Rooted & Rising: Growth from the Greenhouse
Welcome to the Greenhouse! Join Denise each week as she has conversations with women who have experienced God’s power in their lives. We'll cover everything from relationships and parenting to running a business and building up our communities. We hope these stories inspire and enable you to make an impact in your world.
We at E's Greenhouse equip, encourage, and enable God’s Daughters to embrace their true identity as mighty women in the earth. We offer a variety of resources to help you achieve your goals, including online courses, videos, training manuals, blog posts, live video chats, podcasts & coaching groups. Our team of experienced mentors are here to guide you every step of the way, and we're committed to helping you achieve your full potential. Join us today and take your story to the next level!
Rooted & Rising: Growth from the Greenhouse
About How Vision Becomes A Village
What does it take to turn staggering need into steady hope? We sit down with Mary Thrasher to trace a twenty-year arc of faithful work in Uganda: from a pastor’s vision to cottages with house moms, from impromptu classes to a school that welcomes village children, from a single shelf of books to libraries that unlock language, learning, and lift. Along the way, 8,000-plus children have been fed, taught, mentored, and launched into lives that ripple outward. Nurses stepping toward medicine, teachers returning to the campus that raised them, engineers and civil leaders in training, and one young man selected to pursue the bar after law school.
The heartbeat here is practical faith. When a business closed, prayer led to a bookstore that became a mission field, while a teaching job opened the door to steady provision. When cancer struck, children gathered in all-night prayer, and recovery followed. When budgets tightened, unexpected gifts appeared at the exact moment of need. None of it is tidy, all of it is real. We talk candidly about the current budget gap, how cottages and schools are sustained, and why consistent support—paired with prayer—keeps food on plates, teachers in classrooms, and futures on track.
We also shine a light on girls rising in hard places: students who discover their worth, survivors who find their voice, and a poet whose lines carry both grief and grit. Education and spiritual formation move together here, shaping whole people who love their country and are ready to serve it. If you’ve been asking how to find purpose, we share a simple path, love God fully, act where you are, and trust that alignment grows over time. If you’ve wondered whether small offerings matter, listen to how a library card, a house mom’s hug, or a scholarship seat can change a life.
Join us to be encouraged, challenged, and invited into a story where faith meets logistics and children become leaders. If this moved you, share it with a friend, subscribe for the February Uganda series, and leave a review so more people can find these stories and take part.
And this is Mary Thrasher. And uh she's my friend, but she is also Mighty. She is um a world changer, literally, and we'll talk a little bit about that. Mary, introduce yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm Mary Thrasher, currently retired, but my husband and I are involved in ministry in Uganda, Africa, with uh Luanda Children's Home through Greece International Children's Foundation. We work over there training the teachers and working with the orphans, and there's been about 300 orphans that have gone through Luanda. And it's been life-changing for us to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_00:And just to see, they've gone through and then they've gone on, and they're coming back, and they're becoming part of the world over there to change the world because of God's goodness in that land. And we just recently got to see pastor.
SPEAKER_01:They are the pastor of the Presbyterian Church there, and it was Aida that God gave the vision of a children's home to care for the orphans. There's over eight million orphans in Uganda. Okay, stop right there.
SPEAKER_00:Eight million, y'all. Eight million children. This is broke this broke my heart when I was uh I I've known these people for a while, but I hadn't heard this whole story. And it just broke my heart that that many babies don't have somebody to hug them to make sure they have enough to eat or a place to cover them in the rain because there's rainy seasons and cold, and just like that was just really real to me. I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but oh my gosh, my children are were so blessed, and we were we were we were poor, we were poor.
SPEAKER_01:But my kids always had enough, yeah, but these babies don't have anything, they live in fear, and anyway, eight million and and then at any one given time, this Grace Grace International Children's Foundation are caring for 8200 because there's about 20 plus that are in boarding school and secondary school and or trade school university. So at Lawland, there's eight cottages with 10 children in a cottage with a house mom.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm praying, we're praying. Lee and I are praying, and you're praying, and so many other people are praying that God would just I mean, He's given us a vision that there need to be more homes there, uh, and that means more workers and a bigger budget. And right now the budget is in trouble because you know, not everybody, everybody sees things right around them that they want to give to. I am the same way. But across the world, there is horror, and we can make a difference. These kids are growing up, becoming mighty men and women that love the Lord and are changing their country. And so when you are part of something like that, it makes a difference. It makes me want to go and live there and build and um help those kids to have hope where there is no hope.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, you know, yes, and I like what you said because about uh changing the world, because one of the things with Grace at the very beginning, 20 years ago, so it's been a lot of years now. It's really in year 21, they said we want to raise the next generation and the next generation be godly men and women who are making the decisions. And so we have some that are in the medical field that are still in school pursuing, you know, they started as a nurse and then beginning to move forward because that wasn't their goal. Their goal of dream I gave them was to be a doctor, but they need to work and support themselves. So they're being a nurse for a while. Yes, and we have some that are now teachers and coming back to Lawanda to teach at the school festival. And that is neat, and then some that are becoming librarians at schools, which then those are partnering with us in the other our nonprofit books of the beginning that builds libraries over there.
SPEAKER_00:So that's what I had heard about in the beginning was like they build libraries, and you know, I'm a big book hound. I love to read. I can't imagine somebody not getting to read. And so that was what I always heard. Mike builds libraries. I don't really understand, and you know, it's that's I'm so glad we're having this conversation today because it took me years really to understand and and let it seep into my spirit what is happening across the world that we can make such a difference in. And so um, I'm excited about that.
SPEAKER_01:So we have engineers and civil engineers that are in school right now because study the law and the law is our first one, John Matoshi.
SPEAKER_00:Uh so if you hear John Matoshi one day being the leader of that country, you're gonna know that that man is a man of God. I like that. When he was young, he would introduce himself.
SPEAKER_01:I'm John Matoshi, and I'm gonna be the Uganda president one day. Praise God! And he from very young, and so he yes, he we were there in July. God just planted us right, and he graduated from law school, and so we were there. That's okay, and then he had to wait, they have to wait for the bar exam, and so in approval for the an approval. So there were they they were going to accept 500, 500, because they didn't have the bar exam last year, so they have two years of men and women waiting to take the bar, and so he um uh applied and has been selected to be one of the 500. And so now he is going to be in school for another year taking the class for the bar.
SPEAKER_00:Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01:So a year from now he'll continue to take the bar.
SPEAKER_00:You know, we we've been saying this kind of lightly, but I I want it like God gave him a vision for this, God gave him a vision for this, God gave me the vision for this podcast, God gave them the vision for their ministry. God gives visions and dreams to his children still today. So if you're in a place where you're like, well, I don't even know what my purpose is, first of all, let me remind you that he called you for purpose. Yeah, he knit you together in your mother's womb. And he sent you into this earth to be uh to show his love, to be light in darkness. And if you want to know your purpose, I want you to uh ask God to teach you to love him with all your heart. And if you love him with all of your heart, you will not have a problem with your purpose. You will see everywhere. And he will give you visions and dreams, and and it won't be like overnight. I I was telling Mary, like it was years ago that God put in my heart to teach businesses about God in the center of your business and how we're missionaries in the business field. Um, it's years, 20 years since this vision that they became a part of to someone else. I was in Ida's vision, and then you had the vision to come alongside Ida.
SPEAKER_01:Um they didn't have a school, they were teaching the kids just in groups in the big room, and there came, you know, um, the vision for we need to build a school. Yeah, and the school needs to not only have Lawanda children, but the village community children so they can go to school because there wasn't a school out there.
SPEAKER_00:And I love that, and I love the fact that you know, in a country where it's hard for women because of all of the the uh bond, there's bondage, there's all kinds of stuff. Um in a country like that, women are going to school. Young girls are going to school and they are learning about what God thinks of them, and it's strengthening them. And if they learn to pray early, if they do, they're gonna be mighty in that land, and those guys better watch out.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I had breast cancer, and uh during breast during my chemo and radiation, the orphans over there at that time were holding all night vigils, and they would pray all night for me. And the little village church, Bulaleo behind the orphan, the orphanage, where they go to church, they would hold all night prayer meetings. And I can't even imagine praying past two. That's what's just stupid.
SPEAKER_00:It convinced me like I want to see God leave in something. I need to be on my knees. Um you know I think that, but prayer is the best thing we can do. Not the, oh, at least I could pray. No.
SPEAKER_01:You know, and and speaking of that, in both of our lives and in the life of Luanda and the children, prayer has been very integral because when Mike and I moved to uh here to San Marcos, it was because of uh nothing that we had to do with the family business that Mike was in. But we had to, it closed and we had to have a new career. And it was praying. It was going and driving one spring break all around Texas with the map and saying, Okay, God, is this the city you want me to be in? Is this the city? And we felt the calling to open a Christian bookstore, knew nothing about it, but that's what Mike really You had the Christian bookstore appear in.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, wait, okay.
SPEAKER_01:There was one here in town that I the lady who owned the one here in town, Lee, was good friends with Mike's mom and dad.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh, what's it?
SPEAKER_01:They said you need to get a hold of Lee because Lee will let you know about San Marcus because we were coming to San Marcus to check it out. And so we called Lee, and Lee said, Well, I think the lady in San Marcus might want to sell house. Oh my goodness, yeah, that's great. Oh gosh. So yes, and so we got there and uh uh knew nothing about what we were doing, but we started in praying, and I needed to a job, so started praying, and I was had my teaching degree, and so went to the superintendent and assistant soup who were believers and and so said, Hey, God's called us here, but I need a job, you know, and to support us while we're making the business transition. And they said, Well, we don't have anything right now in your career, but in your field, but if you'll take this long-term sub, and then there probably will be one. So that was just a faith. Yeah, stepping out, yeah. Probably will be one. I don't know. Maybe promise it.
SPEAKER_00:You know, we had a store downtown too, and that is exactly what happened to me with Wimberly. You know, I they just said we have this one class. Could you just come in and teach that class? And I was like, Okay, yeah, we need the money. Yeah, because retail in small towns doesn't make a lot of money. I but it's a gift because you get to know everybody in town, and so really, if you think of your life as um a mission and like as a person when God's guide guiding you, he has other reasons for you being busy.
SPEAKER_01:And Mike and I really felt like, and for Mike, that his mission field was the store, and mine then was the school. Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to get. Yes, that was so yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because Lee was the same way he he he didn't even want to work in the store at first, and then he loved it so much, and I would go teach, and then it became a full-time job with them. So when when we finally closed the store.
SPEAKER_01:So anyway, um but all along the way we prayed, and I could remember the first year there was a couple of times where there was not money to pay the bills, and we were praying, and we went to church one Sunday, and the secretary told Mike, said you need to come see me tomorrow. Um, and so Mike said, Okay, and he was just thinking about they might need something, and someone had given my money to the church secretary to give us, and it was exactly the amount that we needed.
SPEAKER_00:Uh I know that it was from that point. So, okay, so this whole broadcast is for somebody out there that is thinking there's no way I'm too in debt, or I can't even pay my electric bill or whatever it is. And I'm gonna tell you from both of our experiences, we have seen God move hugely to pay off huge debt and to remove obstacles out of our way. You right now, you just tell the Lord, He's so close to you, he's right there. Uh, just tell him you want to know him that you want to know how to love him, that you need his help right now. And I'm telling you, he's gonna help you because he's he's not a respecter of like this daughter and that daughter over you. He loves you with this love that you you can't even comprehend because I still can't even comprehend it. He's been loving me all these years, right? I know, and those babies over there, he loves them.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes, he loves them so much, and there's so much joy uh in those children because they have been rescued and redeemed. Yes, and for purpose. Yeah. Um story of one girl, and I won't tell you the whole story, I can't, but she she for a year uh hid in the cornfields in child trafficking and being abused, and she then tried to protect her two younger brothers.
SPEAKER_00:And she's one of the ones that's grown up now that's she's a tailor. She doesn't marry. Is she the one that wrote the poem? Well, we're we're gonna have to have that poem on here sometime. And I'd like to do her. So we have a plan, y'all, maybe in February, where um I'm gonna give you a glimpse of Uganda. We're gonna do some podcasts from there. And uh this one girl wrote, she's an amazing poet, which you know I write poetry. I don't know about an amazing poet, but you know, I write poetry, and so she just touched my heart. She broke my heart with this poem. So we'll show that many times, and then we're gonna uh another girl that's over there.
SPEAKER_01:Um and Grace, maybe Grace.
SPEAKER_00:Grace, and then I and Ivan, and Irene, and Irene. So we've got a whole month in February, and the significance of that is it's my birthday. I think God has a plan. He has a plan for my birthday month, you know. So uh that I can share with you guys a little bit more about these beautiful children and and what God's changing in the world because of them. So if you're sitting out there and you're another person just thinking the world's horrible and it's no, look, it has been horrible. It's been a lot worse for many countries forever. Yeah, we don't even know what horrible is. But God has always, through it all, been God. He has never wanted this for his kids, he has never wanted this. We have an enemy, and his name is Satan, and we don't put up with him. If you know the Lord, we do not have to put up with him. So I want you to hear our voices today saying to you, God has a plan for you, and he'll need every need for us. Yeah, okay, so we haven't talked about hardly anything of our lives together. And you will come back. No. And she's gonna come back and we're gonna hear about her beginnings because how did God take this woman from where she was to this place that's making such a difference? Because He can do the same for you. Right now, if you have a message for younger girls or any girls that are out there, that you know that there's something you'd like them to know that you wish you'd known sooner.
SPEAKER_01:Probably I wish I would have known sooner that, and and really walked in believing that God does love me and that he provides for me and he knows my heart. He is the keeper of my soul, and he hears my desires. And if I am walking with him, my desires become in line with his desires. And I wish someone told me about that when I was in college or even in high school. And it wasn't until I guess when Mike and I moved here really in 90 that we started, you know, and I personally started realizing just yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That he could do anything.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that he could do anything.
SPEAKER_00:So they're y'all facing kind of a uh you have a big budget uh deficit right now and you've gone up for the children's homes. Yes. I'm praying by the end of the year that big budget deficit is just gonna be removed. Exactly. Maybe more than you well, not even maybe the word says more pressed down running over more than we can ask or imagine. And I know that individually in our lives, we're already so blessed living in the United States of America, cool. We uh we have way we already have pressed down running over, but when we need, we can tell you when we've needed, he has given it. And that's how I always know it's him too, is it's pressed down running over more than we can ask or imagine. Yes, this is what he does, and this is what I want your hope on, because it makes your life full of joy, unspeakable, and peace that really does pass all understanding.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and you know, if you are a mother and you have children at home and your husband is working and you have financial difficulties, you know, God does equip us with help and to help in the home.
SPEAKER_00:But yes, and not have to sacrifice your kids. That's one of our goals that we want to teach uh on. But but we'll pray for you right now. Let's just pray for you right now for the Father God. I just lift up your name, the name of Jesus, Holy Spirit. We we we ask that. That you would just infuse all of our wives that are watching today with power and love and a sound mind because I know that that's your purpose in this service for us. Father, I just thank you that these women who are struggling right now and uh torn between taking care of children and being able to do something to make a living. Um, Father, you can make that easy in their lives. You can open doors that no man can shut, and you can close the doors that are the temptations that are just a waste of time and energy. And so we pray for that right now, for those women that are seeking you, that they find you as they seek you with all their heart. And Father, that you restore to them the joy that is this joy of their salvation in Jesus. And we're just praying for this period of um Advent, uh, that we really realize the significance of this season, uh, the time that you're giving us to reflect on our own selves, to be convicted of things, but not to carry them as uh hard things, but just to lay them down uh before you and let you redeem them, Father. And I just pray for all of that in Jesus' name. You have anything to add? Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Oh Lord, I just feel right now that there's um some mothers who have children and they're homeschooling and they're taking care of the house, and yet you have given them a skill and a talent that they stepped away from to raise their children and to teach their children. Father, I just want to encourage them that they are where they're supposed to be. And Father, I just pray that you will show them how they can plan their days to where they're not wasting moments, but they're empowering their children each and every moment to grow up to be strong young men and women of faith. Yes, and that they see that you are you have walked with their parents along this journey, and that they're not doing without, they're just they're blossoming within. Yes. And Father, I pray that if they're if they have a talent and there is a need and they can do it while they're at home, they're in the house, and supplement a little bit of their income, that they will know that God gave them that talent. I thank you, Father. And that talent has been nurtured and bloomed and grown so for such a time as this. Thank you, Lord. That they can help for this time. It may not be forever, but for this time that they can do that. Thank you. And Father, I I pray that you be with the young mothers that uh I meet and encounter weekly, that they just um that there are others at home like them that feel like, you know, am I doing what God wants? And am I? Because I'm home with these children and I'm teaching them. And Father, we want to say, we want you to say to them in their heart right now, you are.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, this is the most important part. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father, for teaching us that too. Yes, so good.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, thank you, Father. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Chris, in Jesus' name.
