Child placed with Jewels for Jesus Agency

A slip of a girl in a lilac gown stole the show from the professional performers. Four hundred people sat in hushed silence as Kabelo told how her dream twisted into a nightmare and then floated back into the sunshine.

Kabelo gave her moving testimony at a benefit concert March 24, for Jewels for Jesus Mission held at Unionville Alliance Church.

At 20 years of age, Kabelo could not have been happier. She was a fine student in Botswana, the land-locked country north of South Africa. All her hard studying had finally paid off. An international mining company had awarded her a scholarship to the college of her choice overseas. After graduation, the company would offer her a responsible management position in Botswana along with her own house (or she could pay the company back for her education). To go abroad she would simply need to pass a medical to ensure that she was neither HIV-positive nor pregnant.

And then her wonderful dream coiled into a nightmare. She was raped. Kabelo was a believer from a Christian home when “a very close family friend” forced her to have sex. Afterwards she prayed desperately that she wouldn’t be pregnant or have AIDS.

She said nothing to her family nor to any of her Christian friends for fear they would turn against her. She only confided in her pastor. He encouraged her to speak with a social worker who confirmed that she was pregnant and advised her to have an abortion. After all, it was rape, and she would loose her precious scholarship.

“But I was carrying a life. I told God, ‘You called me to be your child. Why should this happen to me?’ I was very angry at God.” But Kabelo still trusted Him and, although two months pregnant, went ahead with the scholarship’s medical exam. She was not HIV-positive. And although they performed a medical exam, her pregnancy was not discovered. Nor was she asked.

So miraculously she was able to come to Canada to study as planned; but what courage it took! She knew no one in Canada and had no medical coverage. Yet she trusted that God would provide for her and her child, and He did. She began classes in Sudbury and then at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario. Her Kitchener church picked up her medical bills and through a crisis pregnancy centre she learned of Jewels for Jesus Mission, in Mississauga.

The Mission provides biblically-based counselling for women faced with an unplanned pregnancy. They will support women whether they place for adoption or whether they decide to parent. Kabelo chose adoption. “They were there for me every day during my pregnancy.”

After a difficult delivery, Stephen was born in February of last year. Kabelo helped select the family who would adopt him, a Caucasian family who already had two adopted daughters and who were committed to adopting another child of colour. Kabelo is continuing her studies.

Compassion

No woman can ever forget her rapist. But amazingly Kabelo had compassion for her assailant. “This man needs God,” she told her Mission counsellor, Suzanne Ball. She and Ball would pray regularly for him, for his family and for KabeloÕs own family.

Ball has only admiration for her young client. “She leaves me breathless. She had an overwhelming trust that God would look after her. She really prays and she cared for the state of her attacker’s soul.”

And God rewarded KabeloÕs willingness to forgive, by granting the man who raped her the grace of conversion.

“He got saved. He came to know Christ,” Kabelo told the audience in Unionville. Then she urged them, “There’s a God who is so amazing! Believe in God. There’s a God who forgives. Be open to forgiveness.”

After Kabelo spoke, the Jewels Children’s Choir, 26 children who were placed in homes across Ontario through Jewels for Jesus Adoption Agency, sang to the obvious delight of the crowd.

After the last child left the stage, the director of Jewels for Jesus, Joan Kosmachuk, told the audience, “Look at this empty stage. If it were not for the tremendous courage of birth mothers like Kabelo, we would only have abortions and a dark, empty stage.”

Polished professionals performed for the rest of the evening. First there was the quirky Great Wooden Trio, who punctuated stories with songs and drumming, then Juno award-winner Deborah Klassen, who had just flown in from Nashville. Yet it was Kabelo who had flown in from Botswana so many months ago, pregnant and frightened, who moved us most.

The concert raised close to $10,000 for the Mission, and was spearheaded by an adopting couple, Anne and Jonathan Ison.

Jewels for Jesus Mission and Jewels for Jesus Adoption Agency are charitable, non-profit, non-denominational, evangelical organizations. Jewels for Jesus Adoption Agency Inc. is licensed by the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services to facilitate adoptions in the province of Ontario. For more information call (905) 821-6320 or visit www.jewelsforjesus.net.