 Printer-friendly version Prudence Wairimuka, one of seven children, was raised in a small village in rural africa. “I was ambitious as a little kid. I wanted to study, so when I had the chance, I went to school,” she says. In time, Prudence completed college and earned a law degree. She married and settled down in the city, working for an insurance company. Her life began to look ideal. “I had a husband, kids, was well-paid as a lawyer—life was okay, until war broke out.”
The lack of peace in the country mirrored a growing lack of peace in her heart. “I grew up in church. I tried to be good. I kept the Ten Commandments. I was a good person,” she says. Because of the war, close relatives were displaced from their homes, so Prudence and her family took them in, feeling it was the right thing to do. “But some of these people took my things without permission and sold them!” In these desperate times, tensions grew inside and out.
Some women at her office suggested that prayer would help and invited her to join them at their lunch-hour prayers. But that did not make sense to Prudence. “I used to think educated people did not need God. People who were not educated did not know what they were doing; they didn’t understand that the Bible was a history book. I was more educated than these women were. They were just ignorant.”
But after two years, she decided to join them. “I used to pray memorized prayers at church. It was boring. This group prayed as if they were talking to God! That was different! So on July 2, 1992, I prayed with them, ‘God, I’m coming to you. I’m coming not to look for material things. I am coming to you to ask for peace.’”
“I was a changed person after that,” Prudence explains. “But I was not perfect. I thought as a Christian I would not sin anymore and not be so confrontational with people for my rights. So I prayed, ‘I want you to help me live this kind of life I have started. I want to live as a Christian and as Prudence.”
Without the benefit of Christian teaching, it was hard for Prudence to grow spiritually. Doubts plagued her. Every time she sinned she felt she had to ask Jesus into her life all over again. She knew she was not experiencing the kind of peace she had hoped for. To make matters worse, Prudence’s husband opposed her new faith and hid all the Bibles in the house, keeping watch to make sure she did not find one and read it. However, she found ways to read the Bible in her bedroom when her husband watched TV.
Meanwhile, the political climate grew more dangerous, and one day the entire nation erupted in violence. Prudence and her family left everything they owned and fled. Miraculously, because God was with them, they escaped the bloody violence all around them and made their way to a safe place.
One day soon after their escape, she saw a colorful ad for a “crusade,” and was confused by the term, somehow concluding it was a disco. She decided to go, not knowing she was in for a surprise. “I was surprised at first it was Christian music,” she says. However, she was even more surprised by the speaker. “The preacher was talking about me! He said, ‘Many people are looking for peace in material things, buying expensive clothes,’ and that is what I was doing! Then he said that some people would try drinking alcohol to get peace. I would take a glass of wine or beer to have peace because of problems in my family. He said some would try witchcraft to get peace, as I had done, but he pointed out that none of those things helped. I sat there thinking to myself, ‘I have never talked to anyone here in this country about my life, and this guy coming from the States, he is talking about me!’ I began to cry. ‘How do I get peace, Lord?’ I asked in my heart. And immediately the preacher said, ‘Those who want peace, come forward. You can only get peace by receiving Christ as your personal savior.’”
Prudence prayed with someone that night, and for the first time began to experience the peace she had always longed for. Wasn’t she already a Christian? Yes, she says; she is sure she would have gone to heaven, had she died escaping their home. But this night sealed the relationship. She no longer felt she was in danger of falling away.
Soon she began taking classes at a church, learning about being a Christian, what the Bible has to teach us about forgiveness and answered prayer. She learned that the Bible was not just a history book, but “it is true and alive, the living Word of God.” Around this time her husband became ill and her new church friends went with Prudence to visit him. He responded to their message, came to faith in Jesus Christ himself and then, sadly, passed away a few days later.
The Lord was faithful to Prudence in the midst of her hardships, and she grew in the Lord. Soon she had an opportunity to enroll in a theological college, graduating with a Master’s Degree in Biblical Counseling, and then found ways to serve in various ministry positions. She became the Director of Women, Youth and Children’s Ministries for a Christian organization, and also did work with children-at-risk, street kids and war victims. Her sharp legal mind helped her organize conferences and training opportunities for pastors and lay leaders. Prudence, who speaks five languages, learned how to work with people from different nations, cultures and denominations. She learned how to organize conferences in a distant city, acquiring invitation lists, contacting facilitators, building a team, coming up with budgets and making sure everything flowed smoothly the week of the conference.
Today, Prudence is in Boston, waiting on God for his next move in her life. He continues to show himself faithful. When a ministry job she had for two years was coming to an end, a woman she met in New Hampshire, Sylvia (Miatke) De Jong, who used to be on staff at EGC, suggested she call the Center. She came for an interview and found that her unique gifts are exactly what EGC’s Intercultural Ministries needs as the team prepares for October’s consultation. Prudence joined the EGC team on May 7, 2007. Since then, she has been working to contact Africans, Haitians, and leaders from other ethnic groups around New England to invite them to the consultation.
“I like it here!” she says of EGC. “People are very friendly. There is a lot of Christian love. It is a good environment, and the work is enjoyable. I like getting in touch with people, sharing with them about building God’s kingdom, networking together. It is very important. Together we can accomplish so much more than we can alone.”
In addition to her ministry position, she would also like to take a year of law school in order to be qualified to practice law in the U.S. “I want to be able to pass the bar exam here in the States so that maybe I can help people here who cannot defend themselves,” she says. She has been accepted to study at Suffolk University Law School in August and has been granted a generous scholarship.
However, the balance needed is far beyond her resources. With a confident smile she says quietly, “I am praying for a miracle.”
by Steve Daman
[published in Inside EGC, Summer 2007]
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