Stories of Hope

   Today we welcome Sheila Dykstra to Hope Fellowship. Sheila is a member here, but is working in West Africa as an Education Specialist/Consultant. She will share a little bit about her work in our service this morning. If you are interested in learning more, Sheila would love to get together with you at some point in the next few days. You can contact her at sdykstra@crcna.org. The following is one of Sheila’s stories of how God is working in West Africa.

  There's an old joke that gets kicked around sometimes that says, “If you do something twice in the Christian Reformed Church, it's a tradition.” I think an event trumps “tradition” when it becomes “the way we do things here at Hope Fellowship.” That's what the week of prayer and fasting is: the way we do things.

  Twice, Marja and I have volunteered to work with Disaster Response Services of the Christian Reformed Church, first in Grifton, North Carolina and then in Munster, Indiana. In both places, severe flooding had displaced people and destroyed homes. In both instances (2003 and 2010), it was immensely satisfying to help rebuild people’s lives. In both volunteer experiences, we came on the scene long after the floodwaters had receded.

  The two bases of the twin towers of the World Trade Center have become twin memorial reflecting pools. Enormous curtains of water flow through carefully spaced weirs into the footprints of the original twin towers, and the names of all those killed by terrorist attacks in 1993 and 2001 are engraved on the bronze parapets surrounding the pools.

  September is here, and we are beginning our Church season with a Week of Prayer and Fasting from Sunday, September 11 through Saturday, September 17.

  Piria Shukuru walked for one and a half hours to reach the food distribution site in Oiti, Kenya. The young mother of three small children and five teenagers was happy to do it.   “Before the food arrived, the situation was bad. There was no food in the markets and we had to travel far to buy food. This food [from CRWRC] is keeping us strong,” she said.