Welcome to the God's Goodness podcast, where our mission is to encourage and highlight God's
Goodness and modern-day miracles. We are your hosts, Josh and Jelly Hankins. Today we have with us
a special guest. We know him from church years ago when we went to a different church, and he
has this awesome organization, and it helps reach forgotten peoples in restricted and closed countries.
So countries that don't want Jesus, he goes. So I'll let him reveal as many details as he feels
comfortable with. But today we have with us Todd Matthews, and he's going to open this episode with
an opening prayer. Well, thanks so much, Jelly. Lord God, we just worship you this morning. We
thank you so much for the opportunity to be together and to just really give you glory for what you
do in our lives, what you do in our city, in our neighborhoods, Lord, what you do all around the world.
And we're just grateful, Father, this morning to be a small part of a big thing, Jesus, and that big
thing is your kingdom, your family, your work on earth that is really just a part of writing or
eternal history. And so we're so grateful, Father, we pray for each and every listener to this
podcast. Lord, would you bless them? Would you open their hearts? Would you open their
minds, Lord Jesus, this year, about what you are calling them to do in this world?
Lord, because we don't know how much time's left, but we know, Lord Jesus, that you are on the throne
today and forevermore. And so we give you glory and praise today in Jesus' mighty name. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate that.
Now, while there are some people that have been on mission trips and they went for years,
and some people on our podcast as guests have made their life mission work, and some people just go
on random mission trips. And Todd is one of those people that made his life mission work. It revolves
around reaching out to people that most people don't even give a second thought to and even
knows other foreign languages to get into these countries where they don't want Jesus. And so
where would you like to start, Todd? I know you prayed about what to share and we'll let you start.
Yeah. Well, I mean, we started from short-term trips. It was a short-term trip to Russia back in
1993. Maybe earlier than that, 92 maybe. What inspired you guys to do that?
Well, at that time, I was single. I didn't know my wife yet. I had gotten fired from a Christian
t-shirt company because they were doing some downsizing and some reorganization stuff. And
within two weeks, I found myself fully funded for a mission trip to Russia. It was like a total
surprise. Wow. But the thing that got me on that trip was it was a hockey missionary journey. So
like using hockey as the platform to get inside the former Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain, if you
will, had just came down about months before. And we went there as a total unrest. And we went there
to play hockey. And the hockey would gather these humongous crowds, you know, two and three thousand
people just to come to see these Americans and Canadians playing hockey against the Russians.
Wow. Yeah, in between periods, we'd preach the gospel. And during the days before the games and
stuff, we would go to orcineges and, you know, schools for children with special situations
and their lives and physical situations. And it was really just touching. But the thing that really
touched me the most on that trip was that there were people in the northern part of Russia, a place
called Romansk up in the Arctic Circle, a very remote area, terrible weather, obviously in the
Arctic Circle. They were just completely unreached to the gospel. And when we did like a street, open
air, kind of like worship and just, you know, like preaching, telling people about Jesus for the first
time, like people came to the Lord, you know, with tears, just crying. And I was kind of hooked at
that point because I saw people that had never heard Jesus before come to him and power and thought,
wow, there's just so many places where they haven't heard Jesus. And that kind of became just this
theme in my life that just began to like snowball where why should we have so many opportunities
to hear the gospel in the West and there's places that have never even heard the name of Jesus before.
And so that kind of set us out on a mission. And then when I got back from that mission trip
to Russia, I met my wife, Michelle, a youth group. And we both kind of just set up the course of
our lives to do mission work. And so in 1990, fast forward to 1999, we had been through like,
you know, the Bible school and getting married and having our first kid and all that stuff. And then
we launched out and we went to, and I'm not going to say the name of the nation, but I'm going to
give you listeners just a lot of hints on which nation it is. We went to the nation at that time
and up until very recently, it was the most populous nation in the world. And again, a nation that's
under the same ideology that Russia was under before the Iron Curtain came down. And so and to
this day, they still are a carmous nation. And so we moved there and we cut our teeth and missions
there, literally go into places that we had read and studied about that had no contact with any
Christian organization, any church, any non-mentionary, just anything that completely unreachable and
unengaged. And we'd go into these villages and, you know, set up the Jesus film and show the Jesus
film to people. And it was the first time they ever heard the name of Jesus. I'd say, have you ever
heard of Jesus before? People would say, who's that? Is that your uncle? And another lady said,
to me, I don't know what type of a thing you're talking about. She didn't know about what I think
she she knew I was talking about a noun. But she didn't know I was talking about a person,
place, anything. She had no idea what type of a thing I was talking about. This is our to understand
and comprehend. Yeah, absolutely. They haven't heard of this thing. Yeah. Jesus. We're used to
in the West, we're used to, you know, people know Jesus and what the cross kind of represents,
or not in the Ten Commandments or whatever, whatever basic background people might have.
But there there's nothing like you mentioned Moses, Noah, or whatever. There's nothing.
So we started with preaching with the Jesus film and there's massive response. And many times it was,
it was just accompanied by the power of God to, you know, where people were just repenting with
tears and just, you know, just coming before Jesus, some physical healings and just this openness.
But then inevitably every single time what would happen was the government would come in and they
would just kind of squelch, just squash everything that got started. And we kind of realized after
a while that we had to be more incognito, more kind of under the radar than coming out of this big
production, this big movie screen, and, you know, blasting this film to 100, 150, 200 people or whatever
at a time. And we had to just, you know, look for the man or the woman of peace. And that's
going to become a key principle in missions. And later, many people have begun to write about this.
That like finding the person of peace is just, is so key. And that principle translates anywhere.
If you want to reach a family somewhere, you want to reach a neighbor, you want to reach
someone at work, you just ask God for the person of peace. Who that person is, that's going to
welcome you, that's going to listen to you, and it's going to give you, give you time. And oftentimes
that person of peace leads to whole households being saved. Like for example, in the book of Acts,
Cornelius, or also in the book of Acts, the jailer there when Timothy and sorry, Paul and Silas were
in jail, and the whole jailer and his whole household got saved. Yeah, like this man of
peace process, and Jesus had something along those lines too. And I think Luke chapter 10 or
whatnot, when he sent the seventy out recent apostles out of the time. So if the person,
like we find the man of peace, that's the term. And so we moved more into that. This was all basically
the leading of the Holy Spirit, because this stuff wasn't out yet in like missions books and,
you know, strategies and theologies and or whatnot. Yeah. And so we found people of peace and key
villages. And then we began to build into them. And then they began to build into others. And then
that began to move at a, at a pace that was sustainable over over the course of years.
Like a ripple effect. Yeah. So not like a wave or a tidal wave effect. I would probably want to
emphasize that because it's it's like a slow coming kingdom sometime. Right. And, you know, of
course, we all want the methods and the fast ways and everybody thinks it's easy anyway overseas.
But it's not it's it's it's there's a receptiveness and the harvest is plentiful.
But the work to get that harvest. That's a tricky part.
A lot different. And the physical examples right there and how the land is like here in the states,
we've got planes and planes and planes of fields that we can just put a big old harvester,
you know, John Deere thing on and and make the harvest harvest, you know, with a thousand times
more efficient see than say in in other country we're talking about the user's chopsticks.
Like they have they have terraced fields and each field is a lot more work to maintain to keep it
level. You know, with mudslides come and just knock the whole field down to build the field yet.
And each field is so small because it's terraced up the mountain side. It can only be plowed,
harvested and, you know, planted by hand. Well, so even though the harvest is plentiful,
there's still a lot of hard work involved in doing that. And so as we began to reach the unreached and
just making an impact, we also noticed things like, you know, one of the village and hey, why
why do these kids have like blonde hair? You know, they have they have some like, you know,
American dude that came through here and spread a seed or something or what's going on. Yeah.
And then we learned to know it's not that it's a malnutrition. And so then you begin to see needs
that people have that you really can't turn your eye to. It would just be completely neglectful,
you know, the book of Proverbs is to not neglect the needs of the poor. And so we would see these
needs that like we felt like we could do some. So we begin to, you know, just simple things to
distribute vitamins and to try and help with nutrition, try to help with different projects
that would help them with clean water, just things that would help improve their life.
And those things and would help as well to, you know, obviously to promote the gospel. And so we
actually came to learn later that 80% of the world's unreached are poor. And so there was this like,
wow, there's this kind of like, not either or mentality that came to us, but both and like we
would want to see the spiritual need met first and foremost, but the physical need. If we could do
something about it, we're going to do something about it. And that led to one of our ministries,
which is in leprosy colonies, one of the guys that we had led to the Lord in an unreached
people group. He was the first person to come to faith. And he went through literally hell
with persecution. The government was after him, his family and everybody rejected him. This guy
couldn't find a wife for anything because they're just like, you're this stranger, you're just weird
because of his faith in Christ, because he's the only one. And he had remembered after he was
learned about the kingdom, and he was reading the word and filled with God's spirit. He basically said,
I grew up a mile away from a leprosy colony. And these people were quarantined in this place. And
we were told by our parents growing up never to go there, never to talk to anybody, never to drink
the water that flows down from their streams, never to eat the fruit of their trees. And of course,
they never touch anyone. And you know how we're told as kids like, hey, don't cross the street
without looking both ways or don't talk to a stranger or don't take candy from a stranger.
Well, this guy was told all these warnings about a leprosy colony. It was right up, you know, a
mile from his, from his home village up on a pyre up on the mountain. And he said, I feel like Jesus
is calling me there. And we were like, whoa, like, you know, first of all, like leprosy is
the same thing that we're talking about in the Bible. So he goes, we would think that's still around.
Yeah, exactly. And so, so he goes and he finds, you know, people with just deplorable conditions,
you know, hands and feet, you know, you know, been eroded off or whatever, and even eyelids where
people can't even blink their eyes because their eyelids are gone. It's just so much crazy stuff,
but they were so full of joy and they were actually quite receptive to the gospel. And so we've,
he started basically, you know, one of the biggest ministries to leprosy colonies in that
country that that's there now. And I think just, you know, probably in the past month,
they've probably been about 20 different leprosy colonies doing relief work and medical work and
projects of, you know, just improvement and development type of nature, all while, all while
nurturing disciples and baptizing believers and planting leprosy churches. And what was so beautiful
about that story was that he started all that while he was under persecution. And it was almost
like, well, you know, when life gives you lemonade, or sorry, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,
he was like, you know, this is all I could do. And he did it. And on the flip side, things turned
around in his village in hometown and more believers came to the Lord and then they don't look so crazy.
And then multiply, multiply the disciples amongst his tribe now. Of course, they're still,
they're still persecuted that, you know, the police regularly visit regularly, threaten the
religious bureau does the same thing in certain family members, you know, are just completely
embarrassed by because it obviously affects their, you know, their status and society or whatever.
Even they even take different benefits from it. These are all agricultural people. So they take
different land stipends and seed provisions. They confiscate all that from the believers.
They even built, built new houses. The current president there wants to build favor amongst the
poor class. And so he has built new houses for them, but the Christians didn't get them.
And it's like, man, I'm like, they're suffering, suffering, but they've got the peace and the
joy of the Lord. And so during this whole time with, you know, with what was going on in China,
we also were being invited to different leadership gatherings throughout Asia.
And we were meeting just these incredible, like other worldly people and, you know,
people that made me feel like, man, I'm just, I'm not doing anything. I'm not doing so much for the
king. And I learned not to be condemned by it, but to say, Hey, what can we do? We can be inspired.
We can be inspired by it. We could help them. There's nothing to compare, but it's like, hey,
and let's add fuel to the fire. And so we had an international fellowship there in that country
with a lot of people. And they had the fellowship grew to about 300 different families and, you
know, people were in and out. So there's thousands of people in and out over the over the years.
And all of them were mainly like missionaries and, you know, like profit directors and different
things like that. And they, after a while, they dispersed the different nations. And of course,
the big disbursement came almost a diaspora, if you will, it came with persecution and then
COVID kind of finished it. We're just going home with all sorts of forward missionaries and workers
out in the local church and the house churches again, had to go underground to which they,
that's where they are right now currently. And so a lot of these missionaries went to other
countries too. So suddenly we found ourselves with all of these like trusted relationships all
throughout Asia, the Middle East, and just doing incredible things. And so we felt the Lord told
us to incorporate his feet international as a way to help to add fuel to the fire to what God's
doing. And amongst all these people that we know that are just trusted faithful co workers,
you know, and so for example, there's a couple we just visited last week, my wife and I were in
Myanmar. And this couple is rescuing girls from traffic situations. They're rescuing workers
that are forced to work in scam centers. You know, you get those like texts and phone calls or like
friend requests on Facebook, but people you don't even know that no mutual friends whatsoever.
And you know, who are these people, you know, yeah, maybe they try and let in with like pictures of
pretty women, but really it's like a scamster behind it. That's trying to get your money and
they have these full on scam centers in Myanmar. And these scam centers are run by Chinese mafia.
They've got guards everywhere with guns. And if they basically say they're hiring these college
graduates, college graduates, they hire them, they put them in this place, they never pay them,
they confiscate their ID. And at gunpoint, they make them scam people. And so sometimes when you
get those texts, you could think and pray that, Hey, somebody's on the other side of that. That's
probably being forced into some type of like modern day slave labor. And so we just went to that
work, which is a big project that his feet international has, where we're helping rescue
women from the sexual trafficking stuff and men from these scam centers. But then also they're
reaching people in the slums and they've seen 3000 people come to Jesus in the past year. Wow.
And so like stuff like that places like these nameless, faceless people,
you know, everybody's heard about the big, big organizations and everybody knows you could
sponsor a child through this one, or you can, you know, send a shoebox from that one or whatever.
But like there's actually nameless, faceless people on the ground. They kind of make all those
connections for all that stuff to happen anyway. But they, they are there serving and they sometimes
they need some oil. They need encourage for sure. And again, these are trusted, trusted people.
You know, we're working with that. Just one example, we've got the same thing. I mean, his
feet international has a board member. It's working in Turkey. And when the earthquake hit
there last year, they put on a major relief effort. And of course, we were able to help raise some
money for that relief effort. And people came to the Lord and raised all of that. And so that's
kind of like the quick synopsis of what has happened with, you know, with his feet international.
And like all of its miraculous, all of it has like New Testament kind of like vibes to it.
For sure. You know, like all the way around, for example, one of the big things that helped us to
get past the persecution and begin to accumulate believers and client churches amongst the
the people group where the leprosy ministry started was deliverance. You know, people were just
bound up and all sorts of spirit worship for millennia. For millennia, then they begin to
meet Jesus. And some of that stuff falls off. Some of that stuff needs cast out. And then
neighbors and different people that know them take notice. A lot of times like the healing
is kind of tied into some sort of spiritual demonic situation too, in that context.
For example, one lady was just a super influential lady. She's business woman. And she was bound,
she herself said she was delivered from 70 different demons. And we were there for some
of that deliverance that came out in more than one episode, if you know, but anyhow,
she was sick and dying. And her non believing husband heard about Christians who had power
over this type of stuff. And she took them to see them. And that's where she met Jesus.
And she was delivered. And then the healing came because the deliverance came first.
Nothing sense. Yeah. So all that stuff. Now, I don't have any magic formula for listeners as far as
anything other than just faith and obedience to see, you know, to see the miraculous happen.
And everybody looks for kind of somewhat somewhat of a step or a module or a slum.
It's really just faith and obedience and one step at a time too.
Exactly. Exactly. So I feel like it just rambled on for like 20 minutes or something.
Do you guys have any questions or is everything that you think you're your listeners would really
want to hear? So I have a question. Have you had any close calls like really close calls?
Are we talking like being arrested or are we talking like death?
I would think either. Right. They're being arrested might lead to the one defending where you are.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, tons of close calls on the road. We're talking like,
like serious roads that are like just these cliff, like these roads on the side of a mountain.
Like, like I've seen a lot of them on Facebook reels or YouTube reels or whatever where
they show deliveries being made. And like we've been on a lot of those roads.
And you know, a truck comes flying around the quarter and almost like runs us off the road.
That happened like all the time. We were on a mud slide once and we just had to drive as fast as we
could and four wheel drive just to keep up from the mud sliding down at the river below.
And it was like this raging storm. And the Lord's hand was just always,
you know, always there, always one step ahead of things. You know, we dealt with different
illnesses and different things like that. And the Lord was always faithful to bring healing.
The arrest thing that we've been detained, I think about six times in the nation that uses
chopsticks. And that was man, just not really, huh, I really felt like my life was threatened there,
but the threat was being kicked out of the country and then banned from coming back yet.
And that was really a horrifying thought for foreigners. They really didn't do anything
other than kick us out or, you know, or detain us or warn us and those types of things.
And that's what happened to us. Now, what I've come to realize since that time is that when
the local government are the ones that get to you first, they kind of want to put out the fire
before the higher ups come in from like, say the provincial level or the, or God forbid, the
national level. Because when the, when the national level security, public security department comes
in, and it's kind of like the FBI or the CIA or whatever, they actually have jurisdiction over
the ones under them that are, they're not just like separate enemies. Like we think of them as
separate enemies here, share of departments as the local police, then there's the state police,
and then blah, blah, blah. But there's a hierarchy there. If they come in, it just, it totally shames
them. So we've been blessed that the local and provincial government has not been willing to,
you know, like let that information out of the bag of the national government because that's
where it gets really, really bad. And we've seen tons of friends that have been kicked out of the
country and, and I mean, my one friend was 75 years old. He was teaching about 50 pastors,
and they literally blew the doors down. Wow. It's like some sort of movie scene.
They blew the door and came in a little overkill. Wow.
Dory squad guys to arrest some old man teaching the Bible and about 50, you know,
local pastors learning from that old man's wisdom. I feel like that's not what they were afraid of.
I think they, they know Jesus. That's what they were afraid of. And that is an incredible point
because they know that they are afraid of what they've seen happen already in that nation.
They're afraid that if the people united, then they have a big, a big problem.
Hmm. And uh, where they're wrong is that like an underground house church.
We're not trying to like overthrow the government.
Right. Like there's no revolutionary kind of like tones in it. The revolution is embedded
in Jesus and his kingdom itself. For personal freedom.
It reminds me of when Jesus came, like the higher ups thought he was going to overthrow them.
And he's like, no, that's not what I'm here to do.
Right. Right. Not yet.
Right. Right. But I mean, when that one comes, it's going to be everybody all at once.
And that'll be a wonderful time to watch certain people panic while other people praise.
Amen.
Yeah.
Be cool, Jay.
Yeah, that's amazing.
I never even gave it a thought that the people scamming people are being forced to do so.
Like I never crossed my mind.
Yeah. Yeah. So on this, uh, on this last trip, Michelle and I, we sat down with
eight brothers from Ethiopia and some of them Christians, I believe of like, you know,
maybe like the Coptic line or, you know, Orthodox kind of like line.
And so they were told there's a job for them in Bangkok. They went there in Bangkok. They said,
uh, well, our office is filled here. We need to take you to Northern Thailand.
And, you know, right on the border of Myanmar and, and there's work up there.
They get them up there. And then they, at that point, they kidnapped them. They took them in.
And these guys, every one of them testified to very similar stories.
And in the scam center, if they do not produce, and they produce by basically just gaining trust.
And then the biggest scam is, is the cryptocurrency.
And they gain trust if they're continually relating to people and gaining trust and,
and making progress with like getting, receiving texts and emails back with, then they'll be fed.
If they don't produce, if they don't produce any of those results, they don't feed them.
They beat them. They make them stand in a corner for 24 hours.
I mean, my wife and I were just in shock and in tears, hearing what these, what these young men went through.
And these guys are, they're just beautiful, beautiful young men.
You know, one of them had a dream that this woman was going to come to them and rescue them.
It was the, our partner. He had dreamed of it before it happened.
And they, in the one place that the Lord sent like a panic over the Chinese mafia.
And they just let everybody go and they just, they just shut down the scam center.
Wow.
I was just thinking, how, how do you free these people?
And then there's some, there's some escapes. There's some escapes that happen.
So they basically just, they track their moves when they're transporting people
because they have to act like it's all normal. So when they're transporting people, there's,
they're not like, they don't have the AKs out or
they just, they're just transporting them in cars. Sometimes they put them in taxis and regular hotels.
Over the night. So it's, it's in the transportation where they can grab some people.
And sometimes if a family member makes a big enough stir, if they can figure out kind of like,
at least in the general area of where they are, they can cause some panic and they might,
they might release someone. I don't think that they're trying to kill a lot of people,
but I don't think they have a real big regard for life anyhow. It's just they don't,
they don't want to get caught. And so, yeah. So these guys,
now they're kind of in a situation where Myanmar will look at them, the government of Myanmar will
look at them as illegal citizens, illegal aliens, if you will, in that country who are working illegally
and they first investigate them long before they recognize their, you know, kind of like what they
were victims of. So they're just stuck. And so that's what our ministry does is keeps them in a safe
house and keeps them, you know, keeps them fed, gives them a job. They do work with different
others, jewelry making that, that the trafficked women do. And then the men help with some of that
stuff with sales and whatnot. They do microgreens and different gardening stuff.
Yeah, so they have something to do. But the cool thing is, is that they've all, all eight of those
guys met the Lord as in a way that they never did before. And they're kind of traditional
churches that they might have experienced in Ethiopia. That's just one country that they
take advantage of it. There's people from all over the world, more scam centers. And the one thing
that was crazy to me was that there was like, there's a 14 year old kid who had been taken advantage
of and he was from China. These are Chinese people that are run this thing. It's like they're,
they're like, you know, they're even praying on their own people. Just evil, you know.
So.
Well, another question for you. You mentioned working with lepers.
How close of proximity were you to these people that has a stigma going all the way back to the
Bible and beyond? The name of the disease that they have is called Hansen's disease. It seems to be
very similar to what was in biblical times, but leprosy could have meant, you know, like not to
hype things up to just kind of be very conservative without we look at it. Leprosy could have been
referencing any skin condition back in biblical times. So, you know, like for bad cases to
surrises all the way to, but you would think they might be able to discern between, you know, rashes
and eczema and whatnot versus. Or, you know, any impurity on the skin might have been enough.
Yeah. Yeah, it might have been enough to need like the ceremonial cleansing or whatnot.
But there certainly were lepers in biblical times because they've traced this disease.
It's been a disease that's very difficult to eradicate. It's a disease that's easy to treat
now. You know, like a course of like six weeks worth of antibiotics and then a follow-up course.
It's a different type of medicine. What the disease does is it kills the nerves.
And when they get a cut, they don't realize it's infected. It just begins to ulcerate the skin
and not heal. And then eventually the fingers go and the hands go and the same thing with the feet
and the lower legs. It just like the whole skin just kind of like becomes like hamburger.
It's very, very uncomfortable to like look at and whatnot. But, uh,
And they're in no pain.
So they aren't in any pain. As far as I understand, it's just that it gets infected and
ulcerated and it just begins to rot from there. So like if they're up too close against the fire,
they don't realize that they got murdered. And that particular disease was around
around in biblical times. So there certainly would have been some people with Hansen's disease
that were in the category of lepers. Now, if you wait too long to get treated for this Hansen's disease,
are there permanent side effects? Like do you always have permanent nervous system damage?
Or would you begin to feel again? Yeah, though, that's exactly, no, no, no, it's done if you don't
treat it. Your nerves are done with, and that's what the problem was. Like so these leprosy colonies,
they didn't have the medicine or they couldn't afford the medicine. And so they put them on these
mountaintop quarantined, you know, villages. And I've been in dozens of them and they're
normally in places that are so remote, so hard to get to. It's like the message is so clear,
like we don't want you around anybody. But how contagious is it?
Okay, so it, my understanding is that there's probably only a couple percent, a small percentage of
the population that are susceptible to it. You know, most of us are immune systems could kick it.
But there is that small percentage and that small percentage is enough to be just a life changer for
those that do get it. And there are different treatments as far as like vaccinations or whatnot.
But because most lepers have been treated now, or if you do recognize that you have it,
get those medicines right away. It's very simple, very simple to take care of. And then like you
said, the permanent damage isn't there. And that's the problem is that many people just didn't get the
treatment in time and it had done too much damage. And, you know, so just the deformities and the
nerve damage is already done. How you ever witnessed any miracles
among the community of the lepers? We have some healings. It wasn't for the leprosy.
Okay. Like we haven't seen, you know, like a leper's hand grow back or, you know, those things that
we would love to see, of course. There's a restorative type of things. But of course,
the spirit of God has come up, lepers and healed them of different elements and diseases and whatnot.
I love getting your newsletters each month. It's pretty cool. I don't know why I keep remembering
the pack of cigarettes with that guy. It's coming to my mind, but I don't remember the details.
Is it worthy of telling on the podcast? Forget. I apologize. Well, yeah, it's pretty...
It was worthy of putting it in the newsletter. So, yeah. So we thought it was kind of a cool story
because we were doing the recording, the voiceover for the Jesus film in a tribal language. And the
team there in the nation, you know, they had to do it in secret. And so they had to get locked into
a hotel room floor. You know, it was all set up with the recording equipment. That's simple stuff.
Nothing super complicated. So they had to be locked into that place. I think it was three,
maybe four days, you know, for the recording. And so the one guy that was one of those voiceover
actors, he stuffed his pockets full, I think two or three packs of cigarettes.
And he went in and started recording and he realized he didn't smoke any of the cigarettes in order
to have the desire to. And he just stopped smoking right into the recording of the Jesus
film. And every time I'm back in touch with those people, I was just back in that nation
about three weeks ago. And that guy's doing good and not smoking. I love it. This is what
they're scared of. The power. They're scared of this power that they know is with this name of Jesus.
And that's why I think so many people are receptive to it over there is because they don't,
like the government doesn't want people to have that hope. And they're receptive to that hope
because they are, it's hard to come by over there, it sounds like. Yeah. Yeah, they just, they know,
and there's, you know, there's all these demonic powers behind all sorts of stuff that happens
and the government and all that. So. Yeah, we're intimately familiar with it,
considering that's, you know, where the enemy would take root in everybody's government.
It's easiest way to manipulate people away from wholesome values and towards a different agenda.
Yeah. Right. Right. I can see that in our country for sure.
Yep. Maybe Jesus. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. And can you
share with people how they can give if they want to help with the cause? Oh, yeah, sure. Great.
Thank you for that opportunity. So you could check out our website at hisfeet.com. So h-i-s-f-e-e-t.com.
And you could see, you know, that there are different ministries and different opportunities.
We do post what's called urgent needs. And these are the things that we're pushing to get funded ASAP.
And there's different things like rescues and kids camp and different things that are all timely.
And so you can, yeah, you can check that out at hisfeet.com. And anybody can email me at
Todd at hisfeet.com if you wanted to just directly talk to me. And then we'll set up some sort of
meeting or phone call or whatnot. And yeah, that'd be great. Awesome. And what are your immediate
needs? What are you working on now? So right now, we're, it's kind of twofold. We're really beginning
to push the need because we're just in Myanmar. And there's so much need there for the rescues of
both sexually trafficked and the scam center guys. Because the more exposure these scam centers get,
there's more people that get stuck in limbo from there. And actually, the Chinese government actually
does not want these scam centers in existence because they, it really makes China look bad.
Nobody wants them in existence.
Nobody wants them in existence. Yeah. Except the people making money.
Yeah. And I'd love you select thugs anyhow. And then it's camp season again. And so we send some
of the most marginalized kids in the world to summer camp, whether they have a great opportunity to
hear about Jesus and these restricted nations. Yeah, governments think that it's for English camp
or it's for just a regular summer camp. But they're all infused with every staff member being a Christian
and every program having a biblical meaning. And they always have some sort of finale where they just,
hit them with the gospel. And that's leprosy descendants of leprosy victims. Those kids live
with a ton of stigma even though they don't have a disease themselves. Just they're just told us
be stayed away from society because it's just a stigma that does more damage than even the
nerve damage. Wow. You know, when it comes to leprosy. So we send the leprosy kids to camp,
we're sending, and the Philippines were sending Bajal children to camp or the Bajal people are
the most marginalized people group in Southeast Asian and the Philippines even admitted by the
Philippine government. And we're sending Bajal kids to camp and just to give them an opportunity
to meet Jesus. They're mainly from like a Muslim background and work there. Just
seeing some real breakthrough. And so we got camp seasons right here right now.
And we still have some deficit there where we're going to get some kids sent to camp. It's normally
40 to $50 to send the kid to camp, you know, for three to four days. And it's just a great life
changing experience for them. And then every one of our programs has a follow up thing where
they're just working with these kids all year round and get them incorporated into just the life of
Christ. Sounds like you're very busy. To say the least. I never know where to expect you if you're
going to be in the States or if you're going to be in another country. I don't know. I feel like we
try to connect for like, was it like half a year? Yeah, months. Get on this. Yeah, I'm like, it'll
happen when it's about to. Yeah, this will. Perfect timing. Yeah. And this will air in like a month.
So yeah, it'll be good. That's great. So I will put a link to your website in the show description.
And that that'll make it easy for people to give and connect with you. And I appreciate you coming
on and sharing about that because it reminded me of the one episode we had with Wendy Lawson. She
was in a time magazine when the smugglers were working for Jesus and she would Jesus bomb
little towns with the little tracks each night. They spread Jesus that way back in the day. So
it just, you know, reminds me it can be dangerous work when we know we're there and not getting caught.
And so we appreciate the work that you do to spread the word and all that hope and encouragement
that you give to these people. It's just really cool to hear about. And I knew that the cigarette
story was cool and I just forgot about it, but the Holy Spirit kept saying, hey, cigarette story.
So I'm glad you shared that. Yeah, I'm glad you got that one. Awesome. Well,
listener, I hope you enjoyed this episode and we pray that you share it with a friend. And if you'd
like to give to the cause for the God's goodness podcast and the audio editing, there's a link
in the about section and you can give there. And with that, we'll talk to you next time.