In the image of God

Brian Thomson’s heart was about to be shattered.

He was asked to speak at a church conference being held in Kigali, Rwanda. It was December 2006 and due to the AIDS epidemic and the genocide of over one million Tutsis in 1994, Rwanda was struggling to cope with its massive orphan population, claiming some of the highest rates in the world of households with children raising children. After the conference, Brian asked the pastor to show him some of these children. The enormity of despair everywhere they went shook him to his core. “This is not a World Vision commercial. I can’t just change the channel to look for something more ‘entertaining’,” he thought, with remorse, remembering how in the past he had done just that. 

In the plane on the way home God filled Brian’s heart with His own sorrow and love for orphans. Brian describes it as miraculous, his heart truly broke and he began to weep. And weep. For months. Every time someone asked him about his trip, he would start to share what he had witnessed, and, overcome with grief and sorrow, end up weeping again. God was springing up a new work in Brian, something this 48-year-old pastor from Red Deer, Alberta, could never have imagined or dreamed.  

Back in Rwanda four months later, now armed with approval from his own church, The Home Church in Red Deer, Alberta, to found a new ministry, appropriately called Home of Hope, Brian did something unexpected, yet brilliant. 

He asked the mayor of Kigali for permission to plant a church in an area where the needs of the children were greatest, but where there was no Christian church. She, in turn, happy to assist, sent two men from her office with Brian to a community called Jabana. There they spoke with the local leaders, then met with, photographed, and wrote the stories of the most desperate children in that community. At Jabana’s first church meeting (held outdoors), over one thousand people came. When Brian gave an invitation to pray for salvation at the end of the service, everyone raised their hand. That Sunday a church was planted with 400 new members. The harvest was ripe, and the worker had shown up. 

Brian returned to Canada with pictures and stories of 20 children to start a sponsorship programme. Such a generous response was given that Brian asked his contact in Rwanda to send pictures of 20 more children. At this time, he was often invited to preach in churches across Canada and at the end of the service would always share what was happening in Rwanda. Everywhere he went people wanted to help.

During the first few years of establishing Home of Hope, Brian made the trip to Rwanda repeatedly. Each time, God brought new converts to Himself, and children who had been previously abandoned and hopeless, found homes inside church families or family units, with sponsorships from Canada to help with feeding and school fees. 

As more churches were planted in new communities, microloan projects, funded by generous donors, were used to provide a means of financial support for the pastors and their congregations, enabling them to be a source of blessing and stability to their needy communities. New pastors receive pastoral training and support through Home Church Bible College and its online courses, as well as with Brian himself on a weekly basis through zoom calls.

Home of Hope has quickly grown in Rwanda, and has now jumped borders into Kenya, Malawi, and even into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo). 

Over the past 18 years, one hundred and twenty-eight churches have been planted (Brian, himself, directly involved in planting 120 of these), ten thousand children have been helped as of 2017, and the current goal is to help five thousand new children every year.

Other projects were created as new needs were identified:

-The Dream Centre Project rescues babies that have been thrown away in the garbage dump in Nairobi, 

-The Pregnant Mothers Project provides sponsorships for single moms to afford to keep their babies and to receive weekly counseling and support,

-The Feeding Project helps starving, desperate children receive regular meals every week, 

-The Shoe Project which helps protect countless children from preventable diseases, 

-The Medical Project where $6 provides a child with healthcare for 12 months, 

-The Stella Project provides single moms living in slums with a safe clean place to live, and then sets them up with business training and microloan projects enabling them to provide adequately for their families, 

– the Tumaini Project started in response to the needs of so many rape victims in DR Congo (with the highest rate of rape in the world, four women raped every five minutes). These terrorized women live lives of rejection from their communities, which compounds the trauma they already deal with. Home of Hope provides physical support and spiritual healing, safe places to live, training in sewing and making handbags, and other microloan projects, enabling these women to support themselves and their children, giving hope and help to others.

Incredibly, during the last 18 years Brian Thomson has not received a salary as director of Home of Hope or used any of the sponsorship money or donations for himself. He has been living by faith, trusting God for his personal provisions. 

Brian Thomson was made, like us all, in the image of God: to receive God’s love, share God’s love, through God’s Spirit. His life is testimony to the miracles that happen when we do. 

Brian has written several books, including Meant 4 More www.HomeofHope.ca/Meant4more  (which tells his story in far greater detail than I could). For information about his other books and resources go to www.brianthomson.com  

All proceeds go to Home of Hope. (Note: Buying books through Amazon $1 goes to HOH; buying through Home of Hope every dollar you spend goes to HOH!) 

For information on how you can join a team or donate, go to:  www.homeofhope.ca