Transforming Lives: From New Wineskins to Wings for Change Inc.
I attended New Wineskins in 2019. It was just weeks after sending feminine pads and education to one class of girls in Uganda. I was brand new at this venture, and I knew that I had a lot to learn. As a former flight attendant and a registered nurse, I wasn’t really sure how this Mission Conference experience would help me. My program is health care and not evangelism, and I will never be bold enough to walk up to people and ask, “Do you know Jesus?”
But I liked the people from my church, St. Peter's Anglican Cathedral in Tallahassee, FL, and I met so many awesome and interesting people! I laughed a lot, ate great food in beautiful surroundings, and sucked in all of the information available! This is great, I thought. I'll definitely come back in three years, wondering where my program would be at that time.
The very last day of the conference was the my most valuable day there! On that morning, the “designated driver” in our group needed to stop at a store before we were to begin. So we were a bit late walking into a huge room filled with Anglicans with their arms raised high, singing beautiful praises to our Father and His Son! I started crying. This is what I want in my church!
The worshippers’ ability to sing and worship without fear of what the person sitting next to them thought was beautiful! They were in communion with other Christians who love the Lord and love others in this world. And although those we serve need physical resources, they also more than anything need the same Spirit that I was watching and feeling within myself. This is the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead! At that moment I realized, “I am with MY people!” Thank you, Jesus!
I was inspired after the conference to pursue formalizing my ministry of health education and human trafficking prevention into a non-profit. So even during a global pandemic, our program grew with God's grace and intervention to become Wings for Change Inc., a nonprofit 501c3 corporation. Wings for Change is a grassroots idea that took hold with former Christian flight attendants who liked my idea to send menstrual hygiene supplies with the truth about the female reproductive system to dispel long-held stigmas in Uganda. As fellow parishioners at St. Peter's Anglican Cathedral learned of this project, they joined with contributions. Archbishop Robert Duncan was instrumental in helping us to make the humanitarian project into a 501c3 corporation and offering his blessing to include Anglican churches in Africa!
Upon learning about human trafficking, it was clear that our partners in Uganda had to be educated! I began not only to write on health, disease prevention, and safety lessons for those in Uganda but also to include lessons on human trafficking. Those in Uganda immediately took this information to others in their communities. They worked through radio stations as they began to educate and form community action groups to bring knowledge and awareness to a region of the world where traffickers exploit victims abroad for multiple forms of slavery, and torture, often resulting in death. Even law enforcement in Uganda has approached the Wings for Change partners asking for this information! Wings for Change now partners with Anti-Trafficking, Inc., an organization founded and operated by former law enforcement and Dept. of Justice employee Bill Woolf that provides sought-after education and information about international trafficking worldwide.
As Wings for Change has developed, I began to remember more and more phrases and information that I had learned previously that I could put into action! But something else happened as I began relationships with those in Uganda — I realized that my role was to be an evangelist! My biblical knowledge may not be all that advanced, but I know that I love Jesus, and I know that I love to teach others about their bodies and about their mental and physical health! In fact, before my role as a nurse to be an advocate for health or my former role as a flight attendant to interact well with other cultures, my role as a Christian is to tell the good news of Jesus! That means more people in this world will be praising and worshiping the same God that I do — just like we did at New Wineskins in 2019!
So! Don't think that the New Wineskins conference will be just a mountain getaway! Your lives will change! God will use you to change the lives of others! You will begin to network with others. In fact, while at New Wineskins, I met a priest and his wife on top of a mountain whom I ran into again this spring at another mission gathering in Texas. If we had not shared our stories on that mountain, our physical recognition of each other would not have occurred. But because of New Wineskins, where you will meet and share with others, God will cultivate those seeds that He has planted. And when He is ready to harvest what He has sown, it somehow all comes together — that there was a plan and a reason for you to be in North Carolina for one week in the fall! Coming up soon, I will travel with that priest, his wife, and others to Uganda! I will meet in person those people who have become my friends and partners over Zoom, and those whom Wings for Change have helped!
The ministry of that priest and his wife has grown. Wings for Change has grown in menstrual hygiene and health education, and we are also creating awareness of human trafficking! We provide valuable knowledge (with some financial resources for the expenses of printing) to our partners on this topic. While our partners utilize what we give them, they begin their own mission to others in Uganda, just like I learned at New Wineskins!
So come to New Wineskins! Even through a pandemic, God has kept working! I hope to see you there.
In Christ Alone,
Kathy Funk Gomer
Kathy Funk Gomer is a former flight attendant, a retired registered nurse, and now the founder and president of Wings for Change Inc., a nonprofit corporation located in Tallahassee, Florida. She is a member of St. Peter’s Anglican Cathedral in Tallahassee, Florida. In the upcoming 2022 New Wineskins Global Mission Conference, Kathy will be leading a MAP Talk as well as a pre-conference on human trafficking entitled “Human Trafficking: Churches Can Respond!”