Kim Combs: Nigeria

Miss Kim Combs missed Kim has been you served in Nigeria for a long time. Can you tell everybody here's what I kind of want to just start out with is let's start out with years ago. What did the Lord do to stir your heart towards missions and ultimately call you to the field. Well, I took a short-term mission trip to Mexico and it wasn't to be wholly or anything like that had two teenagers that were going and they weren't leaving the country without but God had something different in mind and the last night of that mission trip. He let me know that I was going to be a missionary and at that time I was climbing the corporate ladder and had my eye on things but I was also working in my church and doing several Ministries there and you know, I am just in love with Jesus and have been since I was a child and I thought that I was doing a good job, you know anything. My pastor asked me to do I did. Including clean the toilet, but you know God had something else in mind and when he told me this we were standing around a bonfire a bunch of us that it's going to mission trip and I promptly told the Lord that he had the wrong person. It was that person over there and it was dark and couldn't see and so he made a mistake so it kind of started there and I didn't tell anyone or even say it out loud for a year because I knew once you speak it. You know I'm talking about. Okay, so I wouldn't even say it out loud even in my prayers if you like board. I don't want to go. You know, I'm talking about a year to tell my pastor and I told him during a mission conference in I was bargaining with God which is always a bad idea. And I said, okay Lourdes. Hope we sing this song the last night at Mission conference. I'll go up and tell my pastor has its really if you are Church Never sing that song before. That music started playing and I lost it was that song and that's kind of where it began. So that's beautiful. That's awesome to see how the Lord spoke to you. It's also awesome to see how you wrestle with him.

I know I just want he's wrestled with the Lord. I think we were in good company cuz Jacob did to you know, but but I always I feel like those those testimonies are a little bit more. Tree of life and I don't know that other test of things aren't trustworthy. But for me who's a skeptic about some things. I really want to know that somebody did it just you know have an experience that they were that they wrestled with it and saw the word on it. So praise the Lord for that one of the things that we came when I know is you know, it's one thing to say. Hey the Lord called me and then I set up to do it. Could you just give us like, I mean, you're climbing the corporate ladder you have a house you have children. I mean, there's some there's more than just I said yes to God and then the next day right? So could you just kind of break into a little bit of those details and we don't have to do everything but maybe some of the details of what that actually looks like. Hey, I have a house. I have a mortgage. I have a family. You know, how was it when you were you told your children? What were some of the next steps for you? Okay should continue the story. I told my pastor that Sunday and you know, and then of course, he blabs to the whole church and we had to have the meeting in his office because he was going to try to talk me out of it because I wasn't you know, I'm in my forties and people don't just like pick up and go to the mission field and in their 40s, like you said, I've got two teenagers in high school and I just bought a brand new car and I had plans to landscape my yard. I mean I was renting the big equipment. It just was not in my plan to go to the mission field. But you know on the way home from church that Sunday my son looks at me and he said Mom what took you so long. I'd never told him he was on the Mexico trip with us. I never told anyone. I mean no one not even myself and I said what are you talking about? He said I knew you were going to do this. I knew you every since we went to Mexico. I knew you were going to do this and it was like God. I have an end my daughter once I got home and she she got home. She said mom, why didn't you tell us first, you know, we knew that you were going to do it, but we didn't know when it is like they had been having their own conversations about me. And you know, it's I didn't know how it was going to work. You know, I knew that my kids were not going to the mission field and so the largest graduate and it had to be gradual for me because you know, that was a huge change at that point in my life, you know single mother and I was getting to where I was at, you know where I wanted to be in the corporate world and in the money, you know, we went on vacation when we wanted to we had what we wanted. I gave tons of money to take promise and it was just I felt good about my life and that the Lord has blessed me and I was giving back and he wanted more than I wanted to give. And it was a very huge struggle and but little by little he helped me to release things and at the end I sold my house and I just started calling up people to come and get the stuff in it. I didn't sell anything inside the house people who needed it at church single moms, whatever. I said come and get the refrigerator. So I can't pay I don't have any money I said if you pay me you can't have it and so the Lord just let me bless people as he allowed me to release the things that I held so dear and I ended up even given the brand new car away and it was one of those things that you know, I couldn't have done that overnight and God knew that and so it was it took a process of a couple of years the house sold and that was a miracle in itself cuz the market was depressed. And God just I mean he knew that it was going to take time and he let me have that time. But everytime I said yes to something small but the next thing was a little thicker and that's the way the Lord works. And so, you know look for him today. I don't even have a bit too, and the Lord does not let me sleep on the street and I think that's a miracle in itself. So what year was Elvis going to take place and something like that? So I mean beautiful also just want to say like I I love how God does that River a teenage girl ass one time. She said, you know, she was a little scared about like, you know. Our little apprehensive about this. She said you don't like it seems like every time I I keep taking the steps. I keep finding out more that like needs to be done or whatever, and I said you had Gods Juno like that because you know, he knows what we can handle he's not going to him. If you were to reveal all my sent to me and all my need to me. I would get crushed under that, you know, and I just love seeing the patience of God with that kiss that like on the other end of that like and calling you to this and come on. Let's take a step and what's take a step and let's take a step and it's a valuable lesson for us all like that. You think that God's going to call you to do something that he's not going to prepare you for But he's not going to walk you through. The guy told me that's patient. And he is kind and he's good and so he will walk with you he'll take you on that will take you on that Journey. So I'm really really love that. There's a lot of fear is what I'm hearing impaired sphere. I'm hearing struggle. I'm here in like, you know, you know just having to release take a death grip off of 700 if you ask what excited you about all of this. I mean there was it only fear or was there like also like these Daydreams in these kind of fantasies of waikato. This would be really awesome during this time as well. I don't know if it was actually fear at that. I didn't want to I mean to be honest I didn't want to but I didn't want to sell my house. I just had redone the whole house and I didn't want to leave my kids. My daughter got married in that. My son went off to A&M and in my life. I've had an empty nest and I was at the about it. Yeah buddy, and now it's you know, now I live with people and the people I don't even know sometime and that's scary but to to give it up it's I didn't want to do it. I like Lord, I worked hard and I gave you part of all of it. And and now you want it all and then no and it's like why isn't she giving it all, you know that comparison thing, you know, I do more than a damn. Why aren't they asked to give some more and I don't have to get some other who are you pointing at over here?

But you know in the interim as I began to say, okay peers no way out of this. I mean basically I just resolved myself that okay. If I don't do this, I'm going to be miserable for the rest of my life because if you're not in God's will your miserable, I mean, you may pretend you're happy, but you're not and so I had to relinquish and then as I started focusing on what God might do through me or or the lives that I might influence or the things that that I would learn as he took me on this adventure and it I looked at it as an adventure like, you know, white water rafting x 10. It was just incredible and now it's like I can't wait for the next thing. And I can look back and say the very best years of my entire life were my years in Africa. Not the years of giving childbirth time. That was not a pleasant time for me. Not the years where I raised my kids by myself that was hard, you know and not the years I was you know, trying to get up that ladder so I could be somebody important in the corporate world. That was frustrating. It was the years that I spent in Africa care in my own water, you know, no electricity sweating at a hundred and ten degrees out in the sun giving conferences with the sun beating on your head are the best years of my life and you may think that sounds really stupid. But that is that is where it's at for me and I cannot wait to get back to African and a month or so. It's awesome. You know, there's something that you said that you said at one point you found out like hey, I would be miserable and then before that you would talk about playing a comparison game and you stink like this kind of let them know to do that. Like, you know, a lot of times I think when we think about miserable like well, you're going to lose your corporate job and God's going to eat at your house is going to burn down or something. I think that like if you would have if you would have said no, but like I think the seed for you being miserable was being planted with that comparison because you would have you would have been telling you would have been

To keep your conviction down you would have been having to compare yourself to everybody and that would have been built like bitterness and resentment and you would have just become like somebody who was it doing what God wanted them to do and that marks them not and that they don't get the next promotion but it works their character and March their attitude and and I think you know, I kind of the point that out because I too many times especially in our circles like fear-mongering has ruled the pulpit and you know, and it's really no God trying to save us. God's trying to save us from from being bitter angry resentful people and you're going to do that if you say no to God because whenever you're saying no to God, you're going to have to have a reason why you're saying no to God and sometimes that reason is I'm doing more than them. It's okay. I got you talk to them. I'm doing more than them. And that marks you and what's your character? You'll see that in somebody's eyes. We'll see how their face. The other thing is. Oh, if you say no to God, you're probably going to end up, you know on a bender or something. Okay with fenders of the drugs, you know, of course you have it, LOL. cool

I was saved when I was 9 years old. All right there. We have just a few more minutes together and cuz I need to give her some time and we could really just go through all this but here's what we really need to know right now. All right, so you're in Nigeria for how many years 10 years in Nigeria and at the end of 2018. There's probably a story here, but we don't have time to break into it tonight. And I'm sorry for that but by the end of 2018 the Lord said hey your time in Nigeria is done. And you spent the last year kind of gone Okay. Now what's next Lord? So could you give us a bit of what's next for you? What's next? All right, if you look back on the table, you'll see this cone with a rope wrapped around it. Because last time I was here I talked about the rope that she holding my rope and some of you promise to do that and you have been faithful but there are I don't know 12 Flags ticket out of it, but I will be going to Southern Africa and I will be in all of those countries at some point and the purpose of doing that and it's so weird. My prayer cards did not get mailed on time. So they're not on the table. They will be here Sunday. So come back but on the front of my prayer card, it says making disciples who make disciples in the hole in my notebook reading a website and you saw it and then that's what happened. That's what that's all you had to order a new pair of cards.

We think I will be based in Zimbabwe right now, which is a country that I was in 15 years ago and got kicked out and blacklisted and couldn't go back but now the president's dead. So no hip hip hooray. And so I can go back. I went back last October and was there for a week and they let me in and gave them hippies and everything. So I was legal but I will get to go to each of those countries and chant and trained church leaders to make disciples and to how to facilitate small group Bible studies because they get up on Sunday morning and preach and they think the job is finished and that is just you know, what the tiny tip of the iceberg. And so when I was in Malawi last year, I got to do that with a group of church leaders and there were some church leaders there that had never want anyone to Christ and there were six of us that LED grow. And my small group kept changing and growing and shrinking. And anyway, I ended up with like 20 every single person in my group one somebody to Christ during that week and all of them one at least one family member because I told them I said if you're going to win people to the Lord you start at your dinner table, you know, and you go home and you show them what I've taught you tonight at dinner because tomorrow when you come back you will give a testimony and it will be here be I didn't do it or I did it and they didn't believe or I did it and now my son is saved and every single person in the group by the end of the week had one a family member to Christ and you know that Angels were singing I'm telling her I was seeing and we were dancing. It was wonderful, but it it's that's what I'll be doing going forward and I'll be going like to Africa for 4 months and then home for two months and back for 4 months back and forth. But just because you know, there's no healthcare there. There's you know, I'm experienced now, I'm a veteran so I have to have come back and get check-ups and stuff. But that's what the plan is and I'm working with an organization who has some exposure in the country actually have exposure across the world, but they had exposure in Africa and in six of the countries that I'll be in with the other five. I have to network and find my own way. And this is this is if you ever seen where the you know people that go out and do street food in Korea and here and there and they just kind of land and go. Okay. That's what I'll be doing. I don't have a place to live and I don't have, you know a network of people to take care of me or to find me food or anything. It's just God and and me and then whoever the contact is in that country and I'll be living either with them. On a house it just on the street not on a protected compound like I was in Nigeria, so it's going to eat you guys are going to have to pray harder. Okay, I'm serious cuz it's it's more dangerous this way because there is no home base and it's just going from place to place to place to train leaders to be disciplemakers.

We owe a few years ago. We adopted the Mantra be disciples to make disciples because that was what we kind of what I could say for my Ministry was I felt like hey, I told everybody to read their Bible but where we doing really the good hard work of teaching people how to read their Bible and you we tell everybody hate Joe share the gospel where we doing the work of showing people that and instead of so, that's where we are like-minded and I praise the Lord for that.