LOAF Mommas
- Ends of the Earth Cycling
- Sep 6, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 28, 2022
Written By: Katye Clark, Love of a Father (LOAF) - Haiti
Hello! We here at Love of a Father Ministries (LOAF) were blessed to be the recipients of Wagon Wheel Bike Ride 2019 (WWBR2019). It’s crazy that two years have passed since we got together with so many of you in Western Tennessee for a week.
June 15-19, 2019, fourteen Cyclists and thirteen Support Staff spent five days praying and raising funds for the youth of Haiti on behalf of Love of a Father Ministries. Generally, young women in Haiti aren’t educated about their bodies, leaving them vulnerable to sexual manipulation. LOAF works with unwed mothers in the city of Les Cayes, Haiti.
We have been able to use the benefits from the ride in helping our mommas continue their education over the past two years. And for a weekend retreat for our mommas! This was a wonderful experience! It is something that we are hoping to have the opportunity to do again once the country calms down a little.
In August of 2020, after a rough summer of ministry, we went about an
hour away to a small retreat center. We were blessed to have a couple of volunteers from another local mission come with us so that they could take care of the little ones while I got some time to focus on the mommas’ spiritual growth. Even though many of our mommas were raised with a lot of exposure to the gospel, little time has been devoted to them having a personal walk with the Lord since their younger years. God is still a “church” thing, prayer is still a “qualified” thing, and baptism is something you do once you reach perfection. We spent the weekend studying the book of James. Although the time was short, it was wonderful to get to spoil the girls a little bit and really take the time to delve into the Word of the Lord.
As is always true with any retreat function, everyone’s motivation for being there and engagement levels are different. There was one momma that I invited to come with us, even though I’d actually had to release her from our program earlier that year. Since she had stopped living in the LOAF house, things had been very hard on her and her attitude towards life had done a one-eighty. She had been young and careless before, respectful to your face, but living life however she wanted when you weren’t watching. She thought she could get by with anything and that she had plenty of time to find the Lord later. No rush. During the months in between she had almost died once and come face to face with some pretty rough situations. Her coming on this trip was a surprise to the other mommas in our program, and they weren’t the most welcoming.
However, for the first time in her
life, there were intentional lessons meant for her. Lessons directed towards a young, teenage momma and aimed at helping her grow where other people no longer believed she could. Since she became a mother 3 years before, she had never been able to even sit through a church service without being distracted by her little boy. She sat there and received the Word of the Lord and drank it all up. Soon after we returned to our town she began visiting my house more regularly. She always wanted to come talk to me about something or other. And by the 20th of September she had made the decision to be baptized. She no longer believed that she had to be perfect, but embraced the idea that she needed a Savior now. It wasn’t a Savior that needed a "perfect her." So on September 20, 2020 I got the pleasure of baptizing her into our family in Christ after 3 ½ years of ministering to her!
Thank you Ends of the Earth Cycling for making this story a reality for this momma! Without you all and your dedication to global youth ministry, she would never have had Biblical teaching time directed at her in this capacity. We are so grateful and we have loved watching the Lord continue His work in her life, as I’m sure He will keep doing!
Help us tell the story of cycling for Global Youth!
Share a Google Review.
Comments