8/04 It's One of the things we love in Hands is vision. We love the Hands Vision. All of us bought into the Hands Vision. All of us believe that the Hands vision is what God called us to do and we are passionate about it. This last week, here in Kachele in Zambia, I had the privilege to spend the week with over 50 church leaders and their wives. Oh, it was so wonderful to see all the pastors bringing their wives. We sat down and we dug into God's word. We looked at the mandate he gave the church. We listened to stories. There was one pastor from Kapiri - he's in his late sixties now - he said last year, it was the highlight of his year to come together. This year he brought his wife and at times we watched them, tears in their eyes, as they listened to God's word and they heard young pastors full of fire and zeal. Then we got to a place where we shared about the Hands vision - to get to the communities where nobody goes. I started sharing with them about Alugbo in Ibadan, Nigeria. How some of our Service Centre staff had to walk through rivers to get to these isolated communities, and how the children were dying, and how they are caring for them now, and how the love of Jesus was brought. We spoke about many other areas. The Democratic Republic of Congo and in Zimbabwe! Then we said to the churches, this vision belongs to the church. We are only with you to help you, but the time is coming when you must take this and run on your own, because we need to get to more communities. We need to go further. I held my breath. I didn't know what was gonna happen after we shared that, but I want to tell you, the pastors wept. They stood up, they shouted to us, "You must go! You must go! We receive this vision. This is our call!" It was one of the most incredible moments many of us have experienced for many years, as we sat back there under the thatch in Kachele. All of us were just committing ourselves before God, before one another, that we're gonna go further and deeper. The churches that already saw Hands, and they saw the model in front of them, they are putting up their hands and they say, we are ready to run on our own church. There's something beautiful, happening and we are part of that.