Ellie Claus

Last November I flew up to Anchorage, Alaska for my Grandfather's funeral. My cousin's husband Karl Clauson is the Senior Pastor of Change Point (changepointalaska.com). It’s a huge church and runs over 5000 a week. My other cousin Gwen Adams is the senior leader of the children's ministry which is running over a thousand children on a weekly basis. Gwen was asking me a lot of questions about Sudan after the funeral. Through this conversation I found out that my grandfather, in the last 6 months of his life, had been praying for the healing in Sudan and that it was a burden upon his heart. Gwen felt she would love to get involved in supporting some type of ministry in Sudan. She said “I have a thousand children that come to our church. If each child would bring a dollar a week that is a $1000.00 a week!” Now there are two ways I could approach this: 1) A sales presentation with PowerPoint and try to meet with key players and close the deal. Which is not me. Or 2) bring someone with us and allow the Holy Sprit to speak to them and let them see what Christ sees and come back to Alaska and share Christ's heart. With this on my mind I thought of asking Gwen to come to Sudan with me. But, my cuz has three children and is running a huge ministry, so going into a very dangerous country is not the brightest thing especially if you don’t have a clear calling about going, forget it. I told Gwen the best thing to do is find someone with a heart for orphans. Two months later I was given a phone number with a name “Ellie.” I called Ellie and realized that I have an opportunity to equip Ellie “to do great things for the Kingdom of God.” I believe in order to do that you have to take risks - big risks - Sudan-sized risks. In a conversation I had with her, she is definitely open to take risks in order to be sold out on Him. Easter Sunday I’m going to introduce her to our congregation at the 9:00 am and 10:45 service for prayer before we fly out that day. Please begin to pray for Ellie that the Lord will instill His direction for her life and that when she goes back to Alaska she will bring part of the hearts of the Sudanese children with her.