Category Archives: Missions

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Advocacy Group, Concerned Christians Host Prayer Vigil for Boko Haram Captive Leah Sharibu TODAY On Her 17th Birthday…

Hello World,

It was six years ago this month that I first mentioned on this blog that Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram stole more than 200 Christian and Muslim Nigerian girls  in the middle of the night from their boarding school in Chibok, Nigeria.

Below is a 2020 update about what has happened to these girls from the grio.com:

Six years later, 164 have been returned or accounted for. Many of them struggle to readjust as some have been ostracized for wearing the unearned cloak of shame that many victims have to dress themselves in. We can thank God for those who, over the last few years, have either escaped or negotiated themselves out of bondage, however, there are still 112 unaccounted young women, still ransomed, sold into slavery, forced into marriage and or dead.

Read the rest of the article Bring Back Our Girls: 6 Years Later, And People Still Don’t Care by Nicole Duncan-Smith, a member of Bring Back Our Girls, USA, HERE.

In 2018,  Leah Sharibu, then 14, was kidnapped by Boko Haram along with 109 of her female Dapchi schoolmates. In the days following, five of the girls died in captivity, and 104 were released on March 20, 2018. Leah alone was kept because she refused to renounce her faith in Jesus Christ and convert to Islam, as demanded by her captors. TODAY, as it is her 17th birthday, a prayer vigil is being held to pray for release. Below are the details.

The  International Committee on Nigeria (ICON), a coalition partner of Save the Persecuted Christians, will host the online prayer vigil at 4 p.m. Here is the link to join: standwithnigeria.org. 

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

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Three Gifts Guaranteed to Give You Christmas Cheer!!!

Hello World, christmas-cheer-grinch

I’ve said this before, but I will say it again: Christmas is supposed to be “the most wonderful time of the year!” So if your eyes aren’t twinkling like they are Christmas lights, if jingle bells aren’t attached to your ankles or if you are not burping up eggnog, you obviously don’t possess that sometimes elusive Christmas cheer…

I know that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but can I be honest? Sometimes even knowing that isn’t enough to dredge up that Christmas cheer that everyone is supposed to be cloaked in like an expensive heavy coat that you only wear on special occasions….

Still despite the manufactured Christmas cheer that retailers will lead you to believe can only be bought, I have discovered there are three gifts, not 12, not enough for your whole family or all your network, simply three that will stoke the furnace of genuine Christmas cheer within you…

wise menI don’t know if it is the example of the three Wise Men or because God is the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit or at the suggestion of my favorite author Catherine Marshall, but in my 20s, I decided that in addition to the gifts I would give to my friends and family, I would also give three gifts to Jesus…

Now, how does one go about giving gifts to Jesus? Although I feel His presence with me, I have never seen nor touched Him physically…So how was I supposed to do that? I was led to these three verses below as I came up with a way to give three gifts to Jesus…

 

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” Acts 20:35

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:30

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matthew 6:3-4

 So what do these three verses mean?

1. I was give without expectation of receiving anything back.

2. I was to give to people and or organizations that served “the least of these.”

3. I was to give in secret and not tell a soul.

I have never revealed what I have done before, but since I am writing a post about this, let me share some of the gifts I have given over the years as a testimony to how God has blessed me with authentic Christmas cheer as a result….

There was once a homeless man that I saw every day as I walked from one location to another in downtown Atlanta…All of the store owners on the street were kind to him, and I could see why…He was kind and mannerly and even funny sometimes…I don’t don’t why he was homeless, but he seemed content to live on the street…I thought that since he seemed like he wanted to be on the street, I could at least help keep him warm…I tried to figure out what what size pants the man wore and bought him a pair of jeans (he always had on jeans) and a blanket…When I handed him the wrapped up gift, he seemed not to know what I was handing to him until I explained it was a Christmas gift…Then he smiled…That simple smile made me glow on the inside…

Another year, I decided to volunteer one Saturday at My Sister’s House at the Atlanta Mission…I helped hand out supplies to the women and children that were staying at the shelter…At that particular time in my life, I pretty much hated my job and the fact that I was too poor to move out of my parents’ house…But spending just one Saturday at the shelter showed how much I had to be grateful for…My mom has always told me if you want to feel better, forget about yourself…

black dollAnd finally another one of my secret three gifts was the doll I gave to a Christmas toy drive one year…although I am not a girly girl, I have always LOVED dolls…I wanted a new doll every Christmas for years and years…in fact, I used to worry that as a fifth grader, someone at school would find out I still played with dolls and I would be teased…So one year I decided to give the prettiest, most girly, luxurious hair-having doll I could find and afford to a toy drive…I don’t know what girl was the recipient of that doll, but if I have learned anything about God, I know that “every good and perfect gift” comes from Him…I’m sure that the girl who received that doll was the very girl that wished for and deserved that gift…

Although Christmas is less than a week away, there is still time to give (and get) Christmas cheer…

Any thoughts?

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Lil Wayne Almost Become a Christian Rapper & Other Reasons Why Christians Should Never Stop Evangelizing…

lil-wayne-book

Hello World,

I recently read an article about Lil Wayne’s new book Gone ‘Til November: A Journal of Rikers Island in which the prolific rapper chronicles the eight months he spent in jail in 2010 as a result of gun charges. According to the USA Today article “Seven Things We Learned from Lil Wayne’s ‘Gone ‘Til November,'”

4. He considered turning to Christian rap… briefly. 

In addition to a landslide of fan mail, Wayne also received a compelling letter from a church, urging him to use his artistry to spread the gospel. And for a moment, Wayne considered it. “I would truly have the power of having pop culture turn to God,” he wrote. “I would have straight killers in church every Sunday.”

But later on, the rapper said he had an epiphany that he was where he was supposed to be in his artistic journey — at least for the moment.

Although, Lil Wayne ultimately decided not to become a Christian rapper, I applaud the church that 1. paid enough attention to pop culture to know that Lil Wayne was in jail (0r even who he is) 2. took his salvation seriously enough to reach out him at what probably was his lowest point…And although he may not have turned his life over to God at this point, a seed was obviously planted and God can make it bloom in His own time…

It was a joyous occasion in the A when Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane who had served three years in an Indiana federal penitentiary was released earlier this year…I wonder if any church or any individual Christian thought to reach out to him for Christ when he was locked up…I certainly didn’t…

So wanna know a secret? I’m not big on evangelizing…I’ve been around Christians all of my life, and I became a Christian when I was a teenager but the evangelism piece has always scared me…I remember times when I was a kid I would go along with my father and a group from the church who would knock on doors and tell people about Jesus Christ. I enjoyed that mostly because I liked to see how other people lived, and I enjoy people watching so it was an opportunity to see people up close in their natural habitats so to speak…I think the last time I did that I was in my early 20s….but I would be hard pressed to do that now…I’m not shy about the fact that I’m a Christian but as far as saying the words, “Have you considered giving your life to Jesus Christ?” or something similar doesn’t roll off my tongue so easily…I will give you an example why…

I remember once in my early 20s, I said something like that to a girl who I met in the gym. She was a kind of popular underground singer in Atlanta but she seemed to be going through some things at the time and I told her how the Lord was working in my life. Incidentally, I told her how I would never go to this one concert venue The Tabernacle (Check out a post I wrote about The Tabernacle – Should Beyoncé and Jay Z Have Bought a Converted Church Mansion?) in the A because it used to be a church and how a place that had been dedicated to uplifting the Lord was now being desecrated….Well, the devil is busy because shortly after that conversation, I was given a free ticket to see Jill Scott, one of my favorite artists, at the Tabernacle, and you know I went…Chile, that singer just about the first person I saw up in there…my testimony on behalf of the Lord was literally shot to hell…

All of that to say, I’m not a holy rolly type of Christian…I enjoy much of the secular world, and I enjoy the Christian world too…Thank God my husband is the same way…We kick it on Saturday wherever we find ourselves and we kick it in church on every Sunday too…I remember when I was a little girl telling my parents that if every day would be Sunday in Heaven like that old gospel song “Walk Around Heaven All Day”suggests, I just want to stay here…LOL…They laughed too…I pretty much know I don’t always live up to the ideals I profess although I’m much better than I used to be…and I don’t cloister myself around Christian culture either, but that is another discussion for another day…

But despite my ability to navigate the secular and the saved worlds, every morning, I get on my knees and worship God in prayer because knowing Him is my only salvation. As the old saints say, He is my rock and my shield…And in His word, He says…

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

So even though I can be a hypocrite and I will never be the type of Christian who wants to be in church every day, I’m going to open my mouth (and not just write) and tell somebody (and they don’t have to be famous either) about Jesus sometime soon…

Any thoughts?