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The Birth of Hope Alive!
The seed that grew to become Hope Alive! was planted in November 1999. I was back in the US following 7½ years in West Africa, waiting to see what God had next for me. It was a Sunday morning, during church, and I heard God say clearly, “I want you to return to Africa and focus on children at risk.”
In March 2002, with guidance and encouragement from my mission organization, I arrived in Uganda, where AIDS and civil war had taken a huge toll on an already poor country. I was looking forward to being part of a small team targeting kids at risk. My disappointment was immense when, on arrival, I discovered that the missionaries I’d been interacting with had moved on to other ministries. I was on my own, in a new country, with a ministry focus that was new to me. Those were challenging days.
I began contacting every group I could find that was working with kids at risk, from tiny local groups to huge international organizations. I met with whoever was available and bombarded them with questions: What did their organization do? Where did they do it? How did they do it? Why did they do it? Did they feel it was successful? What was their criteria for evaluation? What did they feel were Uganda’s greatest needs, as far as kids at risk were concerned? If they were going to begin something new, what would it be? Where? Why? How? I asked everything I could think of. I also met with local pastors and asked them the same questions.
During this time, God placed a burden on my heart that grew deeper and heavier. It was for, what I call, “fragile families.” Polygamy is legal in Uganda and there is little sense of fatherhood. Men rarely marry all the women they are involved with. There are many single women with little education and few skills who have children they care deeply about but have no means of providing for. In addition, there are required school fees in Uganda. Children from poor families have no hope of getting an education, and so, the cycle of poverty continues. These are the people my heart began to ache for, and I asked God, “What do you want me to do?”
Over the following weeks, a vision began to solidify. It involved partnering with a local church to come alongside some of these fragile families, helping to get the children in school, and matching each with a mentor from the partnering church. Each mentor would be responsible for ten children, meeting each weekly at the child’s home. Mentors would encourage, counsel and pray for their students and model for them what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.
With the overall concept in place, it was time to share my vision with others.
Fragile Families Flourishing in the Hope of Jesus!
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