Senior pastor, Bill McKenzie says his church’s goal is simple, “Try to show people where they can experience missions, where they can experience going to a territory where it is the gospel being preached to some people for the first time - to experience what it is like to be a missionary.”

About half of those attending Pinedale Christian Church have been on a mission’s trip; and one-third have gone on an international mission’s trip.

Missions pastor, Danny Spainhour explains, “For people to get to see with their own eyes how the rest of the world lives; to see the poverty; to see just the hope and the joy that other Christians have, and they don’t have the material things that we have.”

Pinedale Christian Church adopted a small village in Zimbabwe.

Two landscape engineers at Pinedale, Johnny Lee Sides and Tim Hanauer, wanted to use their talents to help this drought ridden village.

“The people were really desperate for food and it just broke my heart, and the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, ‘you know something about this, and I want you to go,’” Johnny Lee said.

“It was a real thrill to be invited by the Myshimundas, to the Zimbabwe village where we worked, to really help them figure out how to best utilize the land that they were on,” Tim said.

Both men installed a drip irrigation system for the village.

“Drip irrigation uses one-tenth of the water that hand watering or other types of watering systems provide,” Tim said. “So the good thing about drip is that it is very frugal. Water is in short supply there, so you want to make use of every drop.”

The response of the villagers was amazing. Villager Derek Mushayamunda remembers. . .

“After this happened many, many people gave their lives to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior,” said villager, Derek Mushayamunda. “Because many people had always, for many years, had believed in their ancestral worship. 145 people were baptized the first time and after that we had another 100 people baptized as well.”

For their work in Zimbabwe, Africa, The 700 Club applauds Pinedale Christian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina - America’s Church of the Week!