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Plays On Word Radio
Ep 110: Uniting in Purpose - The Impact of Step of Faith (Part 1)
"Have you ever considered doing mission work for the kingdom of God?
Today's episode explores faith-driven efforts in Haiti, overcoming the impoverished nation's struggles, and the amazing power of hope in God."
We share powerful stories of faith and service from Haiti. Join us as we explore the experiences of those involved with Step of Faith Ministry and uncover the impact of compassion in the midst of adversity.
• Encountering the president of Haiti and sharing the Gospel
• The founding story and mission of Step of Faith Ministry
• Insights on the realities of poverty faced by families in Haiti
• The importance of food and education programs in creating hope
• Transformative worship experiences despite dire circumstances
• Connecting with others through faith, even in tragedy
PlayMakers:
Patrick Hess, Vice President
Pam Hess, Mission's Coordinator
Step Of Faith Ministry
https://stepoffaithministry.org/
Plays On Word website
Plays On Word YouTube
Plays On Word Facebook
Plays On Word Instagram
Email us: team@playsonword.org
Lord you know. Hey guys, you are now listening to Plays on Word Radio.
Speaker 3:It's the best he comes to find out, it's the president's motorcade. By God's grace, he was able to walk around to the other side of one of these vehicles. The window rolled down and there was the president of Haiti. He said I had three minutes to tell him about Jesus, and he did To the point where the president asked for a Bible. He went back into the mission house, got a Bible, gave it to the president. As soon as that ended, the road opened up and off went the motorcade. I think it was the following night he was assassinated. Your big name.
Speaker 2:Your big name, your big name.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Plays on Word Radio, where we discuss, analyze, work and play on the Word of God. Thank you for joining us on this excursion. Today let's join Pastor Teddy, also known as Fred David Kenny Jr, the founder of Plays on Word Theater, as he does a deep dive into the Word of God.
Speaker 2:All right. So let's welcome these guys to the Plays on Word radio program. Welcome, this is a long time coming, you guys. This has been a minute. We are with Patrick and Pam.
Speaker 4:Hess. Yes, longtime friends of ours brother and sister in Christ.
Speaker 2:And these guys, you guys would be considered playmakers for Plays on Word. Absolutely right, Playmakers, Not just playground section, but playmakers, People that make. Actually, this radio program you guys are listening to right now in part is made possible by these guys here. And you guys head up a ministry called Step of Faith. What is that? Tell our listeners, tell us what it is. What do?
Speaker 3:you guys do Well, first of all, it's great to finally be able to meet with you guys like this and have this time. I know we've been trying for a while. So Step of Faith ministry started gosh back in 2003 by our founder, bob Hager, and his wife, sue. Bob had been going to Haiti for 20 plus years prior to the actual name of Step of Faith, and he was going down when there was no electricity, when there was times he was in villages and the children were trying to rub the white off his skin because they couldn't understand why he wasn't the same color as they were. And around 2002, they were starting to get like people who wanted to help and give donations and things like that. So Bob said it was best to make a Christian nonprofit. So Step of Faith was born in 2003.
Speaker 3:And over the last 22 years now, it has evolved to include, as you guys know, a lot of different aspects.
Speaker 3:As you guys know, a lot of different aspects. We have continued in Haiti for all of these years with helping with the medical clinic and feeding programs, children going to school and college and bringing teams down so that they can experience sharing the gospel. In a country like Haiti, we also have local ministries, a tutoring program right here where we're from, in Brick, new Jersey, as well as Atlantic City. We have teams that go down there every summer and partner with New City Fellowship, and in 2014, we were introduced to the country of Albania by our good friend, mike Durante, who grew up with Sue. So a lot of relationships here throughout the ministry and, as you guys are aware, you guys came with us some years later. So it's a ministry centered on sharing the gospel in ways that we can also provide necessary needs and it just opens the door for people to be willing to hear about Jesus Christ, as we're meeting the needs, practical needs such as food and education and things like that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, kind of the whole idea behind Step of Faith was to be like the hub of a wheel, like you guys have heard before, with all the spokes going out to all these different entities and ways to share the gospel and be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:Amen. One of the things that I've noticed is that you guys are connectors in many ways. You guys connect. You connect Certain ministries that would never have connected, but the common denominator is Christ. But when you look at it, the tools that Christ is using it's Step of Faith Ministries and we'll talk about that in a minute, more of the connections but we have connections, lifelong connections, with other ministries because of you guys.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Step of Faith is actually a supporter of ours. Yes, this radio program wouldn't be happening, and Pam is on our board.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm getting to that. I plan on getting to that. Yeah, pam has been and Patrick both have been. Just, you guys have been very, very important in making the things that we do possible. So we are an example of the connectivity from from step of faith. And Mike, even Mike Durante, he's been on the program. Many of you have been blessed. He's the dude that was talking about Albania and he and the and the what the air force general. He was in the hotel and the general was like you need to get out of here before the bombs start dropping. Yeah, that was quite a story.
Speaker 2:A lot of people remember that, yeah, mike doesn't tell tall tales, he's telling the truth. So I want to back up, though, before we get into how you guys met Jesus and how you guys met, we have to back up maybe, maybe 18, 20 years, something like that. And we were all at one place, at Fellowship Chapel in New Jersey and that's another story for a connection and Pastor Cliff, the Gettysburg guy, you radio people listening. Now he's the pastor there. So you're starting to see some of these connections.
Speaker 2:Pam, you went on a mission trip and Katie, you'll back me up on this, right Pam went on her first mission trip to Haiti, and when Pam came back, everybody was all excited. They wanted to talk to her, and I'll never forget this Pam was. She basically was like time out. You guys, I need to go, I have to go figure out, I have to just digest what just happened. It was such a life-changing type of experience. Can you just talk about that? Because I remember wanting to talk to you, but you were like I can't talk, I just have no words right now. I have to process it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was definitely top five experiences in my life was the first time going to Haiti. We can watch on TV, we can hear about countries in need, we can support children in third world countries, as I was told by Craig Bogart from Aslan Youth Ministries, who took me on my first trip. He said I can prepare you as much as possible, but it's not going to prepare you for what you're going to experience emotionally, spiritually. And he was so right. I remember at that time we would walk across the bridge literally from the Dominican Republic into Haiti, and you're walking out of a town called Dahabon in the Dominican Republic and it's a poor town but it has electricity and power lines and stores and sidewalks and paved streets. And then you cross this little bridge that takes you over the Massac River and you are face to face with, in my opinion, one of the poorest countries in the world. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, it's one of the poorest in the entire world. And you're face to face with a river that was only like a quarter of the way deep and in that river I can still see it today there were children playing, children taking baths, cows and other animals walking amongst the river, people washing their clothes, people washing their vegetables. It's such a polluted river, but it was like their only water source. And I just remember walking over and looking at that and then looking ahead of me and the whole landscape was nothing but brown dirt. There were no trees, they had deforest the area.
Speaker 3:This is a Wannmyth, and that week was just one of the most amazing weeks of my life in showing me how people who love Jesus choose to live with joy in the hardest circumstances I've seen in the you know, 25 years of being a Christian. And it did. It just rocked me. And when I came home, I remember like I didn't want to go anywhere. I did not even want to open up my refrigerator. I remember turning on my faucet and crying because I had running water, which there hadn't been for the week I was there, bathrooms, I mean just the things we easily take for granted. They were living without, and there's still people today in Haiti living without that. So it was a very impactful trip and one that led me to want to bring others down there, which I've had the privilege of doing for the last 15 years.
Speaker 2:I remember you I think it was that trip. You came back and you were telling us how some of the people were eating dirt. I'm still, all these years later, I'm still trying to comprehend. Like, wait what? And yet can you talk about the poverty that you saw? But yet, at the same time, you said the worship experience, the praise, was such a—I'll let you speak. I'll let you speak. Tell us about that.
Speaker 3:Well, to the point of the dirt. Yes, that still happens in Haiti today, in some of the villages, when they go through their droughts, when they—or like what happened four years ago with the assassination of their president They've had no government, prices are sky high, people have no jobs and the moms, out of desperation, will make mud pies or mud cookies out of oil and dirt and a little salt, and they bake them in the sun and they feed them to their children, just so their children's stomachs aren't growling and aren't there's in pain from being hungry. Now, obviously, the problem is that makes them sick and then it's a. You know, it's a revolving door of death and and also that is still going on today why we have a feeding program throwing a little rice to add you know a little nutrition, but yeah, I'm trying I'm trying to process that like the I just I I don't get that well.
Speaker 2:Well, here's a, here's a quick.
Speaker 3:Yeah, here's a quick story. This this was not on the first trip, but it was a a trip after that when I started to bring teams down and we would. We would do a vacation bible school for the children and it would be two days with the boys, two days with the girls, up on this property again that our friends from Aslan Youth Ministries own and have developed and Step of Faith has helped develop, after you know, over these years and we would feed the children each day a big plate of rice and beans with a little bit of fish and sauce, because for some of these children, it was still their only meal of the day and it was early on. It might have been around 2013, 2014. I was handing a plate to a child and, through our interpreter, she said something and our interpreter said, no, she's not going to accept the plate of food, and I said I don't understand why not. And then the child spoke again through our interpreter and he said she told me it's not her day to eat. It just stopped me in my tracks Again. Just a time of crying and a time of even questioning God, like Lord, why are you allowing these children to live in just the most desperate of situations, she ate the plate of food. We talked to her. We told her all the children present there were going to eat, because she had other siblings with her and she felt like her siblings were going to eat, but it wasn't her day to eat.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it's very difficult down there with the poverty. There was another part to your question that just went out of my mind, though the worship, oh the worship, oh my goodness. They worship with abandonment. I wish everyone from up here can go down and experience their time of worship. It is both beautiful and powerful. I remember, under a mango tree, when there wasn't a church on the property and they sang Amazing Grace in Creole, a cappella, and I stood there almost like shaking. It was that beautiful and you just felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, knowing that these people again are living in little huts with no bathrooms, no running water, no electricity. They don't know when their next meal is coming, and yet they come together and just worship, and you know that their faith is so true. There's no playing church down in Haiti. You're either a believer or you're not, and those who are, they don't hide it, they just. They worship their creator, they thank their creator, even if they don't know when they're going to eat again.
Speaker 5:It makes me think of. I think it's in Psalm I was trying to look it up while we're talking, but I think it's Psalm 95, something about powerful worship and it doesn't matter, you know, what tongue you're speaking in when the Spirit's moving. And like, you can feel that there. We could feel it in Albania. We were in Italy, you know. So, like when the Spirit moves, it doesn't matter what language you're praising in, you can feel it, you know.
Speaker 2:And the beauty of our God is I could be standing next to a multimillionaire that's praising God, and then I could stand next to somebody who has absolutely nothing but praising God and he goes beyond the borders that we often put up. Pam went on that trip, but we at the same time we were also praying for Pam, pam's husband, who she wasn't married yet, and we were praying for, for the man that the Lord would bring into her life, and I don't remember how many years after that first trip.
Speaker 2:But then Patrick arrives on the scene and, um, patrick, uh, she brought you down to Haiti.
Speaker 5:Um, right, yeah, you hadn't been to haiti until you met pam, so tell us about the, uh, that experience for you well, if you don't mind, I'm going to just kind of back up a little bit like so um I was living in north carolina, where you're at now and, um, my church put out kind of an apB saying hey, there's this couple moving from Point Pleasant, new Jersey, to North Carolina, going to be going to a church right down there, not too far from where I'm at, and I just volunteered. I didn't know this couple, I just said, yeah, I'll help them unload their belongings. And it was John Forsythe John and Allison Forsythe.
Speaker 2:Uncle Jack.
Speaker 5:From Fellowship Chapel another connection so I volunteered to help. We became friends. They said hey, we have this friend that lives in New Jersey. She wants to go to a NASCAR race, not trying to set you up. So anyway, we, you know, and I wasn't a big NASCAR fan, so I he asked me like six months in advance, and it came down to like two months, um, away from this actually happening. I was trying to come up with an excuse as to why I wasn't going to go and I, you know, I procrastinated and I didn't. So I met Pam and she's talking about it. She had just got back from Haiti, so she's talking about this trip and I'm being honest, Was this the first?
Speaker 2:this was this was your first trip, right, Pam? Was it the first trip you went on or was this the second?
Speaker 3:one. No, yeah, when we met, I had been on three trips.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, yeah, all right.
Speaker 5:But I was captivated. I was new to being a Christian and I'm listening to this woman speak about something from her heart and it just, it just reeled me in and it really touched me in a profound way, the one that I've never, in a way that I've never been touched before. And, and you know, I'm like, wow, there's something different. You know, I was pretty shallow, you know, especially when it came to women, and I'm listening to this woman's heart and I just sensed something different. And so we started talking and we knew within like three to six months that we were going to get married. And as soon as we did, I went on a trip and, yeah, it was everything that she said. It was just so amazing to be loved on, and she had already kind of planted seeds there and kind of developed friendships and relationships, and everybody just kind of took to me and brought me in as I like I was part of their family, and so, yeah, that's that's how it, that's how it all began, and I got the bug she had, I believe.
Speaker 4:Patrick's introduction to the New Jersey friends and family happened in our backyard.
Speaker 5:It did yes.
Speaker 3:With the 80th or 80 closest friends of a meet and greet. The poor guy was overwhelmed. No pressure, no pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, you got to realize that so many people were praying for, praying for Pam's husband for years. And it's like, come see the fulfillment of your prayers. And now poor Patrick. He's like, come see the fulfillment of your prayers. And now, poor patrick, he's like I've got to live up to this expectation. I'm like, oh man, we put, we put some, uh, some unnecessary pressure on this poor young guy. Oh man, but yeah, so you ended up going um down down now. Was that the trip that jim mcconnell's went on with? And and um who the doc?
Speaker 3:um burz on no, they had gone on some. They had gone on um dan burz, on dr dan he had been on a couple trips. Uh well, every year he would go to a different location in haiti. It wasn't until patrick uh helped to put the medical clinic on the property that Dan came down a couple times and Jim came on one of those trips to kind of see the clinic how it was working and, if it was, you know, kind of check the box that it was ready to open.
Speaker 2:I remember asking I think it was you, patrick, because you're a construction contractor type guy and I remember asking about the building codes in Haiti. And that's the exact response I got there aren't any.
Speaker 5:There aren't any, just just get it done. Yeah, I saw some things, but you know it's you got to do what you got to do. You know with, with what you've, what's available to work with, and and oftentimes there's there's not much yeah, there you don't have a local Lowe's or Home Depot there to go. Oh, we need this specific bolt, you know, yeah, but that's one thing that we tried to instill in them a little bit is, you know, you got to try to build things as right as you can just to get some longevity out of it, especially when it's people's donations and support and prayer that's providing what they're providing. You know. So you want it to last right, right.
Speaker 2:So then, just moving forward a little bit, the the uh, then the earthquake happened was port-au-prince earthquake. Was it 2011, 2010? I forget the date, but somewhere early to 2010, somewhere around there, um I think that was 2010 because a lot happened in 2010.
Speaker 3:I mean, we got married Like yeah, there was a lot going on. Then that was January, january 9th or so of 2010.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember sending out a prayer request to people pray as if you were under the rubble because there was so much devastation and the country's been. I mean, you guys were there when the president got shot there, right, weren't you there? You were on the ground. Yes, I remember right, katie, we were we were like katie was like I think pam's, pam, I'm like pam's over there right now I said, yo, that was another like amazing moment um, definitely top 10 moments, because you wouldn't think so.
Speaker 3:But we had a team of uh 18 and there were three missionaries down there already staying at the mission house and we had only been there, I think, two days Now. Mind you, we're on the border of Dominican Republic, so we're far from Port-au-Prince, but it doesn't matter when your president has just been assassinated. You know, it's a lockdown on everything. And I remember the morning getting up and I saw Joseph, who's our director. We stay on top of his home. Step of Faith built the mission house up there, so his family is down below, we're up top and we always have a security guard in the front of the property. There's a fence around it and all, and he stays there all night.
Speaker 3:Well, this particular morning there were three or four security guards out front and Joseph's talking with them, and I just felt like there was something not right. So I went downstairs and I asked him. I said, joseph, what's going on? And his response was the government is dead. And I said what do you mean the government is dead? And he said the president was assassinated at 2 am in his palace in Port-au-Prince. Am in his palace in Port-au-Prince and for like five seconds it was like oh no. But it was immediately followed by. I felt like the Lord said I brought you down here, I knew it was going to happen, you're going to be fine and you're going to get everybody out. And we just went upstairs.
Speaker 3:I talked to the missionaries. We then brought the team together. We told them what happened. We gave them what happened. We gave them a few moments to go through their shock, told them to reach out to their families.
Speaker 3:Not to look at the news, because I had actually pulled up on my phone the headlines and on one of the local news up here in America it showed a picture of like tens of thousands of people in the streets of Port-au-Prince and I'm like this is not real. And I brought it downstairs and I showed Joseph and he goes that's not real. So even our own news was not covering it properly. So I told the team to make sure their parents knew to wait on us for the proper news. Obviously, patrick knew our pastor knew you guys.
Speaker 3:We started getting the word out. Everyone was praying and the Lord allowed us to accomplish 85% of what we needed to do. We stayed the whole time. We have a lawyer down there who was monitoring everything and it was safe. We had security with us the whole time and God still accomplished what he brought us down there to do. And you know we all formed a very special bond on that trip. Not something probably will ever be duplicated, but we saw God's hand in it and we were able to be there for our friends, amen.
Speaker 4:I was just struck by the peace that you had as you were going through it, communicating with all of us, you know.
Speaker 2:When Paul writes in Philippians, he talks about the peace that surpasses all understanding, in the Teddy translation, peace that makes no sense. When you are in the midst of it, it makes no sense to have peace. But yet, because of your relationship with the Lord, because of, I mean, that's something that the world does not have. The world doesn't have that. The world has the panic button, oh my God. And then they have to lie to themselves oh, maybe it'll, maybe, maybe, maybe I'll. Let me talk myself into being calm here. But you know, the believer has access to a peace that is outside of their situation and is not dependent on, is not dependent on the situation. It's dependent on the object of our faith, who, the person? And that's why we can have peace in the midst of a storm or in the midst. I mean, you're, this sounds like a Netflix movie or a Netflix TV show. Your missionaries are in a foreign country. They wake up and guess what? The president has been assassinated. That's when the music starts and it's dun-dun-dun and it sounds like some kind of movie.
Speaker 4:This is a really good lesson, because, as you had that piece and we're praying for that piece and we're praying for you and we're praying for your safety, and then the thought just had come to me that, okay, well, she's not worried about it, it helped me focus my prayers. All right, lord, you've got them protected. Help them accomplish what they need to accomplish show them.
Speaker 4:You know, um, what's going to come through this. Help them remain focused. So your reaction helped our reaction and our prayers, amen. I mean, what a lesson is that? As we just you know, walk down the street and you know people.
Speaker 3:You don't never know who's watching you, who's looking at, who's witnessing your testimony and could I just share um a quick two testimonies that actually came out of that. That really strengthened our faith. While we were in the midst of it, one of the girls that was down there as a missionary had a. The next morning after, like the day later when we were talking and all, she came up to me and she said can I please share something with you? And I said, of course. And she said I had a dream the night that this happened, that the president was going to be assassinated and she goes. I don't want to share this with many people. They're going to think I'm crazy, but I went to bed that night and I had a dream that we were woken up in the morning and told that the president was assassinated at 2 am and that's when he was assassinated. So this young girl 23, 22, very in tune with the spirit, that was one testimony. The second came from our good friend, karis Hudson, who is the CEO of Danita's Orphanage. That's right there in Wanamith, an orphanage of 80 plus children, has been down there for over 25 years. She told me that she couldn't sleep the night before that she was so restless that she actually got all of her older boys up and they prayed right through the night and then heard about the assassination and the third testimony and this to me was the best one.
Speaker 3:After the shock kind of wore off with the team and we were debriefing and we were talking I heard it from different team members. I pray that this president heard the gospel. We pray that he heard the gospel before his life was taken, because it was brutally taken. And a few days later it was Rachel, one of the team members at the time, a young team member like 15, on her first mission trip to Haiti. She received a text from her parents with an article through Calvary Chapel and I'll just kind of power phrase it there is a Calvary Chapel in Port-au-Prince at the time and the pastor was in front of the compound. And this happens often in Haiti. You're going down a road and all of a sudden you come to a stop because a truck overturned or a truck is stuck in the road or something we we always say we're on haiti time because it's very slow going, and he's in front of his compound and he sees this procession of cars, dark windows, tinted, and they stopped right in front of the compound because a truck had been disabled. Something happened further up on the road. He came to find out. By the way, this was a day or two days before the assassination.
Speaker 3:Important piece of information he comes to find out it's the president's motorcade and he was able to speak to someone and say I would like to speak to the president. By God's grace, he was able to walk around to the other side of one of these vehicles. The window rolled down and there was the president of Haiti. He said I had three minutes to tell him about Jesus and he did to the point where the president asked for a Bible. He went back into the mission house, got a Bible, gave it to the president.
Speaker 3:As soon as that ended, the road opened up and off went the motorcade and I think it was the following night he was assassinated. So when we got that information, we were like praising the Lord, like you said it doesn't make sense, right, like you're in the midst of such a horrible situation, but God was showing us how we can praise him through it and even giving us that information that the president did hear the gospel just a day or so before he was gonna be assassinated. So it just was such a faith building trip for everyone who was on that one.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen. We're gonna continue this next week, I promise. But until then, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Speaker 1:This program was made possible by the Plays on Word family of supporters. To find out more, check out our website at playsonwordorg.
