Fighting the Cancel Culture

Nakita Kolov, the Russian nightmare.

No, the devil's nightmare here. From it's time to man up. Challenging men to step into their true manhood. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. We live in a society today that denies the truth. We live in a society that tries to cancel and shut down anybody, whether it's an individual or a business, particularly that operates with a Christian perspective and a biblical worldview. My guest today has been a victim of vicious attacks and through it all she continues to take a stand for Jesus and stand on the Word of God.

You're going to want to stick around. We have a great, great show coming today. Well, I want to welcome you to the Christian Perspective. Before we get started, I want to thank our sponsors, the Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. They are the home of the Christian Perspective Studios here in beautiful Memphis, Tennessee. And we thank Mid-America and the College of Mid-America. If you have a college student who is looking for a place to go and you're worried about the cancel culture and critical race theory and transgenderism and all the crazy things being taught in colleges today, take a look at the College of Mid-America.

And the same goes for you. Maybe you have your degree. Maybe you're later on in life or you don't have to go to seminary just to be a preacher. Maybe you want to just learn more about God's Word. I encourage you to check out Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary at mabts.edu. They're a great, great Christian college and seminary.

Also, I want to thank the Citizens for America Foundation. You know, at Citizens for America, our purpose is to impact the culture for Jesus. And we want to do this by educating Christians to know what they believe and why they believe it, to understand what God's Word says on every issue. And then that's called developing a biblical worldview. And we all have a worldview. A worldview is just the lens through which we see the world.

And as Christians, that lens needs to be through the Word of God. We want to have a Christian perspective in everything that we do, and our guest today certainly has that. Finally, I want to remind you that there's a great event coming up on April 30th in Memphis, Tennessee. It's the 2022 Culture Engagement Summit. This is going to be a great one-day event.

It's a Saturday. Memphis is centrally located. The airport's only 15 minutes away from the venue. So anywhere in the country, you can get there very easily and maybe even fly in and out as far away as Dallas and Charlotte, D.C. and other areas.

Just a couple hours to fly there. And we're going to have a great day. We've got speakers like America's pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffers, nationally syndicated radio host, Todd Starnes, former Senator Jim DeMitt, former Congressman Mark Meadows, who was the chief of staff to President Trump and a strong Christian believer. Jay Seigert, who's an expert on creationism, and so many others are coming. And I want you to email our guest today after we're off the show and encourage her to come, because we want her to come share her story with us, too. It's going to be a great day.

You can register and learn more at CitizensForAmericaFoundation.com. Tickets start at only $15 and you get a free lunch with it. So it's a great deal.

I mean, it costs you $15 to eat lunch in Memphis anyway. So come and join us for a great day of learning what God's word has to say on so many issues, social issues and other issues in the culture today. Well, our guest is somebody who is on the front lines of the culture war. She started a great business with her family and her brother, and we're going to get her to tell her story in just a minute. But Heather Wilson is the co-owner of a funding mechanism, an online funding company called Give Send Go. Give Send Go is a conservative Christian alternative to other funding mechanisms out there in the world today, and they are making a huge impact. And if you're looking for a way to raise money online, I want to encourage you. I don't have anything bad to say about GoFundMe and other companies, but this is a Christian company. This is a way.

Give Send Go is a way to support fellow Christians who have really put their testimony and their lives on the line, come under tremendous attack because of it. And I'm so excited to have today Heather Wilson. Heather, welcome to The Christian Perspective. Thank you so much for having me, Chris. Well, it's exciting to have you, and we have not met in person yet. We were connected through a mutual friend. We were both recently at a convention called the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, and even though we didn't meet there, we were there, and a mutual friend connected us.

And it's so funny how God moves because, Heather, I'm going to get in trouble here. I did not know about Give Send Go, and I didn't know your story. But literally, like the day before I went to, I was driving to NRB, and you were on the radio, and I don't even remember who I was listening to. And I heard your story, and then a few days later, a friend connected us, and it's so great how God does that. And, Heather, I want to talk about your company. Before I do that, I always like our guests to kind of share their story, their personal story, where our listeners can kind of get to know them on a personal level. If you don't mind, tell us a little bit about who you are, and your family, and how God's moved in your life.

Sure. You know, I am one of 12 siblings, so I am the second oldest. I have a really large family. We grew up in southern New Hampshire, a very strong Christian mom and dad, and we grew up just going to church and learning about God, and seeing God be faithful to our family throughout the years. And through good times and bad times, and watching our parents be hard workers, stand for freedom and truth, stand up for things they believed in.

And they gave us just a great foundation. As I continued to grow, around 23 I got married, and my husband was a worship pastor. And so that brought us down to Maryland eventually. At that time, we were pregnant with our fourth child, and he took a position down here in Maryland, where I currently reside.

And we were just doing great. I was a stay-at-home mom. I had never really gone to college or anything like that. I had gotten married and pregnant and worked at restaurants and did other things. But I was a stay-at-home mom for most of my life. And my kids kind of started to grow, like all kids do, and I went out in the workforce once they started school and started to work at a marketing company.

I always loved technology. I found out I was pregnant at almost 40, which kind of shook me. My youngest was 11, almost 12, and I was like, oh my gosh, I cannot have another baby. Things were just getting easier. But like everybody told me while I was crying through my pregnancy, they said, once they're here, you won't be able to live without them.

You won't know what life would be like. And sure enough, when our daughter got here, God knew exactly what we needed. But we had this big gap in our family. We had our older kids that were in high school and in middle school, and then we had a newborn. And I actually had some grandkids at the time as well.

And so it was just a crazy time. And we and my husband looked at each other and said, you know, we're going to be raising kids for the rest of our lives anyways. And so let's maybe foster or adopt somebody to fill the gap. And so we said, all right, let's start the process. We went through the foster care process. It took over a year to get our home study and everything approved. And then I went away.

We finally thought it wasn't going to happen because it had taken so long. I went away on a short cruise with my mom and my mother-in-law for Christmas that year. That was our gift to each other. And while I was on the cruise, I got the phone call that said I had been approved to be an adoptive parent and that they had five siblings.

They needed to emergency remove from their home because of abuse. And they asked me if I could take them. And I was like, I'm not even home.

My husband's home with the kids. I'll find out what he says. And so I call him real quick and said, hey, honey, there's five kids they want us to take. I don't know. I'm not going to be home for two days.

So let me know what you decide. And I don't know much information. Call them back. And I came home to having five extra kids in my house.

So I pulled into my driveway and all these kids come pouring out of my house, a 10-year-old, a 9-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 5-year-old. And I was like, oh, I asked God to fill the gap. I should have been a little more specific.

He literally filled the gap. And then it was supposed to be a 15-day placement for these five kids whose mother had tortured them, locked them in closets, and tased them, and fed them dog poop, and is now in prison for 35 years. It was supposed to be a 15-day placement.

It ends up being almost two years. And I'm telling this story because it was a defining time in my life. For my whole life, I would have told you that I loved like Jesus, that I loved people, that I loved God, that I loved serving. But these 15, 18 months revealed a lot in me that was not very pretty. Those fruits that are supposed to be developing in your life that love and joy, peace, patience, patience, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, gentleness, all of those, I'm going, wow, they're not very evident. It was hard to have five traumatized kids in those age range at my house. And I would go, okay, God, I can't do this.

I can't do this. And God would say, well, I'm faithful. And I had to learn in those almost two years how faithful God was, what loving looked like, that it wasn't, you know, I knew it wasn't a feeling. You know, I've been married. I knew the feeling wasn't always there, that it was a choice. But that loving was sacrifice. It was giving up a little bit of what you deserve or felt you deserve to love somebody who might not deserve it or might not act like they deserve it.

And God used those, I really believe God used those years in my life to teach me about his faithfulness, to teach me to endure and be faithful because he knew what he was going to be doing with Keeps and Go. So we had started, me and a couple siblings started a crowdfunding alternative to GoFundMe called Keeps and Go. And the reason we did this was because we said, you know what, GoFundMe had become like the big thing on the scene eight years ago. When we started a few years prior to that, we had seen GoFundMe start becoming something. And we said, that's an awesome idea. Why aren't Christians doing that? Where someone has a need and everybody gets to it. That's what we should be doing. Is there any Christian alternative?

And there wasn't. And so we decided, let's make a platform that doesn't just speak to the needs, the financial needs, which is important, which we all find ourselves with financial needs throughout life. But we know as Christians that there's a bigger need. And that's a hope that only Jesus can fill. And so let's make a platform where we can let people raise money while we share the hope that we found in Jesus. And so we started that platform and I can see now why God had me go through some of those times in my life.

To teach me how faithful He was, how to love people who might not be lovable, how to sacrifice, what sacrifice looks like, what serving looks like. It's amazing how God uses the things in our lives because He knows what's coming. It really is. Well, let's take a quick commercial break because I want to dive into that a little bit more when we come back. Folks, I want to thank you for joining us today. Our guest is Heather Wilson.

She is a co-founder of a Christian funding organization called Give Send Go. So stick around. We'll be right back with more of The Christian Perspective. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. Welcome back to The Christian Perspective. This is Chris Hughes. My guest today is Heather Wilson.

Heather has been sharing her story of how God has moved in her life. And before we jump into your business and talk about Give Send Go, you were talking about how you were nearly 40 years old when you had a child. You already had several. And, Kim, excuse me, Heather, that's something we have in common is, well, a little different. We didn't have kids. My wife and I thought we couldn't have kids, Heather. And it was like 15 years we were married and just had given up all hope. And so we were just like you in that we were at the age of nearly 40 and scared to death because she got pregnant.

And, you know, at that age, it's risky, you know, and you don't know. They call it a geriatric pregnancy, which I did not like very much. I heard that.

But that's that fit. But at the time, you know, I'm really glad. And now you already had kids. But for me, it was it was good in a sense, because we had been married for a long time, you know, now. And we had gotten to know each other better. We were more stable financially. And so a lot of the things of a new marriage were behind us. And, you know, I didn't have as bad a temper when I was younger. So I think things had calmed down, you know, by the time our kids came along. So I know that same feeling you had. But I wanted to just take a minute because I don't want to brush over this. I know we're here to talk about your company, but I just want to thank you for being a foster parent.

That is such a need. My neighbors recently, they became foster parents and kind of similar to your situation. And they thought it would be a short term stay. And a little girl came into their home who came from a terrible situation. And they just fell in love with her. And they recently adopted her. And and it's such a blessing.

And there's a need for that. I mean, we as Christians constantly tell the world that abortion is wrong and that God doesn't want us to murder these nearly 63 million innocent babies that have been murdered through abortion since 1973 in the United States. And we get criticized a lot from the left saying, well, you know, y'all aren't adopting or you're not taking them in.

And that's just not the case anymore, Heather. Christians are taking them in just like you and your husband did and providing homes. And if you're a listener, I just encourage you, you know, maybe God's given an opportunity. And like Heather said, you don't have to be young, not not that 40 years old, but young to to be a foster parent. I mean, maybe you're older in your life and maybe you and your husband, you're at a point where you can take somebody in and they just need somebody to love them. And give a love of Jesus and give them love maybe that they have never gotten before in their in their home.

So I just want to thank you, Heather, you and your husband and and your kids. I mean, what an adjustment. I mean, it's one thing to have one child come in, but five. Wow. That had to be a shock for the family. I can't even imagine you're going on a cruise. You're not even home.

If you come home with I know it was crazy. It was it was my adopting them or did they find a home? I adopted one. I adopted one of the siblings. The rest live locally so that they can, you know, they face time every Wednesday and they have sleepovers and and they each had very specific needs that were. We just felt that having each one having a home where they were like being able to be focused on would be really healthy for them. And so they have all found great homes with great people. We we stay connected.

And and it's just been great. Like we and so we adopted one of one of the boys. He's in fifth grade now. And, you know, he had an IEP when he came to us, which is like educational developmentally, like educationally delayed. And just about a month ago, we had our last IEP meeting because he caught up on all his schooling.

He can read where he needs it. So this is really exciting. And it's not easy. You know, anybody thinking about fostering and adopting, I'm not going to lie and say, oh, it's just like, oh, you're it's this easy thing. But it's what God actually has called us to do. He said, this is true religion is to take care of the orphans and the widows. Right. Like this is sacrifice. You know, it's giving up maybe the freedom you have or some of the finances you have or some of the space you have in your house or, you know, all of that.

It is. It's something that as Christians we should look into and step out and do. I have so many people go out when, you know, especially during that time, they would say, oh, you're such an angel. Like, I could never do that. And I'm thinking, yes, you could.

Like, that's not the excuse is that somebody else could do that because I'm some sort of special angel or have. No, like I, I just said yes. That's the only thing different for me and someone who says they can't do it is that I just chose to say yes. And so each one of us have that choice to say yes. Praise God that you did. And you said it isn't easy.

I don't think easy is in your vocabulary. You're a mother of ten children and then you go on to form what is now the world's largest crowd funding platform for Christians. So Heather, tell us, why did you start Give Sin Go?

Sure. So like I said a little bit before the break, you know, we knew that people needed fundraising. We saw GoFundMe.

We thought it was a great idea. And as Christians we knew that there's a deep, money's not going to solve people's internal issues. If they've lost a child and they need money for burial fees, no amount of money that they raise is going to fix that hurt and brokenness inside.

Except for knowing that God is closer than our brother, that he comforts us and he bends down and listens to our prayers. Those are the things that will help heal us, not any amount of money. And so we said, let's try to, let's make this platform that combines people being able to raise money while us purposefully pointing them to Jesus.

And so we had lots of discussions about what that would actually look like. Because it's great to say, okay, how can we share, you know, if you ask any of our employees what the mission statement of Give Sin Go is, they would quickly say to share the hope of Jesus through crowd funding. So we're not a left or right platform.

We're a focused platform. We are focused on sharing the hope of Jesus, no matter what your political beliefs, no matter what your religious beliefs or lack of religious beliefs. You can come on Give Sin Go.

You can raise money. And we're going to share the hope of Jesus with you. And one of the ways we came up with how to do that is one of the very first teams that we hired was a prayer team. And so if you start a campaign on Give Sin Go, you will get a call from one of our prayer team that will call you and say, Hi, my name is so-and-so. I've been assigned to be your prayer partner on Give Sin Go. Can I pray right now for your medical bills that you're going through or the house fire or your missions trip or, you know, whatever it is that you're raising funds for? That prayer partner will pray with you right there on the phone. If you don't answer, they'll leave you a voicemail prayer letting you know that we're just praying for you. And we have seen people blown away that a big tech company would take time to call them and pray with them. Even people, we've had atheists that say, I don't even believe in God and that you would call and pray with me.

You don't know how much that meant. And so we know that God is using this. What a ministry. I mean, you guys should hold seminars of how Christians should run their businesses. I mean, so many people profess to be Christians, but they're not doing what you're doing. And to have a prayer team actually call people that do business with you and pray for them, I don't think I've ever heard of another company that's ever done that.

Was there something that, did God just give you that idea or did you see somebody else or how did you come up with that? Yeah, you know, we have lots of discussions with the team just going, okay, you know, we say we want to share the hope of Jesus. It's great to send Bible verses on our emails. It's great to be praying, have a pray now button on a campaign. You know, there's all these things, but how can we really reach into people's situations and minister to them? And we're like, well, they're coming to us. They usually have a pretty big need. That's why they're starting to fundraise.

We can get their phone number. What if we were to pray for them? And it was like an immediate, it was definitely a God thing. It was an immediate like, oh my gosh, this is it. And we had a couple people step up right away from that, Jacob and I, my brother and I both, like we knew and maybe went to church or things that were like, you want to pay me to pray for people? Like, this is incredible. I love to pray for people.

Like that's who God made me to be, right? And our prayer team has just continued to grow. One day one of our prayer partners actually messaged me and she was in the middle of praying and they just go through like a list.

They get to the oldest campaigns and they're just trying to always catch up to the newest campaigns, right? So as we grow fast, we have to hire more and pray more and so they're out praying and they're just praying through a list randomly, or so it seems. But then one night one of our prayer partners called me and she's, or texted me and she's like, be praying right now. I'm on the phone with somebody. And I was like, okay, is everything alright?

She's like, I'll call you later. And so I reached out to the team and said, everybody be praying. Our prayer partner just asked for some prayer right now for, she's on a call, I don't know what it's about. But she called me later and she said she had called this campaign owner and it was an older lady who had just, like the month prior lost her daughter to suicide. The daughter had had a baby and had postpartum depression and had ended up committing suicide and so she had started this campaign. And then the father of the child, then a couple weeks later committed suicide as well. So it was a really tragic situation. And when our prayer partner called, the lady just starts bawling when she introduces herself and tells her why she's calling. And she says, I just took out my gun. I was going to end my life today. And our prayer partner, and so that's why I say a random, yeah, is it random?

Not so much. Because God knew that that lady would need a call from someone who said, listen, I'm here to just share some hope with you. And she prayed with her, talked with her for over an hour.

We followed up the next day, made sure she had a church family and people around her that would be able to speak into her life and be there for her. And from that moment on, and we've had story in story, not all as intense, but story in story, again, of people that said, I cannot believe you called at that moment. Well, Heather, you've done something no one else has ever done.

You've made me cry for the first time on my radio show. Just put in a good way of how God is moving in your company. I mean, I knew none of this about your company. What a blessing for how God is using you. And you've been obedient to listen to his call and how you're touching the lives of so many other people. I just want to thank you for being faithful and listening to what God's told you to do. And I don't know of any other company that texts people right away and says prayer, pray for something to their whole team.

So I just want to encourage you. I know we're going to talk in a minute about the terrible things that have happened to your company after this commercial break, but I just want to encourage you and thank you for the stand you're taking for the Lord. So when we come back, I want you to explain what crowdfunding is, and then we're going to talk about some of the attacks that have come on your company. Folks, we're talking to Heather Wilson. She is the founder of a company that is the largest Christian platform for what they call crowdfunding. Her company is called GiveStimGo.

Stick around and be right back. The United States of America has a strong Christian heritage, but most Americans don't know the truly important role that God in the Bible played in the founding of this great nation. This June, join nationally syndicated radio host and founder of the Citizens for America Foundation, Dr. Chris Hughes, for four amazing days in our nation's capital. With Chris, you'll embark on a journey of discovering the hidden secrets of Washington, D.C. and rediscover much of America's forgotten Christian heritage. Your tour will include an up close and personal look at the nation's establishment and how it's evolved over the centuries. Learn about the government and the men who helped forge this new kind of republic, one that acknowledged the creator from its very inception.

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Wow, what a guest we have today. I'm talking to Heather Wilson. Heather Wilson and her brother founded a crowdfunding platform for Christians for online giving. The company is called GiveSendGo and I would encourage you to go to givesendgo.com today.

Learn about their company if you need crowdfunding. I encourage you not to use some of the other platforms, not that I get anything against them, but wow, if you've listened to this show, you know this is a Christian company and God is using them in a way to touch lives that really has nothing to do with money and to reach out to people sometimes at a time of need. And she has been sharing how her company has, they pay people to pray with their customers. What a job, to get paid to pray?

Wow, I need to sign up for that, Heather. But hey, some of our listeners may be wondering, maybe they're older, I mean I've never used crowdfunding, so tell us what is crowdfunding? How does it work and what is it? So crowdfunding is just another name for fundraising. It's getting a crowd of people to fund something that you need. It's become a big thing over the last decade or so as social media has popped up and people are online more and they have all these social networks that they're a part of where they can share their fundraising need. And so crowdfunding is really coming on, so how it works is you come on to Give Then Go, you say I'm going to start a campaign for my needs and then you fill out the forms, we walk you through how much do you need to raise? What are you raising funds for?

Tell us a little bit about the story that you want people to know. Connect to our payment processor and then start sharing your campaign. So I was going to ask, it could be for just about any, like you mentioned burial fees, so it could be something small, not that burial fees are small, but it could be something small or even something large, just really anything and then you guys share this need with other Christians and others out there and people just kind of out of the kindness of their heart that want to support this need donated, is that how it works? So it's actually more like when you start a campaign, you're going to be sharing it with your friends and family. So it's a way for you to be able to share your need with your social circles, your friends and family, let them know that you're raising money for your mission strip, for your pet bills, there's so many categories and things people raise funds for, but it really is you starting a campaign and then sharing it with your circles. And then them sharing it and that's the great thing about crowdfunding is that with social media and things like that, as someone gives, they also share and then your campaign now goes out to all their friends. And then it is on Give Then Go as well, which we have and we're building what we call an army of givers, where we invite people to sign up to give once a month to any campaign on Give Then Go for any amount that they want. And then they go on and they say, I'll give $10 a month. And they just sign up saying I commit to giving $10 a month for a year. And then every month they get a reminder, hey, go pick a campaign to give your $10 to and they get to pick who it goes to. They're just becoming part of our army because we do know there are people that come on our platform that may not have huge social circles that might not have a lot of family around or people with any sort of finances to help. And so we're like, how can we help in this area? And so we've started this army of givers. Now, there are still people who go, well, this doesn't work.

I've made no money. And, you know, unfortunately, there aren't just people out there waiting to give to strangers, although we are trying to build this army of givers, which will do just that. Allow these thousands of people that sign up and every month go on and say, who am I?

God, show me who I should give to today. And then give their money to whoever, you know, whatever campaign they feel led to give to. And so we're working on that because we do know that is one of the frustrations of crowdfunding is that you kind of have to have a crowd that will want to support you. So this is basically a platform for people to give by credit card or debit card and they pay this platform and then the money is then deposited into the account of the person who's wanting to raise the money.

Yes, absolutely. And so you start a campaign, you connect your bank account, you share your campaign. People go, oh, I didn't know you're going on an admissions trip to Guatemala. I'd love to give $100. And so they come on and easily just give $100. The money goes directly to you. The people always ask about fees. So when we first started, GoFundMe was charging about 5% plus there's always processing fees when you process through credit card online, which is usually about a 2.9% to 3%.

And so GoFundMe was charging 5% plus there almost 3% processing fees. And we came in and we said, we're going to be just under that. You know, it's a great marketing idea. We'll be cheaper than our competitor.

And so we came in at like a 4% with a sliding scale model and we had all these great ideas. And within a couple months, we found ourselves over and over again telling our campaign owners, the people who started campaigns, listen, if God wants you to do whatever you're raising funds for, he will provide. Like he owns a cattle on a thousand hills. Like if he's told you to go on this missions trip, if he's told you to help your neighbor with fixing their car, if he's told you to do these things, he's going to provide so you don't have to worry.

You can trust him to bring the finances in. Whether through Give Send Go, whether through your church family, however. And we said it over and over again and we found ourselves going, you know what? We believe that Give Send Go was a platform that God gave us.

The idea, the timing of it, all of it is his. And let's make our platform free. And so we decided we were going to go with a free model where we didn't take a 5% or 4%. You know, there are the processor fees because it is a third party processor.

We can't, there's nothing we can do about it. It's not our, you know, it's somebody else's business. And so there is that 2.9% processing fee that goes directly to our processor. But Give Send Go does not take a fee to use our site. The way we operate is that when somebody goes to give, let's say you're raising money for your medical bills, and I want to give 100 bucks. I go in, I type in, I want to give 100 bucks to your medical bills. And then underneath it says, do you want to help Keep Give Send Go free?

And I can put a dollar a month in, I can make it zero. And so we just figured the person raising the money really needs the money. So let's get them as much of the money as possible. It's silly for us to be taking fees out of the person who needs the money.

And let's let the givers, if they have extra money, if they have a couple dollars, a dollar, two dollars, you know, whatever, let them give us an optional donation to help keep us free. So we moved in obedience on that. And, and it's worked.

And now a lot of the other platforms do the same thing. Wow, what a blessing, Heather. You just trusted God completely.

I mean, because you've got employees, you got expenses, you got website, tech team, that's really putting your faith out there and trusting God. What a testimony. Wow. I'm so glad we had you on today. He is faithful.

He is. Well, we've got about four minutes left in this segment, we've talked about how you started the company and how you work, but you're really a platform that stands for freedom. So, you know, we'll only have four minutes to talk about this before we get into the final segment. But let's talk a little bit about some of the attacks that have come against you because you've had some famous people use your platform as well. And you've been accused of being a safe haven for right wing extremists. And that's just simply not true. Tell us some of the attacks that have come against you.

Sure. So, you know, we had this platform, it was a Christian platform, we were seeing people doing all great things around the world and in their neighborhoods. And then one day we woke up and we had thousands of emails and death threats and hate mail and, and we were like, what is going on here? And we look over our site and we see a new campaign has popped up, it was about two years ago, and a young man named Kyle Rittenhouse, who most people have heard about these days, has had found his way to our platform because he had been deplatformed off everything else, off GoFundMe and Facebook and Twitter and pretty much any PayPal, all of them, they said, no, he's been, we have some video, it looks like he shot some people, it looks like, you know, he's a white supremacist murderer person, let's, we need to not let him have a voice here. And we were like, well, he does live in the United States, he wants to raise money for legal fees, we're supposed to be presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law. So we prayed about this and we fasted and we spoke to counsel and we were like, okay, is this the direction God wants to take, give, then go, where the world is going to hate us?

Now, the Bible does tell us the world is going to hate us as Christians, but we were like, we don't have to get into this, we could just say, no, sorry, we're not going to allow political campaigns or legal fees and things like that. But we really felt strongly that we needed to stand for the freedom of this young man to be able to raise funds for a legal team that you shouldn't just have to be rich in order to hire a legal team. And so we allowed him to raise funds on give, then go. And just a few months ago, we saw as the trial played out, and he was found not guilty in a court of law. And everybody said, we're so glad give, then go stood behind Kyle. And we said, we didn't stand behind Kyle. We didn't know if he's innocent or guilty. We stood behind the premise of innocent until guilty, the freedoms that are afforded to us in the United States, which have been bought by a high price. We stood behind the spiritual freedom that's found in Christ. And we want to share, even with people who make stupid mistakes, who find themselves in a legal battle, we want to share hope with them.

Because no one, even the person on the cross, besides Jesus, was beyond the hope that he could give and the redemption power that Jesus can save us from ourselves. Have you talked to Kyle since all this happened? Have you ever met him or talked to him? We have talked to his family.

I actually don't. I have not talked to Kyle. I'm not sure if my brother, Jacob, has actually spoken to him. So we have a Pray Now button, which I mentioned briefly, where we have a Give Now button and a Share Now button, which every crowdfunding platform has. And then we have a Pray Now button, where you can click Pray Now and then send a message to the campaign owner letting them know you're praying for them. And we heard from Kyle early on, when he was starting to raise all this money on Give Then Go, that the money was great. It was going to get him out of, you know, and get him some bail money and stuff. But that reading these notes of encouragement that people were sending kept him going. And he didn't feel as alone.

He didn't feel like, because everybody else wanted to take his voice away. And he was like, wow, there are people who are standing behind me, people who are praying for me. And that's what it's all about. It's letting people, even people who maybe have made bad decisions in their life, because haven't we all? Even people that we might say don't deserve it, that we say, no, we're going to step into the mess and do exactly what Jesus did with our mess.

Step in and show you that there's some redemption here, that he can redeem it for good. Wow. What a powerful testimony. Well, folks, we're talking to Heather Wilson. She has a crowdfunding company called Give Send Go. We want you to stick around for the last segment. We're now getting into the cancel culture of what's happened to her company and how social media and others are really trying to hurt their company. We need you to be praying for them and to use them when you need crowdfunding. Stick around. We'll be right back with more on The Christian Perspective. With design on social media. In a world crowded with viewpoints and voices, critical condition after a. I believe the message of this financial problems.

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Welcome back to Christian Perspective. My guest today is Heather Wilson. She and her brother formed a company that is what is called a crowdfunding platform for Christians. The company is called Give Send Go. That's Give Send Go.

Go to GiveSendGo.com if you want to set up crowdfunding. And she was just sharing the story with us of how Kyle Rittenhouse, if you remember, he was accused of all kinds of things when he was involved in a shooting incident and was really presumed guilty before innocent and he needed to raise money for legal fees. And he used their platform and they came under tremendous attack and cancellation because of that.

Well, Heather, that's not the only one. Recently, I think you were involved with the trucker convoy in Canada as well, weren't you? Yes. So after Kyle, what ends up happening is that we see more and more campaigns that are canceled off the other platforms finding their way. Now they're going, oh, my gosh, there's a platform that we can have a voice on, that we can let people know another side to the narrative that's being told on mainstream media. And so they would find their way to Give Send Go, which didn't make us super popular, but we stick by our main goal of what Give Send Go is all about is to share the hope of Jesus while people come to our platform. And so every day, this is what we talk about. How are we going to share the hope of Jesus with people? And so we see people come on our site from, you know, we have January 6th, people who found themselves in trouble for their actions on January 6th.

We've seen police officers that found themselves in legal battles. We've seen anti-mandate, people who wanted to fight back against the mandate, using our platform to fundraise where they weren't going to be allowed to fundraise anywhere else. And we, Jacob and I, look at each other all the time and say, wow, it's amazing that God knew.

It's really not amazing, you know, we should know by now, but it's amazing. God knew eight years ago when we started this adventure that we would be needed today or there'd be no funding vehicle for anybody that was more on the conservative side. And so we found ourselves most recently in the trucker convoy issue up in Canada. So we operate in 40 countries around the world. Give Send Go is, yeah, we're in 40 countries around the world and Canada is one of them. And so the trucker convoy started up in Canada. We had one campaign on Give Send Go called Adopt a Trucker that started right away, started raising money.

But the big freedom convoy started up in Canada and they started on GoFundMe and they started to raise money very quickly because they wanted to do a peaceful protest against the mandates that were happening and they wanted to take a trip across the country and end up in Ottawa and speak to the prime minister and let their voice be heard of peaceful protest, let our voice be heard, this is what we want. And so they start raising money and the GoFundMe explodes. Like it just is like millions of dollars. It hits about $8 million and then all of a sudden everybody's saying, why did you use GoFundMe?

They're known to cancel people if they don't agree with them. And sure enough, you start seeing like, oh, GoFundMe is holding the money. Okay, well now there's a freeze on the money. Now they're not going to return the money. They're going to re-donate it if you don't request it.

Yeah, it was just crazy. And we watched it all play out and we're thinking, why didn't they just use Give Then Go? Like their friend is using us and they've raised a couple hundred thousand and never received the money.

Why hasn't this record and convoy used Give Then Go? And then sure enough, they came over and they created a campaign on Give Then Go that was looking like GoFundMe was not going to release the $8 million Canadian dollars that they had raised. And so now people are outraged. And so they come to Give Then Go and many people gave two to three times the amount they gave on GoFundMe just because they were so frustrated and upset that their money had been censored pretty much that they weren't allowed to give to something that was a peaceful protest, which is fundamental to any sort of Western society democracy. If you don't allow people to protest, then you might as well be a dictatorship. You know, just you tell me what to do and we have to follow.

If you want to call yourself a democracy, you have to allow people to have voices. And so they tried to shut this down. And then the Give Then Go, the first 24 hours, we had over 10 million DDoS attacks on our website. So the site just pretty much crashed. If you tried to get on Give Then Go, you would get a 404 page because our database was being attacked by people who did not want people to come to our platform and they were trying to take us down. Were the attackers trying to ruin your system then?

They were. They were trying to take it, you know, not allow people to donate. They did not want, you know, they were glad GoFundMe shut this campaign down.

They didn't think it should be allowed. And so they were trying to take us down. And so we were up all night trying to get our site working and we could see there are thousands of people on it giving, but yet it just seemed very glitchy and we're trying to work out the bugs. And it seemed like everybody was on our side, either half the world trying to give to the campaign and half the world trying to take down the campaign.

The next morning when we looked at the numbers on our site, we saw that the trucker convoy raised $2 million. And we were like, this is a God thing because there is no way our site, where I couldn't even get to it, it just gave me error pages, could process that amount of money with that many attacks going on at the same time. And we said, okay, you know, we're going to stand here.

We're going to walk this out, God. We have no idea what you're going to do in this, but we're going to allow this. We're going to allow this campaign to continue to raise funds, the funds we're going to have in a U.S. bank account so that it's not going across Canadian border lines until we know that it's safe for it to because we really want to protect our givers. So Canada started making these statements saying, we're going to freeze all the funds. The funds are frozen from those campaigns. You can't give to those campaigns.

And we looked at each other and said, well, you don't have jurisdiction. We're a U.S.-based company. You can't shut down these campaigns. They're going to continue raising funds. And we saw funds just flow in.

The $8 million that was raised in about three to four weeks on GoFundMe was surpassed in a week on Give Then Go because people wanted their – it just shows people want to have a voice. And so Canada then issues a statement there, Emergency Act, where they say we're going to make this money criminalized. And if you gave to this campaign, we're going to freeze your bank accounts.

Even if you gave $25, like we're going to find you and we're going to freeze your accounts. It became this huge thing and we're going, oh, my gosh, like look at this government. It was really eye-opening to see what power does when someone challenges the government's power, the fear tactics that take place. It's like David and Goliath. You're just this little company. I know.

You've got a whole nation coming against you. What a story. It was crazy. It was crazy. And we just continued to walk it out as faithfully as we could. And one of the cool stories is at the beginning of the year this year, I was like, oh, God, what do you want to teach me this year?

This is before truckers and all of that. And I really felt like he said, I'm faithful. And I was like, yeah, God, I know you're faithful. I can look back over my life and see through the good times and even the really bad times that I might have had some doubts along the way that you were faithful. And he said, no, I'm faithful today.

You don't have to wait to see how it all is wrapped up. When you look back, you can see how it all played out. So you can go, wow, look how faithful he was. But he's like, I want you to remember I'm faithful today when it doesn't look like it's going to just work its way out, when it looks like the whole world's against you. Remember, I'm faithful. And so a month later when this is all going on every day, I'd be like, remember God's faithful. Remember he's faithful. Like, I don't have to worry. God is faithful.

Even though I don't know how this is going to turn out, God is faithful. And sure enough, the Canadian government ends up criminalizing any money that is raised by these two campaigns. You can be charged criminally. So we're not able to send the money over to Canada because anybody who receives this money, people have been sending in great ideas, some hilarious ideas of how to get the truckers the money. Even if we got gift cards and we went and handed them out, if the government could ever track that those gift cards came from this trucker money, the person receiving that gift card could be charged as a criminal. So at this point, we're going to refund the money because the other option is to let the Canadian government hold it and maybe give it to this class action lawsuit that Ottawa citizens are saying the truckers displaced them and made too much noise and they deserve a payout. And so they're trying to seize that money and we're like, no, that's not who our givers wanted to give to. So we're not going to allow that to happen.

The money is still in the United States so we're going to just refund it so there's no chance of this money going to somebody that our givers did not want to. And it can feel almost like a failure a little bit. And then I go, no, because I'm not in control of the outcome. I was not in control.

God is in control. He was teaching us something and I think he opened the world's eyes to a lot of things as we watched this play out. And I'm like, he had a reason.

He had a reason. And one of the reasons is now a lot more people know about Gifts and Go. I'm like, I feel like Jericho. A couple of months ago, we were on a podcast and someone said, we'd always call ourselves the alternative. Someone said, oh, we have on with us the founders of Gifts and Go, the replacement to Gifts and Go fund me. And we're like, oh, we like that replacement. We're going to start saying we're the replacement. And I was like, yeah, but how's that going to happen?

They have so much bigger name recognition. And then I feel like Gideon where we just knocked a small army down into the camp and made a lot of noise. And the enemy woke up and just killed themselves off. We didn't even have to do anything. And we won the battle and we're going, wow, this is incredible that people do now know about Gifts and Go. We know that we're going to stand for freedom. We're going to stand to give people a voice, even people we disagree with, because we know that the hope that Jesus gives us is for everybody.

And there's nobody too far gone from his grace. And we're going to pray with them and we're going to ask God to encounter that and make himself real to them. And we're going to continue walking this out the best we can, not perfectly.

We talk about this all the time. We're going to give grace to ourselves to get it wrong sometime. We're going to give grace to the people who hate us. We're going to give grace to the people who love us. We're going to give grace to our campaign owners for making mistakes and whatever. We're just going to cover this whole thing in grace because we're not going to get it right.

We're not going to always get it right. I want to pray just a quick prayer for you. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for Heather and her brother and their families. I thank you for their love for children. I thank you for giving them the vision to start this company. I pray that you'll have a hedge of protection around them, protect them from these attacks, but use these attacks for your glory as they have become the replacement company. And I pray you'll make them the premier company in the world for these kind of crowdfunding campaigns as they stand for freedom and as they share the hope of Jesus Christ.

Just give them wisdom as they go down the path that you chose for them. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Well, Heather, thank you for being with us. We sure appreciate you.

Thanks for having me. Folks, thank you for listening. Listen every day on your favorite radio station.

This will become a podcast later today. Let your friends know about Gives10Go and visit them at gives10go.com and add them to your daily prayer list. God bless you. Thank you for listening. Now let's go impact the culture for Jesus. Thank you for listening. The Christian Perspective with Chris Hughes. Learn more about impacting the culture for Jesus. Visit citizensforamericafoundation.com