The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Out of Darkness Into Light by Lauralee Lindholm

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

Out of Darkness Into Light by Lauralee Lindholm https://amzn.to/4bOsTYy I am a living witness and a fruit of the light that shined in the deepest darkness. This book shows the power of the Gospel to transform lives. -Beletew Kebede, president of the Ethiopian Addis Kidan Baptist Church Living in the highlands of Ethiopia was like living in the Wild West. No one trusted anybody; a gun or a doola was always at hand-and was often used; farming was primitive, and famine was always close at hand; and evil spirits held real power over the people's lives. Theirs was not a good life, and we wanted to help. We went as a community development team, asked God for guidance, and things began to change. As a spiritual battle broke out, we relived events from the book of Acts. Amazingly, God worked, and we watched a people group come out of darkness and into the light!

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The fire Iron Lady sings and that makes it official So welcome to the big show

We certainly appreciate it As always for 20 years and 16 years and 2000 episodes We bring you the most smartest people The brilliant minds The wonderful stories of life That give you insights, expand your mind And just make you a better person as a whole And if not, or else

I don't know what that means Go back and watch the video again if you don't get it Anyway guys refer the show to your family friends and relatives go to goodreads.com fortress chris fuss linkedin.com fortress chris fuss chris fuss one of the tiktokity and all those crazy places on the internet today we have an amazing young lady on the show with us today she's the author of the book out of darkness into light, Dramatic Saga in Orthodox Highlands of Ethiopia. Laura Lee Lindholm joins us on the show with us today. We'll be talking to her about her amazing book and insights and what she's done through the course of her life that is just an amazing experience.

Laura Lee and her husband served as missionaries in Africa for 18 years. They were part of a community development team in the remote highlands of Ethiopia, a land that time had forgotten. When they taught the Bible in their native Amharic language, is it Amharic? Amharic. There we go, Amharic language, and lives started to change there. She witnessed a spiritual battle, much like the Book of Acts in the Bible.

They had to leave when communism took over, and Laura Lee became a bilingual schoolteacher for 18 years. On retirement in 2006, they began a bookstore in their house staffed by volunteers filled with donated books and magazines. Hartford Ethiopian Bookstore has sent $1.6 million to Ethiopia for development works such as schooling for children and literacy for women. The work they've done as part of 50 years ago when they first went there has resulted in 350 churches across Ethiopia today. Welcome to the show, Laura Lee. How are you? I'm fine and delighted to be here with you.

And we're delighted to have you. What an amazing story that's inside your bio there, and what an amazing influence you've had. Give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs. It is bookslauralielindholm.com. There you go. Laura Lee, tell us a 30,000 overview of your book, Out of Darkness into Light. It's the story of God doing again what he did in the book of Acts from the beginning,

where they were living by law, by orthodox laws. They had never read the Bible in a language they understood. And so all they knew was a whole lot of laws about, especially about fast days and kind of work they could do on religious holidays. And they didn't know anything about loving their neighbor or being honest or not committing adultery or any of those kinds of things. They were living in fear of evil spirits. And so when we found them, they were in a sad state. And so you go through this journey of life there and help them. And you've been doing this for a lot of years.

What made you focus on Ethiopia? What drew you to there when you first went, I think, 50 years ago? First, when we were missionaries, we went to teach in a high school in Nigeria. And at the end of our three years there, the area director came to our town and by accident had nobody meet him at the airport. And he called us and we got him and he had just come from Ethiopia and he said they wanted to start new work there and they wanted to do community development which is really what my husband wanted to do and they had a doctor and a vet and an agriculturalist but they needed somebody to teach handcraft and he said I can do that I like to do handcraft and so we transferred from

Nigeria to Ethiopia to begin brand new work in the mountains and he taught rug weaving and he'd never woven a rug in his whole life but he said if Navajos can weave rugs. I can weave a rug. So he read a book and watched a Navajo by the road and came to Ethiopia and taught rug weaving and did a great job of it. Wow. I still haven't learned rug weaving. I need to pick up my, I need to learn some new things. Tell us about your upbringing and what influenced you? Were you born a Christian? Was there something that influenced you to go down this road? What influenced you to want to become a missionary? I was brought up going to Sunday school and church. I thank my family for

that. And so was my husband, but we were in different churches in different areas and as I got old enough to understand a missionary came to our church from Nigeria and told about teaching there about the need and the response of the people because they were so eager to learn and so I got the vision then but then I went on to high school and kind of got all into other things and off to college and my husband had a similar experience and so we eventually got married and went to Nigeria to teach in a high school but Neil had this dream of helping rural people who had no other help and no other hope. And so that's why we went to Ethiopia. Wow.

And so it sounds like you kind of come from a spirit of giving and, I guess, sharing the gospel. That's true. And I still believe that's the most important thing, the goal of my life. And publishing this book is still doing what we did in Africa. I want the story to get out to America. I want people to find out how God is working today with actual real people and details. And so that's why I wrote this book. When we got kicked out of Ethiopia due to communism, I sat down and for three months months I wrote down all the amazing things that have been happening.

They were like photographed in my mind. And so it was easy to write. I remembered it all. There you go. So when you first went to the highlands of Ethiopia, what did you find when you first traveled there? What was it like? It was like the wild west. They didn't have

they lived in simple mud huts with no electricity, no running water. They had very rudimentary farming methods and they were dependent on rain. They didn't irrigate. So if it didn't rain, they starved so i'm sure you've heard of famine in ethiopia because they're dependent on rain and the rain is fickle doesn't rain good every year but when it does rain it rains really hard for really long and it's a muddy, hard place to live. Anyway, they were very, very simple people and very close to starvation. So that's why we sent a doctor because they had a lot of sickness and no help.

And a vet because they had animals. And when their animals got sick, it was a big loss to them. And then an agriculturalist to help them grow better crops. And finally, handcraft so that they could use the wool from their sheep they ate meat but they didn't have a good money crop for the wool and so when the ladies spun that they could not only sell the wool outside of mons but also use it in rug weaving and they made my husband drew designs for beautiful patterns of orthodox crosses which have traditional designs each region has its own and so they were lovely rugs thick pile and used lots of this yarn and made a lot of money for the

people and that really helped them and you and made a lot of money for the people. And that really helped them. And you helped them establish a marketplace for that, right? You guys would help get that stuff distributed and take it to market? Yes. So we started a Thursday market. Every Thursday they came to clinic. Our doctor was there every Thursday. And then we had a rug market out in the yard.

And my husband bought the rugs back from them that he taught them to make because they had no way to market them in months. And the better they wove, the more money they got. And you know, that's an amazing incentive. They got better and better and better. So the prices kept going up. And then we took them to the city

and there were several shops and things that would take them on consignment. And the women's club there had a big bazaar every month and we sold a lot at the bazaar wow foreigners missionaries embassy people and so on wanted to buy them there you go and so you created a market you showed them how to build that you showed them how to how to build their. And so what was your goal doing this community development to help the people? We wanted to show them that God loved them. And to just tell them if their lives didn't change in any way, they weren't very inclined to listen. But as they saw us spending our time and energy and money on helping them, along we really did love them telling them about the bible

we took bibles in amharic and they had bibles but they were in is which nobody speaks anymore it's a memorized language for the priests and so nobody understood anything they didn't know any bible stories and they were fascinated. We had Bible film strips. We plugged it into our car battery. And they were hand-drawn, in color, people in long robes, doing everything, sowing grain and herding sheep and doing all the same things they did. So they were very interested in those Bible stories. There you go. So you're helping save their souls and also helping them teach them to have a thriving economy, local economy, and have health.

Take care of the basics, really. Running water and healthy water and all that good stuff. That's the truth. If you love people, you want their lives to be good, to be healthy, not be sick, not be starving, not be poor. So we helped in every way we could. And some were really crazy ways. Like when people died, we hauled the bodies on the top of our car to the place where they were going to bury them. And so we did whatever it was that they felt the need for.

There you go. I just have a funny picture of people being on top of a car. But I mean, you got to do what you got to do when you're in these. We had a Land Rover with a rack on top. It wasn't a four-wheel drive. It wasn't a regular city car. The instructions of my will that I get

buried that way. I don't want a hearse. I want to be on the top of a Land Rover. And I want to be sitting up too, like I'm going on my last ride. So I want to be seated and maybe have my hands out like I'm holding the wheel. That's how I want to get driven to the cemetery. I like that. I'm going to add that to my will just to make it complicated for people. They're like, wait, what is he doing?

There you go. So when you, there's a story that you have in the book about you built your house to live in there and then you decide to camp out in a tent after you built a house. Tell us a little bit about that story. We, my husband taught handcraft in the handcraft school near our house. But after several years we wanted to go in a help another area and so we asked god to show us where and two days later a young man showed up and he had been applied for a government job in the main town of malameda and it took two

months for them to decide whether to hire him or not. So he went to Bible studies at Dr. Kanata's for those two months and accepted Christ. He was the first one to really understand and believe. So he came walking to our house, which is a five-hour walk, and then to his house, and he told us that if we came to the area he lived in everybody would listen everybody would learn and everybody would believe and we said oh you don't understand we've already been here five years and that hasn't happened and he said no i'm sure they would so he disappeared two days later he came back with a big long piece of paper of numerous pieces of paper stuck together

somehow big long paper with thumbprints and scribbled signatures and things and he had 180 on it and he said all these people have promised to learn we said okay and so that is how we decided to go to kaya and it was only a two-hour drive away but my husband brought gas from the city in barrels and so we really rationed that it was hard to get it was expensive and also two hours jiggling along over rocks and dirt and everything to go four hours round trip is crazy so we had a circus tent that a missionary had lived in earlier and we also had a personal camping tent so we took both and went down there and stayed six days a week for three years and here you have a house you're living in a tent there you go we came home once a week to have a bath and get more food and oh there was a

rug market day and pray with the other missionaries who came to clinic and so that was our touch with civilization one day a week there you go one day one day a week baths too that's it whoa all right i'm a very sweaty smelly guy not not at 11 000 feet it was cold okay oh there you go yeah if you're freezing all the time you know you just you're doing anything to conserve warmth in fact the kind of a layer or two of sweat can kind of help keep you warm that's what that's what i say during winter when i don't shower for a couple days don't do that folks clean your clean your skin actually there's some people who say it's good for you they say it's it's healthy for you to not maybe shower once or twice or every couple days because i don't know it washes your stuff off i don't know there's it's on the internet there's

all sorts of people weird stuff on the internet and ideas so you you you you talk about how your experience was like the book of acts in the bible tell us a little bit about more about that because you know some people might not be familiar with that chapter of acts okay and it's all the chapters of acts one after the other so the very first one we'd been there six years and we were doing all this helping them with their animals and everything. But that wasn't the only reason we were there. We wanted to give them, let them be in the light, have happiness and joy and get away from fear of the wiles of the devil. So anyway, we prayed for one church leader to really understand. And right away, a priest came alone to ask questions in our tent, which no priest had

done before. And he had a lot of questions. And when he went to preschool in the capital city, far away, the Pope had suggested they buy a Bible at the end. And he said, for some weird reason, he did. It cost $1.25. And annual income in Ethiopia at that time was $100. So that was a lot of money. But he bought a Bible and he started trying to read it. But he couldn't understand it. He got bogged down and there was nobody he could ask. And so he quit reading it when we came then he we started a bible study for priests and deacons

on sunday after their mass for only them which meant they could let on that they didn't know anything they because they all knew nobody else knew anything either and so he said i found that i found these 10 laws, the 10 commandments. I didn't know they were there. And he said, we all break all of these. And he went through and was telling how they did. He said, some people even murder. They put poison under their thumbnail and put it in the communion cup and have killed people through church.

He didn't say he did, but other priests had. He said, our culture doesn't think these things are wrong. What we need to do is observe the fast rules of not eating meat on Wednesday or Friday and for 40 days prior to Easter. That's our main thing.

And not working on religious holidays. And that's about 15 days a month. So it really does make it difficult for them so long story short he did really understand he confessed his sins and got great joy in his life and we said thank you god we have the one person we asked for that'll do and two weeks later he came back and said i want to burn my magic books and we said what do you mean your magic books and he said i'm the head wizard of this area didn't you know that all almost all wizards are priests in their churches wow and he brought his magic books and we built a fire on sunday at the time of our bible study and then he told people that he was turning only

to jesus for his support and he threw his magic books in the fire and somebody jumped up and said no i'll buy those from you i'll pay you and he said you can't pay what these have cost in my life and he didn't fish them out and sell them and then everybody watched his life they knew that that Satan was going to get him That his crops would fail His wife would leave His kids would get sick Something bad would happen to him But it didn't

God took good care of him And he was a wonderful example Of new life in Jesus There you go Well you definitely influenced some people So what were you surprised about most about your life in the Orthodox Church? As I alluded to, it was finding out that they have all these customs, like killing a cow to appease Satan, and everybody has to eat some of the meat. We do that around here on Fridays. And they don't often get meat.

So to give this up, when they became true believers, other ones, and refused to do this, it was really a sacrifice on their part. They were really persecuted. And families killed a black lamb, a berentichah, periodically, and that was to keep Satan away from their house. And everybody in the family had to eat some of it. And they said, this is wrong. We don't want to do this.

We did that on Thursdays. And their families said, okay, you have to leave. Move out. And they were just young men, late teens, early 20s. So this was hard for them to do. Yeah. So we did not know until then how intertwined all of this was with the orthodox church yeah we we do the we do the lamb black lamb killing on saturdays around here and then

we get some of that good mint jelly it's really good that goes with lamb be some lamb then we make euros we make greek euros out of them it works you know works out well keeps saying away keeps the keeps the stomach full you know it's out well keeps satan away keeps the keeps the stomach full you know it's good it's a good business what else do we have what are some of the long-term results of you working there what was your experience i know you we talked in your bio about you going back but what were some long-term results of all that work you did a group of believers grew and that was wonderful we but communism came and all missionaries had to leave and we wondered if they could continue on their own they got expelled from the orthodox

church so eventually they started the adis kidan which means that's a word for new testament baptist church because before they lived by old Testament laws. Now they live by New Testament faith. And they left MUNS. The government picked the best students, which were our students, because when you become a believer, you get a new mind. It says you'll be a new creation. They were the best in their class. And so they were chosen to go to university. They were chosen to go and kind of like the Peace Corps, go around Ethiopia and do things like teach people to drill wells and to help classes and things. And so everywhere they went, they took their faith and started new groups of Bible studies and eventually churches. And so it started spreading at the head of the government, sending them all over Ethiopia.

Wow. And so when you went back 50 years later, there was like 350, I forget the numbers, 350 churches or something like that? That's what there are now. Wow. Think back after 18 years when I retired from teaching ESL to kids in first or fifth grade. And we went back and wondered if they would still be there. And we found 12,000 of them at that time. And they asked us if we would work with them to

encourage them. So we went there for two months. We rented a house. And we rented a house from a Muslim who had two wives, so he had two living quarters. And so they had pastor training school in the living quarters of the second wife, because my husband only had one wife. I guess you weren't going to let him get two then. And so they chose leaders from each region where they had churches and those leaders are still leaders today they chose well and that's where in the last 18 years we started a bookstore in our house people donate books to us and magazines and volunteers have helped us in every way keeping the computer going

checking maps to see if they have rips or spots or anything and shelving books and shipping and all the things that are involved in a bookstore and so for the last 18 years we've been doing that and ebay had a big contest in 2016 and i entered the charity division for Heart for Ethiopia Bookstore, and we won. They pushed us to Las Vegas and wined us and dined us on the stage. And we really got a boost, Heart Bookstore did, at that time. And that's really helped. Everyone goes to Ethiopia. None of us are paid.

And since it's in our house we don't charge anything and see behind me what a house full of books looks like yeah we can see that in the video it's a whole lot of that's a whole lot of books i love books books are really important we love books on the chris fosh show and authors too to write the books it's always important to have them as well after you after you and now the heart of ethiopia bookstore you guys have sent back what is it 1.6 million i think it was that's right there you go there you go and so it probably helps the members of the community too so they can they can come there and and and give service to others and and help out it's a win-win every way when people give us their books they say oh

i feel so good that something good is going to come from my books. I don't just have to throw them in the trash. Because old books and old magazines are not that easy to sell or get rid of or even give away. So they feel happy who give. And then I feel happy when we get them and I see they're valuable and and our volunteers feel good who help and then when we sell them the people who buy them feel good that the money they're paying to buy these is going to help a charity in ethiopia and of course when the money gets to ethiopia they feel good so this is a win-win all the way through. Win-win for everybody. We like win-wins.

When you had to leave Ethiopia during the communist revolution, what was it like? What was the experience like? You put all this love, sweat, blood, tears into building your life there and changing these people's lives. What was it like having to leave? It was like if you had to leave your own blood family. We had grown so close to them. And so we hated to leave. And we got to America. And they liked to study the Bible all day, every day. Everybody was so eager to learn

the Bible. And we got back to America and found people where they liked to go to church on Sunday and maybe go to a prayer meeting once a week. But we didn't find this kind of eagerness. And then also, we were missing that family there. And we just didn't know what we were going to do, where we were going to belong. And bought a house. And we had jobs. And the house on the next block came up for sale for $15,000 and that seemed pretty cheap and my parents had bought houses and you used them as rentals and made some money and they said real estate was a good way to go so after we bought the first house we we bought the second and the third. And we eventually got 65 houses.

And instead of renting them, we sold them to people. They were little cheap houses, somewhere as cheap as $5,000. And top price was $25,000. We never bought anything expensive to resell. And then we sold them to the people. And we carried the notes. And we have never foreclosed on anybody except one lady who died and her relatives moved in. And for two years, they didn't pay anything. It was not there.

So we foreclosed on the relatives that we didn't even know. But other than that, we refinance. We do everything we can to help people stay in their houses. So that's been a big help to us. We have steady income every month from that. And of course, a lot of them have gotten paid off by now. Most of them.

But it has gave us the money to go back to Ethiopia and help them for those 18 years. There you go. You're doing an amazing job of charity work. You're changing the world. You're doing an amazing job of charity work. You're changing the world. You're uplifting other people's lives, etc., etc. What advice would you give to people on giving back

and doing service to others and helping charity work, etc., etc.? I'm living evidence that you can't out-give God. If you just are willing to do Whatever God puts in your heart to do And you've got to look and pray a little about it Be listening But then be brave Go ahead and do it

Don't be afraid God has your back And he will help you And it will bless your life It will bless others And there is no better way to live there you go that what else have we covered about your book that we should talk about there are a lot of amazing chapters one for example we wanted them to learn about the power

of prayer because they never prayed an individual prayer asking God for something personal. Everything was memorized mass. So we asked God to show them the power of prayer. And we went home from our little camping tent every week, as we said, to have a bath and get food. And the landowner provided a guard and we went off and left our tent for one day a week and the people all said you should take it down and take it home yeah you know they're going to steal stuff and we

said oh god's taking care of us so one week when we came back the guard was gone the tent was open and half the stuff was missing oh and all the people pulled their hair and wailed and everything and said now you're going to go away we told you our people are bad and so on. We said, no, it's okay. We're just trusting God. He'll take care of us. It's all right. So we did have to go back and get a little bit of stuff so we could keep staying there in the tent.

And we did. And for two days, people we didn't even know came to us and said, we appreciate what you're doing. We can't believe that you're just trusting God. But after two days of rain every day, somebody came and said, we think we found your stuff. And so we got in the car and went a mile to the community grazing land, which was wide open. You could see for miles. And right out in the middle and plain sight were three bundles two sleeping bags and my coat with all the stuff tied up so we put it in our car and went back and all the people were waiting at the tent and we had made a list at their insistence of everything missing so we started

getting the stuff out of the bundles and checking it off the list we got more back than we remembered we'd lost. And all the people said, God answers your prayers. You said he would, and he did. You have an in with God we don't have. And they got to see God at work answering prayer, just like we asked him to. Definitely. It's good that you do that. It's great that you set an example. You've changed the world and made a difference in so many people's lives i'm sure there's 350 churches there must be thousands of people that

you've affected and it shows people that you know there's there's an old saying from bobby kennedy it's from the it's from the uh ripples of hope speech and he talks about how each of us can make a difference in this world and send forth a ripple of hope that changes the world, and each of us can make, in our small part, such a big difference. So I think you've done that, and I think that's wonderful that you have. Thank you. And I do want to say, you don't have to go to Africa to do what God wants. We all have neighbors.

We all have circles of influence in our job and in our friends. Bloom where you're planted. There you go. Bloom where you're planted, folks. I love it. You know, there's all sorts of, you know, there's people that are homeless that are nearby you. There's, you know, if you watch there,

sometimes people are struggling, you know, and sometimes you just need to give them a hand up or just a pat on the back and say, hey, you okay, man? Maybe listen to some people from time to time. So this has been wonderful to have you on and talk about all these things, Laura Lee. Give us your final thoughts for people to pick up the book and pitch out as we go out. If you want an upbeat, encouraging, firsthand account of God working just like he did 2,000 years ago when Jesus left and the disciples were living out, trying to figure out what to do next.

And God was with them step by step. And that's what this story is like. It compares it chapter by chapter with things that happened in Acts. You'll be excited and encouraged, and God will bless you if you buy this book, Out of Darkness Into Light. There you go. Give us a.com, too, so people can find you on the interwebs. Bookslauralylindholm.com. There you go. Thank you very much, Laura Lee, for coming to the show.

We really appreciate it. Thank you for inviting me. I've enjoyed it. Thank you. And thanks, my audience, for tuning in. Order the book wherever fine books are sold.

It's called Out of Darkness Into Light out February 27th, 2024. You can find it on Amazon or wherever fine books are sold. Go to goodreads.com for just Christmas.

LinkedIn.com for just Christmas. Christmas, one of the TikTokity andoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, chrisfoss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

We'll see you next time. And that should have...