Perhaps the only resolution we all need to make every year and every day of the year is to never quit.  We can set many wonderful goals for ourselves this year, but if we don’t resolve to keep at it every day then our setting goals is a waste of time.  The fulfillment of our goals is only as real as our determination each day to bring them to pass, and that kind of determination can only come from a source that is greater than our own natural strength and ability.

I am reminded of the words of Jesus to a frantic woman named Martha who was furious with her sister Mary for not doing her part.   The Bible states that Martha was encumbered about with much serving, while her sister, Mary, sat at the feet of Jesus and heard His word.  When Martha complained to Jesus about Mary, He said, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful:  and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10: 41-42)  We can all be encumbered with trying to change all the things we don’t like about ourselves and our lives, but only one thing is really needful:  to sit at the feet of Jesus and hear His word.  That one resolution is life changing because it releases all of the power contained in God’s Word into our lives.  The truth of God’s Word permeating our beings releases us from our natural limitations and thrusts us into the limitless power of God where nothing is impossible.

We make New Year’s resolutions because we want to be free.  There is one path to genuine freedom:  the truth.  There is one source of genuine truth:  God’s Word.  There is one precious fruit of receiving the truth:  freedom.  “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  (John 8:32)  Join me in resolving to be like Mary.  May we be found sitting at the feet of Jesus, hearing His Word daily in 2012.

God’s best to you today and every day.

Kathy Edwards

PASTOR EASTWOOD: I didn’t know whether the world had stopped.  I didn’t know that this thing could be true.

Pastor Eastwood broke the tragic news to his wife.

ROSEMOND: The only words that I found coming out of my mouth was, “We are in His hands.”  That was all I could say, because it was too much.

PASTOR EASTWOOD: I was broken.  I had believed God in so many ways.  So I’m like, what am I to believe again.  So I’m on my knees and I’m saying, “God, I need you to speak.  I need you to touch my heart.”

Despite his pain, Pastor Eastwood continued to seek God for answers.

PASTOR EASTWOOD: Are we going to believe God for them to be raised?  That was before the funeral.  And the Lord told me, He said, “No.  What I’ll give you is consolation and comfort.”  From that point of discouragement, when God begins to speak and you cooperate with Him and you begin to hear what He’s saying, everything begins to change.

But change was slow, especially for Mrs. Anaba, who had already experienced so much loss in her life.

ROSEMOND: Why me?  Why should this happen?  Between my father and my mother, I am the only child, I lost my sister.  I had two siblings, one before me, one after me, both died.  I lost my mom some years back, just about six or seven years ago, and then this.  Lord, what’s happening?  And I kept asking, “Why me?  Why me?  Why me?”

Rosemund felt so much shame that she didn’t minister in church for an entire year.

ROSEMOND: I was like, what am I going to say to them?  The Word did not work for me.  I wanted to run away.  Because it was as if people were hooting at me, you know, “You say you believe God, you say you trust in God, you say God has given you such wonderful children, and what happened?”

Mrs. Anaba asked her husband to pray for her, and gradually the shame left and she began to speak again.  She also stopped asking God why.

ROSEMOND: I realized that if I kept asking “Why me?” I would never get an answer, because what right has the clay got to say to the potter, “What doest thou?”

Both Pastor Eastwood and Mrs. Anaba came to understand that sometimes in life bad things happen.

PASTOR EASTWOOD: I had to come face to face with the sovereignty of God, that no matter what faith you carry, how righteous you are, how much faith you put out there, your ability and the power to say the right things, there may be situations you can’t control.

Pastor Eastwood says through his own heartbreak, he has developed more love and compassion for people.

PASTOR EASTWOOD: I am able to receive people better.  I used to be just kind of blunt.  If you are wrong you are going to hell right there.  And if you did – if something wrong happened to you, it was because you did something wrong.  That is why evil happened to you.

ROSEMOND: Or you didn’t have enough faith.

PASTOR EASTWOOD: Or you didn’t have enough faith.   But then – and now I have to ask myself, “What did I do wrong to deserve this?”  It started changing my mind.

Though the Anabas are still grieving, with God’s help they are moving on with life and ministry.

ROSEMOND: But I want to say that God is faithful, and don’t give up.  Don’t give up on life at all.  It may be gradual.  Everybody’s rate of recovery is different.  But don’t waste the grace of God.  Don’t frustrate the grace of God.  Surrender to God.  Allow Him to work through your heart.  Cry when you have to cry, but in the crying, cry like a child of God.  Don’t cry like someone who has no hope.

PASTOR EASTWOOD: In the midst of the situation, have we fully recovered?  No.  We are still nursing our wounds.  With my left eye filled with tears, I try to see the glory of God with my other eye.  With one ear I listen to all the negative things people have to say.  With another ear, I listen to what God has to say.

Although the Anabas are continuing on, their believed Audrey and Amanda will forever remain in their hearts.

ROSEMOND:     And I was like, “God, so if you hadn’t come to die for me, it means I wouldn’t see these children again.  But because the work on the cross, now I know that one day I will see these children, and it has given me hope.”

DON PIPER: An honor, an honor, thank you.

ERICA: Now in 1989 you were in a fatal car accident.

DON PIPER: Correct.

ERICA: Because you actually died.  Can you tell me exactly what happened that day?

DON PIPER: Yeah, I was on my way to church.  People are usually startled by that, you know, that it happened that way.  So it just proves you can die at any moment, and you have to be ready every moment for the end of your life.

I left a conference, a Pastor’s conference, and I was on my way to church to lead a Bible study on a Wednesday night.  On a rural bridge in East Texas, an 18-wheeler crossed the center stripe, trying to avoid another car, and hit me head on, and I was killed instantly.  It was a four-vehicle pileup and four paramedics came.  Nobody else was hurt, thankfully, which meant they all four worked on me, four paramedics.  And in spite of their best efforts, I was killed instantly as a result of the collision.  So they all four pronounced me dead, covered me up with a tarp and they were waiting for a medical examiner to come and sign the paperwork so the body could be transported to a morgue.  So there I lay.

ERICA: And so you said you instantly died, but then you said you instantly went to Heaven.

DON PIPER: Last breath here, first breath there.

ERICA: And so what was that experience like when you got to Heaven?

DON PIPER: I was standing in front of my grandfather, and I had been with him when he died.  It was like God’s way of saying, “Now, you’ll know where you are, because you know where he is.”

ERICA: Umm.

DON PIPER: And, of course, I did.  And he looked really good.  If you want to look good, Heaven is where you want to be.

ERICA: (LAUGHS)

DON PIPER: He was quite old, and he was missing fingers, because he was a carpenter.

ERICA: Uh-huh.

DON PIPER: He had a lot of scars all over his body after 50 years of hard labor.  Not when I saw him in Heaven.  He reached his hands out to me and said, “Welcome home, Donnie.”  He’s the one who called me that.  And  he didn’t have any – his fingers were back.  I had never seen them before.  And everybody I saw at the gates of Heaven was spectacular in every way.  Even though some of them had been quite elderly when they died, or some had been young, and they didn’t look like they had an age at all about them.  I was greeted by people who helped me get to Heaven, and it was a spec – Heaven is a great reunion.

ERICA: And so, did you see Jesus?

DON PIPER: I saw Him at the pinnacle of a hill, inside the city gates.  There are 12 gates in Heaven, and fortunately I was at one of them.  And I could see him high and lifted up, as well He should be.  And there is a river flowing down the side of that hill, mountain, the river of life.  So He was as beautiful as you can imagine Him, but I didn’t get face to face with Him.  I just wanted to fall at His feet and say, “Thank you for letting me be here.”

ERICA: I know.

DON PIPER: But I didn’t get a chance to do that before I came back.

ERICA: And so did it seem dreamy or did it seem just as real as we’re sitting here now.

DON PIPER: It’s more real than this- because now life for me seems fleeting and temporal.  I know the death rate here on earth is 100%.  You know, we’re not going to make it out of this life.  So this life now, even though I know it’s real, and we are here, this doesn’t seem real to me any more.  It seems fleeting, temporary, I know that it will end in an instant.  And Heaven is now my reality.  This is not.  So that’s my reality.  I look forward to being there again, and this is something I’m experiencing.

ERICA: And you document your story in 90 Minutes In Heaven, which is very popular.

DON PIPER: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

ERICA: But now you have another book out called Getting to Heaven.

DON PIPER: Yes.

ERICA: What inspired you to write Getting to Heaven?

DON PIPER: Because we want to help people get there, and we want to help them have that meaningful life.  The subtitle of that book is, “Departing instructions for your life now.”  It’s very practical, very relevant, and really helps people know how do you treat other people while you’re here.

ERICA: Uh-huh.

DON PIPER: How do you relate to God while you’re here, what you need to do while you’re here.  Because Jesus gives us very specific instructions how to do that.  So that’s why it’s called “Departing instructions for your life now.”  I pray that it will have a dramatic impact on all those people who are saying, “I don’t know why I’m here.”

ERICA: Yes.

DON PIPER: Because I asked the same question when I came back after the wreck.  I came back for this – 34 operations?  I came back for this?  You took me away for this?

I understand better now why I’m here, and I think people can do that.  I think it’s not a mystery.  Jesus really wants us to know why we’re here, and how to have a meaningful life, until we’re not here any more.

ERICA: And then my last question, there are some people who are so caught up in this life and, like you say, Heaven is more real to you than this life.  But for a lot of us, this is what we know.  How can we have that reality of Heaven, not necessarily going that way that you went –

DON PIPER: Uh-huh.

ERICA: — but how can we get a sense of that this is life fleeting and that Heaven is our ultimate goal?

DON PIPER: That’s a great question.  Over in Revelation 21 it says that Heaven ought to be like us, like a bridegroom standing at the foot of an aisle watching his bride walk towards him.  Well, I’ve been a bridegroom before, I know what that’s like.  It’s so exciting to think, “Here she comes.  This is a gift from God.  God has given me this lifetime companion here.”

What if we lived life that way, like we were looking at a companion, a lifetime companion, and being very excited about your life together?  And that’s the way the Bible says we ought to think about Heaven.  You know what, we don’t think about Heaven that way.  We don’t think about Heaven until someone dies, and we’re confronted with our own mortality.  And we ought to think about Heaven a lot more than we do.  If we do, then we can live a better life here.

I know where I’m going, and so I don’t have to worry about that any more.  And I can live a meaningful life between now and then.  So, you can know where you’re going. Jesus said, “I am the way.”  And He also said, “I am the life.”  And that means we can have a meaningful life here.  He will be with us every step of the way until He takes us there.  So it’s just the perfect solution to the human problem.  Jesus here, Jesus there.  I can’t wait to go back.

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI: Excellent, yes.

HOLLY: And you have a very interesting perspective, I think, in terms of writing this book, being a Christian and also being a doctor.  What inspired you to write this book?

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI: In Dr. Jesus I used the healing miracles of the Lord Jesus to argue that there is a spiritual, a supernatural dimension of our existence, something which evolution or atheism cannot explain.

HOLLY: And so what would that actually be?  What would you say overall that that would be?

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI:             A medical doctor, when we are confronted with disease, you use surgical instruments  to cure disease.  But in the case of Dr. Jesus, he just spoke the word, and healing was manifested.  It’s something that medical science cannot explain.  And that is evidence that there is something behind the physical, and that there is a spiritual dimension and there is a power called Almighty God.

HOLLY: Amen to that.

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI:             Amen.

HOLLY: In your book you say that Jesus doesn’t just mend things, but He does something different when He heals.  How does He heal?

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI:             Yeah, Dr. Jesus creates, because He is the  Creator of the universe.  He is the Creator of our organs.  And, for example, when a doctor is confronted with a woman who has a fibroid and say, a growth on the womb.  And the anestheologist who puts the patient to sleep and the doctor uses scalpel or instruments to open the body, and then remove the growth.  But Dr. Jesus speaks the word, and the growth is removed and new womb is created to replace the old.  That is what I believe.

HOLLY: A whole new –

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI:             A whole new organ replaces the old one.  Where if  you are suffering a kidney failure, Dr. Jesus does not mend your diseased kidney.  As far as I am concerned, He creates a new organ to replace the old.

HOLLY: Wow.  Let me ask you a different question, a little bit off that subject.  A lot of people think, because we are talking about what the medical doctors would do versus how Jesus heals.  Some people say, “I won’t go to a medical doctor, I’m going to pray.”  Or some people rely just on the medical doctors.  Some people say you can’t believe in science and have faith at the same time.  What is your perspective, being a Christian and also being a doctor, what is your perspective on that?

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI:             I believe that science as such, it’s called God’s science because science deals with the matter or the particles created by God.  In my book I say that if you are not feeling well, you have to see the doctor still, I recommend that you go ahead and see the doctor.  But you have to combine that with your prayer.  We live in a state in an era where people give science credit for everything. People have so much faith in medicine, who have so much great confidence in their doctor.  They invest every confidence.  And there was a case of a friend who lived in Germany, a friend of them was hospitalized.  So they went to visit the patient and  to pray for the patient.  And the patient [said], “No, no, no, no, no, I don’t need your prayer.  I believe in the doctors.  Uh, the doctors have studied and they know everything they are doing.  I have the confidence in them.”  Yeah, of course, we can have the confidence, but medical science has its boundaries, and it comes to a point that medical science has nowhere to go.  Like, I just want to cite a situation in my own family.  One of my children has a condition of autism.

HOLLY: Uh-huh.

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI:             And a condition of autism, and he looks physically normal if you see him on the street.  But he is not developed like a normal child of his age.  In medical science, we have been giving him tablets to take, but it has come to a point when we cannot move any further.  It is that situation that I believe the Lord Jesus comes in.  So we are praying at the moment for healing for him.  And I can see, I can even  testify that though he is not 100% healed, we have noticed significant improvement.  Because when he was about three or four years old, he was hyperactive, just moving all over the place and destroying all the wallpaper, the glasses.  And there was a time when he jumped through the window, and he was hanging on the window, so our neighbors made a phone call, just to alert us.  And by the grace of God, he didn’t spring, but he was about to spring out.  And, but now he has calmed down significantly over the last two or three years.  So we believe in prayer to heal him.

HOLLY: Prayer is very important.

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI: Yes.

HOLLY: — in the process of healing. What would you say to someone today who— they need a healing.  They are praying, they are believing, whatever they are doing, they may not be praying, but  they want to be healed, or they know someone who needs to be healed.  What would be your advice to them today?

DR. PEPRAH-GYAMFI:            My advice is, seek medical help, but at the same time, combine that with prayer.  The healing is not for the doctor, he will just fix it.  The healing comes from God.  That is what I believe.  So doctors –  God uses doctors.  So we can go and see them when we are not feeling well.  But you have to combine that with prayer.

SIMEON WRIGHT: Well, we lived under the Jim Crow System. There was no protection under the law.  We had no protection, therefore if a white man wanted to mistreat us, kill us, nothing would be done.

We couldn’t vote.  And we couldn’t get a adequate education. And the purpose of not getting a good education was to keep us in the cotton fields.

In August 1955 Simeon’s cousin comes to visit from Chicago. His name is Emmett.

SIMEON:  Somebody from Chicago coming down to Mississippi to visit was, just was joy, pure joy to us.  And we just couldn’t wait for him to get there because it was so different, the clothes they had, the way they talked, and we all had the desire to leave Mississippi and go to Chicago.

Unfortunately, Emmett didn’t understand where he was visiting.

SIMEON:   He felt that white boy, black boy, the same thing to him, no difference.  That’s the way he was raised.  And he had no idea what Jim Crow was about or he had no idea how low down those segregationists was.

It was August 24, 1955.

SIMEON: Well, that day we had picked cotton all day.  Of course, Emmett had picked cotton one day, but he stayed home all day this day and he wanted to go somewhere, wanted to go to Money.  So we all piled in the car, my brother Maurice driving,  about 5 of us and we drove up to Money. Three miles to the west of us, Maurice parked the car and we all got out and went over to the store.

And immediately Wheeler went inside of the store to buy something.  And then Emmett went in behind him.

Well, Wheeler came out of the store, after he had paid for his items.  And Maurice did not want Emmett in there alone, so he sent me in to make sure that he didn’t say anything wrong.

Well, I got in the store and he didn’t say anything. He paid for his items and we both left at the same time.  When we got outside of the store, Carolyn Bryant came out behind us and as she was walking north towards her car, Emmett whistled at her.  And it scared us half to death, and we just couldn’t get out of town fast enough ‘cause we didn’t know what to think and he saw our reaction and it scared him.

Four days later in the middle of the night there was a knock at the door.

SIMEON: Well, when my Daddy opened the door, the man standing there with a .45 and a flashlight in his hand.  And he asked my Dad about the boy from Chicago that did all that talk in Money at Wednesday night.  So my Dad still don’t know what’s going on, so he began to lead them through the bedroom, looking for the boy from Chicago.

So they’re waking my nephew Wheeler, he’s from Chicago also, he said, “This is the wrong boy.  We’re looking for the fat boy from Chicago.”  And then they marched through the spare room, what we call the spare bedroom, then they got to my bedroom.  And I heard the noise before they got there, so I opened my eyes, I saw these two white men standing at the foot of the bed.

Roy Bryant, I recognized him, but I didn’t know J.W. Milam.  J.W. Milam had the flashlight and a .45 in his hand.  He ordered me to lay back down and go back to sleep and made Emmett get up and put his clothes on.  First he asked him the question, was he the boy that did that talking in Money, to his sister-in-law and Emmett said, “Yeah.” And he threatened to whip him there because he said, “Yeah.”  He was expecting him to say, “Yes, Sir.”  And they made Emmett dress and they marched him out of the room.  And as he left, he didn’t say one word.

The mood was — is something like grief and fear that you could cut.  All my dad could do was walk through the house saying, “Hmm, mm, mm.”  And my mother, she would be half talking, half crying.  She ran over to the white neighbors; trying to get them to intervene and they wouldn’t help.

Three days later Emmett’s body was found in the river attached to a 70 lb. cotton gin fan.

MAN FROM FILM:   His body was so badly damaged that we couldn’t just tell who he was. But he happened to have on a ring with his initials and that cleared it up.

Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till Moseley, had an open casket funeral – which drew national attention.

SIMEON:  You really can’t describe all of the-the emotion that was going through your mind, your heart and things you were feeling.  The grief, the anger, the shock, the -just sorrow that you could cut with a knife, and the unbelief that things like this could happen.

J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant were arrested and tried for Emmett’s murder.  Despite overwhelming evidence they were found not guilty by an all white jury.

SIMEON:  I was angry, I wanted revenge.  Acouple of times I took it out on people that wasn’t even involved, that I finally realized, that these kids did nothing to me.  And so, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, they did the damage.  They were the murderers.  They are the ones that got away with it.

For years, Simeon struggled with anger until one night he heard a voice.

SIMEON:            I was sitting in a tavern one night, having fun, drinking the beer or whatnot, feeling half high, and I heard this voice, it said, “If you die in your sins, you’re going to hell.”  And a couple weeks after that, I committed my life to Christ and the anger began to leave.

Simeon realized he had to forgive the men who killed his cousin.

SIMEON: It’s not easy. Don’t ever let anybody tell you it’s easy to forgive.  It’s a struggle.  But once you do, the weights lift and you don’t have to wake up every morning with these people on your mind or thinking about them, ‘cause it’s over.

Simeon wrote a book chronicling the tragic death of Emmett Till.  He travels to schools all over the U.S. sharing his story.

SIMEON:   Some of the high schools I go to, some of the kids, I can see they’ve been abused or whatnot, I said, “A Potter, He made me over again.”  That’s how I was able to get through.  God Almighty made me over again.

MUYIWA: Reverend, welcome.

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: Thank you.

MUYIWA: Thank you so much for joining us.  We are talking all things men today.  Let me ask, your book is The Ultimate Challenge for Men, it says.

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: That is correct.

MUYIWA: What’s that challenge?

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: The challenge to rise up and be who God has designed and ordained them to be.  That is to take responsibility of being the foundation of our community, our families, and society in general.

MUYIWA: Now, in this day and age of equal responsibilities, and you know, equal share of everything and equal share of the bills when you go out and eat,  isn’t that harking back a bit to the past?

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: Well, it is, but it’s a good past that we are going back to, because Jesus giving a response to some men who challenged Him, He says, “In the beginning it was not so.”  So I think what we are discussing in this show as well as in the book is taking us back to that beginning which is where God really wanted us to be and where He wants all of us to be as we go forward.

MUYIWA: Now, you have an interesting thought that follows right through the book, this idea of yourself by looking at the women around you.

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: Correct.

MUYIWA: Tell us about that.  How does that work?

Because, you know, some people might think, no, I don’t look like that woman that’s in the bed next to me.

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: Well, the teaching of the Word of the Lord is that the woman is the glory of man. And most men don’t want to accept that, but what happens is that when God brings a woman into a man’s life, she is coming in as raw material.  She is coming in as somebody who can be molded for good or for evil.  And you see what happens is every man, when they are trying to get a woman, they build her up, they speak all things positive, and they build her ego, and she is a great woman at that point simply because she is responding to what the man is saying to her.  And once they get her, once they marry the woman, they stop doing that.  And then she starts to react to that.  And she becomes a totally different woman in the eyes of the man, and men are surprised and they don’t understand why they change, but it’s simply because they stopped doing what they used to do, which is to build her up and to let her know that she is a great person.

MUYIWA: Now, of course, the time we have is so short we can’t explore everything in the book, but your personal journey that led to the book, tell us about it briefly.

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: Got married in 1994, had been a Christian for many years, I thought I knew everything there was to know about being a good husband.

MUYIWA: Now you’d been a Christian from say the age of 9 years old.

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: That is correct.

MUYIWA: And been ministering –

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: Been ministering since the age of 16.

MUYIWA: Okay, so you were pretty familiar with what was –

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: At least that’s what I thought.   And that’s what it looked like to me.  But being in marriage, and having book knowledge or having talked to somebody else is not the same.  And the thing is that principle of realizing that my primary assignment was to build up my wife, I had never really understood that.  So it was not until after almost 15 years of marriage that God challenged me as far as it relates to how I related with my wife, how I worked with her in ministry, and the challenge was so intense that it changed the way I look at everything now and it’s changed my understanding of relationships and from the time I was courageous enough to take the challenge and to study the Word of God afresh and to look at the principles that are in the Word of God, I have since – my life changed, I saw my wife transformed totally.

MUYIWA: Let me ask you.  We have only about 30 seconds left.  When you got to that spot where you looked at your wife, what did you see that was you and what does your wife look like now?

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: Well, now she looks like the me that I would like to see.  But back then it was a different story, simply because I was not doing what I was supposed to do as a husband, I was –

MUYIWA: What did you see?

TINASHE MUNYARADZI: Well, I saw somebody who was complaining, somebody who doesn’t appreciate who I am, somebody who doesn’t fully grasp  the assignment that I have as a pastor.

KEVIN LEVAR: Yes.

HOLLY: “Let’s Come Together.” What is it that you would like this project to convey to the listeners?

KEVIN LEVAR: To really bring the body of Christ together  in prayer and intercession. Pretty much every song is a prayer to God. If you look at the lyrics, you can pray those lyrics to God as a prayer. The song is made up of so many different genres, so many different songs.

We have songs like, “Heaven Have Your Way,” which is more of a calypso/reggae feel.   “My Everything” has a Latin vibe, you know, and then you have some high energy songs and some worship ballads.  And so, I believe the Lord gave me that, I didn’t intend to write it like that, but I believe that He gave it to me like that so that it would draw different people that listen to different kinds of music.

HOLLY: Now, did you write the majority of the songs on the CD?

KEVIN LEVAR: Yes, every song except for one.

HOLLY: Okay.  Wow. Now there is a specific song on there that I would say is my favorite, it’s “Heart That Forgives.”

KEVIN LEVAR: Yes.

HOLLY: And you wrote that song as well.

KEVIN LEVAR: I did.

HOLLY: Was that inspired by some personal experience that you had?

KEVIN LEVAR: It was.  There were several things that the Lord allowed me to go through and really, to come out of.  I had to make some decisions. I guess I was hurting, my heart was broken, some business relationships went bad, my trust was betrayed.  Relationships, personal relationships went bad, and I had to make a decision to forgive and to love even though it was difficult at times.

There were sometimes I just — sometimes it can hurt so, so deep it takes time. I made a choice to forgive, but the healing process took a long period of time and the Lord gave me this song, “A Heart That Forgives,” out of all of that and now I’m seeing how He’s blessing so many people.

HOLLY: In addition to that, you’ve also started a Heart That Forgives campaign.

KEVIN LEVAR: Yes.

HOLLY: What is it that you want this campaign to accomplish and what’s your vision for the campaign?

KEVIN LEVAR: Wow. People free, people liberated.  There’re so many people that are trapped and bound by an invisible prison called unforgiveness, and their whole lives are kind of like in pause, on pause, because they’re stuck in what happened yesterday. And so the slogan is Forgive and Live. If you forgive, you will live. Letting go of of the past, living free in the present and we just want to set people free, you know, with that message of forgiveness.

So, our goal is to get a million recorded acts of forgiveness per year.

HOLLY: Oh wow, that’s a big goal.

KEVIN LEVAR: That’s our goal. Yeah.

HOLLY: Okay. Now, when did this campaign begin?

KEVIN LEVAR: Uh, well, we’re still in the planning process, but I mean, I’ve been singing “A Heart That Forgives,” and talking about the campaign for quite a while, telling people it’s coming. But the campaign’s going to consist of skits, dramatizations, testimonies from around the world. You know,  — I’m going fly people in to share their testimonies. I’ve received so many testimonies that have just been, I mean, amazing.  The atrocities that some people have been able to forgive by the help of Christ.  You know, one lady came up to me in New York City and said my father impregnated me twice –

HOLLY: Oh, wow.

KEVIN LEVAR: and he just died and he never said he was sorry.  And she lost both of those children. I think she got an abortion and then there was a miscarriage, but, you know, people are dealing with things that we wouldn’t — we can’t even imagine and they’re able to forgive.

HOLLY: Now, with the campaign, there is a specific approach that you have: Hear, See, Do.

KEVIN LEVAR: Yes.

HOLLY: Tell us about that.

KEVIN LEVAR: Well, you know, the song, and, of course, that’s the “Hear” approach and the music portion of it, and then the “See,” the video that we put together,  the “Heart That Forgives” video, and the “Do,” we’re putting together an interactive website where people can go and really  commit virtual acts of forgiveness. I won’t give it all away, but it’s going to be really, really therapeutic for people and it provides them a place to just be able to release it, you know, in private and just forgive.

When we have these Forgiveness rallies in this Heart That Forgives campaign, we’re going to have booths where people can kind of go in and just kind of express their heart, and just kind of just share, if they feel so led, so that somebody else might be might be blessed.

HOLLY: Wow, that’s very good. Why do you think it is so important for people to be able to go on to the website and do those things so that they can go through that process of forgiveness themselves?

KEVIN LEVAR: You know, it’s important because if we don’t forgive our neighbor, God’s not going to forgive us. I believe that there are prayers that have gone unanswered because we haven’t forgiven our neighbor. I mean, you could be sick in your body and God would hear that prayer to heal you if you would just forgive the person that hurt you 20 years ago. You know, and so, I love, that the heart of God is love. And He says, “If you don’t love, you know, your neighbor, how could you really love me?” You know, and Jesus, I mean, we hurt Him, we did Him wrong and yet He forgave us.  So, you know, it’s essential.

SIMISOLA: Today we’re going to be talking about Rwanda, and a lot of people when they hear about Rwanda, they think of the ’94 genocide, and that was a very hard, atrocious event.  But today I want to focus on the hope of Rwanda.  So can you tell us a bit about what exciting things are taking place now in the country?

DR. MULFORD: Sure, sure I’d be glad to.  But just to go along with what you’ve just said, when people talk to me about going to Rwanda, because I’m inviting people all the time — business people, they say, “Is it safe there?” It’s one of the safest place you can go, safer than our communities here often times.

So, they have gone a long way from having a tremendous disaster in 1994 where a million people were killed in 100 days, to a tremendous vision, which they call Vision 2020, where they’re very unified in wanting to rebuild their country and have it be an economic miracle and a social miracle out of the ashes of the genocide.

SIMISOLA: So tell us about some of the day-to-day things that are going on in Rwanda right now.

DR. MULFORD: Kigali, the capital, is one of the cleanest cities in Africa, if not anywhere. They have a project where every last Saturday of the month everyone helps get out and clean up the area where they live. So it’s a very clean city. And they’re always doing beautification projects and things like that, even though they don’t have a huge number of resources, the ones they have they are putting to use in long-term ways.

SIMISOLA: Awesome. Now of these great things that is going on, one of the things you’re involved in is the Business Development Center that you started with–

DR. MULFORD: International Christian Chamber of Commerce

SIMISOLA: Yeah, could you tell us about that?

DR. MULFORD: — and Regent Center for Entrepreneurship are partnering to do this Business Development Center in Rwanda. It’s the prototype of something that we hope to have in countries around the world.

So what we’ve done is partnered with the government there, which is very interested in having business development. So they’ve made it a lot easier for small businesses to get started because they recognize that small to medium-sized businesses are the economic engine of a nation. And so they’re wanting to have many, many more businesses started, so we’re coming in to help train young entrepreneurs and help them to get their business plan together and then also to start that business and we’re there with them for a year or two after they start their business so that we can make sure that they get over the initial obstacles that someone faces.

SIMISOLA: Okay. Now I know the first class just graduated in December, so what would you say has been a great story that’s come out of this program for the Rwandan people?

DR. MULFORD: Tremendous stories, so many I don’t know that I have time to share them all with you. But just in terms of the individual projects, it’s just incredible what God has done through the people there. From small kinds of businesses, because the people are young and don’t have that many resources, to very significant large businesses that are going to be major companies hiring hundreds of people in the near future, I believe.

SIMISOLA: I think the young woman that had to, you know, she had to raise her family at such a young age–

DR. MULFORD: In her application, she wrote, “I became the chief of my family when I was 6 years old,” because that was right after the genocide.  Now she’s 23, she has her younger brother and two nephews that live with her. She’s in school in physiotherapy and her goal eventually is to have a fitness center that uses physiotherapy.  But she doesn’t have the resources to be able to do that right now, so she developed a business plan for designing handbags and then finding seamstresses to sew them and then marketing and selling them.

Well, she started her business during the course, so when she gave her presentation, she showed all these pictures of handbags and I said, “Well, do you have any with you? I’d like one.” She said, “Well, I sold all the ones I made so far.” So then at graduation she came with an extra one and  so I ended up with a handbag. So, she’s quite a star even among her classmates because she actually got her business going right away, which shows you, you don’t have to have a lot of money to get a business started.

SIMISOLA: That’s great. Now I want to speak to someone who’s watching, who, maybe they’re an entrepreneur, or they want to be an entrepreneur, and maybe they don’t have the resources that the Business Development Center in Rwanda has, what can they do to start something in their own country?

DR. MULFORD: Yeah. Well, each country is slightly different, but I’ll tell you a couple of basics that are good anywhere.  First, is to pick something that you’re passionate about, and something that you’re familiar with. One of the things we noticed with the 34 students in our program is many of them had been working in an area and then they did their business in an area they knew about.

So one person had been a nurse in a hospital for 12 years and he saw that the problems of just consumable medical supplies were just so terrible that he said, “I’m going to create a company to distribute those and make it so much better for the hospital.”

So, he saw the issues and he knew what all of the issues were.  Whereas, if you just get an idea and you don’t know anything about a business, it’s more difficult for you to figure out how to do one well. So it’s good to pick something that you know something about and you have a passion for.

If you get passionate about something you don’t have a lot of information about, then go work in that industry for a while so that you gain enough knowledge that you can do a good job when you start it.

SIMISOLA: That’s great advice.  Now my final question for you, personally, I know you have over 23+ years in economics and you have a passion for it, what has it been like to see a vision that you’ve been working on, or God has been working in you for so many years, what’s it like to see it come to life through this project in Rwanda?

DR. MULFORD: It’s like having the best job in the world. I mean, I can see how God had prepared me since I was in high school — for this job that I have right now. But I went through many other kinds of jobs that were good jobs and I learned a lot in them, but this chance to start a center for entrepreneurship that would transform people in nations through business and have the chance to build up a nation economically and spiritually at the same time, that’s just been a tremendous joy for me.

BISHOP ADEBANJO: Thank for inviting me.  Thank you.

ERICA: We’re talking more again about your book, “Strayed Dogs and Demons.”

BISHOP ADEBANJO:     Yes.

ERICA: And one thing I wanted to discuss, there’s so much talk of demonic activity and how demons influence evil acts and things like that, but the Bible says that “the heart is deceitfully wicked, who should know it.”

So the question is: if we already have wickedness in us, how can you tell the difference between just what a person does or if it’s actually demonic — demonically influenced?

BISHOP ADEBANJO: Yes. There are some things that are social, there are some things that are not. Let me give you an example. There was a lady that had maybe about 10 padlocks behind her door, simply because she was afraid there were people outside trying to hurt her,to harm her.

And when she  began to think about whoever was outside, she would begin to bleed in the nose and in the mouth.  That was one particular case.

Now, that is not a social fear, per se.  That is psychotic. A psychosis is when demons are involved. And every person has some kind of a fear, that’s why we lock our doors, our car doors and so on and so forth.  But when you — when you bleed in the mouth and in the nose and you’re so terrified when somebody knocks on your door, that is clearly demonic.

So, there are some things we know that are demonically inclined. And there are some things, for example, if a child steals something, you don’t say it’s a demon.

ERICA: Uh-huh.

BISHOP ADEBANJO: But when you go into a bank and carry a gun and just want to shoot somebody because you need whatever, that’s because there’s a spirit of murder.  So you know the difference between somebody that steals a candy and someone that goes to rob a bank.

ERICA: And so, once a person is delivered, is it possible for it to come back?

BISHOP ADEBANJO: Yes, because if you don’t maintain your deliverance, and I think that’s one of the problems in the Christendom, when I say Christendom – in several churches. People want deliverance. Most people want deliverance, but they don’t want the Deliverer. They don’t want to do what it takes to maintain your deliverance.

For example, let’s say somebody who had been involved in pornography, for example, now you go to a church and they lay hands on you and the demons manifested and they’re out now, you’ve got to do your part. You cannot go back and to buy some porn magazines. When there are some TV shows, you have to change channels on because most of the television shows now are sexually motivated because we’re in a sexual generation. So if you’re delivered from sexual things then you’ve got to maintain it, you have to turn away from some things.

The Bible says “flee” some things.  The word flee means “run with terror.”  That means you know that these things can come back upon you.

And then Jesus also says, “When the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, goes through dry places,” that means when the demons have come out of a person because they are disembodied spirits, they need a body to be able to manifest. And then the Bible says, “The demon goes through dry places he can rest and finding none,” says, “I will go back to my house where I came out.” And when the demons come back and see the place, that you haven’t done anything with yourself, that means you have not tried to maintain your deliverance, you’re still –

ERICA: You haven’t replaced anything.

BISHOP ADEBANJO: — you haven’t filled yourself with the Word of God, you haven’t fasted. You’re still looking around and trying to see what you can do. And then the demons go back and call some other demons to reinforce themselves. This is actually in the Bible.

And then, the Bible says, “the last state of our person is the worse than the first.”

ERICA: Let me ask you this question because I know that this is an issue in a lot of different countries. You have people who are Christians, but they still go to witch doctors, they still go to different places for healing and stuff like that. Can you speak about that?

BISHOP ADEBANJO: Yes, especially in certain parts of Africa and even in Asia also, people do not understand that when you accept Christ, our God is a jealous God. You cannot be dabbling in other things. God is the all-sufficient God. It’s like being married and still looking at a prostitute, you know.

ERICA: Uh-huh.

BISHOP ADEBANJO: So God does not — cannot share His glory with another. And so when people go to witch doctors, in Nigeria and in the Yoruba language we call them “Babalawos,” witch doctors and something like that — and you go to them for whatever you need, number one, you open the doors for demons, legally, you open the doors for demons to attack you, to attack your family and along that line and undo whatever God is trying to do in your life.

CAROLYN MCKINSTRY: Initially,  looking around the church, I could see the rubble, the debris. It wasn’t clear to me right away what had happened. It wasn’t until I got home that the full impact of what had happened was clear to me.  And then Carol Robertson’s mother called my mom looking for Carol. And she asked if I was home. And I think many of the parents thought that their children had been taken to safety by someone else.

But at 4 o’clock, when we received a call telling us that my friends had never made it out of the bathroom, the impact was more than I can describe to you. It was as though I was hit by a ton of bricks, as people say. I was quiet, I think, the rest of the evening trying to process what had just happened.

We had had bombings to take place all over Birmingham, but this was the first time that people had actually died.  And it was very unreal, you know. It was almost as though it was an unbelievable nightmare, something that I just couldn’t process. It was very difficult to understand it as a child.

HOLLY: Now, you had actually just gone into the bathroom, which is where your four friends were killed.

CAROLYN MCKINSTRY: Right. I didn’t actually go in, I paused at the doorway. I was holding the reports and I stood in the doorway and said good morning and just kind of looked at what they were doing. They were combing their hair and just talking.  And our church office, at that time, was at the top of the steps. Glancing at the clock, I said, “Oops,” and ran on up the steps. And when I reached the top of the steps,  the phone was ringing, but the woman that I worked for, she was the church clerk,  was not there and when I answered the call I knew it was a male caller, but I didn’t think that to myself, you know. I say the male caller on the other end said, “3 minutes.”

We, as children, had not been privy to this type of information.  The habit of adults was that they didn’t tell children things that frightened them or tell them things that really involved really deep racial matters.

HOLLY: So what did you think the “3 minutes” meant at that moment?

CAROLYN MCKINSTRY: You know, I didn’t have very long to think about it.  I was puzzled, but I had 15 — about 15 steps or 15 seconds to think about it. And I just know that because we’ve counted the steps. But when I took those steps, about the 15^th step was when the bomb exploded.