Sent to Rwanda

DuHope because There is always hope in Jesus View this email in your browser Hey Friends! I'm so excited to share that as of Friday morning Rwanda time, we are at 32% of our goal. God is so good! This weekend would you be willing to go to your churches, small groups, cell groups, community groups, mission teams and whoever else you will see this weekend and share our need of $6800 left to launch this new ministry? We have nicknamed this project "DuHope", helping young women get out of sex work and prostitution and finding hope. Thank you! jamie Thursday morning, I saw this young woman cross my path as I was headed for work. I don't know her name, but her walk and clothing spoke volumes to me. The Rwandan culture is very conservative and this young woman's skirt was way above her knees. She had her hands in her back pocket and a sucker in her mouth. She almost strutted as she walked. It was 7:15am. My assumption is that she had j...

O my goodness. I’m laying awake tonight so excited as we are launching this fundraising website  and a new twist on our ministry. This is a story about God being God. There is no way in this small message I can tell you the full story, so know there are years of evidence that God has been moving things into place and then He opened the door and said, “Jamie, I want to show you something.” Okay, that was Moses, our youth minister who verbally said it, but God inspired him. Just a few short weeks ago I was shown an alley where women sell sex. I knew it happened, I knew it was there, but I hadn’t ever seen it with my own eyes. We talked to one young woman who said that if she had ANY other option in life, she would not be a prostitute.  Jamie, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Then feed my lambs. Fast forward a few weeks to having two Rwandan social workers say, “I want to help!” A best buddy who said, “I’m in!” An Australian social worker who h...

I believe there are two things (among many), but two specific things that the enemy has used to paralyze me as a Christian: fear and safety. Recently at our Bible study, one of the ladies, Sylvia, was facilitating our discussion and she wanted to have a video ready that she could show.   I pulled up this video of an interview with a man who had lost two of his brothers in the February beheadings. The interview started and the brother began with saying how he was thanking ISIS because they didn’t cut off the part of the video when his brothers and 19 others were calling out to the name of Jesus before they were beheaded. He was thanking ISIS? Anger took over my mind and my heart. If someone were to kill my family like that, I did not know how I could possibly be thankful about anything regarding the people who did that. Anger was all I could see. Then the interviewer asked the brother about their mother. He wanted to know how his mother would react if she saw some o...

A couple of weeks before Easter, our Ladies Bible study (following the IF: Equip online daily Bible reading) began a study of the days leading up to Jesus death, His death and resurrection. It started with Jesus’ last supper with His disciples and the first communion supper. Immediately, I started reflecting on communion and then started reading about Passover. My limited knowledge of Passover consisted of assisting in a Vacation Bible School center about Passover. It was a while back, so I remember eating lamb and spray-painting the doorpost to look like the lamb’s blood for the passing over of the angel of death. I have a funny personality quirk, when I start looking into something I obsess over it. I want to read everything I can find and share with everyone what I’m learning. It’s a thing, get used to it. I was fixed on Passover. I began to read about Christians who have an adapted Passover meal, which includes the fulfillment of Christ. Then, I found out that one of my goo...

I wish I would’ve had a recorder out for the discussion I was a part of on April 7, 2015. My housemates--Janet and Sandra--and I decided to have a dinner accompanied with reflection and prayer for the memorial of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis where 1 million people were killed in 100 days. One of the girls from Duhu 2 is our neighbor and attends church with us. She’s been spending time with us on her break from university holiday, so it seemed natural to invite her to this dinner. She was the only Rwandan and I had a mix of emotions with her attendance. I wanted her there, because she is becoming a dear friend, but I was anxious in not knowing if something we would do or say might offend or hurt our friend. During dinner, I was nervous thinking how if I had just come from a solemn event, I wouldn’t want to attend something with people laughing and being loud. We ate and then Janet began to share that God had put Isaiah 61 on her heart as a message for Rwanda. We went around ...

Last year, I was on a small break from my life. I had taken an unplanned trip to the US for a little R&R…Ok, let me be honest, I was bonkers. I was a little crazy and needed to get my head back on straight. Here’s the short of it, I had tried to do too much in Rwanda on my own strength. Christine Caine said at this year’s IF Gathering, “If you put yourself up there, you have to keep yourself there.” And man, I was trying, but I was tired. I was worn out, I was done. In February 2014, I was at my parent’s home, sitting in the recliner, in my OU hoodie, under my OU blanket (just trying to paint a picture for you). Someone had posted something somewhere about something called IF: . I clicked on the link and it took me to this live feed out of Austin, TX and this small blonde lady said something about that IF God is real, then we ought to start living like it. It caught my attention, what kind of women’s conference starts with saying IF God is real… I mean, they know He’s real, duh....

One evening at Bible study, one of the ladies pointed out a pretty good-sized group of predominately little boys who come to church most Sundays. Many have very little English, but they keep coming to our English-speaking church. We decided as a group to come early one Sunday to…”Meet the kids”. We showed up an hour before services started and called the handful who were running around over to us. They certainly thought they were in trouble, so we quickly pulled out the cookies and started talking to them. All the non-Kinyarwanda speaking people had a ministry partner to help them translate. There were a lot of assumptions I had made about these kids—I figured they were mostly street kids with no parents and were there just to steal from people at church. I was talking with one of the shyer ones and had my ministry partner ask him why he came to church. He told her in Kinyarwanda that he comes because he wants to go to Heaven. Shame on me! I’m not sure what he learned, but I certainl...