UNREACHED
Transforming Economics Through "Business As Mission"
Ever wondered how faith can seamlessly blend with business to create lasting impact? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Derek Kessin and Jonathan Thiessen from Heron Ventures, as they share their incredible journey from a high-flying finance careers to mission-driven lives. You'll learn how short-term missions in Guatemala and a transformative trip to Spain opened Derek's eyes to the power of "business as mission." Discover how he left his finance job in 2019 to empower economic sustainability in unreached areas, using his skills and experiences to advance the kingdom of God in innovative ways.
This episode takes you on a global exploration of how business can serve as a powerful platform for conversations about faith, family, and identity. Jonathan delves into the evolving roles of Westerners and local leaders in mission work, with a particular focus on regions like southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan. You'll gain insights into the holistic approach of integrating faith into every aspect of life, from work to stewardship of resources. Learn about the strategic alignment of talent and capital that supports global mission efforts, and the importance of finding co-laborers and investors who share this vision.
Get ready to be inspired by redemptive business models and impactful investments. Jonathan Thiessen shares invaluable advice on building investor relationships and amplifying voices from emerging markets. Derek highlights a portfolio company working with 29,000 smallholder farmers, aiming to transform the economic landscape. We also explore impactful initiatives in Moldova and Uganda that create economic stability and community growth. The episode concludes with a heartfelt prayer, seeking divine guidance and connection in your daily life, and encourages a deeper understanding of our roles within God's mission.
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
Ever wondered how faith can seamlessly blend with business to create lasting impact? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Derek Kessin and Jonathan Thiessen from Heron Ventures, as they share their incredible journey from a high-flying finance careers to mission-driven lives. You'll learn how short-term missions in Guatemala and a transformative trip to Spain opened Derek's eyes to the power of "business as mission." Discover how he left his finance job in 2019 to empower economic sustainability in unreached areas, using his skills and experiences to advance the kingdom of God in innovative ways.
This episode takes you on a global exploration of how business can serve as a powerful platform for conversations about faith, family, and identity. Jonathan delves into the evolving roles of Westerners and local leaders in mission work, with a particular focus on regions like southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan. You'll gain insights into the holistic approach of integrating faith into every aspect of life, from work to stewardship of resources. Learn about the strategic alignment of talent and capital that supports global mission efforts, and the importance of finding co-laborers and investors who share this vision.
Get ready to be inspired by redemptive business models and impactful investments. Jonathan Thiessen shares invaluable advice on building investor relationships and amplifying voices from emerging markets. Derek highlights a portfolio company working with 29,000 smallholder farmers, aiming to transform the economic landscape. We also explore impactful initiatives in Moldova and Uganda that create economic stability and community growth. The episode concludes with a heartfelt prayer, seeking divine guidance and connection in your daily life, and encourages a deeper understanding of our roles within God's mission.
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb. Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world. For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining. Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work for the men and women he has called to reach the unreached. Hello friends, welcome back to the Unreached Podcast.
Speaker 1:Dustin Elliott, here, your host, I get to have two guests today. These guys work together at a venture capital firm called Heron Ventures, so we've got Derek Kessin and Jonathan Thiessen. We're going to talk about Heron. Why is Heron unique? Why would we have Heron on the Unreached Podcast?
Speaker 1:Well, they're focused on building companies and investing in companies that often are in the frontier portion of kind of economic language, but this also overlays with unreached people groups. And so these guys love Jesus, they're all about it and they're about bringing Jesus's name where he has not yet been named. They're about sharing the gospel through the eyes and the lens of business. And so you know, we do traditional missions work. Here we do businesses missions work. Here we talk about the technology in between. Today we're going to talk a little bit about how we can be investing among unreached people, groups, and then therefore be in support of building kingdom there. So, derek Jonathan, welcome to the show. Hey, good morning, dustin. Derek's first one to speak. So we're going to start with you, derek. Tell us a little bit about yourself, let the listeners get to know a little bit about you and your story.
Speaker 2:To start, please, I'm 40 years old. I live in Chicago. I grew up in a small town in central Illinois in a Christian family. I went to school for finance and economics so I wanted to work in the financial markets. I went to school for finance and economics so I wanted to work in the financial markets. I wanted to work in a dynamic environment that was always changing, and so I worked for a bond trading firm here in Chicago founded by a couple of Wheaton college grads.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about Heron. You were working in finance. Bond desk grew the firm and then how did we transition and get where we are now?
Speaker 2:I think I was blessed, I think, to have a firm that really cared about their neighbor and people outside of even just Chicago, and so we had a group of us who had gone down to Guatemala through work a couple of times in a short-term mission capacity. I know short-term missions can be a bit of a hot button topic. It's probably well-earned, there's good, there's bad, but for me, getting to go down to an economy that I was not familiar with, spending time with folks that literally live, I think, about 11,000 people living in a garbage dump, and that experience, I think, was starting to ignite something in me that, hey, just working in finance and getting to think that I'm awesome and I make money and all of these things probably isn't the end of the story, and so I think that's really where a spark was lit for me. I had never heard of the term business as mission, of the term business as mission. That was never something that had ever come into my context until the church that I was going to, that I went to at the time, park Community Church here in Chicago was sending a group of folks to a neighborhood just outside of Madrid, spain, called Leganese, and it's where many I think over 100,000 immigrants from Morocco, mostly Muslim immigrants, are settled there outside of Madrid.
Speaker 2:There's a lot in Barcelona as well. Something that this group of people noticed about our church who had sent people there before, is they're like, hey, you guys are a young church and most people that get sent over, who do really, really good stuff with us, they don't kind of have the same business background and the energy and the new ideas and things like that. Could you send some people over and help us think about how to make this community center that we have here in the middle of this neighborhood more sustainable? And so that was the first time I'd heard business as mission and I was probably 2016 or 17. And that was probably 2016 or 17. And from there I think it just was kind of a snowball that just kind of got momentum as it rolled down the hill. And I was on the phone with a woman you all know from a company called Impact Foundation in Kansas City. She said well, derek, you know God owns all your assets, right? And surely that wasn't the first time someone had tried to tell me that, but it was the first time that it landed. And so I think from there I said I am the person. I'm an entrepreneur, I've been working at this company for 13 years. It is time for me to go figure out what that means, and so I exited the company in 2019.
Speaker 2:I had had a few people connect me with different people and I just started talking about what I cared about, what I wanted to do, and I didn't realize even six months later. Somebody was like, hey, what do you do? And I'd already kind of started building this. I was like, oh well, I used to work at a bond trading firm and I think for me, that's when it clicked that there was an identity issue actually at the heart of all of this, and before I could start something new, I actually had to squash that and say, hey, if I never work in finance ever again, if I never do anything with loans, with banks, with anything, I've got to be okay with that.
Speaker 2:And in God's goodness, after kind of wrestling with that and putting that to death, where this doesn't matter anymore to me in terms of my identity, then he said, yeah, but I did prepare you with those skills for a reason and I'd like you now to use them in a different way, and so that's kind of the birth of Heron Ventures, which came through relationships, everything from an 80-year-old guy in New Jersey who said I want to get a management company and a fund started for emerging and frontier market entrepreneurs to lead with their faith and love their neighbors, but I don't know how to run it, let's go.
Speaker 2:So I'm just going to pray that somebody comes along like that kind of thing where we all just kind of found each other and has really created this great on-ramp to creating things that an investor, an average person in America who's saying I know that God owns all of my assets and how the heck could I deploy those in unique ways? We're not the only way, but we're one way that we're kind of creating pathways and plumbing for people to do that.
Speaker 1:Man, I love that you said God got you still, got you quiet, got you listening and then redirected you with your gifts and your skill set into this new vein. Jonathan, let's pivot back over to you. Let's talk about how you got introduced. How did Heron come into play?
Speaker 3:So I think part of my journey connects into all of this and the connection points start way back when I was working in Siberia and Kazakhstan. There was one kind of episode in particular where I remember the early seeds or God beginning to poke at things in my own paradigms and thinking. I think you know I came from very much a worldview that saw life in terms of sacred and secular, and so this SSD, as someone's called it the sacred-secular divide or sounds a bit like a syndrome I think was very much alive in my own heart. There's a quote from Mark Green, who leads LICC in London. He says SSD leads us to believe that really holy people become missionaries, moderately holy people become pastors and people who are not much used to God get a job right or work in the marketplace. And it's a little tongue in cheek, but I think to some degree I was kind of in that space and we started in these venture building programs. We started a small network and a small fund to get people started in business and we were working with a couple of larger multinational companies, one agricultural company in particular, and I started doing some business development for them in northern Kazakhstan. Actually, this was in 2004.
Speaker 3:And I suddenly found myself in these relationships with some of the biggest landowners in southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan, sitting around tables with them, in these conversations around faith and family. I mean like literally within 24, 48 hours of meeting them. We're sitting there and we're talking about, like the big questions of life, and I and I'd been in the region for a couple of years earlier and we'd been looking at how do we get into families, how do we have these conversations with people around faith. No one understands why we're here. You can't really call yourself a missionary in the Russian context the word doesn't work and it has all these kind of connotations to it. But suddenly, as I was there now as a representative of this company, I was sitting in these conversations with people of high influence and able to have long discussions into the night around the things that really kind of matter to me questions of identity and biblical truth and eternal destiny and all of this and so I think for me it was one of the first times where I went oh, this is really interesting. I had seen business as something that was at best a platform or a means to an end. You kind of run a business so that you can do all these things. But here was, I found myself in this place where, within the context of business, I was actually able to be the best representative of God that I had the opportunity to be. That was really kind of a formational moment for me, I think one of the pivot moments as I look back in my own history, as we began to really look at what is happening around the world, especially as we think about the rise of the church in the global south over the last 20, 30, 40 years and the fact that Brazil itself will have 100 million evangelicals by 2030, right, very different picture from where we were in 1958, the 1950s and 1960s, when a lot of the mission organizations were birthed.
Speaker 3:There's a new reality and what does it mean to get behind our brothers and sisters in these parts of the world and recognizing that there is still a role for American talent to come in and play specific roles, especially in certain parts of the world where they're welcomed in. There's going to be other places where Brazilians are going to be more impactful in taking up roles. There's going to be other places where Filipinos come in and are welcomed and are accepted and are a bigger part of the narrative of what God's doing in that region, and so this everyone to everywhere thing was a big part of our journey. But then recognizing that, okay, talent is only one piece of the picture, as we think about the growth of the church in these other parts of the world, and we identify leaders who are dreaming big dreams for their nations, they're the ones with ideas of what is it going to take to see the kingdom of God really come alive in our context.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, our role as Westerners is changing. I think this is just one of the realities that we've got to come to grips with. It doesn't mean that we're not needed. In fact, everywhere we go, people are saying no, we do want you guys here, we do want your skills, your abilities, your experience, maybe some of your training and teaching. But the idea of a long-term legacy church planner who goes in that role, I believe, has shifted significantly over the last couple of decades, and especially within the last five to 10 years, and so the step into Heron was really a very natural one. It was saying, okay, we've been reframing the idea of how our participation with God needs to change the way that we engage through our talents. What about the way that we engage through the capital, the resources that the American church brings to bear? And that was kind of a natural next step as part of our journey.
Speaker 1:You're operating naturally now under the theory that God owns it all and you're called to steward it right, and so we've talk about this often. It's not go to work, write a check on Sunday morning, let the church go, do varsity, christian ministry, it's all his Time. Talent, treasure. I'm created as an imager, as a representative of him, and I'm called to be that all week long, not just at certain points of the week. It's about integrity with all that you own, all that he owns, and all that you're stewarding.
Speaker 1:So you've got to shift to that mindset. Then you've got to find co-workers, co-laborers, in that mindset. Then you've got to find investors that are ready to be shifted into that mindset, some of which may be operating more from a position of. I think I can do well on the bottom line here, and some may be operating more from a position of. I think I can do well on the bottom line here, and some may be operating more from a position of I think I can do well in advancing kingdom here. So, derek, maybe unpack for us how do you go about sourcing and finding your investors and your partners, and then let's pivot that into going into how do you find your portfolio companies.
Speaker 2:Whether it is a business that comes into our pipeline, whether it is an investor that we are building a relationship with, or whether it's us ourselves, we are all on a journey of like experiencing the fullness of what that means to be a steward, and I mean I'm waiting for the day that I realize what my next identity blind spot is, that I have to burn to the ground. You know, like where I'm not done yet, god's not done with me, and so that gives us, I think, an incredible amount of grace towards not just ourselves and where we are as we like, as we grow and look back at what we've done in the past and been like man. I wish we hadn't done it that way. Way, the same thing, extended out to our investors and to our portfolio companies, is that we're all on this journey together. Jonathan, I would love if you could speak to some of the investor relationships and what it's like to talk to some of the folks that come in.
Speaker 3:I think for both of us, we recognize how far we've come in our understanding as we've listened to emerging and frontier market leaders over the last number of years and really tried to amplify their voices. I think it also gives us, hopefully, the right dose of humility and recognizing that if we've come this far, we've probably still got a way to go Really seeking people who just want to be part of that journey. Right, if God owns it all, if economics is a science that originates in the mind of God, then he's not simply interested in what we give away, the 10 or 5 or 2%. He's not just interested in the small part of our capital. He's not just interested in the ROI on our investments, like making as much money as we can so we can give more away, give up you know our 2% adds up to more but he's interested in the actual investments themselves. Our hearts are really to find people who are willing to step in at a pretty early stage for us, a pretty early stage for the faith-driven investing journey and willing to, maybe even willing to rethink some of the ways that we've thought about impact. I think this is a big part of our own journey saying what does it look like when the kingdom of God shows up in a particular geography. I know typically the missions world has thought about impact, the ultimate end being churches planted and people making a decision for Christ and we absolutely celebrate those things and people making a decision for Christ, and we absolutely celebrate those things. We're also cognizant of the fact that the reality in the US is I live in the Bible Belt we've got tons of people in churches, tons of people gathering on Sunday mornings. Has that radically changed our society and made us into a place that's truly seeing God's kingdom wholeness come out Saturday, are holy, are owned by the Lord, and that God has a desire to see his kingdom impact the sector that they're in, the sector that he's placed them in. And what does it look like when those hallmarks of the kingdom begin to come alive and people live like Jesus calls us to live on the Sermon on the Mount, right, I think.
Speaker 3:Typically in missions we've been light on following teaching like the Sermon on the Mount. We've been heavy on the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is great. That's part of the salvation story. We haven't really known what to do in terms of being salt and light, living out this long obedience. In the same direction, I was reading again this morning 1 Thessalonians I mean Paul's words right.
Speaker 3:Make it your ambition to leave a quiet life to work with your hands. And 1 Peter, 2.12,. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of you doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. Just this lifestyle that Jesus calls us to. We're looking for investors who are willing to kind of go on that journey for themselves, in a spirit of humility and transparency, and then saying, okay, as I'm doing that within my company, within my business here in the US, what is that? How can I share that journey with someone in another market? A young entrepreneurial leader who's seeking to live out the life Jesus calls them to faithfully within their context. They're going to have very different challenges, but we're both journeying together in seeking to demonstrate the reality of our faith in Christ right Within our context.
Speaker 1:Derek, maybe connect a few stories. Let's talk about portfolio companies. Let's talk about I know your website features a few. Tell us a few stories about your companies and how they're having an impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. The fullness, I think, of the relationship between a PE firm and the portfolio companies, whether it's a majority stake or minority stake, is really an area that I think we're playing in. So an example of a business that we've invested in this year is a global exporter of insecticide something that seems kind of boring, right, wow, it's just a chemical that gets exported. The reality, when you look a little bit deeper, is this business works with about 29,000 smallholder farmers. Why does that matter? On average, a smallholder farmer that grows food makes about 50% of a living wage. So everyone along the value chain of, let's say, coffee makes money, from the broker that buys the beans, the people that roast it, to the exporters, to the retail chains like Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts. Everyone makes money and makes a livable wage and a lot of money, except for that smallholder farmer, because they don't have the power in the relationship, because maybe they own like a fraction of an acre. So what this business said they work with 29,000 smallholder farmers is that we're actually going to look at our relationship with the farmer a little bit different. We're going to invite them into the abundance of this whole value chain. So what they do is they work with the farmers to grow the chrysanthemum flower. The chrysanthemum flower has a chemical in it, a plant-based chemical called pyrethrin, and that chemical can be extracted and refined and used as an organic insecticide.
Speaker 2:Kenya used to be a large producer on the world stage of this industry and the government took it over and it had gone down and it wasn't really producing a lot. Now this business now makes up about 80% of Kenya's production and their farmers are making on average, 10, 12 times more than they would have made if they grew corn, for instance, and they get paid based on the yield. So there is a market basis to this. So it's how can we help you get a higher chemical content in your flower? Because that's how you're going to get paid. So you're going to come learn how this process goes so that you can go back to your farm and get a higher yield so that you get paid more, and so there's kind of this redemptive math feedback loop of inviting the farmers into the story.
Speaker 2:They also have field officers that cover a couple hundred farmers each and they are spending time with the farmers. They're out in the field, going and meeting with the farmers, meeting with their families, and that's kind of where the like, more of the discipleship aspect of the business takes place, right, really building true relationships with these farmers. They're forming a credit union for them. Now they actually have. They're not living in complete scarcity anymore, they actually have money to save.
Speaker 2:So all of those things where they've looked at their footprint and where you know when you learn Porter's Five Forces in the NBA, it says I look at everybody who I have relationships with and I exploit that for the benefit of my business Selfishly. That's what you learn in NBA school. They said I want to flip that and how do I invite them into the abundance of this sort of economic engine? And so they were just recognized by the White House they are the ninth fastest growing business in all of Africa. The way that they are just re-engineering a supply chain for the good of their neighbor and everyone who's a part of it is incredible.
Speaker 1:There we go. That's fantastic. I love that. I've heard similar stories around citronella and cocoa and, obviously, coffee. Right, there's a lot of work the world's starting to pick up on of. Let's help these folks own some more of their own land, let's help them be more sustainable and have commerce, and let's just call a spade a spade here. If your whole generational context is something starts to go well here, then the government comes and takes it, then the government runs it into the ground and then something different comes along and it's oh wait, these people are coming in with capital, with resources, with intelligence, with a network, and they're bringing sustainable economy to my community. Yeah, um, what? Okay, oh wait, you want to talk to me about Jesus? I'm listening. Tell me more about who you are and what you're bringing here right, so you're earning again. You're earning the right to disciple, to evangelize, to bring that in. Give us another story, derek. That was fantastic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and maybe another thing just to put a pin in that one. Um, one of the number one things that farmers say about this company is I can trust you to pay me on time. It's probably inconceivable for the average American to imagine I sell my crop, I give it away, and then I wait weeks, months. The broker comes back and decides how much they want to pay me Maybe what we agreed on, maybe not. Maybe they never pay me Right, and so the fact that this company is actually paying these farmers on time, you know, within a couple of days of when they get the crops from them, is a game to they're like. I can trust you.
Speaker 2:So, there, there is this element of trust that they've they've instilled as well, thank you for closing that loop.
Speaker 2:That's great. Another one that's not in in, that is a part of our initial investment fund that's in about 16 different countries, is in Moldova and it's a company called Unica, and Jonathan, feel free to pepper in here as well. I'm just going to tell the beginning story. Maybe you can tell a little bit about what they do and where they're going today, but the part that really stood out for me about this company. So this company is within a few minutes of the border of Ukraine, kind of across the border from Odessa, and we were working with them. So what they do is they manufacture kind of glue press panels that get built into really, really nice homes that they export to Netherlands, germany. They do it out of this old Soviet factory and they were so successful they had four years worth of orders when they came to us. So they said, at this rate, to keep up with all our orders is going to take us four years to build these eco-friendly homes. And there's another kind of dilapidated factory next door that they could retrofit, put in machinery and they could start catching up on some of those. So it's kind of like a no-brainer from a market demand standpoint and we're in conversations with them about potentially investing in their business and all of a sudden they just kind of go dark and this was right about the time that the war broke out in Ukraine and I can't get a hold of them. I can't get a hold of them and I was like man, I hope they're okay. I don't know what's going on and, of course, I have the key to them getting what they need. I'm the guy with the investment that we're in the later stages of due diligence to say yes or no. You would think I would be the person that they would answer the phone to. Instead, they had closed down the entire factory for days, sent their whole staff to the border and they were helping Ukrainian refugees come across the border. They were paying their employees gas money to drive the refugees to the next town to just get them to sort of to where they were trying to go. They're doing 800 meals a day.
Speaker 2:They became the sort of the hub for, I think the the UN was there. The US embassy was there in their office. World Vision was there. Operation US embassy was there in their office. World Vision was there. Operation Mobilization was there. Everyone was using their office as the central hub to deploy resources, and so that just was radical. To me, there's nothing about blue pressed panels other than the fact that they're eco-friendly. That looks like a redemptive business. If you look at that business model, you're not like. This is like really redeeming and restoring. Other than a lot of Moldovans I think about half of Moldovans in the world live outside of Moldova, and so what they were trying to do in growing this factory was provide a way for families to stay together, so that one parent wasn't working out of the country, sending money back to their family that's still living there back to their family that's still living there.
Speaker 3:They're pretty phenomenal, certified across the European Union. The majority of their homes currently are going to the Netherlands. I think another aspect to this. So not only do they create like a really awesome product. But to Derek's earlier point, you know you talk about transformation. One of the big challenges for the church in Moldova in particular is you've got all these men who are leaving. Every year, like a third of the men leave the country and either go to Russia or other parts of Europe to work, and so talk about trying to grow a church when the majority of your church leaders are leaving for more than half the year. So not only are you opening up families to exploitation I mean a lot of the human trafficking kind of comes through these parts of Eastern Europe and exploits women and children who are left and vulnerable. But in terms of building a church and building a community, if your workforce are leaving, if a lot of your leaders are leaving on a consistent basis, you're fighting against the wind, and so keeping people in the country, providing them with good jobs, is one of the things that you can do that will have the greatest impact. We believe long term in seeing the church in Moldova really thrive. Sometimes it's not that complicated, is it? It's not that complicated, and this is the thing that they tell us. We need more jobs. They also tell us we need access to external markets. There's entrepreneurs who are creating incredible products, like Unica. They're saying what does it look like to connect with markets in the US and further abroad? Let me share one other quick story. This is another one that may tick a couple of boxes.
Speaker 3:Bota-bota drivers are motorcycle. Taxi drivers in Africa are some of the biggest, most popular ways for people to get around. There are over a million bota-botas in Uganda. Most of the bota-bota drivers don't have access to affordable financing, and so they don't own their own bikes. Right the drivers? They're trapped in these cycles of financial dependency. They're given extractive loans to kind of keep them connected or dependent on a couple of the larger, wealthier owners, and so they're leasing their Bota Botas indefinitely. So one of the businesses that we got behind in 2021 was a financing program for Bota Bota drivers across cities in Uganda, providing them with an opportunity to go on a 12, 18, 24 month journey towards paying off a loan, and for many of them, this motorcycle, this Boda Boda, is the first asset they're ever going to own in their lives. It's amazing. They're launching 150 to 200 new motorcycles each month. We were actually Derek and I were there a couple of months ago when they launched another I don't know what it was 40, 50 motorbikes that day from that location. They've now got 80 full-time staff across nine locations in Uganda.
Speaker 3:And here's what I think is really exciting. So every week, as these drivers come back to make their weekly payment, they're gathered together. They call it weekly table groups. They get together, they get a meal and they go through the Bible and they're studying. What does it look like? What does Jesus have to say about the daily issues in my life? And so these 90 table groups are happening and that number is growing. They're happening every week across nine different locations in Uganda, all around this kind of incredible opportunity for mostly men, but some women as well to own their first bikes. And what's happened as well is we just asked this question when we were there those who have now paid off their loans 23 of those that they know of have now gone on to kind of start table groups within their own homes, so they're no longer needing to come to the weekly table group. They've now got a community fellowship within their own homes, and so they're multiplying themselves.
Speaker 1:There we go. 2 Timothy 2.2. You've heard me teach these truths. I'll pass them on to others who can teach them to others, right? So I love that. That's a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that one.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of listeners can relate. You look back to Operation Christmas Child and that series we did last Christmas and just the power of giving something to a child that maybe has never owned or had anything of their own, and now they have a stuffed animal or a ball or something. But this is different. This is I'm working to earn something that I can then go and build a family with, I can then go and support my community with, and then man y'all discipling them at this table weekly. How beautiful is that man? That is real heart change and life change. And, by the way, you're discipling the guys that are traveling among all the different tribes and villages and areas, right, and interacting with all the different people. Derek, closing us out here, tell the listeners what do they need to know about Heron If they're interested in investing among frontier groups and unreached people groups and supporting companies like this, how do they get in touch with y'all and what would be the next steps?
Speaker 2:I would say the biggest thing is you have to have a guide if you're going to venture out into this space. So you really do need to have a qualified financial advisor who has the Christian lens that's going to help you. Kind of balance like what do I do with my charitable dollars, what do I do with my investments and kind of the traditional vanilla things. And then what do I do in this kind of like private investments area where maybe I have the opportunity to play a little bit more redemptively. So I would say they need to reach out to those people first. We're the type of type we have three private investment funds, so the third one is launching a little bit later this year, maybe the beginning of next year. They can find out about those through their advisors.
Speaker 1:Think about all the money, all the time, talent and treasure that God's given you and how you can use that to be aligning your life with his will. Guys, y'all were great guests. I really appreciate it. I love that we get to tell the Heron story. And then I'm going to ask one of you a tradition on the Unreached podcast. We always ask our guests to pray for the listeners, so would one of you pray us out? Sure thing.
Speaker 2:Heavenly Father, thank you for this way of us connecting through the airwaves and, god, we just pray for every listener out there who was able to engage in this story and the many others that have come before and will come after. The same way that we experience these light bulb moments of the different things that you're turning on in our lives, god, we just pray for that in the daily lives of your listeners and ways that may surprise us and ways that may surprise us and ways that might surprise them. God, we are prayerful of the journeys that each one of us is on and we just pray that you would continue to shape our hearts, as you're continuing to shape the world and redeem and restore all things. And it's in Jesus' name we pray all these things, amen.
Speaker 1:And amen. Thank you again, guys. Thank you for listening to Unreached. Our sincere desire is that what you've heard today will cause you to see the mission of God differently and your role in it more clearly. If this adds value for you and we hope it does would you please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen. Also, share with your family, your friends, your church, your life group, small group, d group, wherever you do life, and if you want to connect with us, find us on Instagram at unreachedpodcast, or email us at unreachedpodcast at gmailcom. You, you.