During
the month of August and September, I have been featuring stories from
amazing individuals who are pursuing their God - birthed passions, to
effect change in the world. I am so inspired and honoured to be doing
this! Today, I want to introduce you toTiffany. A woman whose passion is to change the world around her, and her story is one fo grace and love! She is the founder of "With all my Heart" and I'm so inspired by her story!
My
story began when I was ten years old, I was diagnosed with one of the
rarest forms of brain cancer that led me to St. Jude’s Hospital in
Memphis, TN. God was stirring in my heart how to walk in faith from an
early age. The fight against brain cancer was an uphill battle lasting 7
years and including 4 brain surgeries and radiation treatment. My
fourth and final brain surgery was one of the roughest reasons of my
life, during the surgery my doctor was determined to remove the whole
tumor and in doing so, accidentally cut a blood vessel causing me to
have a stroke and paralyzing the left side of my body.
Through
months of rehabilitation and the healing power of Jesus, I learned to
walk again, talk again, and use my left side of my body to atleast
appear to be normal and without a paralysis.
Being
a child with cancer, I was so determined to just live a normal life. I
went off to Oklahoma State University, rushed a sorority, opened my own
frozen yogurt store, and was on the way to normalcy when God revealed to
me the most beautiful truth. He showed me that as Christians, we were
not called to live a life normalcy. He showed me that He loves to use
every circumstance, every hardship, every piece of our life for his
glory.
Through prayer and time in the word,
God revealed to me what breaks His heart and what He sees everyday. He
sees children in need, children in desperate circumstances like myself,
except nobody is there fighting for them. He sees children without food,
without parents, living on the streets, being sold into trafficking,
and nobody willing to fight for their life. God also revealed to me that
our responsibility as christians is to go into these dark circumstances
and be the light. As He fought for my life, I ought to fight for
others.
The With All My Heart Foundation was
established to fight for the unreached, unrescued, and underprivileged
children of the world. We have homes for orphaned children, feed
hundreds of children everyday through our feeding program, and provide
ongoing projects to transform the lives of the families in the villages
that we serve.
Over the years, I have been to
many different countries fighting on behalf of children that are living
in darkness. One of my greatest moments was the very first team I took
to Haiti. We went to a village that we had never visited before. I wrote
this about it here that you are welcome to use:
We
were just a group of twenty-somethings traveling through the lush
Haitian countryside on our last day in country. In hopes we would find a
village that could use our resources, we packed some clothes, food, and
goodies that we could disperse as we trotted through the hills on a
search for people that we heard were in desperate need. We knew we had
arrived at the right place when children came running up wearing scraps
if any clothes at all. We slowly walked deeper into the community of
barely standing huts. Once we were spotted, Men, woman, and children
flocked in a matter of seconds reaching their hands in to grab what left
we had brought to give.
I leaned over to Fabie, my friend
translating for us, to ask our fully engaged audience (who was still
waiting around incase we had some more gifts to give them) if they knew
Jesus. Expecting them to say yes or express what they heard of Jesus,
our team awaited their response.
We got nothing but stares of confusion.
“Fabie, they are confused, Let’s try asking in a different way.”…Still nothing.
I
looked to my left and saw a crushed Coca Cola can in the dirt, “Fabie,
maybe they don’t know that you are asking them a question, Ask if they
know Coca Cola.”
Faces lit up, heads nodded. I began to get nervous knowing that they probably thought we were going to give them all a coke.
Pointing
at the deflated soccer ball that a little boy found in the dump and was
currently playing with, “Fabie, ask them if they know Christiano
Ronaldo?”
The villagers faces gleamed and
little boys began to fake kick the soccer ball as if they were the
soccer star himself taking the game winning shot.
I tried one more try, "Ask them if they have heard of Jesus”
Once again. Expressionless, confused, as if they were trying to figure out if they knew who we were talking about.
My
jaw dropped and my heart began to race when I had realized that we have
encountered a village that has never even heard of the name of Jesus
Christ. Coca Cola and Christiano Ronaldo made it to the slums of Haiti but Jesus Christ had not. I
began to wonder, how could this be? We are only 700 miles off the coast
of Florida and there are people who have never heard the name of their
savior. I mean, I have vacationed in the caribbean handfuls of times,
yet had never taken the time to offer eternity to the people around the
corner?
As I was still digesting the shock of
the moment, my team stepped up and begin to express to a very hopeless
neighborhood the love of Jesus and what he conquered on the cross for
each of them. The faces of the men and woman began to fill with hope.
There was an immediate gleam in their eyes. They were hanging on to
every word in full eagerness longing to know the Jesus we talked about.
When the moment arose our new friends unanimously accepted Jesus Christ
as their savior. Life that they had longed for was being breathed into their beings as a hopeless village received the hope of the world.
Although,
the living conditions of the people in the village did not change
overnight, their reason for living did and the promise of eternity gives
them a daily hope to run to. I left that day wanting to stay behind and
teach our excited learners more about Jesus, but we were on a schedule
and had to head back. Hours later, as we were traveling home, we
received word that miracles and healings spread through the village
later that evening and the people we met were so grateful for the love
and glory of their greatest gift, Jesus Christ.
In
close, In addition to reaching children around the world, we are
launching With All Her Heart in three weeks, providing bible studies and
woman community groups for women looking to grow closer to Christ. If
you would like to get involved there, we would love to stay connected.
