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It wasn't the call he expected from God, but last year, the Rev. Hank Butler of Bethesda UMC in Damascus got the impression that he was supposed to go teach pastoral counseling to clergy in Zambia.

On the flight home in January, he realized that 2009 was 39 years exactly since he had accepted Jesus, his 39th spiritual birthday. And in Africa, he felt he had truly and fully answered God's call.

The story started last October, when Butler attended a pastoral counseling conference with participants from around the world.

"I had an impression that I should help bring those services to Zambia," he said, a place that was admittedly out of his comfort zone. "But my response was, if I get a specific invitation, Lord, I'll go."

Then one night, prayer partner Rev. Jerry Beall, president of Sons of Thunder Ministries, which operates a 10,000-acre farm in Zambia, turned back for a second on his way out the door, and asked, "Why don't you come to Zambia with me this year?"

The invitation was extended; Butler took up the offer.

Butler's congregation raised enough to pay for their pastor to travel to Zambia, with enough donations left over to buy needed items such as a bicycle for one Zambian pastor to travel to congregants during the week. Butler traveled with Beall and another missionary to the Zambian village of Musokotwane, located on the Sons of Thunder farm.

"I'd never even gone on a mission trip," Butler said, because he always thought that we can pay people to minister oversees and they can get more done. But he also knew of the importance of going to help.

In Zambia, the Sons of Thunder ministry trains local farmers in agricultural practices and marketing on 10,000 acres of farmland, where they grow crops such as cabbage and sweet potatoes and other staples. Another of Bethesda UMC's members had spent two years at the farm teaching crop rotation and other agriculture skills.

The ministry also operates a school for some 400 students (some of whom walk more than an hour to attend classes), an orphanage where 54 children live and a walk-in clinic that serves about 1,200 people each month.

New churches have sprung up, too, with eager congregations led by local pastors, who had very little pastoral training.

That's where Butler's mission came in: he led a three-day program on pastoral counseling for nine Zambian pastors. He taught them to ask the right questions and ask enough questions to get to the root of people's problems as well as helping to identify what God is doing.

Butler and his fellow pastors also ventured out into the bush to visit the walk-in clinics and offer spiritual health to those seeking medical help.

Throughout the trip, God kept showing up.

One day Butler said he "felt a prompting to share with the lady in charge of the main house some words about the Lord's notice of her and how the Lord was holding her."

His Bible, the cover's edges curling up from years of use and handling, lay on the table before them. The woman began weeping.

"And the Bible was catching her tears," he recalled, because of the curled-up cover. "She was so grateful, she kept thanking me and I prayed for her." After his return, Butler learned that the woman had lost her two-year-old son only two months before he shared the Lord's love with her that day.

Butler was struck by a God-inspired impression on the flight home: "That we should help the people in Zambia finish building their church," he said. Some 250 congregants, who made up one of the churches that met in a school, were outgrowing their space. Another $12,000 was needed to finish the house of worship.

Back in Damascus, at the end of his first sermon, he shared his impression with the congregation.

On Tuesday, there was a light knock on his office door: one woman wanted to give $12,000 from a recent settlement to build the Zambian church's roof. A few months earlier, she hadn't known where money would come from for milk, and the Damascus church had helped her get by. She wanted to pass on the kindness.

"I knew that that was what I was supposed to do," the woman told Butler. She delivered the check at the end of February.

"I was amazed that God paid for and did that ministry," Butler said. The thought of doing it again "is staggering." But, he continued, if he gets the impression that he's supposed to go back, he will.

Learn more about Sons of Thunder at www.sons-of-thunder.org .