August 12, 2025 • 58 mins
Peggy Halvorsen was "only" trying to adopt a kid from Liberia. Shortly after they agreed to adopt his brother too, he died from cholera and Peggy insisted that this could not be the end of the story. 14 years later, their accidental ministry Teamwork Africa has built 216 wells, repaired over 500 existing ones, sponsor the education of 180 kids, and they're about to open their second school.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Everybody's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks. And
we continue now a part two of our conversation with
Peggy Halberson, right after these brief messages from our general sponsors.
(00:27):
So let's just talk about wells for minutes. I think
an American sent their listen to this is like, oh,
that's cool. They dug a hole and got some water.
And we take so much for granted the United States.
I haven't been to Liberia, but I have traveled extensively
for work. We sell lumber all over the place, and
oftentimes lumber is made where inexpensive labor. Lumber is sent
(00:51):
where inexpensive labor is to make furniture as inexpensively as
possible to the nextport back to first world nations. Candidly,
some of it is a lot like the garment industry,
So that takes me to places that have poverty. Oftentimes,
I have witnessed human beings trying to bathe in a ditch.
(01:17):
While not far up the ditch, another individual was relieving
himself and said, ditch. And while that's maybe distasteful to
imagine and picture in your mind's eye, then the person
(01:37):
downstream of ditch creek is scooping up their cooking water
with the same water as someone had just relieved themselves
and bathed in. So when you talk about the importance
of clean water in a well, you really need to
understand that cholera in some of these places can claim
(01:58):
up to forty percent of the people's lives, and it
is why in many of these places the population the
age of the population is typically like sixty percent under
thirty years old, because people just don't live long because
they don't have something as simple as clean water to drink,
bathe or cook with.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Sure is that Liberia, Absolutely, the seventy percent of librarya
is under thirty years old.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Seventy under thirty under thirty.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
That may be the worst number I've ever heard. There
may be a worst country, but there can't be many it.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
They just did a census two years ago and those
were the statistics that came up. So between the war
and the water health things, the country is full of
young people with no mentors.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So just building a well literally upgrades exponentially the lifestyle
of the people in that village.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yes, and there are a lot of the communities, and
I wish I had better numbers on how many. But
some of the communities had enough structure and enough organization
and leadership in that community that once they had a well,
it was theirs and they took care of it with
like most of the time. What they do in Liberia
is you have a chain and a lock on pump
(03:19):
and you only open it in the morning and in
the evening so that the kids don't come and play
on it and you know, throw whatever, you know, be kids.
So there's a lot and you in some places you
do not wear your shoes on the culvert around that pump.
Like in those places that keep the place really clean
and neat, that pump is going to last a long time.
(03:40):
But not every community has leadership. And in the community
that we put our first well in, it was a
community of almost all women. The only guy that I
knew who was there was drunk most of the time.
So we have had to repair that well. Oh my goodness.
Almost every year we have to go back and do
(04:00):
simple repairs just because they don't have enough organization in
that community to maintain that pump. And that when that
happens over and over and over, I start thinking there's
another problem that we need to address. Before we can
even address the water problem, which is education, organizations and mentorship. Yep,
(04:24):
which is why wells. So Michael morphed to one well,
which morphed to more wells, which morph to civics and teaching,
civics and education. Oh yeah, sure is that right? Well?
And we also so at the times, at the same
(04:45):
time that we are doing wells, we are also doing
a child sponsorship program, so we are trying to help
kids go to school. So in Liberia there is a
public school system that is free. But as Peter used
to say, it's free of teachers, it's free of books,
it's free of dea, free everything, free of everything. So
(05:06):
that is not an option Peter from Peter's Liberian he
is He's from the same tribe that Michael's from.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
No kidding, Yeah, just a librarian dude, trying to do
it right.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, he's a pastor and a husband and father of
five kids, plus a whole bunch of other kids that
he kept bringing home. I don't know how is it
would be like Peter, he for got to stop bringing
home children.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So all right, so take us from the first wells
onwards and the sponsorship.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We did the first well in the first school and
then Teamwork Africa started and then we actually were able
to partner with an organization from Texas called the Last
Well and they were focused on bringing clean water to Liberia.
So we were one of their partners for five years,
five year, four or five years something like that, and
we did a ton of projects with them because we
had Liberian well technician teams and they you know that
(05:58):
they're special the specializ and going to really remote areas
where you couldn't bring a well digging rig and they
would carry in all the materials on their heads, so
the cement, the frame for molding the culverts, and they
would mold the bricks on site and so yeah, they
would chomp through that and I and then I got
(06:19):
to go to Liberia and do the follow up. So
I got to walk on all those jungle paths and
go verify. Yep, there's a new well right here in
the middle of nowhere where you know, we walked an
hour from the closest road to go to this village
and see that there's a brand new well there. So
sad for Oh, sure, easily, yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes
(06:41):
it would take a land cruiser as far as the
land cruiser would go and then would take a motorcycle
as far as the motorcycle would go, and then we
would walk from there.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Did you ever fill No, really.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
No, because by the time I was doing that part,
I had developed really really close friendships with my friends
in Liberia and so they were so, so so careful
with me. We actually moved to Liberia in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, that we actually after Yeah, well, okay, well.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
We did and we were living there and I was
so on weekends I would go into the rural areas
to go do my you know, my well checkups, and
I would travel with the well technician team, and then
there was a place that I would guest house that
I would stay overnight. And there's one time where my
my well technician team was like, we don't know about
this place that you stay because it doesn't have a
(07:37):
fence around it, and we don't really know the guys
that are there, and are you sure that you're safe there?
And I'm like, yes, I know the guys there, they're okay,
and they're like okay, fine, So they dropped me off
and then the guys at that place they're like, we
don't know about those well technician guys that you're hanging out.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
So it's like.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Everybody was always, you know, looking out for me. And
one time I was a little bit foolish and it
was not a very high hill, but it was steep
and it had gravel on it, so it was like
six foot little incline and I slipped and I fell
down and slid down it on my knee and so
I got a big gash in it made it actually
a nice scar. And the guys that were with me
(08:13):
were absolutely horrified that I got hurt, and for the
rest of like not only for the rest of that trip,
but for months after that, I was not allowed to
walk up or down a hill without holding someone's hand.
They told me, they said, we have committed to bring
you back to your husband in the same condition that
(08:35):
you left, so you cannot get hurt.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
It also speaks to the humanity, to the desire to
just be safe and happy and have the basics, and
how despite all of the twenty years of the past
that these people have lived through, that their raw humanity
still comes.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, and they you know that point, they knew us,
they and they were so grateful that the family who
lived in a country like the United States would give
all that up to come and live with them, and
they and they really wanted to honor that sacrifice that
we were making.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And so take us.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
To the decision that you and Mark and your four
children made to move to Liberia. And at this point
you still have Michael living with you. No, no, he's
still in Libera is So tell me how that worked.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
From the very first time I went to Liberia, my
heart was just captured and I just really wanted to
be there, so I wanted to bring it recaptured. I
was looking over some of the things I wrote on
my first trip and really, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Just for those who aren't watching this on YouTube, she's
got a folder with a bunch of notes in front
of her and when she said that, she looked down.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
These are some of your notes from fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, this is my.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
What's for you? That's how seriously she's taken this. That's precious.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I this is, you know, from October twenty ten. So
this is from my first time, my first time in Liberia.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So what what'd you fall in love with?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I said, let me read this. Let this is like
the end my last. This is what I'm leaving.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
He said.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I didn't want to think about leaving. I said, I'm
not sure what to feel now about leaving. I said,
I hope Mother Teresa's quote is true. And her quote
is that I found this paradox that if you love
until it hurts, there could be no more hurts, only
more love. Because I have surely loved until it hurts deeply.
I have come across the world only to find myself
at home, a joy growing deep in my soul. As
(10:47):
long as I never forget the love, laughter, family, and
friendship that is here, It'll always be with me. So
I have so much to do when I get home.
Feels a little overwhelming, but these memories and God's strength
will encourage me in my weakness. Everyone said that coming
here would change me, but I didn't understand how. When
I first arrived, I said that Liberia had a beauty
among the rubble, and I have found such beauty and
(11:09):
it is the beauty, not the rubble, that has changed me.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Wow, And you're saying that with tears in your house
right now?
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Yeah, yeah, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So you get the wells going, you sponsor some kids,
and then you or Mark, or you and Mark look
at each other and say, why don't we just hook foot?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I wanted to move there, and I again waited because
I did not want to make my husband back up
our house and move to Africa. So I just was
patient and I waited to see if God would speak
to him the same way that he was speaking to me.
And so after a couple of years, Mark said, Okay,
(12:05):
well if it go like kind of like I don't
know how this could possibly happen, but if you can
find a way to make it happen, let's see where
this leads. And we found someone who said, oh, sure,
I can support you guys going to Africa. So we
had a guy who was like really like literally started
(12:25):
funding us to go to Liberia about six months before
we left. So we had, you know, we had some
money saved up for us to go to Liberia. We
sold our house and packed up our kids and moved
to Liberia.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
You say it almost as you say it, you're laughing,
like you're not even sure you actually did that.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I know, the whole time, I was like, it's simple,
it's crazy. It's like, how does somebody just pack up
suitcases and just move to Africa, and and then we
just but we just did all right.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So how old were your kids they were?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
That's a great question. So twenty sixteen, so Evelyn was sixteen, sixteen, fifteen,
thirteen and eleven.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
What were they thinking about leaving high school and friends
to go to Africa.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well, Dawson had just my son had just finished middle school,
so he hadn't started high school yet, so I mean
he was probably the most like, yeah, whatever, mom. The
girls were home. My oldest two girls were already homeschooling.
They had had had it with middle school and in
high school, so the a so they were good with it.
And then Elena is just she had just finished elementary school.
(13:35):
So it's kind of like a transition year for most
of the kids.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Any school actually fit.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, and they, I mean they weren't like they were
open to it. I wouldn't have said they were like
gung ho, like excited were moving to Africa, but they
were certainly open to it. Two of the girls had
already gone to Liberia with me, so they kind of
knew a little bit of what we were getting into.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And at this time, team work Africa is a thing.
It is, and you're raising money.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
So now you're taking teamwork Africa to have teamwork in Africa.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, and I you know, so we had we had
to find somebody to be the director on the US side.
So that was another huge factor in being able to
even leave because we had to have somebody here who
was running everything. So we had, you know, so we
had someone to do that, We had someone to sponsor
us to go, and then we we went.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Would you live what's did you live in Maroon?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
We? Yep? Outside so Menrovia is like, you know, capital
city and then there's little communities around Minorvia just kind
of like suburbs are here. And so we had a
base in Liberia where we had a guest house, and
so our family moved into the guest house. We had
built our first school there and we were in the
process of trying to build a medical center, so we
had a place to stay in the and the Fhlomo
(14:46):
family had also built a house on that same property,
so we were all living together. We were it was
absolutely insane. I had traveled to Liberia at least twice
a year up to that point, and I had stayed
up to three weeks at a time, and I thought
I kind of had an idea of what it might
be like to live in Liberia, and I really thought
I had covered all the bases and I thought I
(15:07):
knew what this would look like. And when we got there,
we put all our stuff in a container and shipped
it and the container stayed in the port until three
weeks before we went back to the US for our
first visit.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Customs.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
No, no, I it was. It was the most awful
that year.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Was work hard, it was.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
We shipped it in August and we got it in May.
It in May three, three weeks before we left to
go back to La suitcase for seven months. Whatever we yeah,
whatever we could get and we know, whatever we could
you know, get in Liberia or whatever we had in
our suitcases, that is literally what we had. Yeah, it
was a very interesting time for us. And we had
(15:52):
a plan to have a generator. We had raised a
whole bunch of money to build a community generator so
that we'd have electricity. It never never.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
Worked, so our struggle to have electricity every day, Like
we would try to have the generator on from like
seven PM until like you know, three or so in
the morning, because it's hot.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's hot and humid in Liberia. But you know, we
were going to have running water in our house. We
had running water in our house for one day. After
that we had to carrying water to the bathrooms, to
the big barrels where we could. Yeah, we had regular toilets.
You just you know, dumped the bucket of water in
the toilet and then we did bucket baths every night.
No hot water, no consistent electricity.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
For how long was this?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Two school years? So we were there from we went
there August of twenty eighteen. We came back in June
of the following year, and then we were back for
two months and then we went back for another year.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
So for Yeah, and you had running water one day, Yeah,
of that entire stuy, Yes, and your children bucked it
up and said, okay they did.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah they And now you know, my kids are between
twenty five and twenty now, and they will tell you
that living in Librea for those two years shaped their
lives and they, for the most part, are incredibly grateful
because of how it has changed how they see life
in the United States. And they they know, are yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So what was your plan? What did you do the
two years you were in a Botbaria besides to water.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Well, my background's actually in education, so I was planning
to work with the school kind of in the administration.
I wanted to be training the teachers and implementing some
programs that would help the school, you know, be better,
be different. And then Mark actually ended up being the
Bible teacher in the school. He actually ended up in
the classroom teaching more than I did. The kids still
(17:45):
talk about him when I go back to visit.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So then I went out, of course into the jungle
and did my well assessments to go check on all
our water projects.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Do Okay. So you come back from Liberia and eighteen
eighteen with the.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Goal of well, we had hoped that when we were
in Liberia we would finally adopt Michael, but that didn't
happen either.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Let's remember this all started with trying to adopt Bikeael. Yeah,
and in the meantime, you've moved to a library and back.
Did he get to live with you while you were
in library, Yes, bless his heart and your heart. So
you guys formed a real familial relationship.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
And then when you had to go, you had to
leave him again.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah. The summer when we left for two months, you know,
he stayed but when we knew we were coming back,
so we ended up coming. So my oldest daughter had
a knee injury, a significant one that we thought she
needed surgery for. So in the spring of twenty eighteen,
she had to come back to the United States. And
she was just turned eighteen, so she legally could travel,
(18:55):
but physically she couldn't. And so we sent my son.
So like, you know, tall, strong guy, he's going to
make sure she gets to the airport ocape. Except the
two of them don't have a clue on how to travel.
But my fourteen year old daughter is got the you know,
she knows how, she knows how to navigate the airport.
And so we sent the three of them back to
(19:15):
the United States together ahead of time. And then after
they left, we got word from the US that the director,
the US director that was in charge of Teamwork Africa
was resigning within a month, and that immediately meant that
in order for Teamwork Africa to survive, we had to.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Come back home.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
So we were already planning to come back again for
two months during the summertime. So when we came back,
we had two months to find a new place to live,
to get new jobs, to get new cars, to to
re establish everything. And while I had done a lot
of you know, studying and research and learning about what
(19:53):
it would be like for our family to live in Liberia,
I hadn't had any time to think about what it
would be like to come back. And it turned out
that coming back to the United States was much harder
on my family than it was leaving. Why the reverse
culture shock? Like everybody thought it would be the same.
Everybody thought it would just feel the same, and it didn't.
(20:15):
Everything felt really different. And that like at that point,
we had just had a new Woodman's grocery store come
into our community, and I walked in and looked at
it and walked right back out. The idea that you
would have an entire aisle for peanut butter was totally
overwhelming to me. I could for a long time. I
had just shop out little grocery stores.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
You know what's about.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
That is you're an American and you're only gone two years.
How overwhelming must it be? Or someone that comes from
there and tries to integrate.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Into our.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And I mean for only two years and you're an
American you came from that. What must it be like
for someone to try We always talk about people need
to integrate into society better. But the overwhelming I mean,
I've never thought about it until you just said that,
But how difficult I must be for people?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, My kids were in youth group and they were
talking about a story, something that had happened in Haiti,
and they were showing a video of kids from Haiti.
And and for my daughter Grace, those kids looked like kids.
She knew they lived in a community, you know, in
an environment that she was familiar with. The girls in
front of her were giggling and playing on her phone,
(21:32):
and she was like, like so overwhelmed. She actually had
got up and left and went to the bathroom and
sobbed because she couldn't connect with these girls who just
they just had no connection to what they were seeing
from that video. But for Grace, she knew what it
was like to live there. She knew the struggles that
those kids were going through. So a lot of those
(21:55):
things were just really hard. My kids thought differently than
the kids that they, you know, went to school with,
And for quite a long time, for several months, it
was I felt like I was just trying to keep
everybody's head above water as we were trying to acclimate
to being back here. And then we had Michael with
us that when we came back to stay we were
able to keep Michael came with us for four months,
(22:17):
and then at the end of four months I had
to take him back to Liberia to wait for the app.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yo.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
He was so excited to come to the United States,
and that was a whole other thing too, because people
in Liberia think that the US is heaven. It is heaven,
and so anything that didn't go the way he thought
it was going to go, it was really hard for
him because he thought everything was going to be perfect here.
So that made it a little bit, you know, it
(22:48):
was Those were some really funny, funny times where we're like, no, Michael,
this is actually just another part of Earth where things
are a little bit easier, but they don't go perfectly either.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
So yeah, but that's interesting. All right.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
So you're back here, you're running teamwork Africa, and Michael's
still there.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Yeah, okay, and you stop work today.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Well, and when we got back to from Liberia and
the director quit, so did all the other staff. So well,
we came back to Teamwork Africa. The organization kind of
in shambles, and I'm trying to keep our family, you know, floating,
and now I got to take Michael back to Liberia,
and so I took he went back in October. In
(23:34):
January of that year, So twenty nineteen, Peter Flomo dies
suddenly and he's our country director. Peter, Yeah, my one
of my best friends. And I'm like, we can be
done now, like we can just be done well. And
then yeah, so that's two, and then I can go
through Michael's whole adoption story. But we do finally adopt
(23:58):
Michael in December of twenty nineteen, right before twenty twenty,
and then twenty twenty hits and then everybody, you know,
all the nonprofit organizations are there's no fundraising, you know,
like and I was, yeah, exactly. I do want to say, though,
that is by the grace of God that Michael came
home in December of twenty nineteen, because if he hadn't
(24:20):
based on his age, he had just turned fifteen. I
am not sure after everything closed during COVID, by the
time we could have possibly traveled, he might have aged out.
So that was like the I mean at the very
last minute, because I was like, God, seriously, we've gone
through all this, Please don't tell me at the end
of the day we are not going to adopt this kid.
(24:43):
So we did.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
You're finally adopted and together without going back and forth,
you've started to try to put back together team work
Africa US. And then Pastor Peter does and it's twenty
twenty going into COVID and candidly it's like, maybe we've
done what we've gone to do.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, like I can be done. God, can I be done?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Candidly? Who could blame you?
Speaker 1 (25:24):
And you still have done an enormous amount Yeah, schools
and medical centers and wells and teamwork. Africa's story could
be a good one, and boat up right there.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I think it would have. I would have been satisfied
with that. I would have I would have been okay
with moving on to doing going back to the life.
I thought we were going to have, you know, a
decade before that.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
But it's five years later and you're sitting say no,
what happened.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
What happened was in those quiet moments where I sat still,
I knew that we weren't done yet, and so we
we reorganized and we refocused, and I gathered the people
that I knew best in Liberia and brought them all
together to see what kind of team we could rebuild.
(26:10):
And the Teamwork Africa team that we built in Liberia
after that is the strongest our team has ever been.
The work that we're doing now.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
One door closes, more open.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
We It's almost like the first decade of Teamwork Africa
was just practice for the work that we're doing now.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
How many wells have you guys built?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Oh yes, I brought that too because I'm super bad
at numbers.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
So yeah, give me, give me, give me what we're
going to get to what you're doing now so that
people get how this crazy story is not ended but
currently in the present progressing. But let's put some perspective
to it now in terms of numbers. Yeah, from two
wells and all of it.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Okay, from twenty eleven to twenty twenty four, we did
two hundred and sixteen new wells.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Meaning two hundred and sixteen entire communities yes, no longer
dying from Cawra.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah yeah, brand new wells places yeah. And then over
way over five hundred repairs. Like we would do major
repairs that we would record, but we would go to
communities where there was a little mini repair, a small repair,
and we would always fix them. We didn't even write
it down. So there are times we'd be out doing
our well assessments and we tried always to get back
(27:31):
to where we were staying before dark, because you know,
a breakdown in the dark in the jungle is not ideal,
you know. So we'd be like watching the time, and
you know, I'd see one more well. I'm like, Willy, Willy,
do you think you have time to fix that one
more well? And he's like, yeah, we can do it.
And then another time he'd be like, Sis, Peggy, can
we fix one more well before we leave for today?
And so between you know, the two of us where
(27:52):
he just Peter Willie Jackson is our well technician. He's
been with us the entire time. He is passionate about
having drinking water. Yeah, and he's so talented. I've seen him.
You know, mcgiver has nothing on Willi. He has way
to innovate and figure out how to solve problems. And
he just doesn't quit either, Like he just keeps going
(28:14):
at it until he figures out a solution.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
All right, So that many wells? What else?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yeah, So that's what I have for water, for our wells,
so for like our kids. So right now we have
two one hundred and eighty kids on our scholarship program,
and we're about ready to open up our second school.
And what that's I mean we've done less of other
things too, But I don't have all the numbers for
all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
That's still incredible from a mom who wanted to adopt
a kid, a normal kid, a mom sitting in Oa Claire,
Wisconsin who wanted to adopt a kid, I mean, how
many how many people in each of these villages?
Speaker 3 (28:52):
On average?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
We we estimate that each well can provide I think
the governments to ts Dick say two hundred people, but
the last well said five hundred for each for each well,
and how many wells two hundred and sixty.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
So it's two sixty time.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Those they don't work, well, yeah, they don't work.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
That's like, that's one hundred and thirty thousand people or
so I haven't Yeah, that are living free of cholera
because you decided to adopt Michael.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
He that is insane. All right, so reorganize.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yes, what's today look well, because Liberia is so young,
and because the war and the lack of healthcare has
taken so many grandparents on doctor per seventy thousand My gosh, yeah,
that'd be one doctor for my entierement for all Claire,
for the entire shot of the city. Yeah, I think. Yeah.
We decided that a lot of the challenges of the
(29:56):
programs that we had started were didn't work because of
just lack of education and in a lot of ways
a lack of character development. Liberia is an incredibly corrupt
country and it's because of the civil war and the
disruption of the fabric of their society. It just makes
(30:16):
it just you know, lying is is a you know normal,
stealing from everybody is acceptable, like, and it just makes
nothing works well when you don't have integrity, when you
don't have character, and trying to get like we try
to do agriculture projects and so trying to bring in
more innovative, more resourceful forms of agriculture, and nobody wants
(30:39):
to change the way they do things. So that is
like just beating your head against the wall. So we decided,
you know what, we're gonna work with children. We're going
to work with youth because they are going to be
the leaders for tomorrow. They are they have the opportunity
to change the direction of this country. And so we
decided to focus on education and mentorship, especially the mentorship.
(31:03):
So we started a program from girls and a program
for boys. We limit it to thirty kids with two
leaders mentors. We teach character lessons, We use the Bible,
they get into small groups, they talk, and then they
meet weekly. And we also, as you mentioned.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
This is in addition to school.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yes, yep, yeah, so we ran we are our first
so we have one hundred and eighty kids that get scholarships.
They do not all go to our school because they
don't all live close enough to us. But in twenty
twenty two, I was getting so frustrated with the cost
of the tuition going up and the quality of education
going down that I was just like, we have got
(31:42):
figure out a way that we can run our own school.
And we didn't have the money to build a school
and that was going to take forever to do. And
so I just asked the team, I'm like, could you
guys look around and see is there a house that
we could rent that we could start a school, or
what can we do? And one of our staff was
going to a church and the church school closed and
(32:03):
she talked to the pastor and told that told her
our interest in starting a school, and we worked out
an arrangement that we're renting that school now for the
next ten years. And that was our first school. So
it's called Imago Day. It's called what it's called Imago Day.
What is Imago Day is Latin for image of God.
So the motto of our school is based on Genesis
(32:24):
one twenty seven where it says God said, let us
make people in our image.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
All right, Peggy, show them your tat.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
And it's on your wrist.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
Those are midlife crisis.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Is that your mid life crisis tat?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yes? It is. It is Imago Day, that phrase.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Do you ever think you'd have a tat? No?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I've thought about it for the last two years, and
then this year i turned fifty, and I'm like, if
I'm ever going to do it, it's going to be now.
So I am so passionate about the children in Liburian,
knowing that each one of them has been made in
the image of God and deserves love and respect and
not only that for them to know that, but for
them to see the people in their communities that every
(33:10):
single person that they see is also made in the
image of God and deserves love and respect. And I
want to I want our school to be a place
where that's true. I want these kids to grow in
communities where that's true. I want them to build families
where that's true.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
You're literally trying to change the culture of the country
from the bottom up.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah and not and small and small, Like it's so
easy when you get started to say we're going to
change Africa or we're going to change Liberia, or we're
going to change Bond County, or we're going to change
Swakoko District. And now I'm like, you know what, I'm
going to pour my life into the lives of one
hundred and eighty kids and I'm going to pray that
(33:54):
God is going to change the communities through them.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So one hundred and thirty thousand people in communities getting
clean drink of water, schools, character development, character building, trying
to change it from the ground up.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Where's money come from?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I don't know, Like I told.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
You a weak you're the executive director, so you need
to know, well when we first started, and I told
you that I didn't know anything about running a nonprofit,
and so I just my husband worked at the radio station,
and so he would have me on he had a.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Talk show at the time, perfect and I would tell
the story, you know, when I was in Liberia, and
I would you know, you always have to give a
greeting to the community, and I would always close my
greeting to them and I would say, I'm going to
carry you back with me in my heart, and I'm
going to share your story. And so that's what I
would do. I would just tell the story of what
(35:00):
I had seen and what I had felt and what
the what life was like there, and people just responded.
Speaker 5 (35:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
We had a guy the very first time I was
on the radio, We had a guy call and say
how much does it cost a sponsor a well? And
I had to go find out and he was like,
I want, I want to put a well in in
one of those communities and people. And I went to
the church I grew up in and I told the
story of the first ten kids and they're like real sponsor,
all ten of them. And you know, things in the
(35:30):
early days just just came in and I was sitting
with a pastor who connects with lots of different missionaries
and international organizations, and I was telling him what was
going on with Teamwork Africa and he said, he said,
what's happening with you guys is truly astonishing. And I'm
like it is. I'm like, you mean this is how
(35:51):
it happens for all our organizations. He's like, no, I.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Uh, you know, it is astonishing as it starts with
a normal person, an average person, a mom wanting to
adopt a child who got passionate about where that child's from.
And all of this has happened and is ongoing. But
I do want to give you an opportunity to answer
(36:18):
a question. And this is a softball and I'm a
love it up there for you, all right, Why should
we give a crap about the kids in Liberia? We
got problems all around us the United States.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, because every single person matters whether they're here or
whether they're there. We are all just people. We're not
different people. There's not you know, we make so many
boundaries between here and there or what makes us one
group and them another group? And the truth is we're
(36:51):
just all people, right, now, the radio station that my
husband works at is doing a backpack fundraiser and they're
raising money for backpack for Eau Claire, and they're raising
money for backpacks for Chip of Falls, which is the
community next door, and they're raising backpacks for the kids
in Liberia too, And it's a it's a beautiful partnership
between saying that the kids in the in my community matter,
(37:15):
and so do the ones far away that I don't see.
They all matter and wherever you can find a spot
to do something, do it. A lot of times when I,
you know, I get that question, why should we care
what happens? You know in Africa? We have problems here,
and my question is great, what are you doing about
it that a girl? Don't don't tell me that you
(37:35):
know we have problems here if you're not doing anything
about it, this is where I having called to do something.
And if you're called to do something with me, then
let's go do it. But if not, find the thing
that you are created to do and do it and
stop complaining and what other people are doing.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
That sounds like how we opened the show or something.
Speaker 6 (37:54):
She's ready to host it R.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Because that's what I've.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Been saying to anybody who'll listen, is you know, I
wish somebody would do something about that day.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Who is somebody?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
It can be just a normal person from Oa Claire, Wisconsin.
It could be anybody who wants to employ their passion
and an area's need and make miracles happen.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
One of the I really really love the name of
your podcast, and I think it's one of the reasons
why I was like.
Speaker 6 (38:28):
I'm this morning.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Why I can, why why I can be on this
podcast is because I am just a normal person. It's
like you've said it, I'm a mom from from Wisconsin.
I'm a kid who grew up in the you know,
in the rural farmland and wanted to grow up and
you know, get married and have kids. Like this was
(38:50):
not I'm not. It frustrates me to no end when
people say, oh, you're so, You're so amazing. I'm like, no,
why not? What what God has done in my life
is truly amazing. But it's not because I'm amazing. I'm
simply following. One step at a time.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 6 (39:25):
One thing built to your question about why I care
about Africa. You know, sometimes you'll go on the riff
about even if you don't care about the morality of it,
how about the practical basis? And I think what you
guys did with a bola is a great example of that.
And people now appreciate, especially from COVID, that the world
really is interconnected. So like we don't deal all these problems,
(39:45):
it's going to get here too. If you want to
talk about what you get, Yeah, I mean what I say.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Oftentimes if you don't care from it from a social
and spiritual standpoint, there's a pragmatic view to the type
of work that you guys do. One of them I
use all the time is for like our city. If
you don't care about our school's felling kids from a
social point of view, well, I think you're a jerk,
(40:11):
but okay, but you should care about it pragmatically. If
you give a crap about your property values and about
your tack space. It all connects. So tell us about
what alex is talking about.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah. In twenty fourteen, there was an ebola outbreak in
West Africa, and most people in liber and in the
United States knew absolutely nothing about it until the first
American intracted ebola and then suddenly it was a national emergency.
But it was a big deal for us at the
time because we shortly after the breakout, we lost two
of our foster.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Moms and they're in two Ebola.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, two of our foster mom and their whole families,
like their.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Entire Linebola is a terrible death too.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
It is.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
At the time of the outbreak, it was about ninety
percent fatal. The chances of surviving were almost impossible. We
had two nurses who who also passed away from ebola,
so in trying to help other people survive. So it
was an incredibly scary time and so we you know,
I'm in communication with Peter almost every day. I was
(41:16):
like every day he would call me and tell me
and let me know if everyone was okay. And so
the the biggest thing that we could do to help
was the hand washing buckets, just to make sure that
everybody washed their hands constantly and exactly do that. If
you don't clean water exactly well, soap that's why you need,
right But we so we we bought hundreds, if not
(41:39):
thousands of buckets with faucets and bleach and soap, and
we gave those out to all of our families, to
everybody we could find, and after they got those buckets,
we didn't lose another kid.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
But the point is, why do we care?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Because the world is connected now and it may COVID
may have broken out on bats in a cave or
in a lab and Wuhan or wherever. Who listen, I
said it may.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Anybody will ever pinpoint for sure?
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Okay, well fine, it's lab.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
The point is it happened literally halfway around the world
from us, and it killed all of the people are killed.
A bola killed people here and scared the hell out
of people in the United States. So why why should
we care? Because basic health, basic safety, basic education makes
(42:40):
a world a better place for all of us. From
a pragmatic standpoint.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
It was the the US stepped up and helped Liberia
at that At that time, it was one of the
most proud moments for me as an American, was that
most of the most Americans have no idea the United
States time to Liberia, but at that moment when Liberia
needed somebody to step up and help them, the United
(43:06):
States sent support there. And Sierra Leone was founded by
was part of England, so the UK sent resources to
Sierra Leone and the French sent support to Kotova. No
Guinea was the third country that had it, and so
it was it was actually a good moment for me
to see these nations actually doing something to help these
(43:29):
countries who desperately needed it at the time. You know,
the sad part of it is that they did it
because they didn't want a bullet to come to their countries.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Got was it because of their abject generosity or because
they didn't want to bowl to spread out?
Speaker 2 (43:42):
At least they were at least they were there, like
you know, they needed they I mean, library could not
have ended a bullet without world's help.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
So what does it cost to sponsor one of these kids?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Twenty five dollars a month, twenty five bucks a month.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
We'll get a kid educate. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
That's it. And not only that that So the base
of what our sponsorship kids get is tuition. They get backpacks,
that get school shoes. Then we have some kids who
are in even deeper poverty. And so we have several
families that also get rice support every month.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
How can I, as a donor be assured that that
money gets to that kid?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
How does that work?
Speaker 4 (44:27):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
So all of the money for Starfish kids goes into
the fund and then every year, like so, I'm getting
ready to go to library in September. I'm going to
be bringing all the tuition money with me to Liberia
and so I'm there when all the kids register for school.
So and then I get all the receipts literally take care. Yeah,
when we register the kids, I'm there and I get
(44:48):
the receipts for the school. So we go and right
now my staff and library are doing home visits for
each one of our kids. They're going to their houses.
They're saying where they sleep, who they live with. We
get their con information and we find out what their
health concerns are. And then we get new pictures of
the kids every year, and then we register them for school.
So we have learned the hard way not to give
(45:10):
cash to people. So we always get receipts for everything
that we do, so that I can so that I
can removed.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Value that want to support. You can rest assured these
kids are getting.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Us money there. Yeah, even the kids on the rice support,
I get their picture with the bag of rice every month.
So when the kids go to the doctor, I get
a picture of the receipt from the clinic that they
went to.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
I didn't grow up with a whole lot and sometimes
being a spooled, impetuous American kid like all of my
own children and pretty.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Much are biolsisy.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Listen, I wouldn't always finish what was on my plate,
and my mom would say, my mom would say, you know,
you should eat that and quit being such a selfish
little turd because they're they're kids starving and.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Afford, I used to say. And my joke was, and
I know their names right.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
That's why I set it up for you. When I
read you said that.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
I died laugh because you could say, yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
They're kids starving Africa, and I know who they are.
Eat your food, you little spoiled brat.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Oh Peter had the chance to come to United States
a couple of times, and one time, you know, making
dinner whatever, and I'm calling the kids to come and eat,
and he comes to the kitchen and he goes, you
have to call the children. You're like, our kids are
waiting at the door.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
That's funny but sad.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, And I think it's beautiful that you're making all
of the suffort to make it better for these children.
And starting at the ground up and cleaning water and
everything else. How do people find out more about Teamwork Africa.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
We have a website, teamwork Africa dot org. We're very
active on Facebook, so you can find Teamwork Africa on Facebook.
And we have a media person and so she does
the Instagram and all that kind of stuff too.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Somebody wants to get in touch with you, yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Can email me for sure, Peggy at Teamwork Africa.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Do at work Alex, same thing of for me over there. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (47:12):
One of the things, it's like the Mountain Villager story
that's not quite the name of it, but the guy
talking about the fencing. Oh and then the also to
the story of the girl where people thought, you know,
maybe she was promiscuous, but you new selling else and yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, So we wanted to learn how to teach self
sustainability and we wanted to point out why giving handouts
didn't solve any problems, and so we started found out but.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
A handouts set and if you look at our logo,
we have you know, the little people trying to you know,
help the other person up.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
So one of the stories that we used in our
training for self sustainability was about a community who lived
up on a mountain and there was a really rugged
trail and people kept sliding down off the trail and
getting hurt or dying, and so one you know, kind
of hard group came in and they said, well, what
you guys need is a clinic at the bottom of
this mountain, so them people get hurt, they can take
(48:06):
them to the clinic and get treatment. So they went
back to wherever they were from and raised money and
built the clinic and funded it and staffed it. But
over time that got really burdened some and they couldn't
keep raising money to pay the salaries and get all
the medicine and stuff, and eventually the clinic closed and
people kept falling off the mountain getting hurt and dying.
So another group from a really big city came and said, no,
what you need is an ambulance. So if you have
(48:29):
an ambulance at the bottom of the hill, then when
someone gets hurt, you can get in the ambulance and
then drive to the hospital and the city. So but
you know, the ambulance needs new tires all the time,
and it kept breaking down, and then eventually they just
got tired of paying for that ambulance, and so there
the ambulance sits. So the community is sitting there going, well,
what are we going to do about this problem? And
(48:50):
this old man said, well, I didn't want to say
anything when the outsiders were here, but I was thinking
we could build a fence along the path that people
would stop falling off the side of the mountain. Crazy
thought we could have down some of our trees and
we could build our own railing to keep people from
(49:11):
falling off, and we could maintain it on our own
without any help from anybody else.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Old saying is you can keep pulling drowning kids out
of the river, which is a beautiful thing to do,
but eventually you need to wonder why they're falling in
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah, So how much money was wasted on a clinic
and an ambulance because we went in to tell them
what they needed when all we had to do was ask, hey,
how can we help you with this fountain thing?
Speaker 3 (49:43):
What do you all think?
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Right?
Speaker 6 (49:45):
And the bottom up solutions the people closest to the problem,
or bottom.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Up solution people because the problems always know the answer.
Get my hand up out of hand out, and things
change and they have ownership on it because it's their
idea and they know what it is. Right, beautiful story.
We'll be right back. We talked early about very sad
(50:21):
truth of assault. You have a story about a girl,
I'll just let you tell it that some thought might
be promiscuous, but it turned out, yeah, something completely different.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
I met Lomoni and one of my very first trips
to Liberia, she was four or five years old, and
she had a growth on her eye and when I
went back ahead gotten noticely bigger, and so we were
able to take Lomoni and get her treatment. Unfortunately, we
weren't able to save her eye, but we were able
to remove the tumor. And so from that time on
she lived at our campus in Monrovia to go to school.
(50:57):
And she was a super sweet, very shy little girl.
So she lived there for several years. And then in
twenty nineteen, when Peter died, just chaos just erupted, and
nobody knew what was going to happen. You know, Peter
held the whole thing together, and she ended up going.
She ended up leaving. I didn't know where she went,
(51:18):
and so I was in the community where I knew
that she was from where I had first met her,
and asking the principal of a school there, I'm like,
do you know Lomani? Do you know have you seen her?
Do you know where she went? And after I left
he contacted me he said, yeah, I found Lomoni. And
so I sent our staff from Monrovia to go see
if we could take her back to town so she
could keep going to school. And when they got there,
(51:39):
they said, Lemoni's just given birth to a baby. And
so my country director was like, oh, she has a boyfriend.
Now she's you know, off doing her old thing. And
I'm like, Frances, you don't know Lomone. I do, and
that's not the kind of girl that she is. Go
find out what happened to her. So we sent the
staff back to the village to to talk to find
(52:01):
out what happened. And the they said Lomoni was a
vulnerable girl. What vulnerable? Vulnerable just meant that there was
no she had no protectors. She didn't have a father
and uncle, a brother, nobody to defend her, so she
was an easy target. And Lomoni gave birth to a
baby girl three weeks after she turned fourteen, so I
(52:26):
was undone another moment where I was just like, you know,
so mad and so sad, and just we talked to her.
Her mother was still there and we asked her if
we could take Lomani and the baby back to town.
And we had have a wonderful woman who's one of
(52:47):
my best friends, Rosalind, who kind of raised Lomani when
she was in town. So LONEI went to go live
with with Rosalind. And then once you got to town,
they had me on video call and I knew, I
knew they were going to ask me to give the
baby a name, and I was like, all these feelings
are just so huge. And so I'm talking to Rosalind
(53:09):
and she's shown me this beautiful baby girl and she said, says, Peggy,
what are we going to name her? And it just
blurted out, Mercy. We'll name it Mercy. And from Mercy
and Lumone's story, we have a dream of building a
Mercy House, which will be housing for at risk girls,
(53:31):
so that those girls who are vulnerable will be in
a safe place, and also for girls who have already
been assaulted and we didn't get there in time, that
they can also have a safe place to recover and
have a second chance at life. We have girls right now.
We don't have the Mercy House built, but I have
(53:51):
two girls right now who are in really bad spots
and we need to find housing for them now, a
safe place for them to be. One of our girls
was living with her neighbor and her neighbor kicked her out,
said she wasn't bring anything to the family, so she
went to go live with a boy who had his
own demands on her. And she's pregnant now, and.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
Like, what is she?
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Where's she going to go? Who's you know? We had
another girl who got pregnant and ran away because she
was sure her mom was going to kick her out
because she was pregnant. So we have an incredible social
worker in Liberia, Nima's Angeline, and she is she has
We have a trauma counseling group. She meets with the
girls twice a month and is trying to help them
(54:38):
work through both the trauma of assault and also helping
to tea helping to teach these girls that their body
belongs to them and that nobody else has the right
to touch it, and they can say no, and they
can tell somebody when they're being harassed, and there are
literally signs on schools in Liberia that's say no no
(55:03):
sex for grades, no grades for sex.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
With all that you've done, there's so much more to do.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
The thing that ties it all together for me is
that my entire life, what I've wanted more than anything
in the whole world is to be a mom. And
I have been blessed with five kids that I have
the opportunity to raise, But there are so many kids
in Liberia where I'm the only mom they've got, and
they messaged me every day. I was I was like,
(55:36):
I'm gonna see if I can remember the names of
all of the kids that call me call me mom,
And there's there's a good, good start on some of
those kids that And some days, you know, like Sarah,
she just needs me to say I love you, Sarah,
Or it was Alicia's birth the other day and I'm like,
happy birthday, dear. Like everybody needs to know they matter
(55:57):
to someone, and for some of these kids, it's me
way over here where they can. They just need to
know that somebody cares, somebody sees them.
Speaker 3 (56:08):
How your names are on there?
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Fourteen fifteen sixteen, I was still going.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Twenty five bucks a month. Yeah, teamwork Africa, y'all.
Speaker 3 (56:22):
And Army.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Normal folks is about normal folks doing extraordinary things when
they match their passion with an opportunity. And Peggy is a,
I mean, tip top five star example of that. And
I don't know how you can hear the story and
hear her voice and hear her passion and understand the
volume of need available and understand something. I suppose twenty
(56:44):
five dollars could literally help change not only an individual's life,
but join the ranks of the people that Peggy is
trying to put together to change the culture of an
entire country. One hearted Tom, Thanks for joining me, Thanks
for telling your story.
Speaker 3 (57:05):
You are an inspiration, Peggy.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
It's pretty phenomenal, as well as Mark and your children. Candidly,
your entire family. The work that they've all committed all
because you wanted to adopt a kid.
Speaker 2 (57:17):
Tells you we're on our way to somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (57:20):
What's Michael doing now?
Speaker 2 (57:22):
He is actually in the National Guard.
Speaker 3 (57:25):
He's in the United States National Guard.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
He's trying. He had some trouble with the entrance stuff,
so he had to get some tutoring and stuff. But
he's trying that out.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
Holy smokes, is that actually proud?
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Yeah, phenomenal, That's phenomenal. Peggy Harvson Everybody, co founder and
US director of Teamwork Africa from EA Claire, Wisconsin and
Liberia and points of between doing God's work, changing lives
one at a time.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
Peggy, thank you, Thank you so.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
Much, happy, and thank you for joining us this week.
If Peggy halperson has inspired you in general, or better yet,
to take action by adopting a child, easily sponsoring the
education of their Liberian students for only twenty five bucks
a month, or something else entirely, please.
Speaker 3 (58:22):
Let me know. I really want to hear about it.
Speaker 1 (58:24):
You can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us,
and I'm telling you ask anybody who's ever emailed me.
Speaker 3 (58:31):
I will respond.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with friends,
share it on social subscribe to the podcast, rate and
review it. Please join the army at normalfolks dot us
any and all of these things that will help us
grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until
next time, do what you can
Everybody's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks. And
we continue now a part two of our conversation with
Peggy Halberson, right after these brief messages from our general sponsors.
(00:27):
So let's just talk about wells for minutes. I think
an American sent their listen to this is like, oh,
that's cool. They dug a hole and got some water.
And we take so much for granted the United States.
I haven't been to Liberia, but I have traveled extensively
for work. We sell lumber all over the place, and
oftentimes lumber is made where inexpensive labor. Lumber is sent
(00:51):
where inexpensive labor is to make furniture as inexpensively as
possible to the nextport back to first world nations. Candidly,
some of it is a lot like the garment industry,
So that takes me to places that have poverty. Oftentimes,
I have witnessed human beings trying to bathe in a ditch.
(01:17):
While not far up the ditch, another individual was relieving
himself and said, ditch. And while that's maybe distasteful to
imagine and picture in your mind's eye, then the person
(01:37):
downstream of ditch creek is scooping up their cooking water
with the same water as someone had just relieved themselves
and bathed in. So when you talk about the importance
of clean water in a well, you really need to
understand that cholera in some of these places can claim
(01:58):
up to forty percent of the people's lives, and it
is why in many of these places the population the
age of the population is typically like sixty percent under
thirty years old, because people just don't live long because
they don't have something as simple as clean water to drink,
bathe or cook with.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Sure is that Liberia, Absolutely, the seventy percent of librarya
is under thirty years old.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Seventy under thirty under thirty.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
That may be the worst number I've ever heard. There
may be a worst country, but there can't be many it.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
They just did a census two years ago and those
were the statistics that came up. So between the war
and the water health things, the country is full of
young people with no mentors.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
So just building a well literally upgrades exponentially the lifestyle
of the people in that village.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yes, and there are a lot of the communities, and
I wish I had better numbers on how many. But
some of the communities had enough structure and enough organization
and leadership in that community that once they had a well,
it was theirs and they took care of it with
like most of the time. What they do in Liberia
is you have a chain and a lock on pump
(03:19):
and you only open it in the morning and in
the evening so that the kids don't come and play
on it and you know, throw whatever, you know, be kids.
So there's a lot and you in some places you
do not wear your shoes on the culvert around that pump.
Like in those places that keep the place really clean
and neat, that pump is going to last a long time.
(03:40):
But not every community has leadership. And in the community
that we put our first well in, it was a
community of almost all women. The only guy that I
knew who was there was drunk most of the time.
So we have had to repair that well. Oh my goodness.
Almost every year we have to go back and do
(04:00):
simple repairs just because they don't have enough organization in
that community to maintain that pump. And that when that
happens over and over and over, I start thinking there's
another problem that we need to address. Before we can
even address the water problem, which is education, organizations and mentorship. Yep,
(04:24):
which is why wells. So Michael morphed to one well,
which morphed to more wells, which morph to civics and teaching,
civics and education. Oh yeah, sure is that right? Well?
And we also so at the times, at the same
(04:45):
time that we are doing wells, we are also doing
a child sponsorship program, so we are trying to help
kids go to school. So in Liberia there is a
public school system that is free. But as Peter used
to say, it's free of teachers, it's free of books,
it's free of dea, free everything, free of everything. So
(05:06):
that is not an option Peter from Peter's Liberian he
is He's from the same tribe that Michael's from.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
No kidding, Yeah, just a librarian dude, trying to do
it right.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, he's a pastor and a husband and father of
five kids, plus a whole bunch of other kids that
he kept bringing home. I don't know how is it
would be like Peter, he for got to stop bringing
home children.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
So all right, so take us from the first wells
onwards and the sponsorship.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We did the first well in the first school and
then Teamwork Africa started and then we actually were able
to partner with an organization from Texas called the Last
Well and they were focused on bringing clean water to Liberia.
So we were one of their partners for five years,
five year, four or five years something like that, and
we did a ton of projects with them because we
had Liberian well technician teams and they you know that
(05:58):
they're special the specializ and going to really remote areas
where you couldn't bring a well digging rig and they
would carry in all the materials on their heads, so
the cement, the frame for molding the culverts, and they
would mold the bricks on site and so yeah, they
would chomp through that and I and then I got
(06:19):
to go to Liberia and do the follow up. So
I got to walk on all those jungle paths and
go verify. Yep, there's a new well right here in
the middle of nowhere where you know, we walked an
hour from the closest road to go to this village
and see that there's a brand new well there. So
sad for Oh, sure, easily, yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes
(06:41):
it would take a land cruiser as far as the
land cruiser would go and then would take a motorcycle
as far as the motorcycle would go, and then we
would walk from there.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Did you ever fill No, really.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
No, because by the time I was doing that part,
I had developed really really close friendships with my friends
in Liberia and so they were so, so so careful
with me. We actually moved to Liberia in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Yeah, that we actually after Yeah, well, okay, well.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
We did and we were living there and I was
so on weekends I would go into the rural areas
to go do my you know, my well checkups, and
I would travel with the well technician team, and then
there was a place that I would guest house that
I would stay overnight. And there's one time where my
my well technician team was like, we don't know about
this place that you stay because it doesn't have a
(07:37):
fence around it, and we don't really know the guys
that are there, and are you sure that you're safe there?
And I'm like, yes, I know the guys there, they're okay,
and they're like okay, fine, So they dropped me off
and then the guys at that place they're like, we
don't know about those well technician guys that you're hanging out.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
So it's like.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Everybody was always, you know, looking out for me. And
one time I was a little bit foolish and it
was not a very high hill, but it was steep
and it had gravel on it, so it was like
six foot little incline and I slipped and I fell
down and slid down it on my knee and so
I got a big gash in it made it actually
a nice scar. And the guys that were with me
(08:13):
were absolutely horrified that I got hurt, and for the
rest of like not only for the rest of that trip,
but for months after that, I was not allowed to
walk up or down a hill without holding someone's hand.
They told me, they said, we have committed to bring
you back to your husband in the same condition that
(08:35):
you left, so you cannot get hurt.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
It also speaks to the humanity, to the desire to
just be safe and happy and have the basics, and
how despite all of the twenty years of the past
that these people have lived through, that their raw humanity
still comes.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, and they you know that point, they knew us,
they and they were so grateful that the family who
lived in a country like the United States would give
all that up to come and live with them, and
they and they really wanted to honor that sacrifice that
we were making.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And so take us.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
To the decision that you and Mark and your four
children made to move to Liberia. And at this point
you still have Michael living with you. No, no, he's
still in Libera is So tell me how that worked.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
From the very first time I went to Liberia, my
heart was just captured and I just really wanted to
be there, so I wanted to bring it recaptured. I
was looking over some of the things I wrote on
my first trip and really, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Just for those who aren't watching this on YouTube, she's
got a folder with a bunch of notes in front
of her and when she said that, she looked down.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
These are some of your notes from fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, this is my.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
What's for you? That's how seriously she's taken this. That's precious.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I this is, you know, from October twenty ten. So
this is from my first time, my first time in Liberia.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So what what'd you fall in love with?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I said, let me read this. Let this is like
the end my last. This is what I'm leaving.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
He said.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
I didn't want to think about leaving. I said, I'm
not sure what to feel now about leaving. I said,
I hope Mother Teresa's quote is true. And her quote
is that I found this paradox that if you love
until it hurts, there could be no more hurts, only
more love. Because I have surely loved until it hurts deeply.
I have come across the world only to find myself
at home, a joy growing deep in my soul. As
(10:47):
long as I never forget the love, laughter, family, and
friendship that is here, It'll always be with me. So
I have so much to do when I get home.
Feels a little overwhelming, but these memories and God's strength
will encourage me in my weakness. Everyone said that coming
here would change me, but I didn't understand how. When
I first arrived, I said that Liberia had a beauty
among the rubble, and I have found such beauty and
(11:09):
it is the beauty, not the rubble, that has changed me.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Wow, And you're saying that with tears in your house
right now?
Speaker 4 (11:18):
Yeah, yeah, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So you get the wells going, you sponsor some kids,
and then you or Mark, or you and Mark look
at each other and say, why don't we just hook foot?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
I wanted to move there, and I again waited because
I did not want to make my husband back up
our house and move to Africa. So I just was
patient and I waited to see if God would speak
to him the same way that he was speaking to me.
And so after a couple of years, Mark said, Okay,
(12:05):
well if it go like kind of like I don't
know how this could possibly happen, but if you can
find a way to make it happen, let's see where
this leads. And we found someone who said, oh, sure,
I can support you guys going to Africa. So we
had a guy who was like really like literally started
(12:25):
funding us to go to Liberia about six months before
we left. So we had, you know, we had some
money saved up for us to go to Liberia. We
sold our house and packed up our kids and moved
to Liberia.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
You say it almost as you say it, you're laughing,
like you're not even sure you actually did that.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I know, the whole time, I was like, it's simple,
it's crazy. It's like, how does somebody just pack up
suitcases and just move to Africa, and and then we
just but we just did all right.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So how old were your kids they were?
Speaker 2 (13:04):
That's a great question. So twenty sixteen, so Evelyn was sixteen, sixteen, fifteen,
thirteen and eleven.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
What were they thinking about leaving high school and friends
to go to Africa.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Well, Dawson had just my son had just finished middle school,
so he hadn't started high school yet, so I mean
he was probably the most like, yeah, whatever, mom. The
girls were home. My oldest two girls were already homeschooling.
They had had had it with middle school and in
high school, so the a so they were good with it.
And then Elena is just she had just finished elementary school.
(13:35):
So it's kind of like a transition year for most
of the kids.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Any school actually fit.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, and they, I mean they weren't like they were
open to it. I wouldn't have said they were like
gung ho, like excited were moving to Africa, but they
were certainly open to it. Two of the girls had
already gone to Liberia with me, so they kind of
knew a little bit of what we were getting into.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And at this time, team work Africa is a thing.
It is, and you're raising money.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
So now you're taking teamwork Africa to have teamwork in Africa.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, and I you know, so we had we had
to find somebody to be the director on the US side.
So that was another huge factor in being able to
even leave because we had to have somebody here who
was running everything. So we had, you know, so we
had someone to do that, We had someone to sponsor
us to go, and then we we went.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Would you live what's did you live in Maroon?
Speaker 2 (14:25):
We? Yep? Outside so Menrovia is like, you know, capital
city and then there's little communities around Minorvia just kind
of like suburbs are here. And so we had a
base in Liberia where we had a guest house, and
so our family moved into the guest house. We had
built our first school there and we were in the
process of trying to build a medical center, so we
had a place to stay in the and the Fhlomo
(14:46):
family had also built a house on that same property,
so we were all living together. We were it was
absolutely insane. I had traveled to Liberia at least twice
a year up to that point, and I had stayed
up to three weeks at a time, and I thought
I kind of had an idea of what it might
be like to live in Liberia, and I really thought
I had covered all the bases and I thought I
(15:07):
knew what this would look like. And when we got there,
we put all our stuff in a container and shipped
it and the container stayed in the port until three
weeks before we went back to the US for our
first visit.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Customs.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
No, no, I it was. It was the most awful
that year.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Was work hard, it was.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
We shipped it in August and we got it in May.
It in May three, three weeks before we left to
go back to La suitcase for seven months. Whatever we yeah,
whatever we could get and we know, whatever we could
you know, get in Liberia or whatever we had in
our suitcases, that is literally what we had. Yeah, it
was a very interesting time for us. And we had
(15:52):
a plan to have a generator. We had raised a
whole bunch of money to build a community generator so
that we'd have electricity. It never never.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
Worked, so our struggle to have electricity every day, Like
we would try to have the generator on from like
seven PM until like you know, three or so in
the morning, because it's hot.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
It's hot and humid in Liberia. But you know, we
were going to have running water in our house. We
had running water in our house for one day. After
that we had to carrying water to the bathrooms, to
the big barrels where we could. Yeah, we had regular toilets.
You just you know, dumped the bucket of water in
the toilet and then we did bucket baths every night.
No hot water, no consistent electricity.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
For how long was this?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Two school years? So we were there from we went
there August of twenty eighteen. We came back in June
of the following year, and then we were back for
two months and then we went back for another year.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
So for Yeah, and you had running water one day, Yeah,
of that entire stuy, Yes, and your children bucked it
up and said, okay they did.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah they And now you know, my kids are between
twenty five and twenty now, and they will tell you
that living in Librea for those two years shaped their
lives and they, for the most part, are incredibly grateful
because of how it has changed how they see life
in the United States. And they they know, are yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
So what was your plan? What did you do the
two years you were in a Botbaria besides to water.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Well, my background's actually in education, so I was planning
to work with the school kind of in the administration.
I wanted to be training the teachers and implementing some
programs that would help the school, you know, be better,
be different. And then Mark actually ended up being the
Bible teacher in the school. He actually ended up in
the classroom teaching more than I did. The kids still
(17:45):
talk about him when I go back to visit.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
So then I went out, of course into the jungle
and did my well assessments to go check on all
our water projects.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Do Okay. So you come back from Liberia and eighteen
eighteen with the.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Goal of well, we had hoped that when we were
in Liberia we would finally adopt Michael, but that didn't
happen either.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Let's remember this all started with trying to adopt Bikeael. Yeah,
and in the meantime, you've moved to a library and back.
Did he get to live with you while you were
in library, Yes, bless his heart and your heart. So
you guys formed a real familial relationship.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
And then when you had to go, you had to
leave him again.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah. The summer when we left for two months, you know,
he stayed but when we knew we were coming back,
so we ended up coming. So my oldest daughter had
a knee injury, a significant one that we thought she
needed surgery for. So in the spring of twenty eighteen,
she had to come back to the United States. And
she was just turned eighteen, so she legally could travel,
(18:55):
but physically she couldn't. And so we sent my son.
So like, you know, tall, strong guy, he's going to
make sure she gets to the airport ocape. Except the
two of them don't have a clue on how to travel.
But my fourteen year old daughter is got the you know,
she knows how, she knows how to navigate the airport.
And so we sent the three of them back to
(19:15):
the United States together ahead of time. And then after
they left, we got word from the US that the director,
the US director that was in charge of Teamwork Africa
was resigning within a month, and that immediately meant that
in order for Teamwork Africa to survive, we had to.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Come back home.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
So we were already planning to come back again for
two months during the summertime. So when we came back,
we had two months to find a new place to live,
to get new jobs, to get new cars, to to
re establish everything. And while I had done a lot
of you know, studying and research and learning about what
(19:53):
it would be like for our family to live in Liberia,
I hadn't had any time to think about what it
would be like to come back. And it turned out
that coming back to the United States was much harder
on my family than it was leaving. Why the reverse
culture shock? Like everybody thought it would be the same.
Everybody thought it would just feel the same, and it didn't.
(20:15):
Everything felt really different. And that like at that point,
we had just had a new Woodman's grocery store come
into our community, and I walked in and looked at
it and walked right back out. The idea that you
would have an entire aisle for peanut butter was totally
overwhelming to me. I could for a long time. I
had just shop out little grocery stores.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
You know what's about.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
That is you're an American and you're only gone two years.
How overwhelming must it be? Or someone that comes from
there and tries to integrate.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Into our.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
And I mean for only two years and you're an
American you came from that. What must it be like
for someone to try We always talk about people need
to integrate into society better. But the overwhelming I mean,
I've never thought about it until you just said that,
But how difficult I must be for people?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, My kids were in youth group and they were
talking about a story, something that had happened in Haiti,
and they were showing a video of kids from Haiti.
And and for my daughter Grace, those kids looked like kids.
She knew they lived in a community, you know, in
an environment that she was familiar with. The girls in
front of her were giggling and playing on her phone,
(21:32):
and she was like, like so overwhelmed. She actually had
got up and left and went to the bathroom and
sobbed because she couldn't connect with these girls who just
they just had no connection to what they were seeing
from that video. But for Grace, she knew what it
was like to live there. She knew the struggles that
those kids were going through. So a lot of those
(21:55):
things were just really hard. My kids thought differently than
the kids that they, you know, went to school with,
And for quite a long time, for several months, it
was I felt like I was just trying to keep
everybody's head above water as we were trying to acclimate
to being back here. And then we had Michael with
us that when we came back to stay we were
able to keep Michael came with us for four months,
(22:17):
and then at the end of four months I had
to take him back to Liberia to wait for the app.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yo.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
He was so excited to come to the United States,
and that was a whole other thing too, because people
in Liberia think that the US is heaven. It is heaven,
and so anything that didn't go the way he thought
it was going to go, it was really hard for
him because he thought everything was going to be perfect here.
So that made it a little bit, you know, it
(22:48):
was Those were some really funny, funny times where we're like, no, Michael,
this is actually just another part of Earth where things
are a little bit easier, but they don't go perfectly either.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
So yeah, but that's interesting. All right.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
So you're back here, you're running teamwork Africa, and Michael's
still there.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Yeah, okay, and you stop work today.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Well, and when we got back to from Liberia and
the director quit, so did all the other staff. So well,
we came back to Teamwork Africa. The organization kind of
in shambles, and I'm trying to keep our family, you know, floating,
and now I got to take Michael back to Liberia,
and so I took he went back in October. In
(23:34):
January of that year, So twenty nineteen, Peter Flomo dies
suddenly and he's our country director. Peter, Yeah, my one
of my best friends. And I'm like, we can be
done now, like we can just be done well. And
then yeah, so that's two, and then I can go
through Michael's whole adoption story. But we do finally adopt
(23:58):
Michael in December of twenty nineteen, right before twenty twenty,
and then twenty twenty hits and then everybody, you know,
all the nonprofit organizations are there's no fundraising, you know,
like and I was, yeah, exactly. I do want to say, though,
that is by the grace of God that Michael came
home in December of twenty nineteen, because if he hadn't
(24:20):
based on his age, he had just turned fifteen. I
am not sure after everything closed during COVID, by the
time we could have possibly traveled, he might have aged out.
So that was like the I mean at the very
last minute, because I was like, God, seriously, we've gone
through all this, Please don't tell me at the end
of the day we are not going to adopt this kid.
(24:43):
So we did.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
You're finally adopted and together without going back and forth,
you've started to try to put back together team work
Africa US. And then Pastor Peter does and it's twenty
twenty going into COVID and candidly it's like, maybe we've
done what we've gone to do.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Yeah, like I can be done. God, can I be done?
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Candidly? Who could blame you?
Speaker 1 (25:24):
And you still have done an enormous amount Yeah, schools
and medical centers and wells and teamwork. Africa's story could
be a good one, and boat up right there.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
I think it would have. I would have been satisfied
with that. I would have I would have been okay
with moving on to doing going back to the life.
I thought we were going to have, you know, a
decade before that.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
But it's five years later and you're sitting say no,
what happened.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
What happened was in those quiet moments where I sat still,
I knew that we weren't done yet, and so we
we reorganized and we refocused, and I gathered the people
that I knew best in Liberia and brought them all
together to see what kind of team we could rebuild.
(26:10):
And the Teamwork Africa team that we built in Liberia
after that is the strongest our team has ever been.
The work that we're doing now.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
One door closes, more open.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
We It's almost like the first decade of Teamwork Africa
was just practice for the work that we're doing now.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
How many wells have you guys built?
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Oh yes, I brought that too because I'm super bad
at numbers.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
So yeah, give me, give me, give me what we're
going to get to what you're doing now so that
people get how this crazy story is not ended but
currently in the present progressing. But let's put some perspective
to it now in terms of numbers. Yeah, from two
wells and all of it.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Okay, from twenty eleven to twenty twenty four, we did
two hundred and sixteen new wells.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Meaning two hundred and sixteen entire communities yes, no longer
dying from Cawra.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah yeah, brand new wells places yeah. And then over
way over five hundred repairs. Like we would do major
repairs that we would record, but we would go to
communities where there was a little mini repair, a small repair,
and we would always fix them. We didn't even write
it down. So there are times we'd be out doing
our well assessments and we tried always to get back
(27:31):
to where we were staying before dark, because you know,
a breakdown in the dark in the jungle is not ideal,
you know. So we'd be like watching the time, and
you know, I'd see one more well. I'm like, Willy, Willy,
do you think you have time to fix that one
more well? And he's like, yeah, we can do it.
And then another time he'd be like, Sis, Peggy, can
we fix one more well before we leave for today?
And so between you know, the two of us where
(27:52):
he just Peter Willie Jackson is our well technician. He's
been with us the entire time. He is passionate about
having drinking water. Yeah, and he's so talented. I've seen him.
You know, mcgiver has nothing on Willi. He has way
to innovate and figure out how to solve problems. And
he just doesn't quit either, Like he just keeps going
(28:14):
at it until he figures out a solution.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
All right, So that many wells? What else?
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yeah, So that's what I have for water, for our wells,
so for like our kids. So right now we have
two one hundred and eighty kids on our scholarship program,
and we're about ready to open up our second school.
And what that's I mean we've done less of other
things too, But I don't have all the numbers for
all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
That's still incredible from a mom who wanted to adopt
a kid, a normal kid, a mom sitting in Oa Claire,
Wisconsin who wanted to adopt a kid, I mean, how
many how many people in each of these villages?
Speaker 3 (28:52):
On average?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
We we estimate that each well can provide I think
the governments to ts Dick say two hundred people, but
the last well said five hundred for each for each well,
and how many wells two hundred and sixty.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
So it's two sixty time.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Those they don't work, well, yeah, they don't work.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
That's like, that's one hundred and thirty thousand people or
so I haven't Yeah, that are living free of cholera
because you decided to adopt Michael.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
He that is insane. All right, so reorganize.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yes, what's today look well, because Liberia is so young,
and because the war and the lack of healthcare has
taken so many grandparents on doctor per seventy thousand My gosh, yeah,
that'd be one doctor for my entierement for all Claire,
for the entire shot of the city. Yeah, I think. Yeah.
We decided that a lot of the challenges of the
(29:56):
programs that we had started were didn't work because of
just lack of education and in a lot of ways
a lack of character development. Liberia is an incredibly corrupt
country and it's because of the civil war and the
disruption of the fabric of their society. It just makes
(30:16):
it just you know, lying is is a you know normal,
stealing from everybody is acceptable, like, and it just makes
nothing works well when you don't have integrity, when you
don't have character, and trying to get like we try
to do agriculture projects and so trying to bring in
more innovative, more resourceful forms of agriculture, and nobody wants
(30:39):
to change the way they do things. So that is
like just beating your head against the wall. So we decided,
you know what, we're gonna work with children. We're going
to work with youth because they are going to be
the leaders for tomorrow. They are they have the opportunity
to change the direction of this country. And so we
decided to focus on education and mentorship, especially the mentorship.
(31:03):
So we started a program from girls and a program
for boys. We limit it to thirty kids with two
leaders mentors. We teach character lessons, We use the Bible,
they get into small groups, they talk, and then they
meet weekly. And we also, as you mentioned.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
This is in addition to school.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yes, yep, yeah, so we ran we are our first
so we have one hundred and eighty kids that get scholarships.
They do not all go to our school because they
don't all live close enough to us. But in twenty
twenty two, I was getting so frustrated with the cost
of the tuition going up and the quality of education
going down that I was just like, we have got
(31:42):
figure out a way that we can run our own school.
And we didn't have the money to build a school
and that was going to take forever to do. And
so I just asked the team, I'm like, could you
guys look around and see is there a house that
we could rent that we could start a school, or
what can we do? And one of our staff was
going to a church and the church school closed and
(32:03):
she talked to the pastor and told that told her
our interest in starting a school, and we worked out
an arrangement that we're renting that school now for the
next ten years. And that was our first school. So
it's called Imago Day. It's called what it's called Imago Day.
What is Imago Day is Latin for image of God.
So the motto of our school is based on Genesis
(32:24):
one twenty seven where it says God said, let us
make people in our image.
Speaker 6 (32:29):
All right, Peggy, show them your tat.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
And it's on your wrist.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
Those are midlife crisis.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Is that your mid life crisis tat?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yes? It is. It is Imago Day, that phrase.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Do you ever think you'd have a tat? No?
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I've thought about it for the last two years, and
then this year i turned fifty, and I'm like, if
I'm ever going to do it, it's going to be now.
So I am so passionate about the children in Liburian,
knowing that each one of them has been made in
the image of God and deserves love and respect and
not only that for them to know that, but for
them to see the people in their communities that every
(33:10):
single person that they see is also made in the
image of God and deserves love and respect. And I
want to I want our school to be a place
where that's true. I want these kids to grow in
communities where that's true. I want them to build families
where that's true.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
You're literally trying to change the culture of the country
from the bottom up.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Yeah and not and small and small, Like it's so
easy when you get started to say we're going to
change Africa or we're going to change Liberia, or we're
going to change Bond County, or we're going to change
Swakoko District. And now I'm like, you know what, I'm
going to pour my life into the lives of one
hundred and eighty kids and I'm going to pray that
(33:54):
God is going to change the communities through them.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
So one hundred and thirty thousand people in communities getting
clean drink of water, schools, character development, character building, trying
to change it from the ground up.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
Where's money come from?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I don't know, Like I told.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
You a weak you're the executive director, so you need
to know, well when we first started, and I told
you that I didn't know anything about running a nonprofit,
and so I just my husband worked at the radio station,
and so he would have me on he had a.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Talk show at the time, perfect and I would tell
the story, you know, when I was in Liberia, and
I would you know, you always have to give a
greeting to the community, and I would always close my
greeting to them and I would say, I'm going to
carry you back with me in my heart, and I'm
going to share your story. And so that's what I
would do. I would just tell the story of what
(35:00):
I had seen and what I had felt and what
the what life was like there, and people just responded.
Speaker 5 (35:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
We had a guy the very first time I was
on the radio, We had a guy call and say
how much does it cost a sponsor a well? And
I had to go find out and he was like,
I want, I want to put a well in in
one of those communities and people. And I went to
the church I grew up in and I told the
story of the first ten kids and they're like real sponsor,
all ten of them. And you know, things in the
(35:30):
early days just just came in and I was sitting
with a pastor who connects with lots of different missionaries
and international organizations, and I was telling him what was
going on with Teamwork Africa and he said, he said,
what's happening with you guys is truly astonishing. And I'm
like it is. I'm like, you mean this is how
(35:51):
it happens for all our organizations. He's like, no, I.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Uh, you know, it is astonishing as it starts with
a normal person, an average person, a mom wanting to
adopt a child who got passionate about where that child's from.
And all of this has happened and is ongoing. But
I do want to give you an opportunity to answer
(36:18):
a question. And this is a softball and I'm a
love it up there for you, all right, Why should
we give a crap about the kids in Liberia? We
got problems all around us the United States.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, because every single person matters whether they're here or
whether they're there. We are all just people. We're not
different people. There's not you know, we make so many
boundaries between here and there or what makes us one
group and them another group? And the truth is we're
(36:51):
just all people, right, now, the radio station that my
husband works at is doing a backpack fundraiser and they're
raising money for backpack for Eau Claire, and they're raising
money for backpacks for Chip of Falls, which is the
community next door, and they're raising backpacks for the kids
in Liberia too, And it's a it's a beautiful partnership
between saying that the kids in the in my community matter,
(37:15):
and so do the ones far away that I don't see.
They all matter and wherever you can find a spot
to do something, do it. A lot of times when I,
you know, I get that question, why should we care
what happens? You know in Africa? We have problems here,
and my question is great, what are you doing about
it that a girl? Don't don't tell me that you
(37:35):
know we have problems here if you're not doing anything
about it, this is where I having called to do something.
And if you're called to do something with me, then
let's go do it. But if not, find the thing
that you are created to do and do it and
stop complaining and what other people are doing.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
That sounds like how we opened the show or something.
Speaker 6 (37:54):
She's ready to host it R.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
Because that's what I've.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Been saying to anybody who'll listen, is you know, I
wish somebody would do something about that day.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Who is somebody?
Speaker 1 (38:11):
It can be just a normal person from Oa Claire, Wisconsin.
It could be anybody who wants to employ their passion
and an area's need and make miracles happen.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
One of the I really really love the name of
your podcast, and I think it's one of the reasons
why I was like.
Speaker 6 (38:28):
I'm this morning.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Why I can, why why I can be on this
podcast is because I am just a normal person. It's
like you've said it, I'm a mom from from Wisconsin.
I'm a kid who grew up in the you know,
in the rural farmland and wanted to grow up and
you know, get married and have kids. Like this was
(38:50):
not I'm not. It frustrates me to no end when
people say, oh, you're so, You're so amazing. I'm like, no,
why not? What what God has done in my life
is truly amazing. But it's not because I'm amazing. I'm
simply following. One step at a time.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 6 (39:25):
One thing built to your question about why I care
about Africa. You know, sometimes you'll go on the riff
about even if you don't care about the morality of it,
how about the practical basis? And I think what you
guys did with a bola is a great example of that.
And people now appreciate, especially from COVID, that the world
really is interconnected. So like we don't deal all these problems,
(39:45):
it's going to get here too. If you want to
talk about what you get, Yeah, I mean what I say.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Oftentimes if you don't care from it from a social
and spiritual standpoint, there's a pragmatic view to the type
of work that you guys do. One of them I
use all the time is for like our city. If
you don't care about our school's felling kids from a
social point of view, well, I think you're a jerk,
(40:11):
but okay, but you should care about it pragmatically. If
you give a crap about your property values and about
your tack space. It all connects. So tell us about
what alex is talking about.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah. In twenty fourteen, there was an ebola outbreak in
West Africa, and most people in liber and in the
United States knew absolutely nothing about it until the first
American intracted ebola and then suddenly it was a national emergency.
But it was a big deal for us at the
time because we shortly after the breakout, we lost two
of our foster.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Moms and they're in two Ebola.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah, two of our foster mom and their whole families,
like their.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Entire Linebola is a terrible death too.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
It is.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
At the time of the outbreak, it was about ninety
percent fatal. The chances of surviving were almost impossible. We
had two nurses who who also passed away from ebola,
so in trying to help other people survive. So it
was an incredibly scary time and so we you know,
I'm in communication with Peter almost every day. I was
(41:16):
like every day he would call me and tell me
and let me know if everyone was okay. And so
the the biggest thing that we could do to help
was the hand washing buckets, just to make sure that
everybody washed their hands constantly and exactly do that. If
you don't clean water exactly well, soap that's why you need,
right But we so we we bought hundreds, if not
(41:39):
thousands of buckets with faucets and bleach and soap, and
we gave those out to all of our families, to
everybody we could find, and after they got those buckets,
we didn't lose another kid.
Speaker 3 (41:53):
But the point is, why do we care?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Because the world is connected now and it may COVID
may have broken out on bats in a cave or
in a lab and Wuhan or wherever. Who listen, I
said it may.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (42:13):
Anybody will ever pinpoint for sure?
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Okay, well fine, it's lab.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
The point is it happened literally halfway around the world
from us, and it killed all of the people are killed.
A bola killed people here and scared the hell out
of people in the United States. So why why should
we care? Because basic health, basic safety, basic education makes
(42:40):
a world a better place for all of us. From
a pragmatic standpoint.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
It was the the US stepped up and helped Liberia
at that At that time, it was one of the
most proud moments for me as an American, was that
most of the most Americans have no idea the United
States time to Liberia, but at that moment when Liberia
needed somebody to step up and help them, the United
(43:06):
States sent support there. And Sierra Leone was founded by
was part of England, so the UK sent resources to
Sierra Leone and the French sent support to Kotova. No
Guinea was the third country that had it, and so
it was it was actually a good moment for me
to see these nations actually doing something to help these
(43:29):
countries who desperately needed it at the time. You know,
the sad part of it is that they did it
because they didn't want a bullet to come to their countries.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Got was it because of their abject generosity or because
they didn't want to bowl to spread out?
Speaker 2 (43:42):
At least they were at least they were there, like
you know, they needed they I mean, library could not
have ended a bullet without world's help.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
So what does it cost to sponsor one of these kids?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Twenty five dollars a month, twenty five bucks a month.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
We'll get a kid educate. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
That's it. And not only that that So the base
of what our sponsorship kids get is tuition. They get backpacks,
that get school shoes. Then we have some kids who
are in even deeper poverty. And so we have several
families that also get rice support every month.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
How can I, as a donor be assured that that
money gets to that kid?
Speaker 3 (44:26):
How does that work?
Speaker 4 (44:27):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
So all of the money for Starfish kids goes into
the fund and then every year, like so, I'm getting
ready to go to library in September. I'm going to
be bringing all the tuition money with me to Liberia
and so I'm there when all the kids register for school.
So and then I get all the receipts literally take care. Yeah,
when we register the kids, I'm there and I get
(44:48):
the receipts for the school. So we go and right
now my staff and library are doing home visits for
each one of our kids. They're going to their houses.
They're saying where they sleep, who they live with. We
get their con information and we find out what their
health concerns are. And then we get new pictures of
the kids every year, and then we register them for school.
So we have learned the hard way not to give
(45:10):
cash to people. So we always get receipts for everything
that we do, so that I can so that I
can removed.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Value that want to support. You can rest assured these
kids are getting.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Us money there. Yeah, even the kids on the rice support,
I get their picture with the bag of rice every month.
So when the kids go to the doctor, I get
a picture of the receipt from the clinic that they
went to.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
I didn't grow up with a whole lot and sometimes
being a spooled, impetuous American kid like all of my
own children and pretty.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Much are biolsisy.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Listen, I wouldn't always finish what was on my plate,
and my mom would say, my mom would say, you know,
you should eat that and quit being such a selfish
little turd because they're they're kids starving and.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Afford, I used to say. And my joke was, and
I know their names right.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
That's why I set it up for you. When I
read you said that.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
I died laugh because you could say, yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
They're kids starving Africa, and I know who they are.
Eat your food, you little spoiled brat.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Oh Peter had the chance to come to United States
a couple of times, and one time, you know, making
dinner whatever, and I'm calling the kids to come and eat,
and he comes to the kitchen and he goes, you
have to call the children. You're like, our kids are
waiting at the door.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
That's funny but sad.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah, And I think it's beautiful that you're making all
of the suffort to make it better for these children.
And starting at the ground up and cleaning water and
everything else. How do people find out more about Teamwork Africa.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
We have a website, teamwork Africa dot org. We're very
active on Facebook, so you can find Teamwork Africa on Facebook.
And we have a media person and so she does
the Instagram and all that kind of stuff too.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Somebody wants to get in touch with you, yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Can email me for sure, Peggy at Teamwork Africa.
Speaker 3 (47:09):
Do at work Alex, same thing of for me over there. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (47:12):
One of the things, it's like the Mountain Villager story
that's not quite the name of it, but the guy
talking about the fencing. Oh and then the also to
the story of the girl where people thought, you know,
maybe she was promiscuous, but you new selling else and yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, So we wanted to learn how to teach self
sustainability and we wanted to point out why giving handouts
didn't solve any problems, and so we started found out but.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
A handouts set and if you look at our logo,
we have you know, the little people trying to you know,
help the other person up.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
So one of the stories that we used in our
training for self sustainability was about a community who lived
up on a mountain and there was a really rugged
trail and people kept sliding down off the trail and
getting hurt or dying, and so one you know, kind
of hard group came in and they said, well, what
you guys need is a clinic at the bottom of
this mountain, so them people get hurt, they can take
(48:06):
them to the clinic and get treatment. So they went
back to wherever they were from and raised money and
built the clinic and funded it and staffed it. But
over time that got really burdened some and they couldn't
keep raising money to pay the salaries and get all
the medicine and stuff, and eventually the clinic closed and
people kept falling off the mountain getting hurt and dying.
So another group from a really big city came and said, no,
what you need is an ambulance. So if you have
(48:29):
an ambulance at the bottom of the hill, then when
someone gets hurt, you can get in the ambulance and
then drive to the hospital and the city. So but
you know, the ambulance needs new tires all the time,
and it kept breaking down, and then eventually they just
got tired of paying for that ambulance, and so there
the ambulance sits. So the community is sitting there going, well,
what are we going to do about this problem? And
(48:50):
this old man said, well, I didn't want to say
anything when the outsiders were here, but I was thinking
we could build a fence along the path that people
would stop falling off the side of the mountain. Crazy
thought we could have down some of our trees and
we could build our own railing to keep people from
(49:11):
falling off, and we could maintain it on our own
without any help from anybody else.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
Old saying is you can keep pulling drowning kids out
of the river, which is a beautiful thing to do,
but eventually you need to wonder why they're falling in
in the first place.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah, So how much money was wasted on a clinic
and an ambulance because we went in to tell them
what they needed when all we had to do was ask, hey,
how can we help you with this fountain thing?
Speaker 3 (49:43):
What do you all think?
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Right?
Speaker 6 (49:45):
And the bottom up solutions the people closest to the problem,
or bottom.
Speaker 1 (49:48):
Up solution people because the problems always know the answer.
Get my hand up out of hand out, and things
change and they have ownership on it because it's their
idea and they know what it is. Right, beautiful story.
We'll be right back. We talked early about very sad
(50:21):
truth of assault. You have a story about a girl,
I'll just let you tell it that some thought might
be promiscuous, but it turned out, yeah, something completely different.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
I met Lomoni and one of my very first trips
to Liberia, she was four or five years old, and
she had a growth on her eye and when I
went back ahead gotten noticely bigger, and so we were
able to take Lomoni and get her treatment. Unfortunately, we
weren't able to save her eye, but we were able
to remove the tumor. And so from that time on
she lived at our campus in Monrovia to go to school.
(50:57):
And she was a super sweet, very shy little girl.
So she lived there for several years. And then in
twenty nineteen, when Peter died, just chaos just erupted, and
nobody knew what was going to happen. You know, Peter
held the whole thing together, and she ended up going.
She ended up leaving. I didn't know where she went,
(51:18):
and so I was in the community where I knew
that she was from where I had first met her,
and asking the principal of a school there, I'm like,
do you know Lomani? Do you know have you seen her?
Do you know where she went? And after I left
he contacted me he said, yeah, I found Lomoni. And
so I sent our staff from Monrovia to go see
if we could take her back to town so she
could keep going to school. And when they got there,
(51:39):
they said, Lemoni's just given birth to a baby. And
so my country director was like, oh, she has a boyfriend.
Now she's you know, off doing her old thing. And
I'm like, Frances, you don't know Lomone. I do, and
that's not the kind of girl that she is. Go
find out what happened to her. So we sent the
staff back to the village to to talk to find
(52:01):
out what happened. And the they said Lomoni was a
vulnerable girl. What vulnerable? Vulnerable just meant that there was
no she had no protectors. She didn't have a father
and uncle, a brother, nobody to defend her, so she
was an easy target. And Lomoni gave birth to a
baby girl three weeks after she turned fourteen, so I
(52:26):
was undone another moment where I was just like, you know,
so mad and so sad, and just we talked to her.
Her mother was still there and we asked her if
we could take Lomani and the baby back to town.
And we had have a wonderful woman who's one of
(52:47):
my best friends, Rosalind, who kind of raised Lomani when
she was in town. So LONEI went to go live
with with Rosalind. And then once you got to town,
they had me on video call and I knew, I
knew they were going to ask me to give the
baby a name, and I was like, all these feelings
are just so huge. And so I'm talking to Rosalind
(53:09):
and she's shown me this beautiful baby girl and she said, says, Peggy,
what are we going to name her? And it just
blurted out, Mercy. We'll name it Mercy. And from Mercy
and Lumone's story, we have a dream of building a
Mercy House, which will be housing for at risk girls,
(53:31):
so that those girls who are vulnerable will be in
a safe place, and also for girls who have already
been assaulted and we didn't get there in time, that
they can also have a safe place to recover and
have a second chance at life. We have girls right now.
We don't have the Mercy House built, but I have
(53:51):
two girls right now who are in really bad spots
and we need to find housing for them now, a
safe place for them to be. One of our girls
was living with her neighbor and her neighbor kicked her out,
said she wasn't bring anything to the family, so she
went to go live with a boy who had his
own demands on her. And she's pregnant now, and.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
Like, what is she?
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Where's she going to go? Who's you know? We had
another girl who got pregnant and ran away because she
was sure her mom was going to kick her out
because she was pregnant. So we have an incredible social
worker in Liberia, Nima's Angeline, and she is she has
We have a trauma counseling group. She meets with the
girls twice a month and is trying to help them
(54:38):
work through both the trauma of assault and also helping
to tea helping to teach these girls that their body
belongs to them and that nobody else has the right
to touch it, and they can say no, and they
can tell somebody when they're being harassed, and there are
literally signs on schools in Liberia that's say no no
(55:03):
sex for grades, no grades for sex.
Speaker 3 (55:10):
With all that you've done, there's so much more to do.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
The thing that ties it all together for me is
that my entire life, what I've wanted more than anything
in the whole world is to be a mom. And
I have been blessed with five kids that I have
the opportunity to raise, But there are so many kids
in Liberia where I'm the only mom they've got, and
they messaged me every day. I was I was like,
(55:36):
I'm gonna see if I can remember the names of
all of the kids that call me call me mom,
And there's there's a good, good start on some of
those kids that And some days, you know, like Sarah,
she just needs me to say I love you, Sarah,
Or it was Alicia's birth the other day and I'm like,
happy birthday, dear. Like everybody needs to know they matter
(55:57):
to someone, and for some of these kids, it's me
way over here where they can. They just need to
know that somebody cares, somebody sees them.
Speaker 3 (56:08):
How your names are on there?
Speaker 2 (56:10):
Fourteen fifteen sixteen, I was still going.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Twenty five bucks a month. Yeah, teamwork Africa, y'all.
Speaker 3 (56:22):
And Army.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Normal folks is about normal folks doing extraordinary things when
they match their passion with an opportunity. And Peggy is a,
I mean, tip top five star example of that. And
I don't know how you can hear the story and
hear her voice and hear her passion and understand the
volume of need available and understand something. I suppose twenty
(56:44):
five dollars could literally help change not only an individual's life,
but join the ranks of the people that Peggy is
trying to put together to change the culture of an
entire country. One hearted Tom, Thanks for joining me, Thanks
for telling your story.
Speaker 3 (57:05):
You are an inspiration, Peggy.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
It's pretty phenomenal, as well as Mark and your children. Candidly,
your entire family. The work that they've all committed all
because you wanted to adopt a kid.
Speaker 2 (57:17):
Tells you we're on our way to somewhere else.
Speaker 3 (57:20):
What's Michael doing now?
Speaker 2 (57:22):
He is actually in the National Guard.
Speaker 3 (57:25):
He's in the United States National Guard.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
He's trying. He had some trouble with the entrance stuff,
so he had to get some tutoring and stuff. But
he's trying that out.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
Holy smokes, is that actually proud?
Speaker 1 (57:38):
Yeah, phenomenal, That's phenomenal. Peggy Harvson Everybody, co founder and
US director of Teamwork Africa from EA Claire, Wisconsin and
Liberia and points of between doing God's work, changing lives
one at a time.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
Peggy, thank you, Thank you so.
Speaker 1 (57:59):
Much, happy, and thank you for joining us this week.
If Peggy halperson has inspired you in general, or better yet,
to take action by adopting a child, easily sponsoring the
education of their Liberian students for only twenty five bucks
a month, or something else entirely, please.
Speaker 3 (58:22):
Let me know. I really want to hear about it.
Speaker 1 (58:24):
You can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us,
and I'm telling you ask anybody who's ever emailed me.
Speaker 3 (58:31):
I will respond.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
And if you enjoyed this episode, share it with friends,
share it on social subscribe to the podcast, rate and
review it. Please join the army at normalfolks dot us
any and all of these things that will help us
grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until
next time, do what you can
Host
Bill Courtney
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