The History of Sonrise International

There is truth to the saying, “Hindsight is 20-20.” Our lives may not make sense to us now, but if we will persevere in trusting Jesus, one day we will see the beautiful tapestry He is making out of our lives. You might not know our story. Here is a glimpse of all that the Lord has been doing through Sonrise International:

Looking back over the last twenty-eight years both encourages and confirms to us that Jesus is directing our path. For years the way the Lord was leading us did not make sense in the natural, but  we let the peace of God umpire in our hearts (Col 3:15). After working in missions for years, on  a short term trip to Sierra Leone, Chip clearly heard the voice of the Lord telling him to return to Tulsa and begin cattle ranching. But when he tried to obey the instruction given to him, the cattle market was high and land was unattainable. It seemed like his whole world was crumbling. So, he decided to take some time out to study at ORU, where he achieved a Master of Divinity degree. By the end of three years of study, Chip knew his identity as a child of God was determined not by what he did but by what Jesus had done. He was now willing to do whatever the Lord asked of him. 

The month before he finished his studies an acquaintance he had not seen for years came up to him to let him know a message the Lord had given him for Chip: “An opportunity is coming your way, and you are not to pass it up.” Chip “shelved” it, but a month after he finished his studies, that opportunity came, and he began cattle ranching in January of 1999. 

Back in 1986 the Lord resurrected his childhood dream of being a cattle rancher to vibrant life. Some thirteen years later began the fulfillment of that dream! For the next twelve years Chip and his family developed a rather large cattle business, both in commercial cattle and purebred Angus, as well as participated in other business ventures. Missions had become a “been there, done that” thought in his mind. He would often think, “I was in ministry, left it and pursued a Masters of Divinity, in order to ‘run cows’? That is completely backwards and makes no sense!”

It remained “all backwards” until his pilot instructor and friend, Neels, introduced him to Willie Crew in 2001. Willie Crew is the founder of World Mission Centre (WMC). The Lord used Willie to again “resurrect the dead” in Chip’s life. This time it was to resurrect God’s call upon Chip to work in missions, to open up the bottleneck of laborers to the mission field, a clear word the Lord had given him back in 1990.

In 2009 that Chip was asked to oversee the rollout of LS to raise up laborers in West Africa, which became the fulfillment of a word the LORD gave to him in 1990 that the  LORD would use him to “Open up the bottleneck of laborers to the mission field.” At that time, Chip thought the LORD was referring to helping those called to missions from the USA get to the mission field, but it became apparent that the LORD was referring mainly to helping the African church raise up indigenous missionaries in West and Central Africa.

With every death in Christ, there is a RESURRECTION!

It took nineteen years for the Lord to prepare Chip to begin the work He Himself had prepared for him to do long ago (Eph. 2:10). “Through faith and patience we inherit the promises” (Heb 6:12). Ranching was also a great way to raise his children and be with the family, as they grew up.  

In 2004 Willie invited Chip and his family to come see what WMC was doing in southern Africa. Shortly after that trip, Roger Nix, Chip’s pastor at the time, asked him to help give a focus to the Believers Church (BC) mission program, which became the “Lake to Sea” project. It was a church planting project targeting mainly the Yao least reached people group in the north in two provinces of Mozambique that resulted in indigenous pastors there making disciples among them and planting churches in at least 100 unreached villages within five years’ time. This project served as a microcosm of what Chip and Kathy are now doing across the 24 countries of WACA. 

Chip was asked to oversee the rollout of WMC’s Live School (LS) to raise up laborers in West Africa in 2009. Chip initially thought the LORD was telling him to help those called to missions from the USA to get to the mission field.  Over time, it became apparent that the LORD was referring mainly to helping the African church raise up indigenous missionaries in West and Central Africa.

It was sold with “no reserve.”There was “no retreat,” and there have been “no regrets!”

In January of 2010 Chip began earnestly working again in the field of missions. Believing he had heard from the Lord, in July of 2011 the Carroll’s  “sold the farm,” literally, at auction. Having no confidence that he could pull this off in his own strength, Chip cried out to the Lord telling him that the only way he could sell the ranch, which was a promise from God He had fulfilled to him, was if He would give him the grace to do so. He did just that through directing him to read the testimony of William Borden. In the back of his Bible over the course of his Christian life, he wrote three phrases: 1) No reserves, 2) No retreat, and 3) No regrets. These words communicated the GRACE Chip needed to obey the word of the Lord. 

He sold the ranch at absolute auction (no reserve). From the time they decided to sell until the auction, there was “no retreat.” Chip’s testimony is that he supernaturally did not have a care in the world during this time frame. He did not question the rationale selling the fulfillment of what the Lord had promised him back in 1986! He did not battle any double-mindedness. He had come to know Jesus. It no longer mattered what other people thought. Being yoked to Jesus may be trying, but it is not difficult (Mat 11:28-30). “His grace empowered us to ‘go for it,’ …to go for Him!”  It was years later, when driving from Liberia to the heart of Sierra Leone in a 4WD Land Cruiser that the Holy Spirit spoke in Chip’s heart, “You gave up your cattle leases and sold your 1,400 acre ranch, and I’ve given you 24 countries to play in.” You cannot out-give God! To this day, Chip has “NO REGRETS!” BY THE GRACE OF GOD Sonrise International is now working with volunteer indigenous teams in the 24 countries of WACA!

Without a doubt, from beginning to end, the Carroll’s know that the amazing work that is being done across WACA through Sonrise International is the LORD’s doing. We are here but for a breath, but He will continue doing His good work through others who trust Him when we are long gone. When we live lives of surrendered active faith, He does the most amazing things! Dare to trust Him; dare to obey His voice! 

Nigeria was the first WACA nation to which Chip went, because Kevin Stitt, now the governor of Oklahoma, introduced Chip to a Nigerian friend, Samuel. He has a ministry in Nigeria to the unreached in the rural areas, and said, “I want to start the first ten Live Schools.” So, in January of 2010, Chip and Eddie, a fellow colleague, went to Ilorin, Nigeria and trained the facilitators to begin the first ten LS’s of WACA. Today, some of those schools are still operational, and some of the graduates of those first schools are on our Nigerian team.

At the start, LS was not in French, limiting rollout of the missionary training to the only five Anglophone countries of West Africa: Nigeria, The Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia. By March of 2014, LS was translated into French. We launched the French translation in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, right in the heart of West Africa, where we trained 160 facilitators to run 40 LS’s. From there, the LS rollout process spread from nation to nation through relationships. The result has been that many indigenous churches and mission-minded pastors across WACA use LS as a tool to train laborers for the harvest. Many disciples have been made and churches planted among the Least Reached. Jesus said, “Follow Me, and I’ll make you fishers of men.” The LORD has done and is doing amazing things! 

One of the keys to any fruit we are seeing in our lives has been to learn (and we are still learning) how to let Jesus lead and continually ask Him for grace to follow Him (Mat. 11:28-30).

Chip, Kathy and their two youngest daughters, Amy and Jessica, relocated to South Africa for five months in 2013. Their mission was to prepare some French-English bi-lingual African brothers to help rollout LS  among the nine French-speaking countries of West Africa and also train up  for some of the other regional directors of LS. This intensive three-month training was the prototype of the Leadership Development Academies (LDA) that we now hold in various countries to help build solid rollout teams across WACA. In 2022 we re-tooled the LDA training to be more focused on missions to Unengaged Unreached People Groups (UUPG) and Unreached People Groups (UPG). Our WACA country teams are still helping indigenous churches to use LS effectively by training facilitators, but with the new focus has come a new name for the training, Frontier Missions Academy (FMA). 

In 2015 Chip was also asked to take on Central Africa. He agreed and took his first trip to Chad, which is in the very heart of Africa. By now, Chip was making four to seven trips per year to West and Central Africa, approximately one month each trip.  But at the end of 2017 traveling back and forth stopped abruptly.  Chip had a brain hemorrhage in Senegal and had to be life-flighted home to Tulsa. Even though he still remembers nothing for a month of his life after the hemorrhage, he has miraculously recovered with no symptoms.

The Lord had surrounded Chip with mighty men and women. These continued to run with the vision while he recovered in the states.  To hear Chip’s testimony of the miraculous healing that took place in his body, you can go to our Youtube channel at: https://youtu.be/cWuWCH_tNz0.

Chip’s first trip back to Africa after the brain hemorrhage was in July 2018. In preparation for this trip, Chip was talking with the Lord and said, “Wouldn’t it be neat to have John Schultz (chairman of the board of World Missions Centre, who has used Farming God’s Way [FGW] in the north of Kenya with great success) to come introduce FGW to our teams?” Chip heard a distinct, “Why not?” in his spirit, and immediately called John. He said he would pray about it and called back the next day to give a resounding, “YES,” and that he would ask Grant Dryden, the FGW director (and his son-in-law), if he would come also…which he did!  This became the formal launch of FGW in WACA.  FGW is the only course that has ever been added to LS. It is a ministry in its own right. We use it as an economic development project and tool to open up the door into many Unengaged Unreached People Groups (UUPG) and the Unreached People Groups (UPG’s) in WACA. 

In every country Chip goes, someone will invariably say, “You need to translate LS into such and such a language” (the dominant dialect of the area). His normal reply is, “You come up with the money, and we will consider it.” But in Sokoto, Nigeria, when the question came, he replied, “I’ll look into it,” and immediately wondered what he had just said! God’s heart is to reach every people, no matter the cost.  The Hausa translation of LS was finally launched in July of 2021, seven years after the first seeds of it were dropped in Chip’s heart in October of 2014 (Heb 6:12-15).  Hausa is the largest Unreached People Group in the continent of Africa. Though concentrated in the northern half of Nigeria and Niger, the Hausa people dwell in more than 16 nations. There are more than 36M of them in Nigeria alone and 57% of Niger is Hausa. Additionally, it is a huge trade language spoken throughout the northern half of Nigeria. For instance, the Fula, who are cattlemen and the second largest unreached people in WACA, speak Hausa as a trade language. 

We are now testing the Hausa LS in an audio-only format with great success. Pray that this new audio-only format of LS is seen for the breakthrough it really is. Audio-only translations of LS can be done at a fraction of the cost of a video Live School. And most of the cultures in WACA are auditory.  To strengthen the churches where they tend to be the weakest is also strengthening the potential laborers who live closest to the least reached. But to do this, they must have the teaching in an intelligible language, preferably their heart language.  

God’s heart is to reach every people, no matter the cost.

With many exciting projects starting and our men racing at a greater pace than ever before, 2020 held much promise for our team. But then COVID hit. Things were already steamrolling ahead when the lockdown hit. At the time, we had two Leadership Development Academies (LDA) in session: one in Nigeria and the other in Guinea. Students had come to the trainings from 10 countries across WASCA to be equipped and join our teams. Suddenly, they were locked down, some for an additional three months beyond the three month training! Chip had to come home early from his first trip to Africa that year. He made it out on the last KLM flight out of Nigeria! But even in the chaos of it all, as they could, our teams kept moving forward. These difficulties brought on by COVID taught us how to serve more, pray more and trust God more. Like a male eagle pushes its young out of the nest requiring them to learn to fly, so our brothers and sisters in WACA in Christ took ownership of the work and have done more than we could have done ourselves! The difficulties proved to be the breeding ground for innovation. Technically, WMC began streamlining delivery methods of the schools so they could still propagate even if the borders were shut. We had no option but to delegate more and trust our brothers and sisters in Africa to do the work. It caused all of us to trust God for wisdom. We sought a way to help facilitate our colleagues in Africa the best we could. The result has been a GREATER IMPACT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD!

In 2021, things began picking back up, and now we seem to be running faster than ever…only now, our volunteer teams, having taken ownership, are reaching further and having far greater impact than we ourselves ever could have. Truly, there has been a silver lining in the COVID pandemic. 

The new methods of LS delivery the WMC came up with are “download and copy” or “live-stream” from the WMC website. Because internet bandwidth in WACA is so poor, USB flash drives and sd cards are now used, whereas before we used LS Units, which are like external hard drives. It took 10 years to get the first 1,000 LS units into WACA. In 2021, Chip took the capacity to do nearly 1,000 LS’s to WACA along with the copiers. And on his March 2022 trip, Chip took the capacity to do 1,000 more schools! The enemy tried to stop us, but in the end, things have sped up, which will result in his eventual eternal demise (Matthew 24:14)! 

Since the travel restrictions, Chip’s trips have been reduced to 2-3 trips a year at about two-week increments, but the work being done is accelerating!  Our WACA brothers and sisters are now more focused on targeting UUPG’s and UPG’s.  And we now have volunteer teams in certain nations where it is illegal to preach the Gospel. The light of the Gospel is driving out the darkness! Everyone is running with the vision of fulfilling the Great Commission! While we do not go to such places, in order to keep from jeopardizing the kingdom work there, these new delivery methods of LS and technology such as Zoom has given us the ability to even equip, empower and mobilize the underground church to reach EVERY PEOPLE in such restricted access countries! HALLELUJAH! 

This has become the very focus of everything we do at Sonrise International, reaching the unreached, teaching them truth, and training them up to go into their own tribes, cities, and villages to disciple their own people and others.

In closing, on one of Chip’s first trips with Willie to northern Mozambique to “spy out the land,” one of the tribesmen came up to him, poked his finger on his chest and said, “We don’t need another Jesus Film!  (They had seen it the year before.) We need a church!”  Chip came home from that trip with a fervor that would change the course of their lives and put Sonrise International into motion!  We are called to go into all the world and make disciples. (Matthew 28:19-20) This has become the very focus of everything we do at Sonrise International, reaching the unreached, teaching them truth, and training them up to go into their own tribes, cities, and villages to make disciples from their own people and others.  In the first ten years, almost 1,100 schools started in WACA. We estimate that about 14,000 students have gone through these schools. Since 2018 there are more who identify as Christian in the continent of Africa than any other continent of the world. Christianity is growing extremely fast there. Consequently, the need for solid training is huge! There is much work to do to fulfill the Great Commission, and the harvest is VAST!  Will you join us in reaching WACA and beyond?