"Heaven is counting on us." As we huddled in prayer, the impact of these words hit me with the force of a hurricane. They came from the heart of a teenager as he pleaded with the Lord. He prayed that we would continue to trust in the Lord and rely on His power, so men and women would hear the message of the gospel and give their lives to Jesus.

And who were we? We were not experienced evangelists. Half of our team were young people. Jeffery Habenicht and Jeremy McIntyre were academy students. Nougen Grant had just graduated from Andrews University the weekend prior to our departure. One member of our apprehensive team was Rita Seay, an elementary school vice principal. Laurence and Lois Burn and I led the group, but none of us had preached in an evangelistic series before.

We had traveled halfway around the world to the African country of Botswana, to participate in one of Robert Folkenberg's Global Evangelism projects. We arrived in Garborone on Thursday, June 3, 2004, and were a mess! Our first messages would be preached the next night and no one felt ready.

The project included 16 different meeting sites and we had just been informed that a speaker was needed for one extra. God impressed Jeremy McIntyre, who had only come to sing, to fill that need. To our surprise, and his, he volunteered to preach. Rita Seay had also decided to be a speaker just two weeks earlier. The rest of us, who had been preparing for months, realized that no amount of preparation was enough. We were all nervous wrecks.

It wasn't until the beginning of our last week of preaching that the urgency and the enormity of our calling was impressed upon us. We began to plead with the Lord on behalf of the people of Botswana. And as we prayed, there was something noticeably different about our group. We had changed. We were still anxious, but no longer for ourselves—now we had a passion for souls.

I had become involved in this mission project because I wanted to give our youth an opportunity to preach in their own evangelistic campaign. I had no idea the transformation I would see in their lives—or mine. I found myself surrounded by young people who were pleading in prayer for God to change hearts.

Scripture tells us that when people turn to the Lord, it is as if a veil is lifted and they see Jesus. And as we work to remove that veil from the eyes of others, God removes the veil from our own faces (2 Cor. 3:18).

For some reason, God hasn’t given the task of finishing His work to the angels. He has chosen us to to do His work in His power. His power changes not only those who hear the message, but it changes those of us who preach it. Heaven is counting on us.

Oliver Archer is pastor for youth and children's ministries at Pioneer Memorial Church, Berrien Springs.