Week 2

All right. Good morning. Gateway. My name is Melanie Ortiz. I am actually the kids pastor at a Gateway South Austin campus. And while my audience is typically much smaller than this, about this tall, I am really very excited and honored to be a part of this voice, this series where we are going to be continuing the discussion on the butterfly effect.

In fact, if you missed Haley’s message last week, I would highly recommend to go back and listen to it. It lays a beautiful foundation for what we are going to be discussing over these next couple of weeks. And so, as Justin shared today, you are going to hear four stories of ordinary people who simply said yes to God and how their faithfulness created ripple effects that continue to impact lives and point people to Jesus.

So without further ado, our first guest has been a part of Gateway since the movie theater days. Do we have any other movie theater goers? This is like circa 1999–2000? Yes, so long time. Her and her husband Robert have been serving with Impact India through mission trips for the last 20 years. Kimberly also serves with Alpha in our South Austin Business Leaders Group. What started as a yes to an experience became so much more. So please help me give a warm welcome to Kimberly Watson Hemphill.

Good morning, Gateway.

I’m Kimberly Watson Hemphill, a volunteer here at Gateway Church. I’m married to my best friend, Robert. We have a wonderful son, Ian. I moved to Austin from Michigan to go to grad school at UT—Hook ’em Horns—and my day job is running an entrepreneurial business. When my husband and I got married 27 years ago, we wanted to find a church. He grew up in the church, but I did not. So I was the more skeptical party, and we decided we were going to visit a different church every weekend. This was when the TV show Survivor was very popular, and Gateway sent out a postcard that said, “We don’t vote anyone off the island. Visit us at Gateway Church.” So Gateway was my pick for that Sunday.

I loved the music. The worship was—I thought the message was positive and inspiring. I loved that you could bring your coffee into the service. And I thought that being in a movie theater was really cool. So we started attending Gateway and followed Gateway from the movie theater to the Red Lion Inn, to the synagogue, to North Campus. And then Robert and I were one of the first couples to start South Campus when that became available.

So if we fast forward a few years, it’s now 2006, and Robert is on staff with Gateway. He works for Pastor Gary Foreign, who had already been involved with Impact India 360. Gary brought the founder, Jayesh Sankara, to Gateway to talk about his vision for their growing ministries. Gary wanted to send a small team to India to get to know the people, and to possibly consider getting started on fundraising for a hospital. So the ask was for 48 hours of transportation to spend 48 hours on the ground to get to know some people and help with making a video about the hospital. So he asked me what I thought, and I loved crazy adventures and I said, “Sure, I’ll go.”

And then I went home to Robert and I said, “What do you think about India?” And he said, “Sure, I’ll go.”

So we have a couple pictures from 2006. There’s our team on the left, Robert and I, founder Jayesh Sankara in the middle, and a professional filmmaker. There are some pictures of Robert and I with the kids. Pretty much everyone who goes to India, their favorite part are the adorable children from Grace Children’s Home. And there is the big empty lot where hopefully a hospital would be built in the future.

I thought the ministries were very impressive. There was a sewing school for women, a pastor’s training program, an orphanage, a tiny medical clinic, and they were building a church. Gateway moved forward with building the hospital and has been a partner ever since. But my heart has always been for education, particularly for women. The literacy rate in that part of rural India for women is about 50%, and the original kids from Grace Children’s Home were getting older and two had just graduated from high school. I wondered if there might be some possibility of sending those kids to college.

Time passes. I continue to be involved with Impact India. Before Covid, I led a mission trip for Gateway there almost every year. I was asked to join the board of Impact India and I founded the College Scholarship Fund.

So let’s fast forward to some more pictures now from 2025. We have our most recent team from Gateway South. On the left is the team; we’re visiting one of the church plants from the missionary training school. There’s the hospital, which Gateway has continued to support. Yay, Gateway! Thank you for funding the hospital. The hospital is amazing; 50 babies are born there every month. It’s a growing ministry. We’re currently building out the fourth floor, which is being built out for ophthalmology and orthopedic surgery, which will just be a huge blessing to the people in that area.

There are Robert and I with our current group of college students. We just graduated seven college students and there are currently 32 in the program. The picture in the lower right, I’m there with Durga. Durga was the first girl to graduate from high school who grew up in the orphanage Grace Children’s Home. She currently has a bachelor’s degree and is working as a nurse, and the college scholarship program has sent 122 students to college.

So I’ve always been really interested in life’s big questions: Is there a God? Why are we here? What is my purpose? And as I was getting ready for the most recent mission trip with Gateway South, I was studying Ephesians, and Ephesians 2:10 practically leapt off the page: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

The tricky part is that it’s hard to know in advance. Before 2006, I wouldn’t say I had any particular interest in missions or any thoughts one way or another about India. I was busy with my work and my family. I never would have thought that I would have led ten mission trips to India, and that through that, about 100 people from Gateway would have the opportunity to see the great work being done by God halfway across the globe.

But I do love crazy adventures. And when someone who is close to me asked, I said, “Sure, I’ll go.” Thank you.

Thank you, Kimberly.

And so what stood out to me most as I was listening to Kimberly’s story was that she didn’t set out looking for a calling. She simply said yes to an opportunity. One small step of faith created ripple effects that she could have never imagined. She simply trusted God with the next step.

And so our next guest has been a part of Gateway since 2001. He currently leads a small group along with his wife, hosting events at Gateway South for couples with teens, while also leading trips to Nicaragua with Amigos for Christ. Please help me welcome Trent McGinty—or as most people from the Buda campus know him, Tracy and Carol’s son.

I have a superpower. I would argue that this is better than invisibility, better than the ability to fly. I’ve always been able to surround myself with the most amazing people. So today I’m here to brag on them: my friends, my family. Many of you here in the audience and hearing me online, you guys are part of this. You know who you are. Also, a nonprofit from Nicaragua called Amigos for Christ. And of course, on our God who flaps the butterfly’s wings and makes it all work together so beautifully.

Our story starts in 2010 with these three guys. The one on the right is Aman Quadri; he’s been on our board of directors here at Gateway. The one on the left, Cory Schwartz, was our kids pastor at South Campus at the time back in 2010. Aman calls one day and he says, “Hey, God’s cooking up something in Nicaragua. Got to go check it out. You know some Spanish, why don’t you come and help?” And it took me 30 seconds to book a flight because, like Kimberly, I’m always down for an adventure.

So we met with a bunch of nonprofits. One of those was Amigos for Christ, and we met John Bland, who was the founder. We were sitting around and John’s like, “Hey, you guys are from Austin, right?” We’re like, “Yeah.” “Do you know a guy named John Burke?” We’re like, “Yeah, that’s our pastor. We go to Gateway.” He’s like, “Oh man, we’ve been listening to those Sunday services every Sunday. They’re great.” So they’d been listening to these services right here that you’re at right now. We thought it was a cool coincidence and we’d found our people. We found a group who was empowering people to rise out of poverty, starting with clean water, then building on that with healthcare, education, farming, leadership through sport, and business development.

So Aman’s like, “We’re not starting anything. God started without us. We’re just going to jump on with these guys.” So we came home and guess what happened? Nothing. Nothing happened for me, anyway. We were busy. We had two small kids under three years old. We were busier than two Spanish defenders chasing around Lionel Messi on the pitch. It was that busy. So I was also in that “God doesn’t talk to me” phase, but I stayed connected. I kept coming to church, serving with the kids on Sundays and with our small group.

And one day Michael Warden, who was a community leader here at Gateway on staff, started asking me some questions, and I thought I’d share those with you. Some of those questions were: What makes you feel most alive? What really breaks your heart? And what do you want to bring to the world?

So I wanted more of this. I went to a course to become a life coach, certified as he was. And I remember coming home from one of those weekends, sitting at the light at Slaughter Lane alone in my car, and I just burst into tears. We’re talking ugly cry for no reason. And I don’t remember a voice from God or anything, but I had some thoughts. And one of them was around fire and one was around water. Fire became what I aspired to bring to the world as God’s light, and water became the mission.

So that spurred me back into action. I started going down south to Nicaragua on the weekends with the team, with Aman. And our kids grew old enough to go with us. So there’s a picture of Micah at nine years old with John Bland, the founder, on his first mission trip, and also Kai at the top of an active volcano when he was 11 on his first trip.

Then I started combining some passions. I love to mountain bike, and so does John. So he started a mountain biking team, and we’ve grown that team to ten people over the years and continued to bring down bikes to get more Nicaraguans on bikes. Also, Scott Cunningham, an ultramarathoner working for Amigos, had built a run team, Run Juntos. So you’ll see a picture of over 30 of us there in March doing a ride around two volcanoes in the middle of a lake. The race is called Fuego y Agua, which I thought was a cool coincidence because, of course, in English that means fire and water.

Last fall, we got together as a small group and my family, and we raised some money through an event called “Raise the Roof.” We put a roof on the high school that was being built next to the elementary school that my son, Micah, and a group of us helped to build nine years ago. Also, we’re doing it again this November 7th at Gateway South. We’re doing another fundraiser to put a computer lab in that same building, so mark your calendars.

As we’re working towards changing lives, we noticed that our lives were the ones really changing, along with the lives of our family and our kids. You’ll see Aman from the first slide—that’s him baptizing his youngest son, Asher, in the ocean of Nicaragua. That was just a couple of weeks ago. And a couple of years before that, that’s our small group surrounding Addison Spalding, who was baptized in those same waters. And you all know kids, they grow up. So Micah now is 19, and he served all summer down with Amigos, replicating that picture with John ten years later. And Kai, of course, wanted an updated picture too. I asked him which one, and he’s like, “Bro, the one with the arms.” So there you go.

My Bible verse I picked was Matthew 5:14–16: “You are the light of the world… let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

So now I ask you the same questions that were asked of me years ago: What makes you feel most alive? What really breaks your heart? And what do you want to bring to the world? Thank you.

Thank you, Trent.

So Trent left us with three powerful questions—questions that help connect our heart to God’s. Trent’s story reminds us that none of us are meant to discover our calling on our own. Faith grows in community through obedience, one small step at a time. Not through extraordinary moments, but through ordinary faithfulness.

And so our next guests have been married for the last 34 years. They have five daughters and six grandchildren. They have lived in the Middle East for the past eight years and faithfully served with one of our partners. While they have been a part of Gateway for the last three years, this is actually their first time on campus. Before I bring them up on stage, I do want to share that our streaming campuses will only see our Butterfly Effect logo. You will still hear them, but because of the region they live in and for security reasons, we cannot stream their face or their full name. So with that in mind, please help me welcome Mr. and Mrs. C.

Good morning. Thank you for having us.

Eight years ago this past June, we sold our custom dream home in Virginia, said goodbye to our family, and hopped on a plane with our three youngest daughters and moved to the Middle East. We left behind lives of—I was a trial attorney, she was a small business owner—and we went to the Middle East to share the light of the gospel in the spiritually darkest places in our midlife. It was not our plan.

It started when Matt just said yes to our pastor’s invitation to go on a short-term trip. Today that journey feels like a thousand miles ago, but it started with one small step of obedience. For those of you who don’t know us, since it’s our first time, we are Mr. and Mrs. C, and you here at Gateway have faithfully loved, prayed, and supported us. You’ve encouraged us, given to us financially, and we got to meet Carlos and Austin and Charles and huddle in our crazy city where we live to dream with God and share each other’s testimonies.

It started with one short-term trip, and you guys have hauled suitcases full of goodies for our families with all the American goods, and you’ve supported and loved us. Each person that you sent on a short-term trip, we got to be witnesses to see them faithfully share the gospel to Muslims, and that would not be possible at all without you. So thank you.

Having arrived in 2018, after just ten months in our country, I was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an incurable and terminal brain cancer. That was also not part of our plan. No, it wasn’t. I was told that I probably would be dead within a year, and we were medevaced from our country. We began literally planning my funeral, and life seemed to stop. Even now, death remains seven years afterward still very real to us, much more real than it had ever seemed before.

But what I want to tell you, what I want to remind you this morning facing death, is that everyone in this room has a 100% mortality rate. No one gets out of life alive. And how we live every second and every moment does count in God’s economy. Acts 20:24 has been one of our verses that we love: “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is that I finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”

When you realize deeply how short and small our lives are, and how great and vast the love of God is, and that the Bible is truly the most beautiful love story ever, then it demands us—it changes us—to reorient our lives. The God of the universe left the throne and went to go rescue and save His people. All of us here have our own testimony of that, and those who trust in Him are actually invincible. We are invincible people because of the eternal kingdom we have to come.

So again, after the diagnosis, I wasn’t expecting to live, but unexpectedly and by God’s grace, I got stronger and stronger. Then we were faced with a new choice—that was not our plan either. We were faced with a new choice whether we should stay in the United States or whether we should go back to the country that God had introduced us to. We felt like if we didn’t return, we would be disobeying God who had called us.

That step of returning was actually scarier than the first steps of going in the first place. Medical conditions and medical facilities are very different than what we were used to and accustomed to here. But I remember the Lord reminding me of a friend who had a great cost to follow Jesus, losing her family and almost losing her life, because the cost is great in the region that we’re in if you choose to follow Him. I remembered deeply how Jesus told us to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily—not just once, but daily take up our cross and follow Him wherever He goes. We have been given His promises that He will never leave us and He will never forsake us. He gives us all things pertaining to life and godliness, and He is making all things new. He is actually making things all new, actively.

So I want to leave you with this, as we’re running short on time: We all are going to die one day, but here’s the truth—Jesus one day will return in power, and there is no real risk that we can take. There is a cost, but no real risk; there is reward in following Jesus. Jesus took His own small steps of faithful obedience leading to the cross.

Jim Elliot said, before he was speared to death by the very people he was trying to reach with the gospel, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

So be willing to take small steps of faithful obedience, whether that means getting on a plane headed overseas, taking a meal to a neighbor, being kind to a cashier who’s rude, or striking up a conversation with a coworker. God uses those small, faithful steps of obedience to accomplish amazing things. So be willing to take great risks. You’ll be giving up what you can’t keep and gaining what you can never lose. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you. What I love most about their story is that their faith in God was bigger than their circumstances. If we aren’t careful, too often we let our circumstances diminish our faith. They simply used the gifts and the calling God had given them.

And so our final guest is no stranger to North Campus. She has faithfully served as a worship coach in student ministry since 2020, raising up our next generation of worship leaders. She is a single mom of two girls, a songwriter, and a full-time college student earning her bachelor’s in business, so she is not busy at all. Please put your hands together for Nikki Pinion.

There we go, you just got to turn it on.

Okay, hey everybody. As she mentioned, my name is Nikki. Just a little bit about myself: for those of you who are home here at North, you usually see me here on the worship stage. It’s such a blessing and a privilege to do that. I started singing when I was three, and my dad was like, “Hey, she’s got a gift, go on stage.” And I never looked back. But the beauty about all that and how my journey started in worship was people pouring into me. Little did I know I was going to be repaying that, but God knew.

When I moved here to Austin back in 2015, it honestly took me four years to find a home church, and I had given up at that time. I thought, “There are no good churches here in Austin,” coming from Phoenix. It took a family friend to say, “Hey, come to Gateway. I think you’ll like it.” I said sure. I came, and as I was sitting right over there, the Holy Spirit said, “You’re home.” I said, “Okay.”

The next month, the Holy Spirit says, “Hey, you’re going to audition for the worship team.” At that time in my life, I was going through a lot of things and had PTSD from my old church. I thought, “I don’t think so.” But the Holy Spirit was like, “Yeah, you’re going to do it.” So I tried out, sang for the first time, and then Covid hit.

Fast forward to about two and a half years ago, I was having my one-on-one with Paul and telling him, “The Holy Spirit keeps telling me that I’m here to raise up the next generation of worship leaders, and I don’t know what that means.” In my early 40s, I thought maybe it was time for me to step off stage because I was getting old. Then I went to a CeCe Winans concert, and girl, she is mature in age and can sing! God humbled me in that moment, showing me I wasn’t done yet, and Paul echoed that too.

After that conversation, the worship coach for students stepped down, and God prompted me to offer to fill in. I thought, “What am I going to teach them? I’m not close to their age or that cool.” But God said, “You just need to be there.” So I messaged Isaiah, and he said sure.

Little did I know, it wasn’t about what I could teach them regarding lyrics, harmonies, or stage presence. It was about pouring into them what mentors had poured into me years ago, telling them, “Lean into your calling, lean into your purpose.” They have been an incredible blessing. These young people know how to worship with total abandonment without caring who is watching. Take away the stage and lighting, and it’s all about that connection between them and God.

The scripture that has grounded me in this time is John 13:15, where Jesus washes His disciples’ feet and says, “I have set for you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” He was the ultimate leader who didn’t call us for perfection, but simply to serve. My biggest encouragement to you is don’t worry if you feel unqualified. You are qualified because God has called you for that purpose. He is not looking for perfection; He’s looking for your “yes.” Thank you.

Thank you, Nikki.

Nikki’s story deeply resonated with me. Following Jesus will almost always invite us outside of our comfort zone; that’s where true trust begins.

Like Nikki, I had a plan. This wasn’t it, for the record! But what I’ve learned in my walk with Jesus is that He is anything but predictable. I grew up going to a church that preached the Bible, but didn’t do a great job of teaching the gospel of Jesus. I truly believed that no matter how hard I tried to be a good person, I could never measure up. I eventually walked away from church and religion, though I still held firm to my faith.

In 2004, lost and wandering, I walked into a little synagogue off Bull Creek named Gateway. They had a motto: “No perfect people allowed.” In that moment, I heard the Holy Spirit say, “You’re home.” For the first time, I experienced what a relationship with Jesus looked like and discovered I was deeply loved.

Fast forward ten years: married, raising a family, and attending church when convenient. On New Year’s Eve, I felt God nudging me to make coming to church on Sundays a weekly priority. I had no idea that small decision was preparing me for the hardest season of my life. Just eight weeks later, my husband and I entered a five-year season of walking through four miscarriages.

Instead of drifting, I ran toward God, reading Scripture, joining Bible studies, and serving. A community carried us through our grief with meals and prayers. One small step of obedience led to another. Then, sitting in my second-grade classroom, I heard the words, “It is time.” He didn’t give me the whole picture, just the next step. I went on a spiritual retreat, and during prayer in the chapel, the word “ministry” and “LDP” (Gateway’s intern program) kept coming to mind.

Things then took a temporary turn into a dark season of daily panic attacks. On Christmas Eve, sitting in a bathroom stall at a Shell station off I-35 while spiraling, scripture washed over me: “My peace I give you… do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (John 14:27). I knew Jesus was with me in that stall, and that was my last panic attack almost three years ago.

Six weeks later, I applied for the intern program. While I wasn’t given the internship, I received a call offering me the Kids Director position at Gateway South Austin, and later became a licensed pastor with Gateway Church. God rarely gives us the blueprint, but He invites us to walk with Him one faithful step at a time. He uses the waiting, the pain, and ordinary moments to shape extraordinary faith.

Referencing Matthew 5:14–16 again, what light has God placed inside of you? God has a beautiful way of redeeming the places that once broke us. The wounds we wish we didn’t have often become the places where His grace shines brightest. One faithful step, one surrendered yes, one ordinary life in the hands of an extraordinary God.

Perhaps your next step is joining a Go Team to one of these amazing places. If you’re interested, email missions@gatewaychurch.com. Thank you.