Open Road Global: The Power of Yes
Photos and Words By: Gabriel Richardson
Video By: Chase Viken
Let Known | 2026
(Learn more about Open Road Global HERE)
What would it look like to live a life that’s actually available to God?
For Sarah and Anson Overbey, that question didn’t lead to a single decision. It shaped their way of living.
Today, they are the founders of Open Road Global, a nonprofit working across Mexico and Malawi, focused on community development, vocational training, and long-term partnership with local leaders. Their work includes supporting women rebuilding their lives after trafficking, helping launch small businesses, and developing community-led programs like vocational training centers and gathering spaces that now serve thousands.
But none of it started as a plan. It started with a heart posture and a yes.
Sarah and Anson live in Southern California with their four children. Their family includes 16-year-old twins, Koda and Catalina, and their youngest twin daughters, Praise and Promise, whom they adopted from Malawi.
Their life doesn’t follow a predictable rhythm. Seasons at home are often followed by months spent abroad. Their children, being homeschooled, have grown up inside that movement, learning to navigate different cultures while witnessing firsthand what it looks like to live a life shaped by faith, risk, and relationship.
From the outside, it might seem unconventional. For them, it has always been about intention.
Availability sits at the center of it all.
Not as convenience, but as a way of holding life loosely. They choose not to fill every space or second, but to leave room for interruption, for people, and for the moments that don’t fit neatly into a plan.
“We wanted to live in a way where if God opened a door, we could walk through it,” Sarah says.
One door opened in Mexico. In 2017, the Overbey’s moved across the border with a desire to come alongside people already doing meaningful work. They began by supporting an orphanage, but quickly realized that many of the children there still had families. Mothers. Relatives. Stories shaped more by poverty than abandonment. One of those stories belonged to a woman raising six children while working in prostitution, not out of choice, but out of necessity. Instead of offering a solution, Sarah asked a question:
“If you could do anything, what would it be?”
The woman didn’t hesitate. She wanted to open a secondhand clothing store.
So they started there. They collected clothes from friends, carried them across the border, and helped her open a small storefront. There was no formal structure, no large funding base. Just consistency, trust, and a willingness to walk with her as she built something of her own. Over time, the store became sustainable. She learned how to source inventory independently and began providing for her family in a new way. That experience revealed that what people often need most is not rescue, but opportunity. Not control, but dignity. A partnership that allows something to grow from within.
That understanding became the foundation of Open Road Global.
Their connection to Malawi came through family after their time in Mexico. Sarah’s brother and sister-in-law had adopted children from a village there, creating a relationship with the community. In early 2023, after a cyclone devastated the region, destroying homes and wiping out crops just before harvest, Sarah traveled with her brother to help rebuild.
On her first day, she met two-month-old twin girls whose mother had died during childbirth. The twins’ names were Praise and Promise.
For Sarah, the moment was deeply personal. Years earlier, she had faced life-threatening complications while giving birth to her own twins. She survived because she had access to medical care. Standing in Malawi, she was confronted with the same situation unfolding differently.
Regarding the mother, she says, “I saw myself in her. The only difference was where we were born.”
What began as a moment of connection became a relationship. Over time, through continued presence in the community and growing trust, that relationship led to adoption. Praise and Promise became part of their family.
Their names carried meaning long before the Overbeys entered the story. In Malawian tradition, children are named based on what is being spoken or prayed over their lives. After their mother passed, their grandmother named them Praise and Promise. Sarah and Anson later gave them middle names: Harvest and Flourish.
Alongside those names, they carry another identity. In their Malawian community, their family name means “ambassador.” Sarah and Anson described it as a word that holds a hope that their lives would bridge worlds, that they would grow up understanding both where they come from and how they can give back to it. Raised in Southern California while remaining deeply connected to Malawi, their story as ambassadors is still unfolding.
Around the same time of the adoption, the work in Malawi began to take shape in a more structured way. What started as a response to immediate need grew into a long-term vision for community development. Together with local leaders, they helped establish a community center in the village.
It was not built from a predetermined model. It came through listening, asking questions, and creating space for local vision to lead. The response from the community was immediate. Children began gathering for Bible clubs. Families came for medical outreach. Elderly men and women found a place for connection and care. Vocational programs expanded to include sewing, welding, and computer training. Today, thousands of people move through the center each month.
Lucius, Local Leader (photo provided by Sarah Overbey)
What makes it significant is not just what is happening, but who is leading it locally. Lucius, who only completed school through third grade, now oversees key initiatives with confidence. Norman, who was the Overbey’s shopping cart attendant at the grocery store for 6 months, is now a main leader for youth and kids tutoring programs, teaching kids weekly about the Lord. These local leaders have become anchors within their community, creating spaces for others to grow.
That shift required humility.
“We’ve had to unlearn a lot,” Sarah says. “There were times we came in with ideas that people agreed with, not because they were right, but because we had influence.”
Now, their approach looks different. They create space for honest feedback, welcome disagreement, and measure success not by control, but by how much ownership rests in the hands of the community itself. Their life in California reflects the same posture.
In Encinitas, they started the Redemptive Market, a small storefront that connects their global work to their local community. The shop carries products made by artisans in Mexico and Malawi, with proceeds supporting ongoing projects abroad. The space has become a place where conversations unfold naturally, where people feel seen, and where moments of prayer, encouragement, and connection happen in the middle of ordinary interactions. The same posture of availability and openness that shaped their work overseas has found its way into a small shop along the coast.
The Overbeys’ story has also intersected with the early days of Let Known.
Before Let Known received its 501(c)(3) status, Open Road Global served as a fiscal partner, creating the space for the work to begin. It was a practical role, but it reflected something deeper about how they live. Watching Sarah and Anson has helped shape the vision behind Let Known, not by defining it, but by revealing something essential.
Meaningful impact does not begin with scale. It begins with obedience.
Their story has reinforced Let Known’s direction of paying attention to the lives that often go unnoticed, and of telling stories that reflect what God is already doing through ordinary people who are willing to respond.
Their journey has been built through a series of decisions, each one requiring trust without full clarity.
A move across the border.
A simple ask to a mother of six.
A six-month trip to Malawi.
A relationship that led to adoption.
A decision to step back so others could lead.
Each step carried weight. Each one required letting go of control and moving forward without guarantees. The word yes may sound simple, but in their story it has meant risk, misunderstanding, and choosing a path that doesn’t always make sense from the outside.
And yet, it has also led to a life shaped by something deeper than certainty. A life rooted in relationship, availability, and trust.
For those looking in, their story might feel extraordinary. For them, it has simply been the result of staying open, paying attention, and responding when the moment comes. Because sometimes, the difference between the life you have and the life you’re being invited into
is one word.
Yes.
