She Made Kenya Her Home: In Loving Memory of Dana Jacobs

(August 24, 1967 – January 13, 2017)

Dana Jacobs exuded love, compassion, and genuine concern for all people. She cared deeply for every abandoned or orphaned baby who came through the gate of the Africa Gospel Church Baby Centre, whispering to each one, “Your parents are coming for you.” It was a sacred calling to care for these children and to tell them that they were loved, they were wanted, and they would have a family someday.

This calling to serve with World Gospel Mission in Kenya came after some resistance. At the time her husband, Dan, felt God’s pull to Kenya in 2005, Dana was happy and comfortable in the life they had built in the United States, the result of years of hard work. They had four kids, a lovely home, and a secure future. But God had something else for them, and when Dana surrendered to His leading, they found that He enabled them to find purpose in a ministry that was greater than anything they could have imagined. 

Dan gave leadership as the director of the baby center while Dana coordinated the many teams and visitors who came to the center each year. In this role, she managed the logistics involved in housing and feeding large groups, helped visitors process what they were experiencing, and served as a liaison between supporting partners and Kenyan staff. And she was famous for her delicious homemade pizza. 

Dana made Kenya her home. She embraced the role of sister and mother to staff and babies alike. Dana’s impact on the lives of children will stretch across decades and around the world. 

“When you go in obedience to God’s calling and surrender your life to Him, miraculous things happen,” Dana wrote in 2016 when she was at WGM headquarters for a training event. We are grateful for the years of remission she was able to have after her cancer diagnosis. Yet we still grieve, wondering why Dana lost her life at this time. Our hearts hurt for Dan, Hope, Carson, Talia, Nathan, and Andrea, and for all who knew and loved Dana. 

We have confidence in knowing that she loved her Savior to the utmost and served Him with everything she had. We rest in the knowledge that she is with Jesus. Hebrews 10:23 (NIV) reminds us, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” We rejoice that Dana is in the presence of the Source of that hope today. 

GIVE: Africa Gospel Church Baby Centre is a home for orphaned and abandoned children in Ngata, Kenya. You can honor missionary Dana Jacobs' memory by partnering with this ministry. 

September 25-30: Praise God for the wonderful examples given in the Bible about how we are to treat foreigners. 

Burning Bush Moment

Viktor Rózsa, Missionary, Hungary

What was your burning bush moment?

In Exodus 3:1-12, Moses met God in a mysterious way on Mount Horeb. The experience of the burning bush changed his life forever. The call on Moses' life required him to wrestle with God's mission. As he spent those years in the wilderness and learned about God, he was challenged to take his relationship with the God of his forefathers to the next level. Moses had to sacrifice his comfortable life of being a shepherd for 40 years in the wilderness, surrendering his life to a higher call so that God's mission could be fulfilled to His chosen people.

I clearly remember the burning bush moment of my life. Though it was not as mysterious as Moses' experience, it changed my life forever, too. While I was attending military high school, I gave my life to Christ through the ministry of missionaries in Hungary. At that time, I was set on a course of life that guaranteed a job, financial security, and a prestigious career in the Hungarian Air Force and ultimately in NATO. I was fine with being a Christian in the Hungarian Air Force. Little did I know when I gave my life to Christ that there would be a deeper call one day. 

My burning bush experience came between my junior and senior years of high school when I lived in Great Britain during the summer to improve my English language abilities. While I was there, God asked me to enter into full-time ministry. I struggled with sacrificing a future that I thought was the greatest thing on the face of the earth. I had to surrender to God's leading so that His call upon my life could be fulfilled for His purposes in His mission. At the time, surrendering my future career to God was hard. However, as I have followed Him in this deeper call for His mission, God has shown His faithfulness time after time. 

It was hard for Moses to process his call into God's mission, and I also had to face a very serious process of sacrifice and surrender to His call upon my life to serve Him in His mission in Hungary. However, when God calls someone, He makes a way. He is alongside that person the entire journey.

PRAY: Pray for Viktor and Kristen Rózsa, new missionaries to Hungary, as they return to the country this summer. They will be working to encourage and equip Hungarian churches to reach out to youth. 

Altars and Missions

Dr. Dan Schafer, President

Memories fade. Don’t you find that to be true? Once so vivid, the experiences of our past lose their sense of clarity and even their distinguishing marks of reality as time and distance take their toll. Like photo paper exposed to direct sunlight, the images imprinted on our minds steadily dissipate.

God understands better than any mortal the limited ability of the mind to remember—to recall the passion, details, emotions, and commitments that were made. He knows that without assistance, people are likely, over time, to forget what they have promised Him. For that reason, Scripture often records God’s request for His people to build altars to immortalize His interventions in their lives and their resulting promises.

In Genesis 35:1 (NASB), God asks Jacob to build an altar “to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” Undoubtedly, Jacob hadn’t forgotten that night when he wrestled with a heavenly being. However, the influence of that event on him had diminished over the intervening decades. God’s solution to Jacob’s fading memory—build an altar!

Whenever God chooses to reveal Himself to us in extraordinary ways, we feel as though we will never be separated from the awe of that experience. We make promises to Him in those moments that we expect to last a lifetime. But the God who knew the need of Jacob’s heart knows our needs also, and He advises us to build altars—lasting symbols that will permanently capture the story of His interface with us and retell that story as often as needed to keep us in touch with it.

God still calls people to His service, including service as missionaries. How often I hear of people who at one point in their lives had a clear, vivid encounter with God and heard His call but then never fully acted on it. Today, the memory of that encounter with God is nearly gone.

I also meet others who after 20, 30, or more years can give a clear account of how God called them into missionary service. The difference often lies in that they obediently built an altar to God. They immortalized that moment in their mind, and that immortalized memory—that altar—has served as the continual anchor through the joys and trials of a life spent serving God.

MORE: Does your spiritual memory need to be refreshed? Set aside time today to meditate on Genesis 35:1-15. God was commanding Jacob to return to a place where he had encountered God. Ask God to remind you of your own milestone moments.

I Will Not Sacrifice Something That Has Cost Me Nothing

Veronica Porter, Missionary, Papua New Guinea

When I think about altars and sacrifice, I often think of King David. In 2 Samuel 24, David followed his pride and counted on his fighting men rather than trusting in God to be the One who fought for his nation. He was shown the error of his ways and a very severe punishment was given to the nation of Israel for his sin. David was told to build an altar at a specific place to offer a burnt offering for his sin. When he got there, the owner of the land wanted to help his earthly king so the man offered to give David anything he needed. David’s reply in verse 24 (NIV) was: “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”

I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God something that has cost me nothing. 

How this has challenged me. Our sacrifices today are not the oxen or lambs of the Old Testament, but God does ask things of us that require sacrifice—and it may be different for every person. I am a wife, mother to four children, and a bush missionary in Papua New Guinea. I LOVE my life! My house is wonderful, and when I look out my windows I see beautiful, lush, green mountains. My kids have adventures every day that kids in the U.S. can only dream about. I get to be part of a community whose language and culture is so different from my own. We are honored that God asked this of us. And yet, there is a cost.

We miss birthdays, holidays, and time with our extended families. My youngest child came to PNG at 6 months old, and she’ll be 4 before we return. She has missed out on knowing her cousins and grandparents. Some nights, I comfort my older kids as they cry themselves to sleep because they miss their cousins.  

It has cost me a comfortable life. We live four hours from town over rough roads. I have to cook everything from scratch, every day. Due to the culture, I have to wear skirts; and for this girl who loves her some shorts and tank tops, that’s hard. I also can’t wear makeup, and due to our limited solar power, I can’t blow dry my hair in the mornings on days I just want to look nice. I am introverted and don’t like big crowds, and anywhere we go huge crowds gather around to just stare. 

Seth has experienced huge stress with his work projects when a key piece of machinery breaks and we have no parts to fix it. If he’s lucky, he may find the parts after running to five different stores in town. Cultural differences can also make working alongside our Papua New Guinean brothers and sisters very stressful. Life here can be hard and exhausting.

It has cost us our health at times. Whenever Seth comes home from traveling out to preach and visit, he is ill for days afterwards. The closest good hospital is five hours away, and we have experienced the fear and difficulty of getting there in an emergency.

Seth got very sick in December 2016, and we had to make that trip. It was scary. It took a lot of tests to figure out what was wrong. It was hard trying to make sure he got what he needed and also care for our kids at the same time. He was diagnosed with hepatitis, and we were away from home—in town or at the hospital—for three weeks.  

Yes, serving Jesus has a cost, but it is worth it! The God who is Almighty, King of Kings, and the Great I Am loves me with such an unending, unconditional love that He sent His Son to be my sacrifice. How can I say no to Him when He asks me to sacrifice everyday close family relationships and some comfort and health? Jesus sacrificed His life on the altar cross for me. I have learned that HE is worth it and that HE will honor and look after those who are willing to sacrifice and daringly follow Him. 

Things may not be perfect and hard times will come, but He makes all things good! I have seen the beauty of His Church working together and have felt the miracle of prayers said in different languages from His people around the world. This is the God I serve, the God to whom I will not sacrifice something that has cost me nothing. It has cost me, but HE is worth it and has blessed me beyond what I have ever dreamed.

ACT: What sacrifice can you make for Jesus? Is He calling you to greater, deeper faith? Is He calling you to serve Him through cross-cultural ministry? We’ll help you find your place every step of the way. Email us at mobilization@wgm.org to get started on your missions journey.