Russell Abbot was one of my evangelism students at Victory College. Today he tells the story of how his first crusade was a major disappointment, but he persisted and now ten years later, his ministry has reached hundreds of thousands of people for Jesus in East Africa.
Website: http://advanzeafrica.com/
For more information about evangelism, call Daniel King, the Evangelism Coach at 1-877-431-4276.
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:01):
Russell Abbott was one of my evangelism students at Victory College. Today, he tells the story of how his first crusade was a major disappointment, but he persisted in now 10 years later, his ministry has reached hundreds of thousands of people for Jesus in East Africa.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:21):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. 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 (00:57):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. And today we have a special guest with us, Russell Abbott. Thank you for joining me today.
Russell Abbot (01:07):
Thank you, Daniel and honored to be with you. You are one of my very first teachers back in Bible college. You’ve continued to mentor me and empower me to be reaching the nations. And we’ve been going into over 30 nations and reaching hundreds of thousands of people for Christ. And I think some of those souls may be going into your account.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:34):
Well, that’s awesome. Tell me a little bit about what countries you’re going to and what God is doing through your ministry.
Russell Abbot (01:42):
Okay. So originally I was in south America, a lot to central America. Haiti traveled across and to India a little bit in Europe, you know, a good mix smash of the world. And in eventually God lead me down into Africa. And initially I was teaching and Bible schools and then doing whatever the pastors would ask me, if you want to, can you visit the prison with our team? Can you do a men’s conference? Can you do in an evangelism program? Can you take our team out into the park? You know, I, I had a fabulous time traveling around the world, living and staying with the pastors and then, you know, they would just throw me in the deep end. And we had our famous pastor, pastor, Billy Joe Daugherty. He told us back in Bible college, if you get any opportunity to preach, if anybody asks you whatsoever, just say, yes, don’t think about it. Just say, yes, I can do it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:50):
And so you started saying yes, and you have been doing it ever since
Russell Abbot (02:54):
He started saying yes, without even thinking or praying about it. And Le loaded me and a lot of great ministry situations. I would run back to my little guest house or wherever I’m staying in the room or the pastor crying out to God, God, I don’t know how to do this. Please help me and God would. And that I had a fantastic time and just been so responsive to the holy spirit and the opportunities just developed and grew my boldness confidence ministry. And eventually, as I said, God took me to Africa. We went there to start a Bible colleges. We started Bible colleges in Kenya. I think there’s like just from this one college we first started it’s out of that has birthed about 70 or 80 and about 5,000 graduates from that very first trip. Now this is this is nine years, nine years, 10 years later.
Russell Abbot (03:57):
But so that very first trip was very fruitful. We also did evangelizing out in the marketplaces and many of the poor areas just on the ground, roar our team, carrying the speakers and the sound equipment and stuff on the backs through and between the huts and things sitting up in a local ground, putting on the African Bing, Bing, Bing bong music and, and sitting up the dancers and attracting a crowd and then just bang, launching them with the gospel and seeing 2030, sometimes a hundred or more people give their lives to Christ on that level. And that got my blood pumping, just seeing the response. There was such a hunger there in east Africa.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:49):
Let’s talk about how you got started. So you’re from the nation of New Zealand, the land of sheep and Lord of the rings. And you came here to Tulsa to go to school at, at victory college. How did you end up coming to Tulsa?
Russell Abbot (05:08):
That’s a long story. You know, I was brought up in a heathen family, had a bit of Catholic training and teaching, but God was not real to me. I was just involved in partying and drinking, really a deeply broken individual who didn’t realize it. My mother had died when I was two years old. And I discovered the answer to my life was beer and lots of it. And so I was bearing all the pain and having a great time and I was loving son, but there was demons harassing me every morning. I’d wake up with my heart, still empty and broken. All of that beer in relationships. Couldn’t fix it. And these spirits would start tempting. Tormenting me, your life is hopeless. You’re going nowhere. You’ve got no purpose. Just kill yourself, kill yourself. But you know, good couple of bottles of beer can fix that too.
Russell Abbot (06:09):
So, so I was working but also partying and drinking as much as I could, but those spirits would not leave me. And I didn’t know they were spirits at that time. But as a tough young guy or pretending to be a tough young guy, I had all of that. And eventually eventually I came across a cousin who got born again. He took me to church and the gospel they preached in this particular church was acts 2 38, repent, and be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of your sins. And you’ll receive the gift of the holy spirit. And they told me if you surrender your life to Jesus, then you need to be baptized and we’re going to pray for you. And you’ll come out, speaking in tongues, right there in the baptism waters. And I didn’t believe it, but I started talking to the people in the church and many of them had miracle testimonies.
Russell Abbot (07:06):
Some of the lot were sinners and me, you know, gang guys that the pastor had been in bikey gangs. And he’d been on run for the law for many years for murdering a guy that was our pastor and then associate pastor had been what is it, Sergeant of arms it’s called and the house angels, New Zealand chapter hell’s angels, which means he’s the God of war for the hell’s angels. I mean, these guys were wicked guys and ex Draghi’s and there were some ex hippies, more kind of still hippie-ish Israeli and some nice old grandmas. And I was like these, all those bunch of people living together in a spirit of love. And you know, it was during my heart that some reality, some of them had had dramatic healings of life-threatening illnesses and asked me on different things. And so rarely really stood.
Russell Abbot (08:02):
This could be something. And if God is real, I want to know God, I want to love him. I want to follow them. I want to experience this love they’re talking about, and I want to live the truth. I want to get into my life and find out that there is a judgment day and that I’ve wasted my whole life doing whatever. And I didn’t live the truth and didn’t live for God when he’s real and calls me to be a son. So I thought, let me at least try this kind as a gamble, but really I partially in faith, but God, if you’re real, and this is really true, the improve yourself and fill me with the holy spirit like these people said, and I didn’t really expect anything to happen, but God was working in my heart. And one night they bet ties me in a bath.
Russell Abbot (08:51):
It’s like, come out of the water. There was a group of them just laid hands praying for me. And I had a vision of Jesus and I saw Jesus on the cross and I saw his crown of thorns on his head. And I saw the blood just running down over his face, over his body and washing into the ground. And it was like, God was speaking Russell. I did this for you. I love you so much. You are so precious and beautiful to me. I paid for your sins for your forgiveness, with the blood of my own son. And they might the pastors. Remember they shook me. I was just entranced with that vision. And God’s speaking to me and they shook me, tid Russell, you know, what’s happening. And I’m like, oh, what’s happening? What’s going on? And they said, you’re speaking in tongues.
Russell Abbot (09:42):
I was like, at the time, same time I, as I was having as vision, I’ve felt a massive and fully enough love and joy and peace and just bubbling up out of me was speaking in tongues was picturing Jesus on the cross. So I had that dramatic darkness to light conversion, bam. And one night give him serene my life to Jesus baptized, full immersion baptism and the water coming out. Speaking in tongues, seen Jesus on the cross. That night I drove home in my car and I was just laughing and crying at the same time, just crying with a thankfulness and gratefulness because I realized God is real. God was very real and by heart from that time on. But I also realized I hadn’t even been seeking him. I hadn’t even been searching him. I was like, I felt like God, out of his love for me, I was just like a grain of sand on the beach.
Russell Abbot (10:40):
And he had just reached down and picked me up out of all those other millions of people. And he had reached up and he brought me close to his heart and revealed his love to me. And it was a very powerful night, very powerful lives, transforming time. I’ve never turned away from God since that time. And I’ve tried to give my heart fully to him. And at that same time as that happened, the next, the next couple of days, I became aware that God had a special purpose for me. I had this feeling inside of me that God had something special for my life. I didn’t know what a calling was. I didn’t know what a destiny was. I didn’t know what a ministry was, but that’s how I was just becoming aware that God had something special and powerful for me. But I, and I also had the feeling that I just wanted to go around the whole world and lay hands on everybody and see the whole world heal.
Russell Abbot (11:36):
And that, you know, I was, I was saved, delivered, you know, those demonic voices were gone. The addictions to the alcohol I’d even been starting to experiment and then drugs. And that was all delivered. I was, you know, just one of these young guys, I was just passing all the time and he just took that change to my heart and my language to be pure. He gave me a hunger for purity. I just love to be good. I just love to be pure. And he delivered me from all of those past. Not all of them, actually there was after, you know, God, there’s some things he delivers you from straight away about all of those initial outward things and those demonic voices. And they had alcohol. And and not only did he deliver him, deliver me bat. He gave me that calling all in that one special night.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:32):
So you experienced true transformation. And I remember when you were my student here in Tulsa victory college, I was doing a class on evangelism in the missions part of the college. And we did some classes on how to do crusades. And I remember just going down through the list, this is how you organize the churches, and this is how you have a platform and this is how you get lights. And this is how you preach the gospel and giving all the different criteria that it takes in order to do a crusade. And then you went to Africa and I remember getting your emails and you always do a great job communicating, showing what
Russell Abbot (13:22):
They want me to do, a crusade. What do I do now?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:26):
And so I remember you sent me in one of your emails, a picture of a crusade that you had done, and you took all of the instructions and had given them to one of the African brothers who helped you out. And you had told him, okay, now for the crusade, we need to set up a platform in the market area. And when you set up a platform, you need to put a hand rail around the edge of it in order to make sure that no one falls off of it. And you sent me the picture of this platform that the brother had built you. And it was only about one foot off the ground. It was about two feet maybe by that hand, red hat. So no one would fall off the platform. And I just remember laughing at him because he took your instructions and just had this little tiny platform. And I think in the picture, there were maybe 10 or 15 people way across the other side of the field, maybe listening to you or maybe they were shopping. I’m not sure. And I just like, oh no, it’s, it’s very difficult. But you recovered from that disappointment. I don’t know what your budget was, but hopefully it wasn’t too much, but since then, you’ve done lots of, I want to tell you the full story of that.
Russell Abbot (14:50):
Can I tell you the full story? Yeah, yeah. You were helping me so much in those days and it’s true. I went down there and I told the Africans, you know, I’m up from America now, I’ve been to Tulsa. I was in TL Osborn and, and den Daniel King’s classes. And so I’m a crusade professional, and really I’d just been in one crusade in Haiti and how build the stage out of sticks. So that was my extent apart from your great schooling. Ubut you know, so really the Africans knew a lot more than me, but on this particular one, I was out in a area,unear Narok with the mass eye tribe. And I’d say, we’re doing in Kenya. Yes. In Kenya,udoing the first Bible school,uand this particular area for the mass high tribes had recently given their lives to Jesus.
Russell Abbot (15:44):
And so I was in school one day and I was teaching on the gifts of the holy spirit and how first I start off with teaching them to listen to the holy spirit, pray, praying for each other. And then they’re getting maybe visions and dreams. And in the class we all prayed and I prayed as well. And I got a little vision. So I then shared on the importance of once you get visions, dream prophecy, whatever you have to properly interpret and then properly apply. So I was sharing these principles and in the process of that, I shared the vision I had, which I saw myself on quite a high stage preaching to a lot of African people. And I used the word stage and the, I went and told the pastor who was the one who organized me to come. And then he came to me, you know, that night or the next day.
Russell Abbot (16:38):
And he said, we have a stage, we have a stage right here. You’re meant to do a crusade and our village. And I was like, what? You have a crusade and you have a stage. And he was talking so excited and he so wanted me. And I was like, I’m not sure, really. And he says, no, you can do it. And then you can come back and teach part two another series for our school. And I was loving being there. They were great people, sweethearts and spirits. And I was just making my schedules going along. So I prayed about, and I felt maybe it is of God. I wasn’t sure. Well maybe there’s a God and it’ll be good to come back and teach again. So I said, yes, let’s do it. Meanwhile, after my first teaching, I, I flew, but this pastor was so brilliant that he helped me, Mr.
Russell Abbot (17:30):
Plane. So I ended up catching the bus all the way through to Tanzania Mwanza. And I actually preached in as big crusade and Mwanza, the second largest city in Tanzania, and was exactly how was in the vision, but the people Mount of people in the height of the stage, et cetera, et cetera. And so I had a great time there just sharing briefly. I wasn’t the main speaker, but I joined them and did some trainings with the pastors then flew back, went back to Narok, expecting this big mighty crusade we had. We had stopped in Nairobi and got them to print posters, et cetera, that churches were promoting. Then the first day of the crusade cam. And I was, I was saying, my house was far away with our hosting me. They brought me into the little village and I was expecting there to be, you know, some music and dancing and crowd gathered.
Russell Abbot (18:31):
And there was just a little, little bunch of Christians going round in this in this kind of open space next to the shops and kind of doing a bit like an Indian rain dance woo. And raising her hands, shut up, blah, blah, blah, blah. And not hardly a person for miles, no one coming around them. Now I didn’t have a, your vision of what a crusade stage or anything. They’re just purely on the ground. And, and I was, I was feeling embarrassed. One good thing they hadn’t before that pastor taken me to visit this crippled lady. And she’d been bid cast quite a while. The whole visual village knew we prayed for her within a couple of minutes. You’d got up walking around, completely healed. And so she came down to she, her testimony at our big crusade. And and so at that stage, at that stage, we didn’t have a stage.
Russell Abbot (19:35):
We just went out into the middle and it’s like that people were far away. I’m trying to call them, come close. We’ve got a special basis. You know, they are just hugging the few people that there were hugging the side of the walls of their shops. And I was just literally preaching to the choir. And so that was the first out of the crusade. And I was a bit baffled by it. And it also is that the past the city had a stage and there was no stage there. And then I went back and asked her, the pastor, pastor, where was the stage? And why didn’t the people come? I thought you said, this would be a fabulous crusade. Why are we doing a crusade? And he said, you know, the people that we’ve had lots of crusades here and lots of teams and people go through and they hate crusades.
Russell Abbot (20:24):
They don’t even like them. And I said, now that you tell me, yeah, I said to him, so why are we doing a crusade here? And he said, well, you had the vision. You’re the one that had the vision. So we had to have it. And then I said, and where was the stage? You didn’t bring this stage down. I thought you said you had a stage. Where was it? And he said, oh, the word stage here means means bus stop. We have of a bus stop. We would, they were doing a crusade, was actually where the buses come through every few hours and stop the, pick the people up. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:00):
You really kind of had a, a translation error, cultural.
Russell Abbot (21:05):
Yeah. It’s like a visionary,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:09):
But did anyone get saved at that?
Russell Abbot (21:13):
So being a man from victory, Daniel King background, you know, we’ve trained that there’s not just one way to evangelize. And so I went back to the drawing board that night, praying to God. And I was like, let us form the church and to teams and let us go around and visit the people in the, in the town and little teams of twos and threes. And so the next day we did that and we just had a fabulous time talking with the people. They don’t want to come to the religious crusade and jumping and shouting in that little place. They were crusaded out. But when you just go and spend some time and talk with them, we had great times talking open our hearts. And I think on that second day between it was like three or four teams we created, we lead about 20 something, people to Jesus. And I think we ended up going for about four days the mayor of that huge metropolis city of about 3000 people. He was a drunkard. He gave his life to Jesus by nev on, as you said, then I had gotten angry with the pastor and I told him, you have to build me a stage promise. So I gave him that design because we had no budget. It was only two foot square, but it did have a handrail. And I felt like kept
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:34):
Just at a hand rail to make sure No one would fall off.
Russell Abbot (22:39):
Yeah. Let’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:40):
Come on to the important safety
Russell Abbot (22:42):
First. And really, I let, I let the Africans do both of the preaching. I was just a novelty Muslim guy. I was enjoying going around visiting with the people more. But by the end of that week, the beer had gotten saved. Like over a hundred people had gotten saved. We had a revival meeting the church, the whole church was packed out with people standing around and somehow God turned it into a great success. And we just went on for like three or four hours at meeting. Even the mayor came down and testified again. And yeah. So, so
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:16):
Since then, you’ve done many crusades in different countries there in Africa. You’ve done things with our friend, Michael Ross, who I’ve had on the evangelism podcast before. And you’ve organized events for Jennifer Wilde. Yeah.
Russell Abbot (23:38):
One day one Africa,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:39):
One God, one day, one Africa. Tell me about some of the different places that you’ve done, crusades and what results you’ve seen.
Russell Abbot (23:48):
So, so one of the first breakthrough moments in my life, I’d been into Kenya a couple of times, and I’d been working with this particular Bishop who some people called the Billy Graham of east Africa. And they were just crusade professionals. And they had whole teams when they would go into a town, not only would they mobilize for the crusade, but they would bring a team of about 30 evangelists and they would be mobilizing the whole town with the marketplaces. Jesus. And what was the Bishop’s name? His name was Bishop Ben Behati.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:23):
And he’s gone on to heaven now.
Russell Abbot (24:25):
Yeah, he’s been promoted. I think God said, look, Bishop, you’ve got so many souls to your account. I’m going to have to take you out just to leave some for the other people just to leave samples, but I’ve heard of him.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:36):
I mean, he had a tremendous ministry.
Russell Abbot (24:38):
Yeah, yeah. A lot of Vangelis went through him, some quite famous ones. And so that really scald me an African evangelism being there on his big crusades, out in his little market, preaching crusades, et cetera. And some people were speaking about Burundi and sharing how there’s many, it’s a really impoverished nation and many unreached people. They are. And I started weeping and crying for the souls of Burundi. And it started stirring in me go and get one of our gospel vans we have in Kenya with the team, with the generator of the whole, the whole sound system speakers, et cetera, and traveled down to Burundi and, and just go through all the places you can. And Burundi preaching the gospel, saving as many souls as you can. And this time I flew into Rwanda, stayed with some missionary friends there, and God just downloaded the whole plan.
Russell Abbot (25:38):
And then, you know, God is he’s widest, maybe the right word, God. Sometimes he doesn’t tell you the whole story until you get halfway into it. And when I was in Rwanda, he said, I’m not just sending you to Brenda, you’re going to go to four nations. You’re going to take the van through and to Uganda and to Eastern Congo and to Rwanda and into Burundi. And so I had to set up all of these ministry. I hate to go to various churches and all of these nations beforehand and set up these ministry times, we’d spend a week in each church and we spent 10 weeks on the road with my evangelism team, having the most fantastic, craziest, exhausting time of our lives. Staying in little broken down and guest houses, et cetera, and rising up early, going having two to three or four Vince per day, preaching in the market.
Russell Abbot (26:37):
Places preaching in the schools, preaching on the side of the village hill, sitting up the Jesus movie at night out there, especially in the nations of Burundi and Rwanda that dense most densely populated nations in Africa. When you sit up the Jesus movie, it is the light shine on the hill. There can be just like 20 or 30 people you start with. Then you can get up to over a thousand. People have seen that and come and see what’s happening here. And so within 10 weeks just preaching these little meetings. We had over 50,000 decisions for Christ. Wow, God give me the goal to pray for and believe for. And it’s like we pushed and I pushed my team at our one stage. They all abandoned me and went back to Kenya. I was lifted on my own with a whole big bowl of, to pay God just just went back to the, to the floor, praying, okay, God, what now they say, they’re going to arrest me if I don’t get somebody.
Russell Abbot (27:36):
So, and God sent me the money. God gave me a new vision, how to work. My, my one coordinator from one that came back and we put together a plan and we finished and a power and authority. And we, we saw those over 50,000 souls and that was already a life transforming time. And it was after that is when I started praying. Maybe I should settle in east Africa and through a series of themes, God confirmed that I came in 2012 at the end and started working there just on a very low level preaching on the ground and little marketplaces and gathering people soon heard of, as people said, can you sit up crusades for us? So then we started getting a bit of money. We’d build some little wooden crusades for a couple of hundred stages for a couple of hundred dollars and have a rickety sound system we’d hired.
Russell Abbot (28:31):
And it just got bigger and bigger until we were using some of the biggest stages there in east Africa, we did the capital of Burundi and the end with my cross, the president’s wife came, brought all of her, you know, soldiers and securities. And she spoken, preached from the stage. It was broadcast right across the nation on national TV. That was one of our highlights. We’ve done other major cities with even larger crusades in Rwanda and also down in Tanzania. And so, so now a few years later, it’s like hundreds, hundreds of thousands of souls have been reached and a few, few, very large crusades, quite a few mediums and still a lot, still a lot of small village crusades, hundreds of them really
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:29):
That’s wonderful that God has given you such tremendous fruit and all started from the one foot high rickety stage with handrails. And now
Russell Abbot (29:39):
God was my first where I was the star billing preacher. And yeah, it was a requirement.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:46):
It wasn’t your last stuck with it and kept
Russell Abbot (29:51):
That taste of preaching from the big stage. Well, I had an Haiti as well and there in Rwanda. And so God was preparing you now. It says, do not despise the day of the small beginning. Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:06):
So now you’ve established yourself there in east Africa. You’ve met a beautiful African woman who you asked to be your wife. Tell me about that and tell me about your children.
Russell Abbot (30:21):
Yeah. So for you, young evangelists, ladies and gentlemen, it’s I would just say echoing Kenneth Hagen, pray and obey most simplest keys, just pray, listen to the holy spirit, what he speaks, shows you, and then just go and do it. That is just powerful keys for success right there, but not just keys for success in ministry, you have dreams and your heart vision. Some of them are often connected with a families and children, et cetera, as you pray and obey, God will lead you to your highest destiny. And he will even bring the exact partner and help mate, or husband, whatever for you. And I was all the time being single for so long traveling. And so many nations, many times so lonely on the road. And many times I think it’s time. Lord, I think it’s time. I need my wife. I’ll be much greater traveling round with my partner beside me.
Russell Abbot (31:22):
And as many times I told God that it was time for me to get married and I didn’t hear very much. And when I went and settled there in east Africa, I pretty much given up on marriage and God came and spoke to me. I want you to settle here and not just to settle here and build a ministry, but to find a wife, build a family and she will be your help mate for you. And she she’ll help you with the culture of the people. And God has truly answered my prayers above and beyond. He brought me a beautiful young woman of God who loves Jesus so much. She was a worship leader in a church. He was already ministering with the orphans. She is a powerful and to Cedar, even now when I’m praying, I start to, you know, after a little while, get tired, but she’s still going strong. So I can’t let her beat me. I have to keep praying too. So I think she’s maybe three quarters of the success, plus our supporters and great mentors like Daniel to our ministry. What was it
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:24):
And your children? Tell me, tell me about your children.
Russell Abbot (32:28):
Yeah, we got three beautiful little cuties. They rarely, I think children at that age, they have a ministry in it’s called the ministry of laughter and giggling. When you’re in ministry, sometimes you can get to be a bit serious and thinking and planning and calling and praying about all this stuff. And sometimes, sometimes we need a great sense of humor on the mission field. Sometimes we need to roll around on the floor with our kids, just laughing and giggling and letting them jump on top of us and just have some fun days with the family. So really it’s, it’s brought me back. It’s like, it’s renewing my youth within me. I’ve been on the road for a long time. And now God has given me a beautiful young family and a real, really a blessing. Our little oldest daughter’s called area Anna. She is super smart.
Russell Abbot (33:25):
She speaks three languages. She’s not even five yet. She just, this morning, Daniel, I was talking to, to the mother saline, the international beauty queen. And she was saying, we’ve got a big problem with your daughter, daddy. You know, when they start talking about your daughter, you know, you’re in trouble. Yeah. And she said, you know what? She did. She filled up her school bag with all of his sweaters and shoes. And she took them to the school and she gave them to all the children in the school. And then she took other things, jackets and different things to the family, friends who have a bunch of little children. And she gave them away without telling me to all of those babies and children. And then someone visited him, young little babies and she got her little dollies and she gave her little dolls.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:21):
Wow. It sounds like she has a ministry of clothes distribution.
Russell Abbot (34:26):
She’s got a beautiful, sweet heart. She loves people. And that’s the first time she’s done that. But part of our ministry also in Africa is we try and we go out to the families that are in extreme poverty and we take emergency supplies and food and clothings, and we try and lift them out of that. And then we work over that period of time to where they are self-sustaining and she’s sometimes been with us on those trips. And other times she sees us loading up the car and she’ll say, mommy and daddy, you going to visit the poor people in the visit village again. And so really the whole thing of, you know, not talking is good saying the right things, but living Christ and being Christ is having so much of a powerful effect on the children, around you. And they’re seeing them soybeans things that you don’t even realize and add a little boy, he’s nearly three.
Russell Abbot (35:20):
He’s very smart. He’s kind of shy, but you can see he’s creative. And then our very youngest is just one and a half. And he’s a very tough little guy. He wrestles with his older brother and sometimes he wins and when he was being born myself and mommy and some others, we felt this is going to be a man of authority. He just has a presence and a power to him already. So God is a dream maker and the dream for filler pray and obey every day. Like, you know how I got to this where our ministry now, before hundreds of thousands and seen God fulfill, fulfill that God put on my heart to start ministry and just going out and preaching to my neighbors first. And it was, it completely destroyed my social status in New Zealand to be a Christian as bad, but to be one of these Bible bashing Christians, there, it goes all of your friends.
Russell Abbot (36:21):
And so, but I evade God and I was faithful and not a single neighbor gave their lives to the Lord. Then I started going out on the church evangelism teams, then God would put on me. I read Smith’s walls with book that he made a, he made a vow to God that he would lead at least one soul to Jesus every day. And he was working at time as a plumber. And I’d been in the Lord or quite a while. Then I was back now settled in a city and I sort of led me. I felt stirred in my heart. Let me vowel that are at least maybe I can’t lead them in New Zealand. It’s very rare that someone will give their lives to Jesus on the street, but are at least preach to one or two people every day before I go home.
Russell Abbot (37:04):
And I was faithful to that for years and seen a very little fruit. I was faithful to where God put me into the heavenly calling and serving in the churches and God developed me. And I think he saw that spurt of faithfulness. And it’s like, I have to take this guy somewhere where he can actually bear a lot of fruit for me. You know, I’ve been a fishermen and you can go one place and fish all day long and not catch a single fish. And then you can just move, you know, quarter of a mile, even around the corner by some rocks or something with your boat, throw the anchor out. And you’ve just got the fish, almost jumping in the boat, positioning and seeing where the harvest field is as a powerful. And right now the harvest field is, is hungry and east Africa and other parts of Africa,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (37:54):
Your ministry is doing crusades. You’re graduating Bible school students from Bible schools. You’re planting churches. You’re, you’re ministering to so many people and you’ve been able to do all that with, with very few resources. But if you had more resources, you’d be able to reach more people. And if so, if someone is listening to this and wants to find out more about your ministry, or maybe even support your ministry what’s your website, how can someone find out more about you?
Russell Abbot (38:29):
Okay, thanks for bringing that up. Daniel. Yes. Anyone listening? We need dozens. We can say hundreds. We’re not shy of hundreds of people to come on as monthly supporters, but God has sent me back. No, I live full time. And one, the Africa traveling across Africa, God has sent me back to USA at this time with a mandate to bring on more monthly supporters because he wants us to expand our mission to, to stop working just for my little home office to have a proper offices, to have department leaders. And we’ve been there for nearly 10 years. Now, we have a great level of experience and God is saying, now’s the time to expand and multiply your leadership team. And to be full-time reaching all of these areas to go from the thousands to the hundreds, to even reaching the millions per year. And so we would love for you. We’d be very honored for you to come on board and support us. Our website is advance africa.com and how you spell advance is a D V a N Zed, not C, but we put it with a Zed
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:47):
Z for those of you in America. Okay.
Russell Abbot (39:50):
Z. Yeah. I’m reached where each in all cultures. Thanks. Daniel advance
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:54):
Africa. It’s Z or Zed instead of a skip.
Russell Abbot (39:59):
See a little bit of extra zing Daniel. That’s wonderful. Yeah. Advance africa.com with a Z and on our websites. You’ll see a lot of the different works we do in fact that we need to update that because we’re doing a lot of crusades and larger ones since that time. And we’ve brought on board some more ministries, but you’ll get a good, a taste of our ministry. You’ll be able to see a lot of nice pictures of what we’ve been doing. And there is for those who have PayPal, it’s a very easy to click on that link there, and you can shoot money through to our 5 0 1 C ministry accounts here in USA, where you will get a tax receipt for it. And you can even click make this a recurring monthly payment. And you’ll be set up as one of our monthly supporters. And we will contact. You get to know you we’ll be praying for you daily. And you’ll become part of our African miracle making team. And if I get a chance, I’ll visit you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:04):
That’s awesome. Well, Russell, I’m so delighted to hear about all the fruit that your ministry is producing. It is wonderful to hear about what you’re doing in Africa and the thousands and thousands of lives that you’re impacting there. Thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. Appreciate it.
Russell Abbot (41:26):
And Daniel just so happy and excited to be here. And thank you for being new. You know, when you first came into the Bible school, I thought there was just Billy Graham and a few other evangelists in the world TLS born and Reinhard bond key. And then you come in and you just shook my world. And, and you were very young at that time and young and so passionate and so knowledgeable. And you’d already been over half the world. And I was like, if this young guy, who’s almost like a teenager can be doing that. God, what can I do? So you really helped to just give me even the vision to start believing for these type of things. And not only that you’ve stayed with me all of these years, mentoring and training me, taking me level by level, step up, and God bless you. God, please stay secure in your family. You’re a wonderful example. Wonderful mentor, wonderful friend, just so happy and honored to be here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (42:32):
Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (43:52):
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.
