How God works

As a Christian ministry, there are two questions we are commonly asked: “Are your religious activities mandatory for residents?” and “Do you serve women of other faiths?” The answers to these questions are “no” and “yes”.

Spiritual activities and church involvement is optional for every mother and child who comes through our doors. Our faith in Christ as Lord and Savior is one of our four core values. It’s because of our foundation of faith in Christ that we serve God’s people in need and embrace them with His life-changing love as the key to change and transformation. We live out our faith daily and love every mother and child with God’s love until they want to know the God who loves them for themselves.

We serve women (and children) of all faiths or no faith at all. A spiritual review is part of our family needs assessment to determine (among many other things) a family’s spiritual background and if the mother has a desire to grow in her faith during her time at Hope Alive. Then she decides what those spiritual goals are for herself and her children.

From an email I received this week from Jody Julian, our Family Ministry Specialist, here’s one example of how this happens.

“I overheard a preschooler speaking to a volunteer as they were doing a puzzle together in our children’s center. The volunteer commented that the man in the puzzle was Jesus and the young child said, ‘I have never met Him before.’ To the volunteer’s reply, ‘You haven’t?’ the child said, ‘No, my mommy has never taken me to see Him before.’”

“The next day I was going over the schedule for next weekend with the mom. She had made changes in her daughter’s schedule in terms of meeting up with a family member so her daughter could go to church. A few hours later she also came to me and told me she was so excited because in our recent clothing donations she found a “church dress” that fit her perfectly and her daughter has never had a church dress. It was also a “coincidence” that there were matching shoes that fit too. This Sunday she plans to talk to the pastor as one of her first identified goals is to get her daughter baptized.”

See how God works? No pressure, no mandatory participation. We remain faithful to our calling, obedient in service, and continue to live out our faith each day as a testimony to the lives we touch and He works in each mother and child’s life as He wills.

Please keep those questions coming and let me know if there’s something in particular you’d like to hear about in my blog. And don’t forget about our $25,000 challenge grant from the Ausherman Family Foundation matching dollar for dollar every donation made to that amount. Help us spread the word! Until next week …

Sue Oehmig
Founder and Executive Director