About Melissa . . .

    For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

2 Corinthians 5:14,15

 

    The word used for compels is "sunecho" in the Greek, which means "to grip tightly".  This "holy grip" first laid hold of me as a little girl in small home Bible studies with my family (my dad, a former penecostal minister, baptized me in our bathtub when I was 8 years old). This grip of love then significantly tightened as I studied the book of Genesis with a campus missionary the summer after my freshman year of college. It was then that I believe I first saw and understood the condition of my heart (sin) and my very real need for the salvation that comes only through Jesus Christ.  I was compelled to give my life to God and ask Him to take control and do whatever He wanted with me.  This has led me on a journey more beautiful and full of love and incredible experiences than anything I could have planned for myself.

 

    I spent a season in Madrid, Spain where I studied and worked alongside a few campus ministries doing discipleship and outreach.  It was while at a national youth conference in Spain in 2000 that I heard Pete Grieg speak about 24/7 prayer (Red Moon Rising, www.24-7prayer.com), a powerful seed that went straight into my heart and today is re-surfacing to be a main focus for my work in Mozambique.  After another stint living and working in Madrid in 2002, I heard this woman named Heidi speak in Chicago about her work as a missionary in Mozambique, Africa.  I was so gripped by her testimony and life that I cried through most of it. I knew God had called me to be a missionary, but was living and working in Wisconsin until God showed me how and where.

 

    For three years I worked as a free-lance Spanish interpreter while I followed her and her husband Rolland's ministry in Mozambique, visiting it for the first time in 2004.  After this life-changing experience visiting their center of 500 orphaned and abandoned children in Maputo, Mozambique, I returned again to the States, only to find out that they would be having a missionary training school called Holy Given, right at their new children's center in Pemba in northern Mozambique. I completed the 3-month Holy Given school in 2005, a life-changing experience. Shortly after that I knew that I was supposed to apply to join as staff for a 2-year minimum commitment.

 

    Once again I was compelled by the love of Christ to take the biggest risk ever and leave my job, all my possessions, my family and friends and move to a very poor place and work for free.  God's love makes us do crazy things!  So in August of 2006 I landed in Pemba, now as volunteer staff at a center for almost 200 children. I began by filling in in areas of need such as accounting, and also superintending the primary school for the last year and a half.

 

    This last July I had the privilege of spear-heading a week-long 24/7 prayer initiative, mobilizing our 200 missions students from around the world as well as our precious Mozambican Bible students from around Mozambique, to pray non-stop night-and-day in order to see a shift in the spiritual atmosphere over our center and over the city of Pemba. I think we were all amazed at the results of just one week of continuous prayer. I mobilized another 24/7 this past November, this time for 2 weeks of night-and-day prayer, which brought still more noticeable change in the spiritual environment.  I realized that I had stumbled upon what I was sent for. 

   

    In 2008 I will be giving myself fully to raising up a house of prayer in Pemba and in Mozambique, equipping the national leaders and children to take their land through prayer and fasting.  Please pray with us for this spiritual house to be raised up in Mozambique (1 Peter 2:5) as this spiritual and literal house of prayer is established in Pemba.