An incredible European man leaned over a cafe table in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to look into my eyes and offer me the promise of a lifetime. He said "Gabrielle... I can't give you everything, but what I can promise you is an adventurous life with a sleeping bag in the nations."
And I said, "Yes!"
However, this wasn't the beginning of my passion to live a life that was bigger than myself... a life of preaching Jesus to the lost people groups of the world. No, I'd been dreaming about that since I was a little girl. My walls and diaries were always filled up with pictures of nameless faces... some with slanted eyes, some with dark skin, some with light skin, wrinkled cheeks, dirty cheeks... those were the most beautiful faces I'd ever seen. My first international trip took place when I had just finished high school. I booked a ticket to China where I would spend my summer teaching English and falling madly in love with a people group I had only dreamed of while staring at those glossy photocopies on my bedroom walls. Those pictures transformed into reality! They had names... they became my dearest friends... and they didn't know Jesus. I preached my heart out for them in that stuffy, overheated classroom and cried my eyes out when it was time to leave. I was ruined for life as I had known it up to that point. I became obsessed with reaching the totally unreached - those who had NEVER heard the name of Jesus and His great love before. I returned to China later that year and also made my way around the world to 3 new continents where I studied the life of "missions" and wrote a book that would recruit new missionaries to the field called - God Adventurers - for an organization called Mission SOS that's based in Sweden. Mission SOS led me to the love of my life, Samuel. We met in Thailand, fell in love in Ethiopia, dated in USA, decided to get married in Sweden and finally said "I do" in my home church in Youngstown, Ohio!
Two days after Samuel and I married in September of 2009, we moved to Ethiopia. The Horn of Africa was not our honeymoon destination, it was our calling.
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After 5 intense years of outreaches, festivals, church plants, pioneering a native Bible school and of course seeing our own skin become a bit more black and our speech thick with the African accent, Samuel and I handed over our lead pastors role to our dear friend and brother Ashagre and the position of Assistant pastors to Mohammed and his wife Sinabwa. What a joyous day in heaven! Those three radical evangelists shake the foundations of the earth when they walk. They live and breathe evangelism and church plants among the lost on the Horn of Africa. They dream especially of reaching Somalia with future daughter churches and local missionaries. They are my heroes. Inside Harar, Ethiopia... the fourth holiest Islamic city of the world... dozens are finding Jesus each week. Some come and stand at the alter in shredded rags with no shoes, no hope, no life, and then walk away with eyes full of tears and the sweet love of God. It’s the greatest thing I know.
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Street children
My best friend Joelle visiting us in the desert Somali region of Jijiga
Samuel preparing our Bible school students for an outreach!
Our team celebrating Christmas!
Me, Samuel, Ashagre, Mohammed, Zinabwa, Sarah and Naftalim
Front Row: Mohammed, Samuel, Me, Ashagre
Let me share with you the vision of Harar Church of Joy so you may continue to pray...
Among the People. For all people.
To Liberate, transform and equip a generation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ...
in Ethiopia, on the Horn of Africa, and to the ends of the earth.
For the sake of the unreached.
Preaching Jesus to crowds under a muslim mosque!
Pray that this vision from God will be fulfilled. Pray for favor upon the pastors. Pray that God will provide finances, land and a good church building so they may continue to grow and graduate many more missionary students. Pray that the religious, the Muslims and the animist tribes will meet the one and only God and creator of the universe!
As far as our next move, we are dreaming big dreams for India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka… we long for the masses of unreached Hindus and Muslims to meet Jesus. We are ready to invest the rest of our lives into the lives of the poor and lost and suffering. I have tears streaming down my cheeks as I write these words. The Holy Spirit is so near to us as we study the people groups in these areas. We are overwhelmed and obsessed with preaching the Gospel and providing a way for God to show off Himself for those who have never had the opportunity to understand. I use this scripture far too often, but it’s as true and powerful now as it ever was…
“My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. I have been following the plan spoken of in the Scriptures, where it says, ‘Those who have never been told about Him will see, and those who have never heard of Him will understand.’” -Romans 15:20
Samuel and I will spend the fall and early winter of this year scouting out the land of India... chasing the Holy Spirit's guidance, praying and making kingdom connections! We plan to move there in 2012.
