Dreaming Big With God - Bonny Andrews

I'm just telling you, when God gives you a vision, He also gives you relationships with people. And you're always looking for the superstar, you're looking for Bill Gates. But God has put the right people around you to share it. So all I did was I just kept sharing the vision with people, vision casting, pray. My first strategy was going to a city in pray. When I prayed, the Lord starts opening up and I look for the man of peace. Who's the man of peace? Who's the person that I know? I'm Bonnie Andrews and lead a campus outreach movement called Campus Harvest, reaching college students with the gospel. And this is my Faithly Story. Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders. As they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff, and volunteers. Learn more at Faithly.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly Stories podcast. My co-founder sent me an article, so I just kind of priest through it and there was a title called The Chief Dreamer. And I just wanted to dig into that a little bit. What does it mean to be a chief dreamer and how did you get that title? Well, if you don't dream, you will not see it. So I, as a young man, born and raised up in India, grew up in a home where there was not a lot going on. I mean, that was an alcoholic and my mom was suspect cancer, but when I saw God touch my mom and heal a lot of cancer and had an encounter. I had a personal encounter with Jesus and changed my life upside down. Suddenly a life that didn't have any purpose is now filled with forward, passion, burden. And I wanted to see young people like me get saved, not only in my little town in India, God just gave me a global vision. And that led me to this dream to see every student in every nation, gospelized and mobilized. And I tell you, if God is not in it, it cannot be accomplished. So somebody said, dream as big as possible. I dream, you know, dream, dreams that are God size that only God can accomplish. And that led me to this title chief dreamer. It's kind of fancy, but it just inspires people that here's my story to say that if God can do it through Bonnie, God can do it through me. Yeah. So let's get into a little bit of your faith story. How did you come to faith in Christ? Oh, yeah. I mean, I was born and raised up in India. You know, I call it the United States of India. You know, this is this is curry land as I call it. We have 22 official languages. Every state has got a different curry. Every state has got a different language. So it's it's an amazing place to live and be raised up. But I grew up in a business home and, you know, and my dad was an alcoholic and, you know, I grew up in the panels of that and then my mom at one point was a specter cancer. So we are now faced with this reality of, you know, what's going to happen tomorrow? And that's the moment when we had, you know, some of our business friends come and pray for my mom. The next time she went for a checkup, they couldn't find any trace of what they thought was cancer. God healed my mom. And maybe people are listening to me on this podcast, thinking that healing and divine stuff and supernatural things. Man, I just get blown away every time I read the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, all that Jesus did was he, he preached the gospel and people got, you know, people got healed and delivered. So God healed my mom and that was a big, you know, jolt for our whole family. So I get to this revival meeting, not expecting anything. And I get there. I had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. If I want to say practically have like electric power going to my body, I didn't know anything about this. I'm not a judge guy. I nobody had to tell me it was Jesus. I just knew it was Jesus. I came in life to Christ and then my life took a whole different turn. You know, seeing my life get changed. My dad said my wife could be faking it, but my mom, my son wouldn't fake it. He gives his life to the Lord. My brother gives his life to the Lord. The whole family comes to know Christ and that we now go from home to home in all of our business communities. You know, those kids, those people don't need Jesus because they need food shelter or clothing. They are, they're doing well in life. But when they saw the change in our family, they started giving their lives to Christ. And I, I wanted to be in business, Daniel. And I want to be in business. I want to be writing checks just like my parents fully expansion the gospel, but God spoke to me one day and he said, I want you to be in the business of saving people. So I got into full time ministry just about to get into my masters and business. I just stopped right there and committed my life to serving God full time. It's been a little over 20 years serving God in that, in that, you know, in that capacity. And finally, I ended up starting this ministry called live jam out of India. The whole idea was that 20, you know, by 2050, 70% of the world is going to move into cities. So as much as India, people think we are all villages and rural, but the expansion of cities is unbelievable. And I lived in a city, I'm a city boy, urban, upper middle class kid. And I wanted to see kids that look like me, talk like me to be experiencing the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I ended up starting this ministry called live jam in 2005. The last 18 years, we reached over 4 million students in 186 cities around the world and still growing and expanding. And so that is the most exciting thing. And now we are in New York City. How long were you are ministering in India? India till 2019. And that ministry is still going. I mean, we have a great team out there and I'm overseeing a little bit of that, but nothing. We got a great team and they're expanding out there reaching high schools, students and middle school and high school students with the gospel and all of the major cities. And out of India, you know, the dream kind of grew out of India. We felt like we are part of the generation that's going to take the gospel from India to the rest of the world. So the Middle East started opening up Southeast Asia started opening up Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia. You know, all of the Middle East Dubai, Qatar, Doha and some of these Kuwait or these high school started opening up then to Brazil, Columbia. And finally, in New York City and the story to New York has been truly fascinating. God, grab ahold of us and, you know, alert us and told us the story of moving to New York as a family. Before we get to New York, I had a friend like he, he's Indian and he did ministry in India and he mentioned how like spiritual warfare is really real there. Oh yeah, right. Could you share your experience about that? Yeah, absolutely. So let me give you a background to paint a picture of what India looks like. India is a very spiritual country. It's a very spiritual country. So we say there are 33 million gods in India, 33 million gods. And they don't have, I mean, you're talking about a temple in every corner, like how we have, we drive through Nashville or something that is like a south city. Churches in every corner, that's the same case in India. We've got temples in every corner and of course they have spirituality at the highest. And when we compare that to the scripture, there's something I tell young people wherever I go telling my story is that, you know, every religion in this world is all about man somehow trying to reach God. And I saw that very clearly in India, you know, people are climbing up a mountain, barefoot fasting for days, dipping themselves in the river, somehow thinking that by doing that, you know, their sins would be forgiven. So, and then you talk about going in different different places, rolling on the floor. I mean, doing all kinds of things, hoping that their sins would be forgiven. Every framework, every religious fundamental framework is all about man trying to reach God. And when I start reading the Bible, it is probably the most amazing story of God coming down to man. And, you know, that is, that is the beauty of God. So love the world that he gave his one and only son. And that's, that's, that's our story for India. So spiritual warfare is real. Efficient success. We don't fight against flesh and blood. When I say these things out in America, people don't, people don't quite get it. I mean, if you want to be seeing what's happening when you start, if you say that you don't believe in spiritual warfare, you don't believe in manifestation and you start preaching the gospel and there's villages, people's demons start coming out and, you know, people's, you know, spiritual office, absolutely. So we talk about the fact that you have to do a strikes before you send troops. So here's, here's a picture. Before a country like India or America attacks another country, you first do a strikes, right. You send the planes out there, you bomb the places, you deactivate and then you send the troops in and the church has been just doing the opposite. The church has been setting people without doing a strikes and the casualties being crazy. So if you want to see spiritual activity, spiritual warfare and the highest you're talking about every demon, every principality force of darkness, always manifesting and the only way that we could go and advance the gospel is really by praying and that's been one of my guiding principles in my life as being that before you do a strikes, you cannot take things on the ground. So every city that has opened up every door that has opened up has been because of prayer and we call it prayer power, have a great devotional on you version, five day devotional called prayer power that you guys can actually have a look at it or understand what that looks like to understand the spiritual activity. So, but you know, the scripture says the name of Jesus is about every name there are the names and at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess and that's what we're seeing in India, especially with the name of Jesus and God being. Let me say people in India don't have a problem with looking at Jesus as one among their gods, they have many gods, they don't have a problem. Oh, we love Jesus, but when we tell them that Jesus is the one and true living God and that's not us telling is that's what the Bible tells us, that is sort of the, you know, that is sort of the piece of where they have to make a big decision and to follow Christ. What was your family's belief before they came to Christ? Yeah, they were nominal Christians, they were nominal Christians before me, probably two generations backwards, they probably would be Hindus, but we were normal Christians, in fact my grandfather hosted Billy Graham when he came to town and drove him around. So, I mean, we have some braggadocious rights, but let me tell you something, none of those traditions will keep telling people God doesn't have grandchildren, he has only children. So, the aspect of us being nominal, occasionally going to church to having a person relationship with Jesus just, you know, change everything for us. So, how did your relationship with your dad change? No, what happened was that there was a transformation. I mean, let me just be clear here, he was a great father, right? But on top of that, what really happened is that his journey with Christ changed the whole landscape of, you know, of everything that happened home. I mean, family prayer became the center of our home, really the scripture becomes so, that is what Christ does and maybe people that listen to me thinking, what's going to happen to my dad, what's going to happen to my mom and, you know, I'm doing what I'm doing in the ministry because of my mother's press. And I'm doing, I'm seeing the kind of things that happen in my home because Jesus came into my home. So, I believe in the promise in Joshua one, it says me and my family, we will serve the Lord. So, for people praying and still believing for their parents to change or something's happening with your kids, I want to say don't stop praying. The Bible says God has heard every prayer. He has collected every tear in a bottle. So, he remembers those prayers and those prayers are going to be answered in Jesus name. Amen. I believe that because I wouldn't be who I am with my mom's prayers, you know. Amen. And I remember like growing up her praying like her eyes out in a closed room in the dark. And for me, like, I didn't understand it. But looking back, I'm like, man, those are precious prayers. So, so from from being saved, what was the path to getting to what was it, live jam? Live jam. Yeah. Yeah. Like, like, how did that happen? Yeah. So, I started off when I when I was given my life to Christ and when I was getting my, you know, making a decision to follow, you know, serve God on a full time capacity. I was asking the Lord, God, what do you, I mean, what do I have? What can I, what can I do? What am I going to do? He asked me the same, told me whisper the same simple thing. You have a story and you have a song. So I'm a singer song right on the side. So I had music in my blood. And what God was telling me was, let's start with music. Music is the only commodity that was imported from heaven to earth. Right. So it was, it was God's design. And every time, you know, we talk about world peace, it's like a, it's like an element that brings people together. So I just use a simple tool of music, music, young people love music. So let's do music concerts. We had these rock concerts, Christian rock concerts and get young people to come kids that would never walk into a church, which start coming to these concerts. They're like, man, they can correlate church and rock music or band together. So hundreds of kids start coming to these concerts and start and then we would, we would pause and share the gospel. And we wouldn't preach at them. We would tell stories. One thing I know about learning to work with young people is that people, young people love stories and stories stick. Right. I probably remember your dad, your dad's story in this podcast more than anything else that we talked about so far story stick. So I began to share my story and it wasn't about me. We build a platform. It was not built around me. It was a platform that many people could showcase their talents and also use their stories to share with people. So star off with concerts and we got on radio. The Lord of Supernaturally opened up radio on the largest radio station in the country, national radio. We started doing an English show and then from their music festivals, you know, around Christmas. So if you know a little bit about our country is the fact that, you know, Christmas is probably Christmas and Easter are the two times of the year that the gospel is open in the mainstream television channel. Right. So we use Christmas time to do a massive festival that would be televised. We would sell the rights to mainstream channels where the gospel be preached in music. So it would be like some of the best music artists around the country. We'd be brought on a platform on a music festival and then we would broadcast it during Christmas with, you know, sharing the love of Christ the music and this festival kind of grew to different parts of the country, feeling some of the biggest stadiums. And, you know, we've seen so many miracles happening because it doesn't look like a typical crusade or an outreach, but it is like a festival. People come, people are Christmasy during the time of December. People coming in here in the gospel, here in the music. And so that became a sensation. And then at some point we found that 80% of the kids that are coming to these big arena events are already Christians. They just wanted to be part of, I mean, the whole millennial thing. They want to be part of a brand. They want to be part of a movement. So they were coming in because this movement was kind of resonating with them. But we found out that 80% so we were like, wait a minute, we spent thousands of dollars to create a big festival. Of course, I mean, the television audience and the, you know, the online audience was a humongous, but we found out that meant this has to change. So we got inspired by God to do a 30-day prayer tour across the country. So I actually but, you know, tickets for young people, young leaders who came to church. They probably came to church for free, you know, free lunches and, you know, they want to probably check the girls out or something. I said, guys, listen, I'm going to pay for your tickets. We're going to go around the country. Some of them never fasted in prayer today. In fact, one of those guys, he was the PR to the speaker of the parliament in Canada. He's actually visiting me today in New York. So packed up all these guys went across the country 30 days, talking about special welfare, divided the city into four halves, praying over the city, saying that God, we want the young people of the city to be touched. And we went to the schools, we went to colleges, we went to the IT parks, whether the media hubs, the television channels, and then we would break our fast everyday at a shopping mall. 30 days, Daniel, guess what happened? After 30 days, all of these seven cities opened up, saying we want you to come and, you know, to do, to do, reach out to our young people. So we found rather than getting people to where we are, we got to go to where they are. So that just flipped the whole high schools and middle school started opening up all across the country in India. So the idea was you have a band, you have a storyteller, and you take over and assembly kits are excited because they're bunking class there, wide open. And the audience is very, you know, if I may say it right, like, you know, India is officially 4% Christian. So you're talking about, you're walking to school, you have a captured audience of a thousand students. So we were at one point, we were touching over 30 plus cities, reaching 100 plus thousand students every year with over 25 bands and artists touring with a zigzagging across the country. So thousands of kids here in the gospel, going to where they are, and that was a mass movement, and then that just took over to other parts of the world. Who are some people that like helped you get there? Was this you just doing by yourself or like you found a team? Oh yeah, I mean, I'm just telling you, when God gives you a vision, He also gives you relationships with people, and you're always looking for the superstar, you're looking for Bill Gates. But God has put the right people around you to share it. So all I did was I just kept sharing the vision with people, vision casting, praying, my first strategy was going to a city and pray. When I pray, the Lord starts opening up, and I look for the man of peace, who's the man of peace, who's the person that I know, the first person that I know, I remember going to the city in Kathmandu in Nepal to pray, just to pray with some guys. We got there, started praying, and after our prayer drives across the city, we have, we get this message. This is the first year that Christmas is going to be declared as an official holiday. It moved from a Hindu kingdom to becoming a secular nation, and we have the opportunity to do the first official Christmas concert in the history of the country. So we stumbled upon these opportunities because we prayed, and I keep telling people, one of my slogans is, you walk into what you pray into. Right. So we walk in and we, and then we next week, no, I was, I was at a doctor's office yesterday, I found a guy from Nepal, I'm like, you know, a total of grounds, 25,000 people live on national television. That year, the gospel went for them. Of course, American Christian media, a bit of big, a big story about that because it was historic. So always sharing it with people around you, the relationships that God has ordained in around you are so amazing that you get to share the story, and then people start coming in. And I think I have a great story principle that I learned from from the life of Jesus and also inspired by John Maxwell, Jesus never had volunteers. He had recruits. So there are people out there around you. They have probably no idea what to do, but as a leader, we got to make the ask, ask, asking is the way of the kingdom. So somebody asked me to be on the podcast today, Daniel, you asked me, that's why I'm here on the podcast. And because of this relationship, this podcast is not going out on the web, and it's going to touch people. So your private testing will become public testimonies that will inspire a generation. So with that, what were some of your private testings that you would want to share? Private testing is always like, let me just tell you one recent story that happened in America. So I have to talk about, am I ready to launch into my New York story, Daniel? Okay, so here we are comfortable sitting in India, the, the ministry is growing, fancy office, somebody's checking with you, checking on you. Hey, man, Bonnie, you got something drink. God, what do you want for lunch? Somebody, I mean, the whole, you know, you feel like, man, you're living in the fulfillment of some of the things you've been praying and dreaming about. But I've always said and preached that comfort zone is dead zone, right? Comfort zone is dead zone. So I'm feeling comfortable. I just knew that I felt inspired by the Lord in that time of prayer. Zip code number one. And I got to say this because zip code number one is the most influential zip code in any British colony around the world. So India used to be a British colony. If you go to London, it is zone number one. Zone number one has got everything. Westminster Abbey got everything that controls the UK in that zip code, just like in India. So I'm like, Lord, we are in zip code number one because you're so fascinated by number one that are building numbers. Number one, we weren't zip code number one. I could walk up to the parliament. We were so we're in the most influential zip code in India, but I felt the Lord should not zip code number one India, but zip code number one America. Whoa, quickly Google and to find out that one zero zero zero one is midtown New York. So here we are. The Lord's kind of pointing us directions and I, you know, my mentor, Dr. Ricebrook says follow the clues got always put some clues around. Got to follow the clues. So I follow the clues. And finally, we felt the Lord is speaking to us at one of my good mentors, Mac Pierre from movement or of the founder. And I remember him telling me the story about New York. New York is a modern day room. One of the most influential cities around the world by Tim Keller. And you know, and it is like if you touch New York, you touched the world, you touched the nations. So we fell as a family that we were now going to be moving from India to take this ministry to New York City and take it to 500 cities around the world. So I was a dream. So coming in, make a big step of faith. You can imagine we had a race money moving in from city to 10 times my expensive. That's a huge step of faith. All right, just come in here. Get ready and land into New York City. Now in Manhattan, Roosevelt Island, you know, get ready to roll and two months later, the pandemic broke loose in our city. And let me just paint the context. My wife is pregnant. We haven't figured out our insurance. We came with very limited money. We're just about to finish off our money. And I have no clue what I'm supposed to be doing because I can't meet nobody. This is the time when Times Square was running empty 800 people dying every single day in New York City was the crazy season ever in the history of New York. And I'm like thinking I made the craziest decision of my life to move my family half around the world. What are we going to do? I can go back airports are shut. What am I going to we don't have money. The red man's going to come to collect the rent. We don't have money. So what I did was Daniel, I got on the ferry every single day. And Roosevelt Island going all the way to Wall Street, nobody on the ferry, you know, mask and all that stuff stand on the balcony and praying Jeremiah chapter 29 and verse six. Seek the piece of the city when the city is blessed, you will be blessed. So while praying that Lord open away, do something where I don't know what's going to happen. This is a real testing testing time of no idea what's going to happen. I felt the Lord give me an idea to put the songs bring the church in New York together and produce a song. So Daniel in India every artist is working with us. So they're all speed dial away like call them. They're on board. But here in New York, I had nobody that I knew that I could put this thing together. I waited for two weeks thinking maybe somebody smarter somebody better can do that. You know, the song that was the time the blessing song was coming out in the Pittsburgh blessing and come out in the UK blessing one of my good friends. Tim Hughes was doing it. Tim Hughes and Nikki Gumball are the most influential leaders in the UK. If they call everybody jumps some like man, I'm not Tim Hughes. I'm not Nikki Gumball. So when two weeks later, Daniel, I felt God telling me this is the time you're the one to do it. So I stepped out in faith again, the relationship that I had shared with people like Adam, some of these people around the brothers that God has put around me. The next thing I know Daniel is within the first week, we're the most influential churches in New York City. Come on board. Finally, we had a hundred churches and over 125 voices coming together. Now the crazy part out of this is that I had to pay upfront all the costs for the production. And we had hardly any money left in the account. That's probably the last amount of money that we have. But somebody told me, if what you have in your hand is not going to meet the need, it becomes a seed. So my wife and I decided pray and said, we don't have enough money anyways for next month. Let's show what we have in our hand into this vision of bringing the churches together and telling the story to the world. And we sort into this project. The next thing we know is Daniel, this song became a song of healing and hope it went over a half a million years. Every Christian channel, every Christian media portal in America wrote stories about it. And you know, even now I would meet somebody that said, oh, you're the one who produced a song. It is still opening doors. It's still connecting people, still healing people. And it was the song of New York became the song of New York. So that became a private testing that became a public testimony that touched people. Franklin Graham, I mean, if God had to do a PR story for me, I had to spend, I mean, for this ministry to get to launch when I spent thousands of dollars, God did the greatest PR campaign for our ministry. And forming that you're, you're in the plan of God, you're in New York City based on God's plan. And also this became a healing to literally the nations of the world. I was in Bahamas two weeks ago. People in Bahamas were watching the New York blessing because it was New York people in India were watching the New York blessing that they started the India blessing and they asked me to be part of it. It went viral private testing into public testimony, touching people thousands and thousands of people around the world. And maybe you're going through somebody listen to this podcast is going through a private testing that you know and your wife knows and probably a few people around them know I'm telling you, hold in there. The Bible says, even though you walk through the valley of shadow of death, I will feel no evil, your rod and your stuff will comfort me. And surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life. And I'm telling you, your story, your private testing is getting ready to become a public testimony. Get ready. You have such a full life. So what's going on now? So now what's happening is that now we're we're talking I'm in New York City. It is the most influential city in the world. Over a million students just in New York City. And this is probably the most influential corridor in America. You know, you're talking about the Ivy League schools, you know, we're talking about, you know, Howard Yale Princeton, Brown, all of that in this area. And once we got here, Daniel, the Lord began to give us a burden, a burden for the students in college campuses. I have a mentor of mine, Dr. Ricebrook, he wrote this, wrote a book called Change the Campus, Change the World. It is so fascinating that the students. So we felt, we felt this another story that I was reading. I mean, I was reading, you know, Tim Keller, right? I mean, we, you know, during the pandemic became friends and he was going through his journey and every time he used to leave for his cancer treatment, he used to leave his office with me and I tell people about God's favor. I mean, I mean, little coming from a little town in India, I'm sitting on Tim Keller's office and I'm thinking, how in the world did I get here? And I get a reminder about the story of the turtle on the fence. If you've seen a turtle on the fence, you know that the turtle never climbed up the fence. Somebody had to put the turtle on the fence, you know, that's my story on daily basis. So here I'm praying one day reading the scripture and the scripture says in Genesis, God spoke to Abraham. Walk the length and breadth of this land and I will give it to you. Boom, it just was a reminder. So we felt as a family that we need to go across the length and breadth of this land and pray. So my wife and I with our kids, the youngest one is 22 months. We got on a mini van, started driving from New York all the way to Los Angeles, Seattle to Miami, back to New York, 9,000 miles of just praying every single day. Meeting every city, meeting one man of peace, praying for the city, praying for young people to be safe, praying for the arenas to be open, pray for college students to come to know Jesus. 30 days later, we come back with a fresh vision that a vision in America is to reach the college students with the gospel. So here we are in this assignment and now we are seeing open doors in all of these cities. We were in UC Berkeley going to these college campuses. Now we are taking this event called God's Not Dead, which is, you know, a book that was written by Dr. Rice books from a good mentors and friends and then became a movie over 300 million people who watched it. Like 70% Daniel 70% of the kids that come from a Christian home would walk into a campus and will lose their faith. I heard about the story about this young girl. She was on fire for Jesus. She's a youth leader and now she's getting ready to college and she talks about that. I want to go to UC, I want to go to UNC Chapel Hill. That's like, no, why don't you go to Liberty or why don't you go to all robots or some Christian University. Now she said, I want to go to UNC Chapel Hill and I want to turn this campus upside down for Jesus. All right, she goes to UNC Chapel Hill, joined school six weeks later. She calls up at dad and says, I don't believe in God anymore. This is what is happening in our nation and all of the campus ministries put together in the last 60 to 80 years starting for the University, all of these people, great ministries, great friends of ours. We are at, if you go to any, I was at my first stop on the prayer drive was to camp to Penn State 40,000 students Daniel 40,000 students and less than 1% of the total student body is coming to any sort of campus ministry. So if I talk to major leader, they'll say 1 to 3% of the college students in America are engaged with the gospel. So our story is that we are, we have taken over this vision call campus harvest starting the 1990s reach thousands of students and the vision is to mobilize the church to gospelize the campus. We want to see every student in every campus, gospelized by mobilizing the church. So here we are taking the gospel, taking young people from these churches. We're going to admission to these college campus with these God's not dead events, which is faith and signs because people think that faith students think that faith is blind faith is not blind faith is backed up by evidence. So we bring the scientists from MIT and we bring the scholars and we talk to them that faith is not blind. We lead them all the way to the gospel that Jesus rose from the dead. It is not a fable. It's backed up by evidence. If Jesus is alive, our faith is alive. And we give them an opportunity share the share, share Jesus and 13% on an average basis students come to know Christ at events. I mean, 3 to 4% was a line slide for Billy Graham and he was doing the crusades. So we've seen a massive, we're also doing mental health based events, music, mental health and, you know, and Jesus. So we have a music artist, Grammy nominated artists, hip hop, go to college campus. We're going to stand for it. We're going to be in UC Berkeley now. And then we take a faith leader and we take a mental health expert. We have a neuroscientist, Dr. Neadi, who is the first African American to have a lab in his name at Yale. He's a man of faith. And we bring these people together, use music and stories and mental health to share the gospel. So this is an exciting season. If you look at college campuses are, you know, the protests and things that we're seeing on the college campus is mostly pointed to what happened in the 60s. Major protests and riots on the college campus that led to the Jesus movement. So we're in the cusp of a major move of God on the college campus. And I'm saying as a curry eating man from India, Lord, we are ready to do whatever you want us to do. To take the gospel and serve these students not only to gospelize them, but to mobilize them. They are the winnable, the most winnable, you know, trainable, sendable population in the world. So a mission is called campus harvest, campus harvest. It's been going on for over 25 years and here we have an opportunity to take leadership of that vision now to make it part of our ministry to launch us again all over again to reach the college campuses conferences to to energize these students. You know, intensive trainings. We're going on mission trips. We're probably going on a first mission trip to Bahamas. We have open doors and Bahamas taking students out there. So all of these exciting things. I talked a lot, but all that is saying I'm very, very passionate. If you change a campus, a college student, you change the world. How do students get involved? Oh, yeah. So you can you can follow us on our socials or go to a website campus harvest campus harvest.org or our socials is going to be campus harvest. And you can find all all about it. So you can come with us on prayer walks. You can be trained. You can work with campus ministries. If you're a church, this is the big thing with all of these campus ministries working. We still at 3%. So we believe the whole church need to be mobilized. Like I'm talking to friends out here around around Hofstra University. Guys, you're living close to Hofstra. Let's take Hofstra. What does it start like? Let's start talking about prayer. Maybe a campus crusade of two other groups are there. We need more groups on campus. Can the church launch a group on the campus? We'll tell you how to do it. We'll tell you training how to get a student status. We'll training how to raise finances. Whatever you need to get yourself on the college campus, we have the tools and we have the best people around the world. Partnering with us to be part of this great move. Campus harvest. Change the campus. Change the world. Thank you for that. That sounds so exciting. Yeah, I remember my college years and they were very influential to even just sustaining my faith because there's a lot of distractions. Absolutely. Absolutely. And your faith gets strengthened. Either you lose your faith, your faith gets strengthened. They say if your faith gets strengthened, then you would become a very strong Christian for the rest of your life. So I think we can do more. When I came to America, I thought, I mean, this is a Christian country, guys. We got sent all these books and resources and stuff and the worship music and all that stuff. Like, oh, my God, this is like the mecca. And then we come here. We're in bad shape. We are in bad shape. And I think God is moving. I mean, the last one year from the aspirin revival to two weeks ago, I was at University of, University of Tennessee in Knoxville with a group called Unite, just started a prayer. It's getting saved. Massive arena gatherings. Kids getting saved. 200 kids getting saved. A hundred students getting baptized right outside the arena and hostrofs. I mean, light maps. We're out there giving away new testments and serving in any possible way. We're a ministry of ministries. We are working with everybody at the campus ministry, the churches, active ministry to somehow, in some way, reach the college students. My prayer, like, John, you know, you know, is that Lord, give us a campus. How did you be your wife? Because of my friend. Yeah, your whole life, like so much is happening, but then like you have a family. How is she involved? Absolutely. Let me just tell you something. You as a man of God or as a leader, you're always dreaming about something. You want to start something, you're dreaming something, you're making a logo. We're always buying some new domain names. You know, I mean, you have more domain names than you pay for that you can actually execute. But imagine you heard a vision from God and you're coming down the prayer room and come back home or come down into your bedroom and your living room and tell your wife, guess what, honey? I found this is what God spoke to me. Imagine she would say, nah, that's not from God. Mission aborted. Mission is gone. It's finished. It's finished though. You're done. You cannot do ministry without your wife. You know, and I'm telling you, Daniel, my wife has become the greatest blessing, the greatest blessing. She's probably more trained. She's got a master's in, you know, double bachelor's and a master's in social work. But she's a servant leader and she is being my partner, my go to person. So I met her. You want to go the whole story, Daniel? All right. This is Joe Rogan style. Okay. So here I am in the city of New Delhi, which is the capital city of India. It's a very small little town of 22 million people. So you can imagine, Daniel. I mean, I get, I come to, I mean, the only city that resonates with me is New York City. When I drive in New York City, Daniel, I feel like I'm driving in India. Like we drive on all sides. We drive. I've seen it on YouTube. It's crazy. There's like no light. And it's only it's crazy. It is, it is, it is like a river. It's like wherever the space is just like water. We just go, but let me tell you, it's a control chaos. Nobody's getting killed. The drivers are probably more alert than anybody else. I mean, people I feel in driving in America, you're on cruise control. I'm thank God for automation and automated driving. I mean, automation driving us to go like 100 to 1000 times, you know, it has to be mastered as we checked like 100 times in India. Because you don't know what's going to happen. Somebody is going to come. Some, some bike guys going to come. So you're fully 360 degrees alert. So here I am in New Delhi, the capital city. And we're we're wanting to do this massive arena event to share the gospel around Christmas. And I walk into this church. It's my hosting church there. I walk in telling this girl walks up. Hey, Bonnie, you're here. I'm like, OK, I remember seeing her. She said, you know, I brought my friend to Hindu friend to one of your events. And she got saved. And I'm so glad that you're here. And I'm like, all right, great. Fantastic. And when I was leaving that place, she came and gave me an envelope. And she said, please give this to my pastor, my local church pastor, when you, when you arrive in your city, said, definitely, I will do that. So when I landed, I gave a when it went to this friend of mine's house. And I gave his envelope and I had to go quickly in the night. Daniel, this pastor friend of mine calls me up and says, Bonnie, that envelope, like came in in the right. That had money. And there was a man of God in my house. And I wanted to bless him. And I didn't have money. And the money came in on time that I could bless this man. Wow. A couple of things went up in the air right now. Here's a girl that hears good. Number two, here's a girl that is generous. So we got two combinations there. But now we are focused. It's not like America. You can go out date and stuff. It's like a very shame based culture. So you don't want to be the Christian minister today. So I'm just not talking about, but we've developed a friendship and a couple of our friends came together. And she's literally the opposite. See, I love, I love, I mean, you can look at me and say, I'm like a loud kind of a guy. I'm like, my slogan, our slogan is live out loud, loud, loud, loud. She threw up halfway around this festival. If there was ever a night for anybody to fall in love with me, I'm in the suit. I'm in the spotlight. There's thousands of people. Five television channels going like she left halfway and started throwing up because of the loud music. So this is a contrast like, you know, don't want to be in the platform. I believe in your vision and then we fed in love and then we prayed about it. And Daniel, I want to say this being the greatest blessing, greatest blessing of our life. I mean, finally, finally, I took a long, long, long time to say yes, because I had to like hear it from the Lord. I knew this is, you know, I tell young people, this is second most important decision of your life after your decision to follow Christ. You get this right, brother. You're going to be select one, one will change thousand, two will change thousand. And we have, it has been a journey. I told her, join the adventure. Because this is going to be adventurous. It's going to be full of faith. You know, we will always be dreaming about things way bigger and way greater than a bank accounts. Bank accounts are sometimes liars. They don't actually tell us the truth. We look at our, but we're always going to be dreaming because the Bible says without faith, it is impossible to please God. So it has been a journey of faith, a marriage was a journey of faith. You know, I remember talking to my mother, no, they're missionaries again. They want to do the wedding and they say, you know, that we want to be, you know, give us some time. We need in a year because you know, culture, everybody puts in money, right? We need some time to prepare. I said, now that I knew it was God, I was in a hurry and I was like, it mattered ASAP. And I, as a matter of faith, I said, I'm going to pay for the whole wedding. Daniel, I'm going to pay for the wedding. Don't worry about the wedding. It's on me. I'm going to bring, bring all the money. I had no money in the account. But by the time we got married, we got married in the top five destination wedding spots in our country. And every bill was paid and we had extra money to start our home. So we've been married for a little over 14 years, three boys traveled, moved from city to city. And here we are in New York. We've trained together, believing together in the ministry after I got married. It moved from three cities to 186 city footprint. And I really believe one will chase thousand, two will chase 10,000. So we've prayed together. We believe together. We're together. Believe in God for all that God is speaking and sometimes somebody said the voice of your wife often sounds like the voice of the Holy Spirit. You know, she's like the silent prophet that comes in and tells me things and some of the big steps that we have taken. You know, it's not been a prophet that came up and said, does save the Lord. It has been my wife's whispering certain things in my heart or a WhatsApp text or a text message that changed major direction. So I am in love with my wife. I love my kids and onward together. We are serving the Lord and, you know, true evangelist. We want to see young people come to know Jesus. Man, you have such a great story. Daniel, when you come from up out of the world without stories, you will never get here. You know, it was never easy. It was never smooth. We had to believe God every step of our way. If God wouldn't show up, we wouldn't make it. And I thought things would change, you know, when we were in America, things, it is the same formula here again, Daniel. So even with faith, I believe that's such a great vision that you guys are part of. But don't look back. Don't look back. You know, many times it feels like the scripture says the kernel of people fall to the ground and it will die. Many times it felt like my vision died. My dream died. My idea died. My relationships died. And then boom, resurrection. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is going to resurrect every dream for people watching. Don't stop dreaming. Don't stop believing. God can and God will show up on you behalf. The scripture says his eyes are looking to and fro throughout the whole earth. Looking for somebody through whom God can put himself faithful. So if you say yes, recently God asked me, we were getting in a big, big decision. And I was feeling very overwhelmed about this thing that is coming up. I was like, I have no idea how in the world I'm going to do it. And I heard the voice of God telling me, all I'm asking you is, yes, are you ready to say yes? And I said, Lord, I am saying yes. And maybe God is speaking to people on the spot. God has listened to me. God is saying, are you ready to say yes? You know, the dream and the vision and the journey is going to be looking so scary. But living in New York City in Manhattan with all of these, I live in an apartment where there's diplomats everywhere. Harvard and PhDs and all of those are feeling overwhelmed. But I remember the code God never calls the qualified, but he qualifies the code. I'm not preaching too much, Daniel. You said Joe Rogan. Here we go. Amen, brother. I mean truth is truth. Keep preaching it. So a quote I recently heard that like I live by now is live long enough to tell your story because even if your dream dies, doesn't mean your story dies because God is doing something. Yes. So yeah, I love that. Yes. And the best stories are yet to come. The best stories are yet to come. The best songs are yet to be written. The best books are yet to be written. And I am feeling more and more hopeful. Every time I read the scripture, I feel I feel energized. Every time I pray in the spirit, I feel energized. I feel like God is not done with me. Every time you go to turn 43, I'm like, am I too old? You know, God, can you do that again? Can you work with me again? Can you do this in this nation? Can you do this in this new city? Can we do this with this new dream? God keeps telling me I can and I will. So let's go. Oh, last thing. How can we be praying for you and your family? So we are in this vision of reaching college students. And let me just tell you that this is also a very dark spot. Convergence of spiritual warfare. Convergence of a lot of things that has happened, protests. I mean, if you look at it from different ways, it is it is a lot going on. And we need all the press, all the press that we came from all the people that are listening to us. We need prayer. And the number two thing is that we need your partnership. We really need your partnership because what we're trying to accomplish always requires resources. And I believe that our responsibility is to keep sharing the vision. Here I am on this podcast sharing on on faithly, like a absolutely networking spot. Nothing, but our passion and undesired to see campus students as a missionary from India to America to see American campus students and come to know Jesus. So pray for us and also partner with us financially. Some of these events on college campuses cost us a lot of money, like $15,000 a minimum to do an event, a small event on campus. But if God is putting on your heart, you you went through NYU and I want you to go to NYU and I'm going to sponsor that. Or you went to Colorado, you went to University of Tennessee, you went to Harvard, you went to Yale. I keep sharing the stories and people from the church come up and say, I went to Stanford. I'm going to get behind Stanford. So if God is speaking to you, to people to financially support us in this mission to reach not only American students, if you're hardest foundations, we're going to we're in we're the most unreached and the most youngest country in the world in India. Region students, Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Bahamas, the Caribbean's opening doors all across the nation. So we need your press, we need your press, we need your financial support and that'll be that'll be huge Daniel. Thank you. Thank you for asking. Thank you, Bonnie. This is great. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Absolutely. And all the details are going to be on the website campus office.org and we'll give you all the details that you need to, you know, to stand with us. And Daniel, I'm excited to be on this platform and doing everything I can to help you guys succeed with this vision. So it's been great coming on the podcast and yes, get ready. The best the best the best is yet to come. Amen. That's it for podcast guys. Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. 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