Mothers are amazing people, aren’t they?

God gives them hands to touch with love and strength, and feet to take them where they are needed most. Arms to embrace in love or lift the weak. Minds and voices to guide, direct, encourage, and correct. Eyes to see need and ears to hear another’s joys or sorrow. And hearts to love their families, their communities, their God.

God includes mothers in His amazing work, not only to nurture their children to know and follow him but to reach out and nurture new spiritual generations. As Global Disciples, we hear stories of many mothers who are part of what God is doing to birth, nurture, and raise up His children of faith.

Eve is one of those mothers on a mission. She came to Christ as a teenager in Tanzania. She pursued her walk with Jesus as she matured. She married a young pastor, and they were blessed with several children. Together they planted churches along the coast, in a challenging Muslim region. Finances were difficult, and during a particularly hard time, Eve’s husband started an argument. He accused her of having a “poverty spirit”; that he had not experienced “the blessing of God” since they married. Then he left her and their children.

Eve was heartbroken; she and her children had almost nothing. Despite her husband’s cold words, she continued to hold onto the Lord, praying for His help. God answered, prompting her to study more. So, Eve worked several jobs to feed her children and put herself through university. She became a teacher and enjoyed success in the city for a time.

Then she sensed the Lord leading her to take a teaching job in another region of Tanzania. It’s an area that is considered a center for witchcraft. People from around Tanzania and neighboring countries come to consult the witchdoctors and practitioners. Even pastors come to seek help and making sacrifices to “grow” their churches.

Eve believed the Lord wanted her there to make disciples and pray for people.

Eve’s church cluster connected with Global Disciples and sent her to the Directors Training. She was equipped and then sent to start a discipleship-mission training in this community steeped in witchcraft and spiritism.

God has opened doors, and Eve is nurturing and equipping disciples of Jesus Christ. Her training program has become a church plant. Prayer is growing and it’s threatening the power of the witchdoctors. They’re fighting back; Eve is often threatened and opposed. The local authorities released her from her teaching job—not because of her performance but because of her faith in Jesus Christ.

This mother is on a mission—even if it means standing for Christ in a fiery furnace of opposition and spiritual warfare. We honor Eve as a woman of God, and a spiritual mother to a new generation of God’s family in Tanzania.