer employment to people who might otherwise be begging in the streets.

Polio really did affect the country as well, and we still see the effects today. And then presenting the gospel to the people who are waiting to be seen in the outpatient clinic is an amazing thing as well.

So we can witness at the bedside, witness while they're waiting. That's when waiting in lines are a really good thing. The other thing I'm excited about is being able to teach national nursing students, not just to give them a fish, but to teach them how to fish so that it can be self-sustaining.

When we're gone, what are they gonna be able to do on their own? And they can reach their own people much better than we ever will be able to. They speak four to five languages each, and so they can reach many more people than we ever would be able to.

So I'm excited about that, excited to get in the villages to be able to teach the moms how to take care of their kids better. One of the things that is just appalling to me is they think that cow manure is clean somehow, so they'll spread it on the ground and let it dry and then put their food on top of it.

Or they're cooking next to the pigs, or they just don't even know what to feed their kids to help them not be so malnourished. So I'm really excited to be able to get in there and to educate, to help them ask better questions, because often they just don't even know what to be asking, so.

The Mission as Technical Support, Not Just Medical Care

So yeah, I get this question a lot. Josh, what exactly is your job description? I'll explain it this way. You know, in any conflict or battle or war, you can have the most amazing, well-trained warriors on the front line.

But if you don't have these supply lines running and active, those people on the front line, no matter how good they are, they're just not gonna make it, they're not gonna last. We can have amazing medical professionals like Chris here and the other doctors and nurses, but she doesn't like fixing broken generators when they break.

And she doesn't like fixing computers when they break, but these are all very necessary tools for this ministry. My passion is to use my gifts so that other people can use theirs. To illustrate, I mean, you could talk about Vernon Denny Johnson, Chris's mom.

In a lot of these situations in the world, we've got over seven billion people in the world. In a lot of these language groups, there is only one person like Denny Johnson who has the tools, the time, and the experience to translate the word of God into their language.

That's one person. And time is so precious. One of my teachers used to say all the time, he said, time is a non-replaceable resource. And I've really taken that to heart because you can replace things, you can replace money and stuff like that, but if you lose missionaries on the field just because of health or retirement or whatnot, that time can't be regained.

And so my passion is just to help, be part of the solution to helping these people be reached because Denny Johnson is translating the Bible and I can't do that. At least I'm not set up for it at this point, but I will for sure be willing to help people like that.

So not only will I be working in a technical support role on the hospital there, but just being a good support to the missionaries in that area of the country as well, just providing some critical support needed just to keep the wheels turning.

And we were just blown away too by the amount of people that ended up in our homes just because they knew that somebody could fix a computer. And it was cool just the relationships that were built and hopefully that just continues to grow and grow.

Someone once said that missions exists because the worship of God doesn't. We're so humbled to join in this task to serve him because to be honest, the only reason we can do this and step out on the water is because he has the power for us to do so.

It's his power and his strength. To be honest, moving to a place like West Africa, in my sane moments, it seems absolutely crazy for moving a family over there. Some would even say it's irrational. People ask us all the time, are you taking your kids over there?

And the implication is that we're being reckless and we're just trying to follow Christ. And so that can be hard sometimes. We know that God has not called us to comfort, but to obedience and so we wanna follow him.

And for those of you sitting here tonight, from everything we've seen in you, I would just say, just keep doing what you're doing. I don't really know how to say this, but there have been churches in the past that we've shared with and we really felt burdened to challenge them to sort of wake up and get more involved in stuff like that.

We don't have to tell you that. You guys are encouraging, you guys are involved in the community, you guys are involved worldwide in what God is doing. So thank you for everything you've done as far as that goes.

Last time we attended this church, for example, there was someone sharing, I believe it was from the Pregnancy Center, just sharing about how much this church has meant to the community and to this. And it just made me think of in Matthew where he's talking, whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.

And I just think it's such an amazing way to get involved in people's lives. Yeah, it can be messy, yeah, it can be hard when you try and start dealing with other people's problems, but it's so worth it.

And I think one of the biggest things that we've learned is that some people are not going to hear the gospel unless they see it lived out in you first. And we really tried to take that to heart. So we just wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for your prayers, thank you for helping to send us.

And I just wanted to give a quick update on my parents as well. We know that you guys have prayed for them faithfully. And I know I've told a couple of you, but we used to get cassette tapes from Sunnyside all the time, the recordings of the sermons.

We had a trunk full. And it was always so exciting when we would get one in the mail. So all the ways that you guys have supported and prayed whenever my parents talk about you, it's always, they're a group of prayers.

And so anyway, as far as I know, they're doing well. My mom is in the country next door, Ghana, the country to the east. And my brother is expecting his second daughter here any day now. So she's over there to help him for a little bit.

She just finished up a really big check of several books in the New Testament, including Revelation. And she said that it went really well. She's very excited. And she had already, even the day after the check, gotten started on the next book.

I can't remember what that one is off the top of my head. She usually has two or three in different stages. So if you could just keep praying for her health and my dad's health as well. He's finishing up the church building that had just been done out there.

When the team left, they didn't have time to get everything done. So there were about two weeks worth of work left. So he's finishing that up as well. I know they had asked for prayer for their language helper, Sibri.

And he still isn't doing very well. My dad is asking that he will be healed, but we know too sometimes that God says not right now. So we're just praying for that situation that he's a huge help to the translation.

So the longer that he can keep working on that would be amazing. But we're just trusting the Lord for what his plan is in that as well. So thank you.

Yeah, thanks again for your prayers. As far as what life looks like for us from here on out, we've checked off most of the things that our organization requires as far as moving forward and getting clearance to leave overseas.

Basically, the last thing left is to be 100 funded. So would you just pray with us that Lord willing, we would be overseas within the next couple months in language study so that we can continue on.

We're about 70 funded right now, and we're just really seeing how God is providing and moving in his own timing. For those of you who wanna continue to stay in contact with us or continue to receive or to start to receive newsletter updates, stuff like that just to figure out what's going on with us, there's a signup sheet in the back if you just wanna throw your name and your email address on there.

Go for it. Thank you for praying. We never turn away any prayer. We need all of it. We can get, for those of you who wanna know more about our ministry online, our website and blog is ducttapeandbandaids .com.

So I'm the duct tape, and she's the Band-Aids. So yeah, thanks again for your prayers. I guess we'll just open it up for questions at this point if anyone has anything. So thank you, Jack and Sam, and Jana.

Yes, thank you, Jana, for parenting our kids.

Yes, sir.

Training for Technical Support and Living Near the Hospital

Yeah, so I took, I went back to college for networking and IT work just to get a really good feel for a lot of the basics as far as IT goes. Like I said, I'm not gonna be the best at anything when I go over there, but I wanna be a really good resource if there are things that are above our heads.

I might not have all the answers, but at the very least, I wanna be able to connect their problems with people maybe back here that do have the answers. So yeah, that, counting degree, that was fun. I loved it in college, not so much in the real world, but I'll still get to use that a bit.

I took a course put on by New Tribes Mission. They train people that are gonna be in a technical support role. It's a five-month course, and I took that at eight to five every day for five months. Learned about stuff like solar-powered homes, hydrodynamics if you wanna power your home with water, propane and gas, electronics, you name it.

So like I said, I just wanna be faithful with what God's given me and be as an effective tool as I can, so yeah, stuff like that.

I love it.

A lot of people think it's geeky, but I'll be a geek if that's what it takes. That's right. Do we have a secret handshake or something? I don't know, we'll work on that. Yeah, we will be living in a real home.

It won't be a mud hut. The hospital compound, they have about a dozen homes there for staff and missionaries and stuff, so we'll live right a stone's throw away from the hospital. So yeah, we'll have a tin roof and cement walls and stuff like that, so yes, sir.

We're about 18 miles away from them, so not very far. The roads are not always good, so it can take up to 45 minutes to get there, but yeah, we're pretty close, so. Close enough that she can be a babysitter if we want a night out, stuff like that.