"There's An App For That!" with Jeff Peterson of Waha

We walk the path of Waha as we seek to create reproducible discipleship that reaches the unreached by equipping ordinary people to lead Bible-centered groups that multiply across languages and borders. Jeff Peterson shares stories from MENA to Mauritius showing how God draws people and how simple tools help us obey.

• the gap between conversion and discipleship
• why missions struggles to scale without simple tools
• discovery Bible study as a reproducible framework
• Waha’s audio-guided format and multilingual reach
• case studies: Sarah’s dreams and five generations of groups
• family transformation through gratitude and obedience
• shifting the paradigm: discipleship before labels
• how $30 helps one family start a study
• practical steps to start a group today

Visit https://waha.app/eng to find out more!

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Chapters

• 0:05 Vision Of Every Tribe And Tongue
• 0:43 Host Intro And Jeff’s Mission
• 1:59 Dustin’s Journey And The Discipleship Gap
• 3:32 Jeff’s Early Fears And Call To Nations
• 4:52 Defining The Problem: Unreached And Unaware
• 7:03 Missions Isn’t Failing, It’s Not Scaling
• 9:16 From Ads To 30 Churches And A Stalling Pattern
• 11:22 The Audio App Idea And Building Waha
• 13:46 Dashboard Shock: Tens Of Thousands Of Groups
• 15:20 Tools As Train Tracks For Reproducibility
• 17:50 Sarah’s Dream And First Discovery Groups
• 20:55 Five Generations Of Groups And Digital Spread
• 23:05 God Draws And Teaches: John 6 Insight
• 24:56 Mauritius Story: Family Transformation
• 27:15 Organic Multiplication And Visible Change
• 28:54 Vision 2028: Empower, Equip, Everywhere
• 30:16 Funding Journey: From Small To Scale
• 33:02 Prayer, Blessing, And Listener Invitation
• 40:36 Rate, Review, Share, And Connect

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

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. My family and friends have been on a journey to find and fund the task remaining. Unjourney with us to the ends of the earth as we share the super helpful stories of God at work to the minimum he is called to reach the unreach. Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Unreach Podcast. Dustin Elliott here, your host today. And today we have a new friend in the house, Mr. Jeff Peterson with Waha. And you're going to get to hear today about a story where evangelism moves to discipleship. And I'm going to cue this up by telling you a bit of my story. So I was actually saved and baptized at 17 in a tiny little one-room church of Christ in Brownsboro, Texas, by a missionary. A guy came through and did a sermon series on the gospel. And then he left town and I went on about my life. And I went to the University of Texas and certainly was aware of God, certainly prayed, probably more at finals time than anything, but I wasn't discipled. Nobody really grabbed me after that and said, hey, here's what you do next. And I went through the next probably 12 or 13 years of my life really as a walking identity crisis between chasing willfully what I thought I wanted, as opposed to faithfully being intimate with a relationship with God and understanding his will. And I think the key to bridging that gap is discipleship. And Jeff Peterson has found a way to scale discipleship through Waha. And so I want to get his story out to the world. I want everybody that listens to our pod and all your friends and family to know that there are some tools available to you and people you know locally and globally for walking people through those next steps. We have a huge heart for discipleship on the pod. We know the Great Commission doesn't say just go and make evangelists of all nations, but it says to make disciples. And so help me welcome Mr. Jeff Peterson. Jeff, welcome to the show. Hello, hello. Excited to be here. Yeah, let's just start with your story, man.

SPEAKER_00: 2:30

I mean, how do we how do we get to here? So I grew up in the Dallas Fort Worth area and went to a little Baptist church, think deep red carpet, think hard uh pews. Oh yeah, we can see the tall stained glass windows. And I remember being this is in the 90s, uh, I remember these missionaries would come and they would wear their their garb from you know wherever they're from Thailand or you know Colombia or whatever. And when these missionaries would come, I would literally be in the in the back row, I was a back row Baptist, and I would put my fingers in my in my ears, and I would actively try to avoid contact. And I was like, God, I don't want to listen to these stories. I was terrified that God, I was gonna hear these stories and feel you know, the quote unquote call, the call into ministry. Uh I was gonna feel convicted. Why? I thought being a missionary meant, okay, you live in a hut, you stand on street corners, you eat like congealed blood or something. I was like, I I can't do that. Uh I don't like run run a school, do street evangelism. I I don't want to do that. So something changed because in my mid-20s I moved to a country in the Middle East, North Africa region. So what happened? I was married, I was in Houston, Texas at the time. I was working a just a secular job as a consultant, and I was doing my Bible reading plan. So it was a normal day. I was in Matthew 28, where Jesus says, go make disciples of all nations, teach them to obey, baptize them. And I I read this and I just put my coffee down and I was like, I'm not obeying this. I just felt the conviction of the Lord that I actually don't even know what this means. What does it mean to go make disciples? Is this is this the same thing as evangelism? Is this the same thing as like meeting at a Starbucks and talking about our sin struggles with another brother? Is that discipleship? Is it going through a curriculum? Like, what does this even mean to make disciples? So this started this journey of like, okay, I really want to explore what does this look like. Eventually felt my my wife and I felt like, okay, this whole piece of go make disciples of all nations, all nations, that's important. Um, so we eventually moved to this country in the Middle East, North Africa region and received some training, uh, learned, obviously learned about what does it mean to make disciples? And through this journey, I I learned some problems. So I want I want to highlight some problems with it. Yeah, please. So this is the Unreached podcast. Uh so we're talking about the Unreached. So there's 3.4 billion people who are unreached, meaning they have no one to tell them about Jesus. I was in a taxi cab uh in in my country, and I I mean I try to talk about Jesus all the time. Um so I was uh with this taxicab driver, and I try to bring up spirituality wherever I go. So it's like, man, I was spending time with Jesus this morning, and I was reading some of these stories uh about Jesus and like man, I just love Jesus. And the in the taxi cab, like we were at a stop sign, he looked at me and was like, How do I find this Jesus? Like, who is he? Does he live in this city? Uh it was like, oh man, you you don't even know who Jesus is. Uh he thought it was just some some guy like in this city. So the the problem is 3.4 billion people, they don't they don't even know. There was a Barna survey done in 2018 where there were they they surveyed these these church goers and they're like, hey, what is the Great Commission? And only 17% of churchgoers can even identify what does it mean to make disciples? They they don't even can even identify it. And of those who can identify it, how many are actively trying to do it in their lives? We we don't I mean there's no study on that.

SPEAKER_01: 6:09

Less than 17%. Less than 17%. I think it's safe to say for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 6:13

So if there's like there's this huge number of people who need to know, and if God's vehicle for reaching them is discipleship discipleship, I mean what did Jesus do? He invested in 12, right? Like if this is God's vehicle for changing the world, go make disciples. But we we don't need we don't even know what it is. We don't know how to do it. That was my story.

SPEAKER_01: 6:35

Yeah, Jesus didn't start a mega church. No. He got a small group of guys and he did life with them.

SPEAKER_00: 6:40

Like even you look at the big crowds, he actively trying to he tried to like filter through the crowds and find who is actually spiritually interested, who is actually interested in these stories. So there's over 7,000 languages in in the world, and there's over 3,000 of them that don't even have any sort of scripture, any sort of content. If we need to make disciples, like how do how do we do that without the Bible to actually have them read through this, right? Um there's a there's a gap.

SPEAKER_01: 7:08

Yeah, or without people there to tell them, right? Absolutely. And so so it's a it's a question of access.

SPEAKER_00: 7:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 7:15

And then you just look at the stats. So there Luzon did this uh it's called the State of the Great Commission report. We looked at the last 125 years, and definitely there have been new disciples made. There's been new churches planted. Like there has been growth, but if you look at the global population, we're pretty stagnant. There's been pretty much zero percent growth if you just look at the global population uh relative growth.

SPEAKER_01: 7:38

Relative growth. Uh when you consider the the population growth as well. Yeah. So we're kind of you know treading water, if you will.

SPEAKER_00: 7:45

So the way I like to think about it is like, hey, missions is not necessarily failing, but it's not scaling. So how do we scale discipleship? How do we scale reaching the unreached? So there's these groups of people who are like, man, this is a problem. What are we going to do? And these are from different missions organizations, many of them that you guys would know, and they're like, Man, what if we just went back to what what does the Bible say about how Jesus made disciples, right? Like we look at the Great Commission, go make disciples of all nations, teach them to obey. Like, what if discipleship was just simply, let's look at the Bible and let's let's do what it says? Let's let's share it with others. What if what if it's a life on life? Disciples making disciples making disciples. I was in this country in North Africa, and I have a friend. He's five foot two, he's lacking some teeth, uh, but he's got a fiery heart for God. Everywhere he goes, he's he's dripping Jesus, he's trying to talk about Jesus, and uh he's trying to start groups. So he starts this group in this pretty remote village. They're meeting in a house, they're inviting some of their neighbors to this house, and he identifies a leader who's like, Man, I want this person to like lead this this church. So he has a conversation with them. Hey, Mohammed, like, hey, why don't you I've been doing this church, I've been leading this church, why don't why don't you do it? And he's like, Brother, like, I would like to do that, but I I don't have the training you have. I don't and actually you're you're getting paid to do this work. Like I'm I don't have that, I just have a shop. So if we have this paradigm that to make disciples to do church planning that we need some sort of seminary degree, yeah, that we need training, we need to leave our job and and yeah. Is it's not gonna happen. If we're relying on the 1% to actually do ministry, like we're not gonna accomplish the task. So how do we just get how do we catalyze, mobilize, inspire, train, coach ordinary believers with ordinary jobs to make disciples that make disciples? So that's the problem that that I'm seeing. Uh we were in this country, we were partnering with some local believers, and they were like, hey, we want to run ads to find Muslims who want to read the Bible. My background before moving to this country was actually I was uh I had an ads agency in Houston. I was running ads for like home services businesses, um gyms, things like this. And I was like, oh, perfect, like I know how to run Facebook ads, like we let's work together. So we started running ads, and this is from 2017 to 2019. In about two and a half years, we saw over 30 churches planted um in this country. Praise God, that's exciting. Uh the problem is 2 Timothy 2 2, Paul says, What I, Paul, have taught to you, Timothy, in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to other faithful men who'll entrust others to do the same. We see this idea of Paul teaching Timothy in a group, which starts more groups, which starts more groups, and we weren't seeing that. We were not seeing that in our country, and that's a problem. How do we see this this simple reproducible pattern? A lot of missions organizations are using this thing called a discovery Bible study, um, where you simply look at the look at the Bible and you ask some simple reflective questions as a group, and it's not this organized program. It's like, hey, let's meet in a house, let's meet where we normally meet at a hang out at a park, let's let's read the Bible, ask some reflective questions and hold each other accountable to really obey these commands that Jesus is giving us and share with others. So we we started going back to the story, we we started these these 30 groups in in this country, we weren't seeing 2 Timothy 2.2 happen. Uh they weren't multiplying. Groups were not starting groups, which were not starting more groups. So we were in a another country in the Middle East, and w there was a group of us who are committed to making disciples, and we were talking about like, okay, how do we how do we really do this? And there's a case study happening in a in a nearby country where they're using this app and it's an audio-based app. Um you press play and then you hear these questions like, hey, what are you thankful for? Someone whoever's leading the group presses pause, and then the whole group discusses. Oh, I'm thankful for this. Someone else and then you press play again. Hey, what's been challenging this week? You press pause, the group discusses. You hear scripture, you hear the inductive Bible study questions after as a part of this. So in this case study in this country, they've seen 18 generations of groups. So groups, starting groups, starting groups, starting groups, all the way to the eighteenth generation. And in in this time at this uh this round table that we were at, they're like, we need more apps like this. We need an app all throughout MENA, all throughout Middle East North Africa. How do we see an app like this? So my teammate and I, teammate and I were like, Well, we could do that. Like, I don't know how to make an app, but like you're gonna watch some YouTube videos, like, how hard can it be? We'll we'll figure it out. Uh so we committed to like, okay, let's let's do this. COVID happened also. COVID, the great catalyst of all things. Uh so all of a sudden we were like locked into our apartments, we couldn't leave. There were like tanks rolling around in in the streets saying, like, you know, don't don't leave where you are. Oh man. Uh so we're like, okay, let's let's learn. Um fortunately, God gave us a a developer. So I didn't actually have to watch YouTube videos to figure it out. Uh, but he gave us a software engineer and we started developing this app. And really the focus was just our country at first. But our country has multiple languages, and we're like, okay, how are we gonna pay for a develop our developer? Uh we had a small email list of around 200 missionaries essentially, and we made this really bad promo video kind of explaining the vision. Uh I think I scrapped the Wii. I don't know if you guys ever played the Nintendo Wii, the dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. Anyway, uh, we like, but that was the the soundtrack of this video. And uh it was like, this okay, here's the vision of what we're doing. Uh, but we had over 70 people like respond to that email and they're like, this is amazing. This is exactly what I want for my country, too. Can we add our language? Could we add Egyptian Arabic or Turkish or French or Spanish or uh Russian? 70 out of 200. Whoa. It was a good response rate. Yeah. And of those 70, we had seven of them like actually move forward with us, and they're like, hey, we're gonna help crowdfund. So they give$5,000 each, and that like paid for our developer for the first several months. Praise God. So from the very beginning, we're like, okay, God's heart is for every tribe, tongue, and language. This needs to be a multilingual app. So that helped fund us uh at the start, and then some some time passes, we add more languages. Uh so maybe two years pass, and we're like, is anyone actually using this? Uh we we didn't know. Uh we we heard some stories, some anecdotes of like, man, hey, thanks for for Waha. We're using this in in Turkey and it's it's going really well. We're like seeing groups that are starting more groups. Um just like, okay, praise God. Uh but our our developer was decided, hey, let's make like a dashboard of where are groups happening. It's an app, right? So we have data. Uh where where are groups happening? Um how often are they are they meeting, how long do they meet? Um, all this is data that that we could grab. So we built this dashboard and I was absolutely blown away. There's if you go to dashboard.waha.app you can actually see it. So there's a spinning globe, and there's at that juncture there was uh tens of thousands of groups that that have started. So each one of those, if you go to that website, each one of those red dots is a group of three to ten people who have gone through at least seventy-five percent of the questions. They've been on the app for a certain amount of time to make sure it's not just someone like opening the app, right? Uh so we're like, oh my gosh, like people are actually using this.

SPEAKER_01: 15:45

Yeah. 27,753 meetings is what it says right now.

SPEAKER_00: 15:49

Yeah, that's in the last year. Uh so I think if you look at like all time, we're somewhere at least time of this recording, 68,000 groups have been.

SPEAKER_01: 15:58

Oh yeah, and you can kind of zoom on it and it spins the globe and you can see man, they're everywhere. They're all over. That's incredible, man. What I love about that story is that you weren't paying any attention to the data for two years. Who starts an app and doesn't look at the data for two years? I know.

SPEAKER_00: 16:15

That's hilarious. Yeah, we were we were just focused on okay, is this solving our problem?

SPEAKER_01: 16:21

Um well, and if it is, then it might be probably helpful in other places. And so you were you were laser focused on developing the content, right? Making sure the questions and the to train tracks. And so I think such a key part of discipleship groups and training disciples to make disciples is you've got to give them some train tracks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:39

I firmly believe we just need good tools. So about a year ago, my wife and I bought a house. We live in Seattle now, and uh of course when you buy a house, things go bad just right away, right? Uh so immediately our dishwasher breaks. Oh yes, oh yes. So I'm on my hands and knees, I'm underneath the sink, I'm like trying to undo this tube that goes into the the the tap into the faucet, and I'm spending like 30 minutes just my hand is starting to get bloody trying to twist off this tube, and it's taking so long. So eventually I'm like, oh wait, frick. Uh you know, I try to wr a wrench, I I I Google it, like, hey, how do I get this this tube off? And of course, there's there's a tool. So I go to Home Depot, spend seven dollars on this tool, I come back, one turn of my wrist, and now the tube is off. It's like, oh man, if if I only knew there was uh a better tool, I could have saved myself a lot of time and effort. So I I really believe when it look when we look at the Great Commission, when we look at this mission of how do we reach the unreached, we need tools. We need effective tools.

SPEAKER_01: 17:44

Right. Okay, so you've built the tool now, so how's it being used, man? Give us some stories.

SPEAKER_00: 17:50

Yeah, so there's a cool case study happening uh in the Middle East. I keep talking about the Middle East North Africa as because that was like my world, right?

SPEAKER_01: 17:58

Like that's the one that's the MENA's the 1040 window, and we talk about that whole that whole area a lot.

SPEAKER_00: 18:03

So there is a Sudanese Muslim, she wears a hijab, she lives in uh a country in the Middle East, she prays five times a day, and uh we'll call her Sarah. And for three nights in a row, Sarah has this dream where there's this glowing man who appears in the dream and he has a book in his hands, and he hands her the book, and she takes the book and she looks at it and she reads B-I-B-L-E. And then this man says, Hey, this is this book is gonna change your life, and it's gonna change many people's lives. And then the dream ends. So for three nights in a row, she has this dream, and then on the third morning she she goes into her apartment's like common living room space and she sees this book on a coffee table and she reads B-I-B-L-E on the coffee table. And then here comes this Nigerian guy, he's got his cup of coffee, and he like walks up to the coffee table, he he looks at Sarah, who's staring at the book, he looks at Sarah and he's like, What are you doing? He's like, What is that book? Like, oh, this this is the Bible. He's like, What is the Bible? She didn't even know what it was. She was like, Oh, but the but the Nigerian guy was like, Well, it's it's kind of like it's kind of like the Quran, but it's for Christians. And she was like, Can I read this book? I was like, Yeah, let me introduce you to some of my friends. So she gets introduced to two of my friends who also live in this country. And uh she Sarah just desperately wants to read the Bible, so they start reading the Bible together and they start doing the discovery Bible studies. So they start, I think, just with a U version Bible app. They they read, they read the scripture and then they're asking questions like, hey, what is what does this say in your own words? What does this say about God? What does this say about man? If this is true, how will you apply it? Who will you share this with? And she's she loves these stories. It's like, man, okay, I I'm reading this creation. Story and God wanted relationship with me? Like that, that's remarkable. I mean, it's she's radically touching her as she's reading these stories. So they do about two of these. And then uh my my friend is like, hey Sarah, like we've been doing these Discovery Bible studies. Who who can you do this with? And Sarah's like, Oh, oh, it's too many questions. How will I know what what story to use? Like, I I don't think I could do this. So my friend takes Sarah's phone and is like, okay, okay, oh, okay. She goes to Google Play, searches Waha Discovery Bible study, and she downloads it. And then like, okay, use this. So Sarah takes the phone and was like, okay, so all I do is gather a group. I press play, or I could just read the questions and then we just discuss it. That's all I gotta do. And my friend was like, Yeah, that's all you gotta do. She was like, Okay, perfect. So Sarah runs with it. I mean, she she's still a Muslim, by the way, right? Like she is, but she's on a journey of following Jesus. I think often in the West we have this paradigm that first evangelism happens and then discipleship, uh, and it's like this one-to process. But I wonder, could we could we change our paradigm?

SPEAKER_01: 21:14

Wow, that's strong, man.

SPEAKER_00: 21:16

Like I have I have three kids and I'm not waiting for my my son or my daughter to like quote unquote receive the Lord and be baptized before I start the discipleship journey, right? Like I'm discipling them from the moment they're born, and I can read the Bible to them, and I'm like, I'm trying to train them and disciple them. And in the same way, like, what if we view discipleship as okay, it's not just evangelism and then discipleship, it's like, could we make disciples and eventually there is a faith decision and then just continue the discipleship journey? Does does this make sense? You bet.

SPEAKER_01: 21:50

So you bet, but nobody's ever quite phrased it like that before.

SPEAKER_00: 21:54

Yeah. Come on. So Sarah starts, she's still a Muslim, but she's reading scripture, she's applying it to her life. God is rocking her, and she's sharing it with others. So we fast forward the story like six months, and there are dozens of groups all around her neighborhood of people of her same ethnic origin who are reading the Bible, they're using Waha, and they're applying it to their life and they're sharing it with others. We fast-forward the story now to today. We're seeing five generations of groups in in this place. There's over a hundred groups. So these are groups starting groups, starting groups. One day Sarah is, she's in her 20s. So one day she's uh scrolling on TikTok. Um and she sees this uh this video of this Saudi Arabian girl, also covered with a hijab. And this Saudi Arabian girl is like, hey, I'm from Saudi Arabia, but I keep having this dream of this glowing man, and he says his name is Jesus. Does anyone else uh who's a Muslim are is anyone else having dreams like this? It's a man in white. So Sarah looks at this and she looks at the comments, and there's over 800 comments of people who are like, oh yeah, I'm from Yemen and I I'm having dreams like this too, or I'm from Tunisia and I've had a dream like this too. So obviously Sarah sees that. She writes in her comment. Um, she's like, Oh yeah, I'm you know, I'm from whatever country and I've I've had this dream too. Uh so she Sarah's strategic. I think she's gifted with apostleship. She she wants to start groups. Um so she she's like, hey, let's do this. Let's organize into like it was either Instagram groups or WhatsApp groups uh based on like what country you are and let's like to share our stories together. So she starts these groups for like Yemenese people and from Saudi and for Saudi Arabians and Tunisians and Libyans, and and people start writing in, they're sharing their stories. And then Sarah is like, hey, uh I had a dream like this too, and here's what I did. Uh I started reading the Bible to learn about this this glowing man in white. His name is Jesus, by the way. Uh so you either need an original Bible. There, there's this concept with Muslims that the Bible has been corrupted. Maybe some of you know this. So she's she just leans into that. She's like, you either need to find an original Bible or you could download this app. Uh this one hasn't been corrupted. It's called Waha. Uh so she like makes a video in in these like WhatsApp groups, explains how to do it, and people start writing in. They're like, okay, I'm you know, it's a Yemenese person. Like, okay, I'm gonna do this with my family tonight. So once again, groups are starting groups, it's happening even in the digital space, digital church planning, I guess you could say.

SPEAKER_01: 24:40

Well, in a matter of words, it's a it's a tool that's getting them to the living word. Yes, getting them in community, getting them opening up and asking questions. You know what's interesting is you were a back row Baptist with your ears plugged, right? Kind of refusing to hear it. Yeah. Then the word opened your eyes and your ears, yeah, and then you recreated that through DBS, through Waha, and now it's happening at scale. Yeah. How cool is that?

SPEAKER_00: 25:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 25:10

Praise God.

SPEAKER_00: 25:10

It's like God has this story for us, and we just need to walk into it.

SPEAKER_01: 25:13

But you're not you're not meeting with Sarah directly and telling her how to do all this. This is happening organically, spirit-led. And when you hit that man in white part of the story, you know, the first time we talked about the man in white on this podcast was a couple years ago, um, and it was after the earthquakes in Turkey. And it was the story that our friend John told us of them pulling kids out of the rubble two and three and even four days later, and they were alive and they were well, they were fine, and they're like, How? And they're like, Well, the man in white, he came, he brought me water, he brought me milk, he took care of me. Um, and if and if the story was so pervasive at that point that even the even the news in Turkey told the story, which of course you wouldn't think would ever happen with that kind of dark force control against it, but they told the story because then well, obviously they didn't all understand it, but that man in white is that dream is pervasive and ongoing in the MENA region. A lot of us have a preconceived notion that that closed countries and certain parts of the world don't want to know Jesus, they don't want the Bible, kind of like in a way you didn't, but the reality is when you get in there, they're starving.

unknown: 26:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:27

They're starving. They want it so bad. They want that living word, they want that living water, and when they see this completely different paradigm of a God who created them in his own image and delights in them and wants direct relationship and intimacy with them versus what they've been taught.

SPEAKER_00: 26:46

I mean Yeah, well, you you mentioned that you know this man in white. I want to just hit on that actually. Yeah. So John 6, 44 through 45 says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I'll raise them up on the last day. And it is written in the prophets, they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. So we we see in this passage this idea that like who is doing the drawing? It's God. Like God is drawing people to himself. Like in in Turkey, like the this example, like Jesus was literally appearing. He's like identifying people, and he's he's like showing up. For Sarah's story, like he showed up. God is drawing people to himself, and it then it says in verse 45, who's doing the teaching? It's God. I find this just incredibly almost relieving. I find this incredibly relieving. Yes, right? Like, who's doing the teaching? It's not on me. It's not on me. It's it's God who's doing the the He's drawing people and He's doing the teaching. It's not on me. Yeah. Um In a little Indian Ocean island called Mauritius, there was uh one of my friends, he's a disciple maker, and he is committed to this idea of like, man, I wanna I wanna find people who are God is drawing. I want to help them read the Bible and ask these reflective questions, do a discovery Bible study. So what what that looks like for him and his wife is they do prayer walking. Um so they identified this slum. It was like, okay, Jesus' heart for his is for the poor. So he he and his wife started prayer walking this slum. And then he he found this this family. We'll call him Jacques and Marie. And they're broken, man. They Jacques uh struggles with alcoholism. They fight nearly every night. They have a child who's not in school. They they're they're far from God. Uh they don't have like a Christian background. My friend is like, Man, I I find so much peace through reading these stories in the Bible. Would you guys be willing to to read one of these stories with me and just asking some reflective questions? I'm not gonna teach teach you, I'm not gonna preach at you, we're just gonna read these stories. So Jacques and Marie were like, Yeah, I mean we need hope. So they started doing these discovery Bible studies and they start, you know, in creation. Started every good story starts at the beginning. So they start with the creation narrative, they see that God wants a relationship with them, but then they messed up and they resonate with that. Like, man, I've I've messed up too. So they start going through these stories. Uh part of Waha's flow is is the first question is like, hey, what are you thankful for? So on the third meeting, they start with this question, What are you thankful for? So for 45 minutes, something breaks in the room where they start saying how they're thankful for each other. Oh uh it there it yeah, something shifts in their marriage as as they start doing this. So it totally they don't even get into the the scripture. They just that's the whole meeting is just encouraging one another, saying what they're thankful for.

SPEAKER_01: 29:54

So I mean they were getting some some grade A counseling right there.

SPEAKER_00: 29:58

That's it. So they continue to go through these discovery Bible study processes, they they continue to read these stories, and then Marie's uh sister, she lives about two hours away, she comes and visits. And once again, Jacques and Marie, they they've not yet been baptized. They are not like identifying yet as Christians, they're just reading scripture and applying it and sharing it. Uh so her sister comes and she's like, What has happened? Marie, you are completely different. Uh they decided to give up alcohol. Uh Jacques have found a job. They decided to put their kid into school just simply through, I mean, they're reading God's word, they're applying it, and God is transforming their life. So her her sister's like, What has happened? And Marie's like, to be honest, I've I've been just reading the Bible, and we've been doing this as a family. You should do it too, actually. So Marie's sister's like, Oh, well, if you're reading the Bible, then I I need to also like I know your story, and like you're reading this, this, this book, like, okay, what what do I need to do? So Marie's like, okay, give me your phone. She finds Waha, she downloads it. Uh so Marie's sister starts a discovery Bible study with her her family. So we see once again this idea of like in 2 Timothy 2 2, what I, Paul, have taught to you, Timothy, in the presence of many witnesses and trust to other faithful men. Groups need to start groups, which need to start groups. Disciples need to make disciples that make disciples.

SPEAKER_01: 31:27

Amen. Amen. And I just again, I just think the encouraging, many, many encouraging parts, but the really encouraging part here is it's organic. Yeah. It's organic. It's the it's it's a direct to God prod, poke, and realization that going from, you know, captain of my own ship, willfully doing it the way I want to do it, to faithfully letting him be the captain of the ship and real life change, real heart change happens, then people see that and they go, Why are you different? What happened? This is what happened. Maybe it'll work for you too. Come on. Right?

SPEAKER_00: 32:04

Love it.

SPEAKER_01: 32:05

I love it too, man. Thank you for for coming in and telling the story. So let's talk about what's next for Waha. How can listeners get involved? How can they support?

SPEAKER_00: 32:13

So the the path that we're on, um, we are by 2028, we want to equip 200,000 disciples to make disciples. Um, so that's kind of the number we have there. So we think in terms of three different spheres. Uh, we want to empower, equip, and we want to do it everywhere. So empower. Um, we want to empower 200,000 disciples to make disciples. Um we want to equip them. So this is continuing to develop the product. Uh we're working on some hardware products to get the gospel into really unreached nations in these really restricted places. How do we get the Bible there? Uh, and we want to do it everywhere. So our goal is to have 100 languages on on the app.

SPEAKER_01: 32:56

You're talking about everywhere. And you know, uh, we don't ever talk about stats for our podcast, but I'll I'll reveal one stat that I think has just blown Clint and I away. We've been listened to in 119 countries now.

SPEAKER_00: 33:08

Let's go.

SPEAKER_01: 33:09

So my prayer is 119 countries are gonna hear about Waha. Come on. Maybe 123. Maybe we'll add a few. Right? They're gonna hear about it and they're gonna go on their phone and they're gonna download it. And they're not gonna have an excuse to not do it with their family, their close friends. Just do it. Clint downloaded it while we're sitting here. Just go through it. It's free. It's free. So if we go on waha, is it waha.app dot app and there's a button to give. Yep. So we can support. So with that goal, is there a particular raise you're trying to hit?

SPEAKER_00: 33:41

Yeah, let me tell just our funding journey. Um so I mentioned a little bit of it. Uh we hired this developer, so this is back in 2020. Um, we needed about$1,500 a month. Uh, that's it. Yeah. Uh but at the time, like we're I mean, we're two missionaries. Like$1,500 a month felt like just an insurmountable amount of money. It's like, man, how are we gonna come up with this? Uh so we sent that email, seven people gave five thousand dollars each, and I mean I just wept before the Lord. Like, man, you own the cattle on the thousand hills, thank you, Jesus. Well, that developer, he was working part-time for us, um, he was in college, and then he graduated and he wanted a full-time job. Like, okay, uh how do we how do we pay for that? So the the need grew to be about sixty thousand dollars. And if fifteen hundred per month felt like an insurmountable amount, I mean sixty thousand was like this isn't I mean, there's just no way. Like, how are we gonna how is this gonna happen? Uh it f it felt like so much. We prayed, we fasted, we like gave personally. Like, I don't have a ton of money, but like what can I what can I give just from from what I have to to to pay for this. Um and around this time we we got an email saying like, hey, congratulations. You have been nominated for a grant for your work in North Africa Middle East. And I was like, What's a grant? I I didn't even know what that was. Uh Who's Grant? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who is Grant? Grant wants to give me money. Uh I was like, okay, we answer like a lot of questions and it's like 20 questions, and the people want to give us money. Sounds awesome. Like, let's do it. So I didn't know what's a normal amount of money to apply for a grant. I had no idea. I was like, well, our need is 60,000, so let's let's ask for 60,000. So we we we applied for the grant. A few months pass, or sorry, a few weeks pass, and we hear back, and they're like, hey, congratulations. You've been your grant proposal has been accepted. And I was like, oh my gosh, God, you are so faithful. Once again, you have the cattle on a thousand hills. I can't believe you provided. And at the end of the email, it said, Hey, just as a reminder, this is a matching grant. So, in order to get the$60,000, we had to raise another$60,000. And now we had a timeline. It was like, hey, you have to do this by by January 31st or something. I was like, oh my gosh, like how are we gonna do that? Like, six sixty thousand dollars, that's a lot of money. Uh so once again, we prayed, we fasted. Lord, what are you doing? How are we gonna come up with this this money? And then we we got an email um from these two guys, and they're like, hey, we've been following your journey with Waha for a while, and we'd love to get on a call with you. And my teammate actually was like, Oh, we don't we don't have time to get on a call with these guys. Like, we we need to raise this money. Like, what are we gonna do? Uh but we we agreed to to get on the call, and uh we share the vision, share what what's going on. I mean, we didn't have like a ton of traction at this point. Like we had um a few hundred groups maybe happening. Actually, we didn't even have the dashboard. So this uh just anecdotes. We we we thought there was there was a certain amount of fruit. Um so they they heard our story, and at the end of the call, they're like, we want to match the the full sixty thousand dollars. I was like, Oh my gosh, God, you are you are so good. I can't believe you provided. Um so our funding journey has actually largely been this grant has come several times, and then these two gentlemen have been, we call them angels. I mean, they're they're absolutely amazing. Um they gave a three-year commitment, and that that the third year of that commitment actually ended last year. So once again, this is an opportunity for God to provide. You know, everyone wants a miracle, but no one wants to put themselves in a position to need a miracle. And here we are, I feel like okay, our budget for this next year, we're I mean, the team has grown. Um, the impact has grown. We're trying to raise$1.2 million for 2026. And we're actively asking Jesus, would you provide? Would you you have the cattle on a thousand hills? What what is this gonna look like? Um we did some number crunching of just like, okay, if you look at our annual budget and you divide it by impact, what what are these numbers? And we found that anyone who donates$30 that helps one family do a discovery Bible study. Um, which I think is a pretty compelling stat. Like this is all just organic, right? Like we're we haven't run a single ad ever. Um would love to do that in 2026 if if we received funding. But this is all groups, starting groups, starting groups.

SPEAKER_01: 38:18

Excellent, excellent. Well, I think uh some important people are gonna hear this. There may be some more angels out there, bud. We just might. Clint and I will help as well. Um we have a we have funds set aside that we want to help um guests that we feel called to help with the pod, and then uh my family also. So um so we're gonna come in. We're gonna help you out. So thank you. Well done.

unknown: 38:40

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01: 38:40

Yes, absolutely. Come on. Um, super well done. So cool. And um, we always ask the uh guests to pray for the listeners. Take us home.

SPEAKER_00: 38:52

Yes, okay. Lord Jesus, we thank you for every listener who is listening to this podcast right now. Thank you that you have called them to be a disciple. And the natural outcome of being a disciple is to make more disciples. Thank you that there's a calling on their life. We don't need to fear the call to ministry. We're all called to ministry, whether you get paid to do it or not. Uh we are called to be a disciple-making disciple. Um, thank you for what you're doing in the nations of the earth. Thank you that your heart is for every tribe, tongue, nation, ethnic group, every people. Um, and Lord, to see this great commission accomplished, we need just ordinary believers to make disciples. So Lord, would would we be would we be the would we be faithful? Would we obey your commands? Um Lord, I pray this yeah, that we've talked about just spending time with Jesus. God, I pray for every listener that they would love you so much uh that they would want to spend time with you. Um it's it's natural if you have a friendship with someone that you To spend time with them. So, Lord, I pray for every listener that they would be committed to just simple devotion to God through prayer, through reading of the word, through worship, or whatever that looks like, God. Would would we be be as just the the every listener that they would love you, they would love others, and they would want to change the world. So we bless you, bless every listener. Jesus' name. Amen.

SPEAKER_01: 40:25

Amen. 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 Unreach Podcast or email us at unreachpodcast at gmail.com.