December Blog
Help Us Help Them
Hi, and welcome to The Widows Project!
At the beginning of the year, as Co-Directors of The Widows Project, Linda and I pray about what goals God has for The Widows Project. At our prayer retreat last year, God gave us some amazing assignments and, of course, He has empowered us to reach many of those goals—but we still have more to go!
In the last couple of years The Widows Project has literally gone international! We will tell you a little bit more about that, later. But we are asking today if you will help us reach the widows and widowers of the world.
First of all, we want to produce materials so that any church can start a ministry to the windowed. This year, we published our third book to complete our Care Package. In this Care Package, you get all three books, videos for two books, and a pamphlet that describes everything you need to start a ministry to the widowed in your community. You may not think you have enough widowed people in your church to start a group, but if you look around your town, you'll find some more widowed people.
In addition to our care package, something that's really exciting and very much on our hearts is what we call HeartWork. This is ministry that helps widows and widowers process the actual trauma surrounding the passing of their loved ones. We work with them through the timeline of their spouse’s passing, and then also use inner healing prayer to process those traumatic details.
God helped us sponsor our first HeartWork retreat this year! We had nine widows and widowers in attendance. We were also able to train 18-20 leaders! We assign a Leader and an Intercessor to each Participant. It is life changing! People told us that they were relieved of their heart-wrenching trauma and were then able to move forward in processing their grief. As a result, HeartWork prevents complicated grief, so Participants can avoid getting stuck in grief.
We want to do more HeartWork retreats next year. Linda and I donate our time to The Widows Project, but these things all cost money as we hosted 30 people at our HeartWork Retreat. God has given us this beautiful property with plenty of room to host a retreat, but it does cost money. There are people waiting in line who need to experience HeartWork. People are waiting to be trained. Will you please help us with the cost?
This year, we also published Take Heart! for widowed men. And now, we are offering Don’t Lose Heart! in Spanish on Amazon! That took a long time! In the next year, we hope to publish at least one more book in Spanish. We have already published one in French and are working on the translation for the second.
We are continuing to work on writing the book, HeartWork. We have already written the curriculum for HeartWork, but we're planning, God willing, to write the actual HeartWork book, which will take time and money to write that and publish. It's going to be a professional book that people all over the world can use to help widowers and widowers in crisis. As a licensed therapist, our goal in writing HeartWork is to train lay leaders so that they can also do this kind of work. All they need is to have a heart to help wounded people.
Another wonderful opportunity came our way this year as we attended the Fellowship of Christian Assemblies International Conference in Minneapolis this last spring. Our dear brother Steven Mayanja, is an apostolic leader in Uganda who raises up other pastors and church planters. Steven has planted over 350 churches in Uganda, and in neighboring countries, as well.
Steven attended our Widows Project seminar. He asked if we would come and minister to the widows in Uganda, many of whom are in very desperate situations.
We really felt God wanted us to go! We made all our preparations, including getting immunizations and mosquito netting. We were ready to roll, and then at the last minute, my dear son Stevie ended up in ICU. Suddenly, it was not possible for me to leave, but Pastor Steven Mayan said, “We are going to go ahead with this anyway!” So, working with Pastor Stuart Davids and Pastor Sarah Kaweesa, who is also widowed, they held a three-day conference for widows all over Uganda. They said, “Everybody come! All who are widows and widowers, come!” So people who were Christians and non-Christians all came! They were encouraged. They heard wonderful testimonies, and many of them got saved!
We know that the widowed population is our part of God’s Harvest whom God wants us to reach. We hope to intercept people at this most vulnerable time of their lives. First of all, they're thinking about Heaven. They are receptive. They want to know, “What now?” and “What does God have for my life now?” They’re willing to hear the Gospel! So we get to disciple them through Zoom groups, through conferences, through HeartWork Retreats, through our books, and, we hope through helping you start widows groups in your churches.
God willing and Lord providing, we hope to go to Uganda next year to speak at their second annual Widows’ Conference!
So,we need your help! We’ve been told that HeartWork has just been life changing and that people were set free! One Participant who has lost two husbands, came to our group just our zoom group just six weeks after her second husband had passed away. She told us that she found their zoom group to be life-changing and the camaraderie within our group to be astounding!
We would like to see Zoom groups like this springing up everywhere! That's why we developed our Care Package for you!
So if you find it in your heart to contribute to The Widows Project, you can be absolutely sure that your money is going a be stretched as far as possible. We have an administrator and a bookkeeper who work with us to do the things that we can't do, and to set us free to direct the ministry. We also have a web designer and a graphic artist who help us with our media and book covers. These people do get paid even though we donate our time, so we're asking if you will you help us so we can continue this work.
As James 1:27 says, it's pure religion to help the widows and orphans in their distress. Linda and I have been widowed. We know firsthand what that distress is! God has put a fire in our hearts to help widows not only in the United states but around the world! We’re also reaching into France and into15 or 16 Latin American countries, mainly Mexico.
We know that each person has their own story. Each widow, each widower is like a book waiting to be read. With God’s help, we want to help them write a happy ending to their story. As God leads, will you please help us help them?
Do you shop at Fred Meyer? They offer Fred Meyer Community Rewards.
You can choose to have them contribute to The Widows Project in proportion to your spending at Fred Meyer.
Go to the Fred Meyer website and your account, and then search for “Community Rewards”.
Please choose The Widows Project.
Thank you so much.
Click the image above to make a donation today!
