Couple sells everything to spread Gospel & help poor

well we were actually tobacco farmers when we got saved and so we had a large tobacco farm we had a sugar farm and when we needed the provision as god had intervened in our lives and we really had a damascus road experience so everything switched around and now the the although we passed it in the church for two years we co-passed it fell in love with the local church saw god's purpose in the local church loved it now suddenly it was all about missions it was all about getting out with the gospel which is what drove peter so strongly we've got to let this gospel get out to the people who haven't heard the word and so everything changed and we sold the tobacco farm we sold the sugar farm and we depleted our resources because there was no salary and so that was that's how we started we started using everything that we had and that provision ran out and then we went through a season of intense poverty it was actually pretty tough but you know what god came through and we learned how to trust him that was our bible school that was our training school it was in the work it was on the ground and it's all captured in the stories of the in the this book because people so often say to us these stories have to be told because people are in situations like that and they're wondering is it god isn't it god will he provide can we do it god is faithful he does come through and when i look back now on more than three decades of ministry with both the gospel and humanitarian work god has come through over and over and over again we we honestly can say we have lack of nothing personally because god has provided but there was a season where it was pretty tough i think it's interesting because you know when you get in a season where you're feeling challenged like you did to give everything away you have a naive assumption that if you do this hard thing that god's asking you to do that he's going to like give it back to you like many fold and you'll be fine but you weren't totally fine like you had holes in your furniture you were struggling to get your kids to school and have enough food so how do you spiritually look at that season well really as i said it was our training school it was our training ground where we needed to learn to truly trust god and you know what when you've got a lot you've always got a reserve and are you truly trusting god but god has promised that he will provide and he called us and we've done what he'd called us to do and he has always come through so yeah there are seasons in life there's seasons even in the provision of god where we need to truly trust him and go to another level of faith and that's why the book was called death defying faith because that same faithful provision was the faith that kept us during really tough times times of arrest times of being shot at times of real challenge where we weren't sure whether we were actually going to survive or not your husband even after this tough time and a heart for the poor and giving everything away he got stuck in mozambique during a really tough time and god broke his heart even more yeah tell me about that uh you know i actually want to read i'll tell you a little bit about it but i want to read just a little paragraph out of the book that describes really what happened inside his heart because he he really had a burden for mozambique and he went and met with the government asked them how we can help and remember this was under marxist rule at the time so they weren't really embracing the gospel in any way but they said we can take you to where the area of need is where the people are starving and they flew him up to an area called pambara and he was able to see the situation where they were trying to do food distribution but there was no food people had just come in from the outlying areas to band together to try and help one another and this is the camp that he landed in and they were supposed to come back and fetch him that afternoon and the pilot never arrived he was stranded there for 10 days starving and it was totally life transforming he was starving he was he was sick he he had had to drink the dirty water so it was really really a very tough time for him and let me just read the little piece here in the book where i just think it had such impact as he finally left when the pilot came back the book says here from the air i looked down on pombaro and saw that it looked so peaceful and picturesque a subtropical paradise of little thatched huts it was only when you got close that you could see the suffering that lay beneath and i knew the same was true of human beings if you want to help them if you truly want to help them you need to get close enough to see and to understand what they're going through and to me that's what ministry is all about it's getting close enough to feel the heart of the suffering to feel the heart of the poor to feel the heart of those that are doing despicable things because they're lost and they're without jesus and if we feel that heart it drives us and it motivates us to bring the solution to what their need is he shares an incredible story in the book that the two of you lived through where a serial killer was walking around the city where your sister and brother-in-law lived your sister encountered this man yeah tell me about it yeah he broke into their home one night beat her husband to death immediately while he was still asleep with a hammer on his head and then hunted down my sister and the story was horrific from the pathologist's report of how she then died but he beat both of them to death and they had two little children little four-year-old boy two-year-old daughter and they survived and went to his sister who had two children as well and so yeah it was a it was a terrible experience and it was right in the beginning when we were reaching out in apartheid days in south africa and we were reaching out to what we call the black people and the fact that this man was a black man and broke in and killed and murdered had we not been able to forgive it could have affected the forward path of our whole mission and so i we realized that through that experience but the moment i got the news it was like the spirit of god came on me and i said i have to pray i really need to pray and peter said i'm coming with you and we went into the room got down on my knees and i started to pray and these words came out of my mouth father forgive him he didn't know what he was doing and with those words came an understanding in my head of the spiritual forces that had driven this man to as an as a demonic force that had driven him to do what he was doing and i was able to release it and as i prayed that it was like a torrent of forgiveness that poured out of my heart and i could sense that there was malice and hatred and anger and unforgiveness and all these emotions that wanted to get inside me but this river forbade them from entering in it was the most amazing experience and the forgiveness is so so important there are people walking around with unforgiveness in their heart sometimes over a little thing not even a murder but something they cannot let go of and it's not changing the perpetrator but it's changing them it's restricting them it's holding them from the plan and the purpose that god has for them so the challenge today is we have to forgive we have to do it and it's not it's not overnight sometimes like you experience something kind of supernatural yeah it was but i know even from my own personal experience when you make a decision and you keep making that decision every single day that forgiveness will come it will but it just takes time sometimes it does and if you give it the priority that it deserves the forgiveness is the christ within he's able to forgive even though we might not feel we can we've got to let it go you launched this work with your husband together for three decades and just recently you've lost him tell me about this tough journey you're on it's been it's been really tough a terrible loss i'm so grateful that we finished the book together three weeks before he passed pardon me and and the book has captured all of those stories but peter was the visionary larger than life just a giant of a man with an incredible heart and the beautiful thing that i have now is the vision continues the vision hasn't died with him and even right at the end of the book you know he wrote here in the book i'm not done yet my heart beats with a powerful drive to finish my race yet still my life was not taken and the vision dream and calling are still alive stronger than ever together for the remainder of my days and far beyond with your partnership we are going to help our beloved africa help itself [Music]

Channel: 100huntley

Views: 12,175

Keywords: 100huntley, ann pretorius, peter pretorius jesus alive ministries, christian testimony 2020, christian testimonies, jesus testimony, my christian testimony, christian testimony video, testimony christian, my testimony, christian testimonies 2021, christian testimony videos, faith, christian faith, south africa

Id: gcwE206lNmE

Length: 9min 8sec (548 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021