Impact Hope Has Quite the Impact

I interviewed two lovely ladies this week on Women in the Word. They are with Impact Hope. That show will air the week of June 4, 2023.

Impact Hope partners with Christian boarding schools in Rwanda to educate refugees. These young men and women are also provided with vocational training and mentoring. The story behind Impact Hope is nothing short of amazing.

Hans and Mindy Thygeson are the co-founders of Impact Hope. In 2015, they were made aware of refugees living in Rwanda that had been living in these refugee camps for over 20 years as a result of the 100 days of bloody genocide in 1994. We cannot begin to imagine how hard their lives have been and currently are.

Hans and Mindy also learned that the area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where persecution was most rampant, was predominantly Christian. They felt God moving them to do something for these 80,000 refugees, (now closer to 100,000) spread throughout five camps, who were facing hopeless conditions.

On the interview this week at Better Life, it was mentioned that for all of the students, they have known nothing but war, living in camps with no electricity and no running water, they have known nothing but poverty and hardship, hunger, and pain. My life has been exactly the opposite. Same small spinning globe hung in space and yet lives that are as different as night and day.

Certainly, there have been wars in my life time that U.S. men and women have been involved in. Lives lost; lives forever changed. The heartbreak of war is not new.

The Dominican Civil War. The Korean Conflict. The Cambodian Civil War. Lebanon. Grenada. Libya. Persian Gulf. Invasion of Panama. The Gulf War. Iraq. Somalia. Bosnian War and Croatian War. Intervention in Haiti. Kosovo War.

More recently the War in Afghanistan. America’s intervention in Yemen. Iraq War: War on Terror. American Intervention in the War in North-West Pakistan. Second U.S. intervention in the Somali Civil War. Operation Ocean Shield. International Intervention in Libya. Uganda. Niger. Syria. Ukraine.

There is a web site called Global Conflict Tracker. This morning I counted 25 spots on the global map of places where there is war and conflict today, right now.

For people my age and younger, living in the United States of America, war is something we learned mostly about in history class. We may have a faint memory of losing a great-uncle or stories told of how a grandpa, a father, a husband, never came home from World War II, but nothing more.

I have faint images of seeing the nightly news with Walter Cronkite and images of the Korean War, but it seems so long ago and so far away that it rarely-to-never affects my day-to-day life.

Wars and rumors of wars.

Those 5 words were spoken by Jesus as he sat on the Mount of Olives. Those 5 words were part of a narrative that spoke of His second coming.

Matthew wrote that the disciples came to Jesus privately and asked Him, “Tell us…what will be the sign of Your coming?” Matthew 24:3

Jesus gave them 4 things to watch for.

Jesus answered by saying, “…See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.” Matthew 24:4-8 ESV

I like what I found online this morning: “Understanding Jesus’ statement about “wars and rumors of wars” to mean that warfare is a sign of the end times is the exact opposite of what He intended. Jesus was instructing us to not allow wars or rumors of wars to alarm or concern us, because “the end is not yet.” (Source: gotquestions. org)

This really rang true for me. We mentally see the “wars and rumors of wars” in bold italics, but somehow the “see that you are not alarmed” fades into the background.

We are reminded many times throughout scripture to not be afraid.

Someone once said that the command to ‘fear not’ is found 365 times in the Bible. I like that idea, one verse for every day of the year. I am not sure if this is fact, but I am familiar with a few that I want to leave you with today. My favorite is Psalm 91:5-9.

“You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—the Most High, who is my refuge” ESV

“For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”…I am the one who helps you, declares the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.” Isaiah 41:13-14 ESV

By the way, I have never done this in my writings, but I would encourage you to visit Impact Hope and find out more about them and there mission.

I have also never sponsored or adopted anyone or anything, until this week. For a commitment of only $50 a month you can send one young person to school for a year. I’m not talking just ‘going to school’. I’m talking getting a young person out of the slums that they know in the refugee camps and giving them a bed for the first time in a Christian boarding school. They will have running water for the first time; three meals a day for the first time and clean water to drink whenever they are thirsty, for the first time in their lives. This is heaven on earth for these young people.

They get an education and then go on to learn a trade such as sewing, baking, hairstyling, and from that they can change their lives and the lives of their families.

Please visit the site today. Pray about this and see if God wants you to get involved in making a difference in the world. www.impact-hope.org

by jeanette Stark – Thursday, May 11, 2023