CHURCH OF CHRIST-RELATED AGENCIES

Hope for Haiti’s Children hopeforhaitischildren.org

Manna Global Ministries www.mgm.mannadr.org

Haiti Christian Development Project www.hcdp.net

Christian Relief Fund www.christianrelieffund.org

White’s Ferry Road Relief Ministries www.wfrchurch.org/relief

Global Samaritan Resources www.globalsamaritan.org

Rapha International www.raphainternational.org

Healing Hands International www.hhi.org

Churches of Christ Disaster Response Team www.churchesofchristdrt.org

Bread for a Hungry World www.givebread.org

OTHER NON-PROFIT HAITI RELIEF AGENCIES
·American Red Cross, 800-733-2767
Text “HAITI” to 20222 to donate $10 to Haiti relief
·Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
·Doctors Without Borders, 888-392-0392
·Habitat for Humanity, 1-800-422-4828
·Haiti Children, 877-424-8454
·Haitian Health Foundation, 860-886-4357
·Mercy Corps, 888-256-1900
·The Salvation Army, 800-725-2769
·World Relief, 800-535-5433

Kristin and I have both had a desire to be more involved in God’s plan since before we met.  Kristin went to Harding University and during her time there she was able to attend Harding University in Florence (Italy).  After her time in Italy she was just drawn to a more committed life serving others and harbored the desire to do foreign missions from that point on.

After high school I attended Oklahoma Christian.  I had attempted to go to Germany as a student missionary during the summer of my sophomore year but I couldn’t because I had to work in order to pay for college.  The following year, through the great sacrifice of my parents I was able to attend the OC Vienna Studies program.  Although our mission experience was limited and as a young college student our efforts also were limited (self-limited, you could say) God was working on me throughout that experience.  Mostly by putting great people in my path that would later direct me onto a path that would lead me to Rwanda.

As I was graduating from OC I was still awaiting a verdict from two medical schools when a former missionary and then business professor at OC asked me if I would be willing to go to Germany to work with a church as a youth intern.  He said that he had a friend in that church that would pay for my room and board for the whole next year.  I said, “Absolutely.”  Being young, I let myself be talked out of this by my family because it was “silly” and I “could not get into medical school from Germany.”  I outwardly agreed but was inwardly crushed.  I felt right then that I made a wrong turn.  The desire to be a missionary never left me once from that day.  Even as Kristin and I began dating we both knew that God was calling us to a service far greater than we could imagine.  We would spend countless hours and days over the next ten years talking and praying about what God meant by all these feelings.

I did go to medical school and joined CMDS (Christian Medical and Dental Society).  We had guest speakers from all over the world.  I sat on the front row at every meeting and just ached to be where they were.  But God would not show me how to get there.  I was just lost in the grind of school and residency.

In 2002, a full ten years after I was first asked to be a missionary, I was asked by OC science department to take a pre-med student to Honduras for a medical mission trip.  By this time I had a one-and-a-half year old and a newborn but my great wife gave me permission to go.  Little did she, or either of us for that matter, know that this was the beginning of our journey to become foreign missionaries.

We arrived in Honduras in the afternoon and by evening we had traveled to the interior province of Honduras.  After a night’s sleep we awoke and began our walk to the clinic where we would see patients.  About halfway I had to stop and look around because, right then, God had told me that this is what He had planned for the rest of my life.  Now, I could not figure out how he was going to do this so I did what most other people do in that situation.  I tried to figure out how to do it on my own.  What I know now is that God was just preparing me for the beating that was to come.  To me, the idea of being malleable comes to mind.  Malleable means to be beaten or shaped by hammers or rollers.  When God shows you the direction he wants you to go and you get in his way, he gets out the hammers.

I went home the next week and announced that God had called us to be missionaries and that we were moving to Honduras.  Well, Kristin was not so excited at that time.  She just sat on the couch holding four-week-old Madelyn and patiently said to me,  “Well, why don’t we pay off your medical student loans first and then talk about it.”  After a lot of praying God did impress on us the fact that the loans were our responsibility despite the fact that some organizations would make the payments for us while on the mission field.  We knew that we had to learn to be financially wise and responsible before we could undertake such a change.

Over the next seven years, Tyler, Texas, and our $180,000 in loans became the hammers that God would use to shape us into the family we needed to be in order to be productive in Rwanda.

We moved to Tyler in 2002 and bought a nice house and enjoyed a good life.  We loved our home, we loved our school and we loved our safe, comfortable church.  All bad things to say when being shaped!  By the time we had been in our new home two years we were expecting our fourth child and God was crushing us with the burden of becoming debt free.  We were doing well but God had a time table and impressed that on my heart.  After six months I was finally able to convince Kristin to move to a home more than thirty percent smaller that cost us only half as much so we could pay off our student loans.  We still talked about missions constantly but we were so frustrated because we just didn’t feel that we were making progress on our loans at the rate we felt we needed to make it to the mission field by the time our children were “too old to adjust.”  So what did we do?  We took it upon ourselves to lay down some plans.  We decided that we just had to wait until the kids were older and gone before going to the mission field.  We decided that we would plan for a life in our home in America.  We even decided to buy a thirty-four foot, class A mobile home when our loans were paid off.  We even went and picked out an RV, took a picture and placed it on a poster board with a graph of our loans.  When the graph hit zero we were buying the RV!  We wandered way off the path God made for us.  By this time missions was becoming distant in our minds.  We talked about it but we never let it rise above our own limitations.

God, again with the hammers, just wasn’t satisfied.  He had a surprise.

In 2007, he sent some old friends of Kristin’s from Harding to Glenwood.  The Koonce family had been in Togo, West Africa, for ten years and were planning on moving to Rwanda when their commitment was complete.  They came to Glenwood to seek support for their move and ongoing mission, or so they thought.  Since Kristin knew them from college we were asked to be liaisons between Glenwood and the Koonces.  They spent two days in our home on subsequent trips and while we were together we had a chance to share this very story with them.  They asked how long it would be until we paid off our loans and the answer was July 2008.  That was six months before their departure to Rwanda.  They said they had been praying for more teammates in Rwanda.  Right then, Kristin and I both knew what God wanted.  We knew the events in our lives had been orchestrated to bring us to that very moment.  God was calling us in His way and in His time.  We had never considered Africa, I had never met the Koonces or anyone else on their team.  It was way off my radar.  That day the RV came down and a picture of Africa went up on the graph behind the door.  After meeting with the Koonces and some of their teammates we were officially invited and our lives have never been the same.

God is so good.  I cannot say that every step was pleasant and we oftentimes felt like we were beaten down, but I know now that I could not be what he wanted me to be until I stopped trying to be what I wanted me to be.  May we all seek to be open to what God wants us to be.

Brian Robinson

brian.robinson@rwandaharvest.com
www.rwandaharvest.com
awillingspirit.blogspot.com

Download the Robinsons’ Packing Day newsletter.

For more information about the Robinsons and other missionaries supported by Glenwood Church of Christ, please visit www.glenwoodchurch.com.