Tag Archives: Ouleye Ndoye

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Ouleye Ndoye of Ministry of Motherhood Hosts Human Trafficking Online Meetup on Monday!

Hello World,

Protecting our most valuable and vulnerable population, our children, is of paramount importance to me, which is why I want to tell you about an important online meetup hosted by Ouleye Ndoye of Ministry of Motherhood. Below are her words…

Our children are now spending more time on the internet than ever before, due to COVID-19 induced “Virtual Learning” across the country. Human Traffickers use the internet to groom and recruit victims in many ways.

Join me tomorrow, Monday, September 28, 2020, at 8:00 p.m. for a candid conversation with Homeland Security Investigations’ Alia El-Sawi as we learn from her important work in victim assistance.

We will share our expertise on human trafficking prevention, rehabilitation, and talk about what each of us can do from home to keep our families, neighbors and loved ones safe.

To register, click HERE.

Below is more information about Ministry of Motherhood, which was created by Ouleye Ndoye, who, most recently, served as the inaugural Senior Human Trafficking Fellow for the city of Atlanta as part of Mayor Bottoms’ executive team.

The Ministry of Motherhood began in 2017 when I was a new mom. I was often in church and something about having a small baby on my hip and lap at all times led me to have conversations with other new and expecting moms. I realized that these conversations all had a similar thread, despite these women coming from different circumstances. They were seeking answers to similar questions. Questions I was also grappling with. We all needed a community. So, I started hosting small MoM Meetups at a nearby restaurant. Over time this group grew into a Ministry of Moms that included friends from the church and all walks of my life, stretching as far back as friends I’d known before college!

Hello! My name is Ouleye. I am a mother of two. My first birth was in a hospital and my second was at the Birth Center. These very different experiences led me to hours of research into the existing systems of maternal health in the United States and their history. In many ways, my birth experiences and the months thereafter ignited my passion for this work in maternal health.

My career has been devoted to promoting the health and human rights of women and children for over a decade. Becoming a mother deepened my passion for supporting women and their babies throughout the journey of pregnancy and the early months and years of parenting. The calling to do more for the collective wellness of mothers led me to found the MoMs Ministry at my church. Around the same time, I began my training to become a Doula with DONA International.

I am deeply committed to improving the maternal and postpartum health outcomes of women of color. We are 3-4x more likely to die due to complications around pregnancy and childbirth! I am also passionate about advocating for more humane maternity leave policies that truly support the mother-baby-bonding period.

For more information, go to ministryofmotherhood.us.

Any thoughts?

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Why Wait? Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church Pastor Marries on Valentine’s Day After NYE Proposal (VIDEO)!

warnock wedding

Hello World,

Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta’s Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the “spiritual home of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” already created headlines when he proposed to Miss Ouleye Ndoye at the end of Watch Night Service at the church last month! Well, Rev. Dr. Warnock capitalized on another romantic occasion, marrying the former Miss Ndoye during a Valentine Day’s wedding ceremony at the church last Sunday!

So I watched the video of the ceremony which came in at about 1 hour and 37 minutes. The wedding colors seem to be shades of lavender, purple and white as all of the flowers and decorations were in those colors. The wedding started off with a solo of Sweet Sweet Spirit which set the tone of the wedding. Also, there was a beautiful flute solo and a heartfelt solo rendition of Steve Wonder’s Ribbon in the Sky. The music lasts for nearly 40 minutes as the mothers walk in together about the 38:09 mark of the video. I counted 10 bridesmaids and 9 groomsmen along with a ring bearer and two flower girls.

Flanked by her parents and with a soloist singing Maurette Brown Clark’s The One He Kept For Me, Miss Ndoye walks down the aisle about the 47:00 mark. The wedding ceremony included readings from Genesis 2, you know the “God made a woman from the rib” from man and “one flesh” chapter, and a reading from 1 Corinthians 13, the Love Chapter. What I found most unique about the ceremony were the thorough and beautiful vows, which start at about 1:06:16. They covered EVERYTHING. As a pastor’s daughter, I’ve been to countless weddings so I know what I’m talking about…Here they are below…

O: I know that love must be kept alive by active concern, and I pledge that in loving you, I will continue to court you in many and in new ways.

R: I promise to keep our love vibrant, to discover new ways of loving you and to make our love continue to grow in new riches.

O: I will continue to be your special friend, accepting and sensitive to your needs.

R: I will continue to be the companion who is always by your side, understanding and sharing in your laughter and tears.

O: I will continue to respect your opinions and feelings in all the ways you relate them to me, and I will freely share mine with you.

R: I will continue to be honest with you, not holding back what I feel, and I will continue to be open to hearing and responding to your feelings.

O: I know that sickness is often a real part of life, and I will meet these hardships with strength and courage.

R: I recognize that death and misfortune are untimely parts of life, and I will not let these events overshadow and take away from our life now nor will I turn from the burdens they may place upon me.

O: As individuals, we need the freedom to become ourselves, and I will live with you in a way that will allow you to reach your highest potential.

R: I promise to respect the individuality of yourself and will continue to work towards the development of mine so that each of us may live life to the fullest and yet I will be close enough to continue to share in your life and to share mine with you.

Together: You will be secure in my promise to you this day that during all the years of our life together, I will be ever mindful of the things we found important from our earliest encounter to this present moment. I am committed to grow and to let our marriage grow. So be it, and so it is. Amen.

invite resizedSee what I mean? Following their vows, famed gospel singer Byron Cage sang “To God Be the Glory.” Following his performance, the Rev. Dr. Lawrence Carter Sr., who was the celebrant, welcomed the couple to the “the halls of highest human happiness,” a phrase I first learned about after reading a “A Man Called Peter: The Story of Peter Marshall,” by my deceased spiritual writing mentor Catherine Marshall. Rev. Dr. Carter also introduced the couple as the 5th First Family of Ebenezer Baptist Church…

So what do you think of their very short engagement? The Warnocks went from proposal to wedding at a swift speed, particularly as it has been reported by the AJC that the two actually were actually first married at a private ceremony at Danforth Chapel on Morehouse College’s campus last month! The two are graduates of Morehouse and Spelman College and “many Morehouse men and Spelman College women have married there.” “According to TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com’s Real Weddings Study, the average length of an engagement is 13.8 months. And 7% of people surveyed said they were engaged for more than two years,” which is from the CNN article “Standing Engagement — Are Committed Couples Waiting Longer to Tie the Knot?”

My hubby and I got engaged in December 2012 and married the following August so we were engaged for eight months. I think longer engagements give couples more time to plan a wedding, but a wedding doesn’t have to take a long time to plan in my opinion. Actually, we didn’t start planning our wedding until February 2013 so it came together in an intense six months. Celebrity couple DeVon Franklin and Meagan Good-Franklin got engaged in March 2012 and were married by June. Earlier this month, the two released their book The Wait: A Powerful Practice for Finding the Love of Your Life and the Life You Love about their entire 13-month celibate courtship.

The Warnocks speedy proposal and wedding reminds me of a line from one of my favorite movies “When Harry Met Sally.” Harry and Sally were friends for a long time before they were lovers, and Sally realized first they could really spend their life together. Of course, their friendship breaks down when Harry doesn’t immediately return Sally’s feelings. However, on New Year’s Eve, Harry, who is spending the evening alone, suddenly realizes he is in love with Sally too. Instead of telling Sally the next day, he barges into a New Year Eve’s party where Sally is partying alone and tells her exactly how he feels. It Had to Be You by Frank Sinatra is playing the background…Below are his words…

I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.

The video of the entire the wedding is below. Congratulations to the Warnocks!!!

Any thoughts?

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Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church Pastor Proposes to Girlfriend During Watch Night Service! (VIDEO)

Why You Should be at Watch Night Service Next Year...

ebenezer engagement photo

Hello World,

If you’re in the A, you may already know the news, but since my audience is worldwide ( 🙂 ), I hope I’m the first to bring you the news! Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta’s Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the “spiritual home of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” preached the Watch Night Service that will probably go down as the most romantic Watch Night Service of all times. At the end of the two-hour service, Rev. Dr. Warnock (who sounded a bit hoarse from preaching I guess or maybe it was nerves considering what he was about to do next) acknowledges Mrs. Christine King Farris, the longest serving member of Ebenezer and sister of Dr. King and people from his circle including his siblings, a friend from high school and one of his best friends who “know [him] before [he] was Rev. Dr.” BEFORE introducing the church to a Miss Ouleye Ndoye about the 2:07 mark of the video below.

He says that “Morehouse men don’t get far without Spelman women.”  He goes on to say Ndoye, who is a graduate of Spelman, Oxford and Columbia, is the “one of the most brilliant people I know” and the tone of his voice lowers a bit before completing his statement with “and one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen” after which a collective “Oh” comes from the congregation…

Then he walks over to her at which some woman in the congregation says, “Uh oh, Pastor?” And then many members of the congregation armed with cell phones vacate the pews, furiously corralling themselves around the pastor and his special guest like he is a football player about to score a touchdown! (I saw “Concussion” last night so football motifs are on the brain. A must-see movie by the way!) He responds with, “Why y’all carrying on like this?” in the midst of the commotion. And the same woman it seems yells, “Go head pastor! Work it pastor!” “Can I talk?” says the Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor finally before beginning his proposal.

Obviously inspired by the words Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, Pastor Warnock recites his words to Ndoye, who is seated, as he stands before her.

“Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer to me than they are. Those who speak to me do not know that my heart is full with your unspoken words. Those who crowd in my path do not know that I am walking alone with you. Those who love me do not know that their love brings you closer to my heart.”

And then he quotes from the Word, reciting Proverbs 18:22 with a sweet twist as he pulls out a red jewelry box from one of his front jacket pockets.

“The Bible says that he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.  So, will you do me a favor and be my good thing? Will you marry me?”

Pastor Warnock, who is on bended knee by the end of his words, had to stop for a moment the applause was so loud but he was able to get the words of his proposal out. Ndoye, who is trembling and intermittently clasping her hands around her face, responds by saying, “Yes, I will.”

All this time, I thought that Rev. Dr. Warnock, who became senior pastor of the church as a single man in 2005, was like Paul and had the gift of singleness. But as it turns out, he was just waiting for his “good thing” to arrive 🙂

Congratulations to the beautiful couple!

This Watch Night Service proposal reminds me on an episode of “Sex and the City” when Charlotte, who has converted Judaism to be a suitable marriage candidate for her Jewish boyfriend Harry, but they have a fight before he proposes. Still, Charlotte, who was serious about her conversion despite the breakup, goes to a Jewish mixer for singles where she bumps into Harry, who has by that time forgiven her for the fight. He proposes to her in the middle of mixer! One of the single Jewish women, who watches the proposal, responds by saying, “I’m so coming back next week!”

Maybe if more women knew they could score a marriage proposal (the football motif returns) at a Watch Night Service in church rather popping champagne  in the club, they would show up there  instead for their NYE festivities 🙂

Watch the whole service or just the proposal (which begins around the 2:07 mark below) below! Happy New Year Y’all!

Any thoughts?

P.S. UPDATE: Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock and Ouleye Ndoye are now married as of Valentine’s Day 2016! Read the story – Why Wait? Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church Pastor Marries on Valentine’s Day After NYE Proposal (VIDEO)!