Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Planting Churches in the Sahara with Cash and Ann Godbold – Part 1:
Life on the Sahara Desert is a real terror. There are just very few women who would ever want to live on the Sahara Desert, where the sandstorm blows for 11 days and it’s a 118 degrees in the shade. And so I asked the Lord to show me. Well as I prayed, I knew Ann Mickle and God indicated to me that she was the one. I asked her to go on a picnic down to the river.
I thought that was a real great place to propose to her. So we And I knew nothing of this. I I was supposed to make sandwiches for a picnic. I had put my little notes on a piece of paper, you know, of what I wanted to say to her and I asked her if she would marry me and she said Well, I must tell you my first thought was a prayer. Lord, if I faint, I will fall over backwards into this river because I was truly shocked.
But, I asked him This is my wife. What And God what are you gonna do before your life work? What kind of education and, ran a grocery store and, I, went to the club. Cookie, and I went to drink it. But anyway, I thought I better answer her question if she isn’t gonna answer mine.
So I said, I believe God wants me to take the gospel to the Tuaregs in the Sahara Desert. And I said, okay. I’ll marry you. Man, we have a great show for you guys today. Yeah, this is Truth About Muslims Podcast.
I’m Trevor. And this is Howard. And this week we’re going to be interviewing 2 people that have spent 50 years working among nomadic groups in the Sahara Desert. This is my wife. Anne Godbold.
Anne Mickle Godbold. My daddy was a dentist in Columbia, South Carolina. And I am Cash Godbold. My father was superintendent of education and, ran a grocery store, and I, went to Columbia High. And I went to Dreyer.
So after Cash and Anne graduate high school, they go to a small bible college in Columbia, South Carolina. And it just so happens that this bible college is now Columbia International University. It’s both the place where Howard and I went to school as well. It’s our alma mater. Alma mater.
So now we call it CIU. And while they’re at CIU, there’s actually a particular class that Cash goes to where God gives him a glimpse of what he’s getting ready to do for the rest of his life. In the class, he mentioned the Tuaregs in the Sahara were so difficult that nobody had ever been able to stay with them. This, little factor that nobody had ever been able to stay with them stuck in my heart and mind. So what was this class that he was going to about?
The class was supposed to be so that you could learn how to write a prayer letter if you planned on being a missionary. Do they even offer that kind of class at CIU anymore? I don’t think they have that class anymore. No. I can say with a surety, we do not have a class about well, we have a class where there’s probably a section on writing a prayer letter.
Okay. That makes sense. A section. Right. But this was an I think it was a specific class to teach you how to write a prayer letter.
And he went and instead of really getting a whole lot about the prayer letter, it was more so about this group called the Toreg. And so, what’s really fascinating to me is what draws him to the Toreg. It’s the concept that they’re, like, the most difficult people and no one’s ever been able to live among them. And there’s something in cash that, like, immediately says it reminds me of Paul, right, in Romans 15 where it’s, like, it’s always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not yet known. Right.
That begins stirring inside of cash. And we need people like that because people just don’t go to the people like Touaregs to to just kinda have a good time. No. It’s not the kind of place where you just kinda wonder. I wonder if I could survive among the Touareg.
It’s a very specific kind of person and also a specific kind of lady that’s gonna be alongside of him. Which is kinda why you hear Cash get kind of emotional when he talks about how his wife is a tough cookie. Yeah. Tough cookie is right. I mean, living among a nomadic tribe, it does not sound like an easy time.
And and hearing their story, it’s not an easy time. But God does something really cool about confirming specifically to Cash and to Anne that this is the place where they want him to go. Cash is working at CIU as a student worker, and one of his jobs? He he has to entertain guests, lecturers, speakers, and he meets this guy. And for some reason in this time, he has a ton of extra time.
His train is laid, and he just does he just has a lot of time. So he’s just talking to this guy. Right? And you know how guys are with small talk. Doesn’t exist.
Well, boys don’t know how to just chat, you know, talk. So I asked my 3 questions, and then I didn’t have anything left in the clip. And so, I thought, well, it’s worth a try. I said, do you know anything about the jumped out of his chair. He said, I love the Tuaregs.
They are my favorite tribe. And he just started spilling all the information. He knew all the books you could read. He knew all the organizations who worked in their area. He knew all the missionaries’ names and addresses.
Everything. I mean, he was a walking encyclopedia on work among Tauroig’s. And so, you know, I said, alright, lord. I think I got the message, where you want me to work. So both Cash and Anne, they graduate from CIU or Columbia Bible College as it was called back then.
And the crazy thing is that they got married the day after graduation. That happens a lot, you know? Does it? I I guess. Is that a thing?
Well, I think nowadays parents want their kids to graduate before getting married. But back then, it was actually a rule at the bible college. Yeah. They could not even announce it. Right?
Right. But they were quote secretly engaged. Yeah. They didn’t tell anybody though. So, Cash said, Well, I never announced it so I wasn’t breaking the rules.
Yeah. But they were engaged. So they got married. And our perspective was some rules are just worth breaking. But they get married and within, you know, a short time, they are literally getting on a train heading to New York, and then boarding a ship to cross the Atlantic.
Right. And they have a 14 month old at this time. And, the trip right over is full of, adventure as well. Yeah. And imagine this isn’t even a context that we can imagine but imagine riding on a ship over to Paris, France.
You’re gonna be in language school there and then eventually you’re gonna move into North Africa. And from the very get go, day 1 on arriving in Paris, France, it’s difficult. One of the most miraculous things, my high school bible teacher from CBC was Earl Sandifer. And he had gone to France as a missionary. And when he heard I was coming, he came down to the train station that comes from the boat.
There’s a train that runs from the boat right to the center of Paris. And he came down to meet us. When we left New York, s I m handed us one phone number to call when we got to Paris It was to get help. EBI, European Bible Institute. There was no EBI at that time.
They had moved. There was no phone. There was nothing. They had moved out into a suburb. And if Earl had not come to that train station, I would have been standing there with a wife and a little baby and a baggage and not knowing what to do or where to go.
But thankfully, he came along with another missionary from, CBC, Luis Lazaro, who were both in France. And they helped us helped us, man. They they bailed us out. We were in dire straits at that point because we had nothing, absolutely nothing, how a mission can send you off with a telephone number that doesn’t even work. I don’t know, but it only shows how dangerous missions can be.
Hey, ladies. I’m from, truth about Muslims podcast. Have you heard of it? Yeah. Okay.
So we want you to read an ad for us. Can you do that? You’ll be famous, like, world famous. It’ll be amazing. C I u?
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Luke fame. Luke. Alright. CIU educates people from a biblical worldview to impact the nations with the message of Christ. You wanna read that again?
Yep. You’re like, I’ll be so embarrassed to be honest. So, like, right from the very get go, man, he shows up in Paris, and this is with his young wife, newborn kid, right, and crates of his stuff. Yeah. No iPhone.
No. Yeah. There’s no, I mean, like, even a pain phone. Like, if I were there, like, he had never taken French. He did say that he had 1 year of high school French, that he barely survived, and the only way that the professor or the high school teacher let him go forward is if he never told anybody that he had taken French.
And so fortunately, Anne had a little bit more French and but it’s still they just arrived and there’s no one Yeah. But God provides. So after 1 year of language training in France, they moved down to Niger. Right. And Niger is in West Africa and this is where they’re gonna spend the next 27 years living and traveling among a nomadic people group.
We would go and visit in their camps, and we would stay a day or 2 or 3, with them. And then we would move on to another camp. We have actually nomadized with them for a period of time, where every day they would gather their sheep, their goats, their camels, their cattle, and donkeys, and people, and move the whole contingent to a place that had more water or more grass or whatever it is that they needed for their animals. So we just moved along with them and that was a good thing because they felt like that we understood something of their lifestyle. Okay.
So this is really different than the traditional missions model. Right? Because there’s usually a mission compound. Right? This is in the sixties.
So there’s probably a mission compound and then there’s a bunch of missionaries that live in there and they maybe have some servants, people that help clean and do all those kind of things, cook. But in this case, this is not what’s happening. No. They are nomadizing. Now, granted, they did say that they had an oasis where they had a home actual Oasis.
With date palms. And they had a home there and they would get together and they’d prepare and they’d get food and then they would go out in nomad eyes for a time where they would actually travel around with the people. And and something that we didn’t put in here is that, that Cash does this really crazy thing that actually makes waves all around the area. He attaches a cart to a camel. And the Department of Agriculture, and animals, they just say camels don’t pull carts.
It’s impossible. And so he’s thinking a horse can pull a cart. He’s from South Carolina. He grew up riding horses. He had done things like this before.
And so they built a cart to carry all their things and attach it to a camel. And there they went. Nomadizing. So the people really appreciated the fact that here are these 2 Americans, living among the people traveling around with them, you know, grazing. They have this camel with a cart, but they really appreciated that they took interest in their culture.
But there was one aspect of the culture that I think was really difficult for Cash and Anne to sort of reconcile. Tuaregs are known to be the most ferocious warriors on the Sahara. They are used as guards for places because they will fight anybody at a 10 to 1 odds and promise you they’ll win. They are really ferocious. They, So it sounds like a society built on that kind kind of, thought.
Right? Or I But it’s an honor in that sense to fight in a in a situation where you are responsible for protecting this, warehouse. And, robbers come and you fight them even though you may be losing your arm. You will fight on to protect because that’s your honor, And they have a system of honor, that is built on bravery. And so you have to incorporate that into, your understanding of them.
They are pretty intense people. Yeah. They are intense. And they were actually known as the blue men of the Sahara. So they cover themselves in blue or something like that?
They have, blue robes, but particularly they have a blue, kinda head covering or a scarf that goes around their heads and then covers their face. If you can imagine, like, the Lawrence of Arabia films and all these things where these men are wearing these Right. Wraps around their heads. Theirs are blue. Okay.
And they’re known to be ferocious, not just in the 20th century, but it goes all the way back in history. I mean, the Taureg, they were the ones that controlled the entire sort of Sahara, transport. So when you think of, slaves coming through all across North Africa and going out to the ports, the Taureg were the ones who would loot and raid and everybody was afraid of these people. Kinda like the pirates of the desert? That is a good example.
They are the pirates of the desert. And it’s not because they’re awesome, you know, navigators of ships. It’s because they are awesome on camels. But all this comes to an end with the end of, colonialism, essentially. Because you have the establishment of nation states and the Taureg tribe then becomes sort of minimalized because before they used to go from, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, Algeria, Libya.
I mean, just think of the entire North African Sahara Desert. But then they, begin drawing nation states and people start having national identity and the Tuareg become less and less and less influential. But there’s still about 1 to 2,000,000 Tuareg. But you know us. We love stories, so we asked Kash.
Right. Help us understand, are the Tuaregs still ferocious today or is this just something that exists in history? And he gives us this. A man went to the dispensary to get some medicine. He was very prideful and he wanted to go to the front of the line.
And so he tried that and the dispenser said, I’m sorry, you have to go to the back. And he kept pushing to get to the front, and, the dispenser would not let him break into the line. And so he went home and got his gun and waited for the dispenser to go to lunch, and shot him, and killed him because he wouldn’t let him into the line. And, And immediately fled. Yeah.
Then ran for his life. But, that is the type of thing where the leaders will set a price he would have to pay to come back into the tribe. And if he were willing to pay it, or able to pay it, or if his people were willing to pay it for him or able to pay it for him, they could let him back into the drive. Okay. So can you kinda go into a little bit of detail about what that means?
Because, you know, we have the payment system of, like, you go to jail. That’s that’s our payment system. That’s that’s right. Yeah. No.
This is more of a, an honor shame system like he mentions. You’ve dishonored me and you need to make it right by paying, think about it in the theological term. We call it propitiation. You need to appease the anger and the wrath of the person that you’ve offended. Mhmm.
And so you do it by a certain amount of goats or a certain amount of sheep. So monetary. Monetary, but sometimes it’s blood for blood. If you kill somebody Like a feud kind of thing? Absolutely.
Think about it. If you kill a person, then it is up to the family members to retain the honor of the family by taking blood revenge. And this isn’t just common among the Torek. This is common amongst a lot of tribal societies. It’s just tough because I have a hard time envisioning a society that’s able to function when people are just killing one another.
Well, I think that’s true, Howard, and that’s where you have this longing that exists in every individual. And, you know, I’ve worked with a few different people from tribal areas and it’s true. There is a deep longing within the individual for forgiveness. And there’s a deep longing within the individual to have the blood feuds end and just to be able to say to someone, I’m sorry, and it be over. There may be warfare with between groups or individuals, but what does the person want?
And they used forgiveness. They used the term forgiveness. If I’m thanking you, I say, may God forgive you. Alright. So you can even see it in the language.
Right. And how they figure out that it’s in the language is in this concept of thank you. May God forgive you. And it comes about with Anne going to the salon. So, ladies, when your husband is saying, you know, you don’t really need to go to the salon, you’ve gotta hear Anne’s perspective on the salon.
We’re not talking about a normal salon. No. No. This is not some place nice and cush where they just do your hair and you just, you know, relax and all this kind of stuff. No.
No. This is in the desert. In a tent. But this is one of the first things that Anne would do whenever she would go out into these, nomadic tribes is she would get her hair done. And it’s actually one of the inroads to figuring out this idea about forgiveness.
One of the first things I did was seek out a hairdresser, and I provided, my own grease rather than camel butter. And it takes hours and hours to do. And also, you’re required to have very long hair, which I had at that time. I I could sit on my braids and it was coal black, believe it or not, just like theirs. And they they did love to to braid my hair in their beautiful beautiful styles.
It it’s just unimaginable unless you could see a picture of the work of art that they would do on the head and then finally, the braids. But anyway, I got my hair done and came out of the tent, from under the tent and one lady came up and said, oh, Mineta, which was my name, may God grant you forgiveness. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
And we had noticed before that that when when we would part from our nomad friends, we would often be asked for forgiveness. Sort of a if I’ve offended you, please forgive me. We are parting now and we just wondered about that. At the same time, we were wondering what motivates these people? Is it shame?
Is it getting glory? What is it? And when I I went back to our, our campsite and said Tocash what had happened, that this lady was so delighted with my hair looking nice in their style that she just brushed forth with, may God grant you forgiveness. And we just we studied and we prayed on that a long time and it it seemed to come clarify for us that the thing that they valued the most was forgiveness. And that was a breakthrough in in the emphasis that we put into our conversations and the fact that Jesus is the way for that.
Okay. So talk to me about this butter. I have honestly don’t know. I was it lost myself. You know, we didn’t ask her we didn’t ask her when she was here because, like, it was in my head.
Was it in your head? I was wondering, what is camel butter? What is camel butter? And it didn’t even occur to me that camels do make milk. Right?
They’re mammals. Yeah. So I I think that’s the butter, but I’ve also, since hearing that, looked and apparently there’s some butter in the hump. No. There can’t be butter in the hump.
So I don’t know if that’s Is that a thing? Write in. Okay? Because Google tells us that there’s butter in the hump and we don’t know what that means. We didn’t get it on Google Scholar.
I think it might have been Wikipedia, so we can neither confirm nor deny that there is butter in the hump of a camel. Any any camel experts. So, essentially, she has her hair done. And if you can imagine, we’re sitting across from Anne and she is, you know, sweet older lady with very, silver hair and she’s talking about how her hair was coal black, and she could even sit on her braids. So both Howard and I separately go and look.
Like, what does this look like? And it really is an amazing, hairdo instead of braids that they do. Right. They make it into an art form. It’s beautiful.
But the deeper truth about the hairdo is that this is where they start to realize that forgiveness is right at the core. It’s something that’s valued amongst the Toreg. Something that they actually long for. I could ask almost any Toreg, what’s the greatest thing on heaven and in earth? And he’d say forgiveness.
And so you see how central to their thinking forgiveness is. And so, I tried to fashion my presentation of the gospel in the context of forgiveness, so that it could fit into their thinking much quicker and more comfortably. Alright. So this show wouldn’t be possible without sponsors. And at this point in the show is where if you wanna partner with us, we would put your ad.
So if you wanna be a part of the show, you like partnering with us, you like what we’re doing, you wanna be on our team, what have you, bringing this show to the world, then email us and let us know. So Cash comes up with this idea that he’s gonna be able to present the gospel in a more effective way by using the longing for forgiveness. Right. And I think with the honor shame society, sometimes we wonder, like, so how do you present the gospel in a way that it makes sense with honor and shame? If you think about it, if the Torah can understand that they have greatly dishonored, you know, the one true God and that they are in need of forgiveness from the one true God, then you could see how when he presents that there is forgiveness through Christ, it would take root.
Yeah. That’s amazing. That’s amazing concept. Because I think in the first sense when I heard about the Toreg, I was thinking, okay. Well, how do you just not get yourself killed?
And then here you go. The very thing that makes them, I think, so formidable actually is an inroad for the gospel. So cash goes along preaching and teaching, but it’s 24 years before they see a single baptism. And some might think, what’s going on here? Why is it so difficult to see anything happen?
And I have to say when I teach in courses on missions, I bring up the Godbolds because right now there’s a bit of a movement within mission circles about, you know what? If God isn’t working, nobody’s coming to the Lord. There’s not a response. Knock the dust off your feet and move on. And I couldn’t help but wonder how Cash would respond to this kind of thing.
I’ve heard in the past, like, that you guys saw very little fruit for a very long time. That probably is a wrong vocabulary word. Okay. Give us the correct words. What the what people keep thinking when I say what I say, they I say it was 24 years before we baptized the first believers.
Okay. They say it the way you say it, no fruit. We were having fruit for 24 years, and you’ve got to realize that. You are planting seed and as long as you’re planting seed then God can use it. Quit thinking we don’t have any fruit.
That is a very discouraging thing. I say there are only 2 kinds of missionaries. The one at night who goes to bed and says, nothing happened today. Lord, I don’t see how you’ll ever use me. The other one who says, thank you, Lord, for everything you did today to advance the gospel.
Same man, same actions, but two different points of view. And so it really is important how you look at what’s happening. Faith has to take risk. There is no faith that doesn’t take risk. That’s all there is to it.
So, we took the risk that the seed were gonna germinate and they were gonna bring forth fruit. And we did not know what God was doing in so and so’s heart. So what would you say to the mission boards and the book producers right now that are all about if you don’t have converts, you don’t have fruit, knock the dust off your feet and move on? Well, I think that that is a western world evaluation if it’s not expedient, if it’s not productive in terms of what I want it to produce. It.
I I was productive but it was plant productive in planting, seed. A farmer who gets out there and plants seeds, he’s doing something very important. And when he cultivates those seeds he’s doing something very important. And when he’s weeding those seeds, and all the rest is important. Now, you haven’t got the first ear of corn yet, but you’re doing something that is productive.
And you have to have faith that God is doing something productive if you’re gonna work with Muslims especially. And I told my prayer partners before I left, remember, it takes a long time to build a church among Muslims. And so they recognized that. They were in it for the long haul. Alright.
Honestly, Howard, that clip might be the most important clip, in my opinion, that we’ve had on this show. Yeah. And why do you say that? Because, you said that to me and I was like, yeah. I believe that it’s important, but what what’s your backstory?
What are you seeing? So when Cash was saying this, I look over at Howard, and I just wanted to leap out of my chair because there is so many that would argue, like, well, you know, God’s just not doing anything, and it’s a it’s a dry, harvest. And, you know, Muslims are resisting the gospel, and it’s this inundation of discouragement among working with Muslims. And Kash, he reworks it in such a way that we understand that it’s not about our economy. We should stop looking at this about how we are viewing success.
Too many times we have, you know, individual churches, supporters, mission boards looking at missionaries like Cash and Anne and saying, what are you guys doing? And it’s personal for me because I I went through this myself wondering, you know, couple years on the field and all of a sudden, you know, I was getting responses from the mission more like, so what are you guys doing? Yeah. What what are the numbers? And the numbers were 0 for cash.
But he was thinking, you don’t understand farming. Somebody has to till the soil and that’s part of the mission of God. Somebody has to plant seed and that’s part of the mission of God. Somebody has to sit and water and wait for germination and that’s part of the mission of God. But we tend to think of just the guy who’s harvesting.
And I think when we do that, we discredit so many people that have come before and have poured out their hearts and their lives in prayer, and tilling, and preparing, and then people are just discouraged and they go home and wonder, what was God doing? Nothing. And Cash says, wrong perspective. So the question is, how do you keep the right perspective? And as far as Cash and Anne Godbold are concerned, that’s where uncle Wiggly comes into play.
Was it discouraging to be 24 years without a baptism? No. No. We, I don’t know whether you hide out, Trevor, that you’ve ever heard of uncle Wiggly. I’d love to hear about uncle Wiggly.
You you want us. Right? I wanna I wanna hear about uncle Wiggly. Uncle Wiggly is a child’s, story, book in which this rabbit comes home, and tells these stories of what he’s been doing. And day after day, I would come home to the family and tell them the stories of what God was doing to open the door for me to get the gospel out to people, and that God was making it possible for us to keep going with the proclamation of the gospel.
So, it was not uncommon for Anne to ask at the table, does uncle Wigley have a story for us? Uncle Wigley would would come come back to his rabbit hole and tell the family there about his adventures he had had. Cash would go down down to the market or whatever. Go visiting to the next tent next to us. And he would come home to our campsite and we would ask him for his Uncle Wiggly adventures.
That’s a great idea. I gotta buy this book, Uncle Wiggly. And we need to read it as I have searched and searched for this. Oh, you’re fine. And and I could I wanted my children to have it.
Oh, I’ll see. Don’t worry. Yeah. We I’ve got it down here by and by an uncle Wiggly book. We’re gonna we’re on this.
Uncle Wiggly. What do you what are your thoughts, Trevor? I think I gotta buy the book. I mean, Howard found it. So those of you that are thinking, I gotta read Uncle Wiggly.
Howard has found the series. It’s gonna be in the show notes and I’m gonna read it and see if I can implement this at home. But the thing I think that was the most encouraging and challenging was the idea that I’m in ministry. I come home, and oftentimes, my kids have no idea the faithfulness of God in my ministry. Yeah.
I think sometimes we oh, man. This is horrible, but we leave it all out on the court, what have you. Like, we go and we pour ourselves out in ministry, and then we come home. And instead of, like, encouraging our family about what was happening and what God was doing in our lives, we almost just they see the the drain and we’re asking them to kind of fill us back up and that’s just not right. You gotta go home and say: Man, look at what God was doing today.
And ask them: what was God doing today in your lives. I mean, that was so encouraging to hear from Cash. Yeah. And if you look at the fruit of his children, I mean, you’ll meet his son, in the next episode. But the idea, man, that, their kids are all serving the Lord, and that’s my prayer.
I have 5 kids, and I just the biggest thing for me would to see them all be raised up in the lord, have a strong faith, living out their faith. That’s what I wanna see. And I think this is probably a part of it. Absolutely. It was a privilege beyond expression to sit with them for the hours that we did.
And this is gonna be a 3 part series, guys. And we really want you to tune in next week because we are just getting started. Here’s a clip from next week. There were 14 being baptized. When we got out in the water, I would say, have you put your faith in in Jesus Christ?
They would say, yes. And do you believe your sins are forgiven? Yes. And so it was quite, joyful. And some of them coming out of the water danced.
So that’s it for this week, truth about Muslims. Yeah. Be sure to go and like it on Facebook, guys. The the listenership is growing, and, honestly, it’s exciting. Like, it’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of work of love, and we really don’t mind doing it.
But at the same time, when we hear people are listening, it’s encouraging. So And, we get a lot of letters, emails, texts, even Facebook posts from me, and every one of them is encouraging and helps me to keep going. So just keep doing that. And and if you could, if you have it on Facebook, post it, share it, Twitter, whatever you wanna do just to kinda get the word out there because, we think the message is valuable, especially in this day and age. So Right.
There’s so many so many different views going on, and we’re trying to keep the church, centered on the mission of God and wanting to love and share the gospel with Muslims. And that’s a message that needs to be told today. So leave reviews on iTunes, subscribe on iTunes, share it on Facebook, get people listening. Thanks for listening.