Hands of Houses

This is Andy Thomas from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we discover what it means to be a wholehearted man. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the call of James 1, pure religion, true religion.

Isn't that right, Margie? Tell us a little bit about your passion with all this and how this happened. Yes, so that is the scripture that we always take, the one on true religion, looking after the widows and the orphans. And we started off 16 years ago in South East India building with a local pastor, because we don't speak the language, little, small, low-cost houses for widows and the disabled out in the very, very poor villages. And coming from South Africa, we've seen poverty, but we'd never seen the poverty that we've been exposed to in India. And so it's been an amazing walk over the last 16 years, just seeing God open doors for us to build in South East India. And then when India closed down, shut down during COVID, instead of us shrinking the vision, God challenged us to expand. And we are now building all over India with new partners in Nepal, in Sri Lanka, in Zambia, in Africa, looking into other African countries, and in Argentina, and about to start in El Salvador. And so we're both in our 70s and life has never been quite so exciting.

And this man over here, he carries a guitar with him half the places he goes to. Don, this really is the next step. You know, it's one thing to say thoughts and prayers are with you, and there's nothing like the power of prayer. But when you pull out your hammer and your nails and you start building a house for a widow who is at the lowest of the caste system in India, I mean, she's disregarded. They used to burn the widows in India. You know, they're impoverished. They have no hope. Their husband's dead. Everyone's turned on them.

Society's like, you're practically an animal in our eyes. How is this fleshing out the gospel? Well, we want the people to know that they're getting a house now, but we really want them to have a mansion in eternity.

And so that's the purpose. And so we give the houses free of charge. No strings attached because Jesus said, give to the poor, don't lend to the poor, don't sweat equity, all that sort of thing.

It's just a complete gift. And we want them to know that this is from Jesus. Jesus has provided the house for you, but we want you to have a house for eternity, too. So that's our heart. And we found that the churches have grown as a result of the pastors working with us. And we think we're, you know, we're getting there somehow, but a lot of prayer needs.

And so, yeah, but it's fun. I love sharing the gospel playing basketball. We love encouraging our Truth Network listeners, our Truth Talk listeners all over the place to share the truth, right? Sharethetruthnow.com is a new website we started. We'll feature you guys in the Share the Truth segment, too, at the end of the program. A new thing to mobilize our listeners to do something. But how cool is it to say, hey, wait a second, this person is going to starve to death. Give them a little food, right, before you blister them with a gospel, right? Give them a drink of water, right, before you share the living water with them so they can actually not die of deprivation in the middle of your presentation.

But you all are taking it to the next level. You're like building them a house. You know, these are predominantly Hindu folks and in some cases Muslims. And you are saying, hey, we're going to build you a house in Jesus' name. And through that, there's all kinds of evangelism, like not just there with that lady, but all the other folks that are benefiting the whole community is watching this light shine.

The local pastor that we started off building with, Pastor Jay Sheehan, 16 years ago, he said to us, you can't come and just speak about Jesus. You actually have to provide tangible evidence of God's love, something that they can see. And so a house is something that people can see. They can't argue with the fact that God has given them a house. Jesus has provided for them. And so that is the tangible evidence. And it's just such a basic need to have a home, a home where you can take your children in at night, lock the door, be safe. Your children can do their homework, they can get on and progress through school and probably have a better future.

So it ripples down the generations to just showing the love of God. And they can find you online, Hands on Houses. You have a website.

Obviously, you've got some other things. So tell us a little bit about that. The website is handsonhouses.com.

You can find it quite easily. I think we're the only Hands on Houses. And that's the best way of communicating. Our email addresses are on there. And if you want to communicate or want us to come and speak, explain to your group of people, your church, your business, whatever.

We move around a lot during the very hot months of summer. We're not in India then. And we speak in all sorts of situations. Christian school assemblies, small groups in homes, one-on-one coffee, whatever, if you're interested.

I love it. And you will also sing Praise and Worship Rings Out with you the other night. I mean, you've been in town with us at our family and you get the guitar out and you're singing praises to God. And you bless all our men's groups. And you prayed for us at Wednesday in the Word the other day. What a blessing, Don.

A lot of folks listening, I mean, you two just came back from India. You were building. You were building houses.

Tell everyone a little bit, like, give us a quick field report as we wrap up the segment. Well, we've been, over the years, I've been trying to develop new methods of building houses. And so in parallel with the normal construction methods, I've been trying to develop what I call my one-day house. Whereas we would, the idea being that we could put all the components on the back of a pickup and take it down into the village.

Put up the main part of the house in a day and then just leave the completion of the house to people that can do the sort of last minute things. But so I've been sort of working a lot more on that, trying to see if we can't find ways of building better houses in countries that are really just or places that are way out in the middle of nowhere. So that's keeping me busy still. But at the same time, I've just felt the Lord say, sing more and talk less.

And so I've been playing my guitar a lot more. I love how you work with the pastors, you work with the churches, you know, your goal is to spread the gospel. But what a better way to build someone a foundation on Christ and to build a house. They can't even, you know, live somewhere and have a roof over their head. Margie, how can people pray for hands on houses, your ministry, and how can they support you? Let me give you a real quick time to shout out that real quick to all our listeners out there that are may not be able to come to India and take up the hammer and take up the compass and take up the the level and the whatever it takes to construct that house. But they want to support you pray for you financially help you out.

What do you need? Well, you know, prayer is such an amazing thing. We were speaking to a lady last night who says she keeps waking up in the middle of the night with us on her heart and praying for us. And I said to her, well, when we have needs for prayer, which happened a lot when you are in a third world country, I just say, Lord, put us on the lips of an intercessor.

And she was one of them. So you can always pray for us. We need prayer all the time.

There's so many challenges out in India and Africa that one isn't aware of when you're living in a first world country. So if God lays you on our hearts, we need prayer for whatever it might be, for building, for finances, just general health situations in different countries. And the way to donate and give, you can donate a house at the currently five and a half thousand US dollars. You can get together with your family, your friends, your business might match, donate a house together. And we build the house, we give you feedback, we send you photographs of the widow who receives the house or the very poor family. And those are ways that you can give into hands on houses. And it's all on the website, how to donate. Well, you also help with folks that are handicapped or have fiscal challenges.

Is that correct? To help them? Well, we build houses for them. We build for the blind, we build for the deaf, we build for the mute.

We build for people who can't walk. Yes, we've done all that. Yes. Tremendous. So here, final question, your message to people out there listening on how important it is that everyone who has Christ shares the truth in whatever way. You're doing that through building houses and preaching the gospel all over India, now Africa and these other wonderful places. What's your message? I'm inspired by a couple in their 70s where everyone's like, why aren't you in the RV chasing a little white ball? And, you know, you know, planning this and that, this and that.

You're talking about, you know, missions in third world countries where some countries they kill Christians in these places is a dangerous thing. And this is hard work. What's your challenge to everyone about sharing the truth with what's given? God's given them no matter their age, no matter what's going on.

Yeah, I really feel it's time now for us all to get back to work now that COVID sort of settled down a bit. And we all have different gifts. You know, that's the one thing is, you know, it's important to know what our gift is and just start working in it, you know.

And it's difficult to model what we're going to do on what somebody else is doing because the Lord might not have called us to do that. So I mean, my message is find out what the Lord wants you to do and trust and obey. And it gets very exciting when you're hanging around with Jesus like that. You know, so we just are very excited about just doing what we're told to do and seeing the Lord's miraculous protection and provision. So, yeah, it's really great out there. You know, so let's get back to work.

And Marge, I want to have you add to that. You know, when you guys walked in the door and another amazing Hispanic couple who have written a bunch of Christian books in Spanish and they're part of our La Verdad, our new Christian Spanish format we're doing across the country. They asked you about missions and I love what Don says. Well, we're just we're not just we're not any kind of ordinary missionaries.

And I like that you got you two are not ordinary. OK, but you're trying to challenge everyone to think in the extraordinary to think of the supernatural. Think about, you know, make a difference. What's your challenge getting out here?

Everyone out there about why it's important with whatever God's given them to be a part of kingdom work and sharing the truth because it's of eternal value. That's why, you know, if you're doing something that's of eternal value, it's going to go on forever and ever and ever and ever. And Don always says to encourage people.

It's you never too old and it's never too late. You know, God's always got something more. And you just ask him to show you he's faithful. He'll show you. And in your eyes, you might think it's small, but if it's what God calls you to do, it's never small. It's what he wants for you to do.

So ask him. And remember, it's never too late and you're never too old. The greatest thing in the world is to give ahead to heaven, right? To the kingdom of God. And who knows who you'll see in heaven someday. Someone listening may have a widow walk up to them and hug them, you know, and say, hey, thank you. You built a house that allowed me to have a Bible study that allowed me to lead my neighborhood to Christ.

And so Don and Margie Cook, two of my heroes. They're in the conference room here at the Truth Network. Honored to visit with you. Share the truth now dot com. Order a card or 100 cards free if you want to donate to the site. There's a place to do it there so you can hand a little card with a QR code that will have stories.

And I'll do a little story with you guys here. OK, before we leave, inviting people to come to Christ. OK, I'm going to hand one right across the table. There's a share the truth card for you. There's a share the truth card for you.

Margie, you hit that QR code with your camera. You push the link on there and it's a video of me saying this is what Jesus did in my life. And so we're about to create one for you guys right now.

And I'll send it to you later. And then you can have cards to give people and they just hit that and they can talk all about your ministry. So this is why we're doing it.

And this is why we're just thrilled to have you on the show. Thank you for what you're doing. Friends, be the hands and feet of Jesus. Support hands on houses, support these ministries. Go, if you can't go, give. And if you can't give, regardless of whatever you can or can't do, pray. The Lord of the harvest, right? The harvest will go out and be a part of something that's valuable on an eternal level, reaching souls through Jesus. God bless you guys. Thank you all for being on.