Jared Buswell is on the board of Favor International, a ministry founded by Carole Ward. The ministry was birthed in South Sudan and Uganda during a time of war when the rebel Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army were killing and kidnapping. The ministry started as a prayer movement and has grown into a Book of Acts turning the world upside down movement. They send out teams to host portable Bible schools and thousands of people in Africa have been impacted.
Check out the Favor International Website: https://www.favorintl.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Jared Buswell is on the Board of Favor International, a ministry founded by Carol Ward. The ministry is birthed in South Sudan and Uganda during a time of war when the rebel Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army were killing and kidnapping, the ministry started out as a prayer movement and has grown into a book of acts turning the world upside down movement. They send out teams to host portable Bible schools and thousands of people in East Africa have been impacted.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:31):
Jesus said, Go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls in the name of the Lord shall be safe.
(00:42):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist, Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:06):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Jared Buswell, and he is with a great ministry called Favor International. Thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Jared Buswell (01:24):
Thank you, Daniel. It’s an honor to be
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:25):
Here. Now, our friendship goes back to when both of us were at Oral Roberts University. I graduated about 20 years ago, and we just recently reconnected at the U Homecoming. Yes. And I was hearing about all the amazing things that you are involved in ministry in Africa, and I’m so delighted to get to hear more about what you’re doing.
Jared Buswell (01:53):
Yes. Well, I’m excited to share. The Real stars and heroes are African missionaries, the indigenous missionaries who are led by God and compelled by the love of Christ to share the gospel with their neighbors and the far off places of the
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:07):
Earth. Let’s talk about Favor International. It’s actually a ministry that was founded by Carol Ward. Yes. And you are on the board of that ministry, and you’ve been very involved over the years in raising funding for the ministry and also helping to implement best practices for the ministry in Africa that takes place in Uganda and in South Sudan and other parts of Africa, which we’ll talk about. But kind of give me the quick synopsis of how the ministry got started with Carol Ward.
Jared Buswell (02:44):
Okay, yes. So we have the 32nd version, and we could do the 30 minute version as well. So in 30 seconds, there is a brutal demonic war in Northern Uganda. Started by, not started by, but continued, made famous by Joseph Coney and the Lord’s Resistance Army. The lra, as a lot of people know, up to or around 50,000 child soldiers were abducted, trained, and brutally traumatized to traumatize others. And this is a demonically motivated and inspired war, just a trolley on a choli. There’s no political sense to it whatsoever. There’s no political solution. The Uganda government can’t solve it. God solved that war a prayer, an organic prayer movement ended that war and favor of God ministries as it’s known locally, formed out of a house of prayer and a public prayer movement. During that time, from around 2002 is when they first started gathering at the House of Prayer.
(03:44):
By 2006, the war was over. A lot of events transpired in between. Then during that time also, a lot of people were moved by the spirit to bring the gospel into the prisons or into let’s start a school, or we need to care for these orphans who have no parents anymore. And so all these little different ministries just started out of a house of prayer. And without funds and without supplies. God divinely provided the ability for this small organic group of leaders to see the book of Acts open up and an organization was started. The Ugandans themselves said, Carol, you need to go back to the states and tell what God has done. And Carol had gone to sow her whole life and to stay permanently in Uganda. She did not want to go back, but God led her to go back and continue telling these stories that people in America wanted to start an organization. She said, Great, You do what you do here. I’ll go do what I do there, and we’re gonna see God’s kingdom come in as we’ll be done. So things got rolling and I came into the mix in about 2011.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:54):
Let’s talk a little bit about the importance of prayer, because this whole ministry really started as just a prayer meeting in a house, and now it is impacting that entire region of East Africa. So talk to me about the importance of laying a foundation and prayer and missions. Yes.
Jared Buswell (05:17):
So prayer and missions are absolutely essential together. I personally know this is, I personally know a many American missionaries who are well trained, called by God, equipped, financially supported, committed, who go with their whole families to live full time in a foreign context. And within two to three years, they’re back in the States having been beaten up by spiritual warfare and other things going on. And besides the lack of training in some of the spiritual warfare aspects of things, and this is all denominations, this is not a particular denomination I’m talking about, but prayer is laying our whole lives down before God and his will and seeing what he does through us. And when we’re entering into what God’s already doing, there’s a whole level of success there. Unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain and we really have to watch him build it. And so as we pray, we pray for his purposes, we pray for the people around us, we pray for situations, then we see God open those doors and unlock things that he wants to open up. And so it’s absolutely imperative for the Lord to be moving first before we go into the territory he’s already bought and purchased, and then we just go in and claim what he’s already won.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:43):
Now favor International has a variety of strategies for vo, both evangelism and for discipleship. You’re working in Uganda, you’re working in South Sudan, you’re sending out teams to other parts of Africa. So talk to me about some of the strategies that you’re using to both evangelize and disciple.
Jared Buswell (07:08):
Yes. So the main bread and butter Ministry of Favor is something called the Portable Bible School. And this comes from the inherent need in Africa for strong theological training for access to the word of God, but also knowledge as to how to use and apply the word of God to everyday situations such as raising your kids, maintaining a healthy marriage in addition to being a pastor, reaching the lost and training the next generation. So we bring in at least a minimum of two indigenous missionaries who live in a village full-time for two months and full-time Monday through Friday, nine to five. The students, the enrolled students are being trained in the Word and the ways of God. They’re all trained to be pastors. They’re all trained to be leaders. There’s no difference between the professionals and everybody else. We train everybody. And these villagers who would’ve had no access to a school, much less a theological education, maybe have never even seen a Bible in person graduate with their own Bible or an oral Bible if that’s required in their language.
(08:21):
And a healthy church is either revitalized or newly planted in that context, oftentimes multiple, if it’s near city, there may be multiple denominations coming together for this training. Our guys are intentionally nondenominational so that we can serve the local population in any language and in any denominational background that they’ve been exposed to in the past. But the kingdom of God comes in and there’s just revival in the city and the whole city life, the village life now centers around that healthy congregational planting. Now for the next several years, we follow up with longer term unique development. So our portable Bible schools are underneath a larger department ministry that we call Reap, R E E P, which stands for the Rural Evangelism and Empowerment Project. And so that REAP program encompasses the portable Bible schools, which are linked to other ministries such as women’s empowerment or church building, construction or adult literacy centered on the word of God.
(09:30):
So there’s many, many different ministries that have been moved by the spirit of God that are linked in strategic way in a long term transformation of a village. So we’re looking at changing a nation through transformed hearts, not just doing social aid. Everything is gospel centered. First and foremost, there has to be heart transformation, but heart transformation occurs best when the whole village transforms at the same time, when whole families enter the kingdom at the same time and pass on that heritage to their children and their children grow up knowing the kingdom of God from a young age.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:05):
And last year, how many of these portable Bible schools did you send out?
Jared Buswell (10:11):
Last year? We completed close to 150 portable Bible schools,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:18):
And each one would have two people going and living in a village for at least two months.
Jared Buswell (10:23):
Two full-time missionary staff,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:24):
Full two. But these are missionaries from Sudan or from Uganda? Yes, yes. And so you’re sending them out indigenous missionaries, they’re going into a village, two months living there and teaching every day?
Jared Buswell (10:36):
Yes, they are. In addition to additional teachers with specialty skills, whether in health or in marital counseling or other skills. So we have traveling teachers, and we do this all in strategic waves. So we have, it’s very complicated getting missionaries out to areas where there’s very little roads. We have to fly missionaries, different places. They’ve got to foot it walking, but the term they use is footing it over through the bush into a village, and we drop them off. So we might have a truck go, Okay, we’re made relationships with these four villages, we’re gonna drop you off, boom, boom, boom, boom. All your schools are gonna start at the same time and end at the same time. And we transport food, Bibles, diplomas, everything in a strategic and efficient way.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:21):
And talk to me about the evangelism component of what you’re doing. How are you evangelizing people who maybe from an animus background or up in Sudan, Muslims? Of course, yes. You have Sudan, <affirmative>, which is mm-hmm. <affirmative>, mostly Muslim, and then South Sudan, which has a higher percentage of Christians. How are you actually evangelizing?
Jared Buswell (11:45):
Yes. So the Africans themselves are bringing the gospel, and it happens in a multitude of ways. So a lot of times, sometimes our men go again based on prayer, based on the direction of the spirit. We need to go now to this specific village or tribe. So there’s that call from the Holy Spirit. Oftentimes we’re invited by the government, so we’re going into areas where there’s tribal warfare or there’s been Civil War or other kinds of strife. And the government has heard the reputation of this organization. And so they say, Hey, we’ve got this problem between this tribe and this tribe. Can your team come in and do something about it? Or it happens with the schools. The schools have to shut down because of a demonic manifestation of some disease or something. But it’s really demonic oppression, just really shutting down. The teachers can’t teach, so the government or businesses or schools call us to come in.
(12:45):
And so our missionary teams will bring in, just like Jesus, bring in healing the sick, restoring people to their right mind, and then proclaiming the gospel and teaching everywhere he went. And so our men and women, mostly men, are going around doing what Jesus did evangelizing first. And this just creates opportunities in open doors. Then we tell them that we have portable Bible schools that are free of cost. There’s no charge that can be followed up on, but that always follows up after an evangelistic event. We do crusades. There’s very successful and popular. We’ve got equipment to do that. We do smaller events, and so there’s different sizes of evangelistic events, but there is always some kind of evangelistic outreach. Or we’ll work with another ministry. If another ministry or another evangelist is coming through, we will partner up and provide the logistical support. And our men will provide a lot of that hands on and prayer support for God to have a successful event. The Gospels proclaimed people come to Christ, and it has to be immediately followed up with discipleship and training.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:04):
I’m Act actually very amazed at everything that favor International is doing. On the website, it talks about how you’re doing community development. You’ve got portable bible schools, trauma counseling, which because this area has gone through wars and a lot of attacks over the years, I I’m sure that’s very important. Yes, you’ve got the woman empowerment, church planning, church construction, and then in prayer of evangelism, you’ve got houses of prayer. You’re doing outreaches and crusades and then prayer mobilization. And then in education and discipleship, you have a primary school, you have a God’s Institute for Transformation Leadership Training Institute, then you’ve got radio ministries and Bible distributions, and then also economic empowerment where you’re doing agricultural business projects and retail and service business projects. So this is a multi-pronged ministry that’s doing and accomplishing a lot, and it takes a lot of resources to do something like that. So talk to me about the importance of sharing the vision with people and getting people involved financially in what is happening in Africa.
Jared Buswell (15:19):
Yes. So none of this happens without the power of God and without prayer and without practical fuel. Money is the fuel that went combined with the spirit and when combined with lives that are already laid down in love and in prayer to serve their fellow man, once you bring that whole combination together, then it’s explosive and great things happen and money is multiplied. So we see God take a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, $10,000 and multiply it so many times over into so many lives changed and doors open, reputation protection. We have never lost a missionary due to violence in any of these spheres where we’re working. And so it’s just incredible to see that financial support. When I first started with favor, at one point I made a mind map, but I just was listening to all the things the team was doing. I hadn’t been to Africa yet, and I was talking with some of the African team virtually, and I was talking with Carol and I said to Carol one day, I said, Carol, there are at least 48 distinct ministries that Favor is doing. And we can’t, can’t talk to Americans about 48 different ministries
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:33):
Like pick one or two.
Jared Buswell (16:34):
We gotta pick a just one or two because for each, every time you talk to in honoring financial supporters and givers, it’s really important to have a clear business plan in place, written down a knowledge of if you were to fund this whole vision, what would happen? How long would it take, who would do it? Why does it work? Who’s accountable? And it’s just necessary to have a lot of pieces in place before you go talk to somebody and ask for financial support. So I said, Kara, we can’t ask for financial support for youth sports programs and for the medical clinics and for the radio station. And so after a lot of prayer and a lot of discussion for a long time, the team settled on let’s group everything into four broad categories. And so the REAP program that I described falls under the whole category of community development.
(17:34):
And our website reflects this. It’ll show what we do. We do four things. So we do community development, which is the whole outward push with holistic transformations. That includes evangelism, discipleship, and practical help. Again, that follows the transformation of the heart already. So this developing whole, transforming whole villages at a time is a community development. And that’s the outward push. Then what we call education discipleship are all the ministries that train and build up leaders from our home base. And what that looks like is we have schools, we have two home bases, one in Gulu, Northern Uganda where we started, and in Juba, South Sudan, which is the capital of South Sudan. So from those two headquarters, we have a school at each location, and we’re building a secondary school at each location. This was originally done to educate the orphans who were coming into our cares.
(18:32):
So other ministries that were either leaving the area because of the bullets or for a variety of reasons, were dropping kids off at our doorstep. And we didn’t have the financial support to just pay the tuition dollars at first to pay for these kids to get educated at other schools. So we quickly put our own schools together. And those are now, they’ve got 10, 15 years of history of great academic success and tons of stories. So we’ve got a school at each place. We’ve got a radio station at each, And this again came from the people, the heart of the people. So we’ve got Christian programming coming out of both Gulu, Uganda and South Sudan. The South Sudan station has boosters that are broadcasting and gospel even further out. And we’re hoping to get that daily programming all the way into Sudan proper, but through the airwaves.
(19:25):
So that’s been a long and powerful story to see God move in those areas. So that’s the education that education discipleship is the leadership development at home. We also have a leadership training institute, which is a university education that all our staff are required to go through. And now that’s open to the community as well for tuition to get professional kingdom based leadership training. So this is creating the next generation of leaders who then serve on the mission field and serve in the places of influence, whether in business or government or wherever God is gonna have them go. So that’s that. Another department, whole area is the prayer in evangelism. This is the fuel, this is the foundation of the whole ministry. So we have a house of prayer at each headquarters, but we have houses of prayer at most of the main hubs where our teams serve.
(20:13):
And this is what really blesses and protects all the work that God is doing. Our evangelism teams are housed within the prayer teams. So as far as the way the organization is structured, if you were to come onto favor i ntl.org and give a donation, and if you were to devote it to prayer and evangelism, that’s supporting that specific, those departments that work together on both the whole evangelism side and the prayer side. Our prayer teams are full-time prayer warriors who not only man the House of Prayer, which is always open, 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM every day to the whole community and is a non-denominational community focal point for everybody of all walks of life to come and hear the word of God, pray, worship, experience, healing, miracles, revival breaks out every once in a while and they have to expand into evening services. And again, that’s totally a gift to the community.
(21:10):
And the community uses it, and it does not compete with the local churches. So it’s a very beautiful thing that God’s doing. So it’s prayer and evangelism. And then the newest area of focus is the economic empowerment programs, which has been on our heart for a lot of years, but we’ve had to seek out the capital funding and those kind of things to get agricultural projects started and other businesses sewing and training. And that also provides vocational opportunities for all the young students who are our family, who are growing up under our care. So it all works together in an efficient system.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:41):
Let’s talk about the role that you play. I’ve been reading a lot of business books lately, and one book that’s really good is called Traction. It talks about how there’s visionaries and then there’s implementers. Absolutely. And visionaries tend to be all over the place. They’re just really good at communicating vision. And usually a ministry is founded by a visionary, somebody who’s got big vision. We’re gonna go, we’re gonna impact lives, we’re gonna change people’s lives. But then there needs to be an implementer to come in behind the visionary, to really put flesh on the bones and kind of show what it’s going to look like, and then developing the systems that maintain it over the long term. And just listening to you, I feel like you probably are more of the implementer type in helping to build the business plan. And so talk me through what you do and what that process has looked like for this ministry. This is
Jared Buswell (22:43):
A very important principle for ministry, business and families. And it’s very important for people to watch how God has designed us to serve, in particular capac particular roles and capacities. And this observation that the eos Executive Operating System traction system, author noticed that in business, in successful business, there’s often a case where you have a strong, strong visionary who finds an implementer, a strong, strong implementer, they find each other. An implementer without a visionary is very useless and vice versa. But when the pair of them are together, big things happen. So I have been an implementer to Carol’s visionary. I’ve used the term before. I learned this language. I’ve always seen myself as an anointing, amplification. So there’s this anointing on our founder
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:39):
That could be the spiritual lingo for what’s a business term? Anointing. Anointing, amplification. That’s
Jared Buswell (23:45):
What we’re doing. And so that’s the language I’ve used internally. But I wanna share this. This is important. When I, I think I was about 19 years old, I was attending church regularly under a very strong visionary pastor. And I remember the Lord talking to me. I am a visionary actually by nature and design. I am full of visions. I’ve had to at many times just kind of quell and put down that part of myself. But I’m getting ideas all the time and just brilliant, creative things. So I see all this visionary capacity. But I remember when I was young, the Lord told me strongly, He said, Jared, you need to learn to serve me in what I’m doing now. Yes, I’ve given you ideas. Yes, I’ve given you a calling, but I’m moving right now through this man, and I need you to serve this man’s vision.
(24:36):
And Carol is out there, and she’s devoted her life to serving. She has beautiful messages on serving another man’s vision. She’s out there serving the Africans visions, the African missionaries are on fire and supported in doing what God’s called them to do. So it’s really their vision that we’re all supporting, and we strongly communicate to the whole US team the importance of our hearts being genuinely devoted to serving the visions of our African brothers and sisters, many of whom we might not have the opportunity to meet, but we’re here to serve them. So I’ve been for the last 11 years, serving our founder, serving the people she’s serving, and I’m serving another man’s vision, and I love it. And I know I’m a visionary, but that’s for a later time where God is moving now. I need to serve there now. And I think we all need to do that. When we all get all hands on deck, then God will move mountains.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:33):
Well, I really admire you finding a place to serve. Jesus said, the greatest in the kingdom is the servant of all. And I think sometimes in ministries, everyone wants to be the figurehead, but some people are gifted by God to do what you’re doing, <affirmative> and to help implement the vision. And I think if we had more people willing to do that, we could accomplish a lot more for God. All right. So favor international. You mentioned the website once, but let’s just mention a gift someone wants to help to support what you’re doing or see more about what you’re doing in Africa. What is the website where they can find out more information?
Jared Buswell (26:18):
Yes, the website is www.favorinternational.org. And it’s shortened, F A V O R I N T l.org. If you type in the whole name, you’ll also, it’ll forward you to favor i ntl.org, but that’s our website.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:35):
Awesome. Well, Jared, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. It was great having you here.
Jared Buswell (26:41):
Thank you very much, Daniel. It’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:42):
A pleasure, pleasure to see what God’s doing through you. Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today, I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (28:05):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
