She is a professor at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia, a Hebrew scholar, a translator of Hebrew Grammar into Spanish and has a passionate burden for the thousands of hardened criminals in Colombian Prisons.  Jeannine Brabon is among a number of OMS missionaries who understands something of the enormous pain Colombians face as they daily come to terms with that nation’s ‘culture of death.’  Although the killing of others has become very lucrative for many of the cartels of the nation’s expanding drug culture, it has not stopped God’s people from serving in Colombia.

In an article on her ministry in Colombia she says, “I teach people who have had their fathers, brothers and sons assassinated.  I rarely have a class in any given year that one of my class members does not lose one of their family members to a violent death.”  To a culture where life itself has become insignificant, she encourages those around her to find security in the Person of Jesus Christ. It is doubtful that most of us will ever face some of the horrors which confront those who spend their time working alongside some of society’s most notorious criminals.  But this is where God has called this community of missionaries and Church workers – each day trusting God that He would protect them and keep them focused on His plan for Colombia.  When OMS began its particular style of ministry in the prisons in 1989, God took hold of the missionary’s inadequacies and rewarded their faith with the sight of transformed men coming to Christ.  Long before OMS arrived on the prison scene, others had laboured, sacrificially laying foundational stones for what God was going to do in the future, preparing the way for a mighty move of the Spirit.  Men who were broken at the Cross, found themselves desperate and hungry for some sort of answer to their hopeless dilemma.  They began to surrender their darkened past and pain filled present to the drawing of the Holy Ghost.  Before long, many in the prison, although facing long prison terms, were spiritually set free.  With Biblical training schools, leadership training courses, academic ‘degree and diploma’ programs and a host of other ministry related learning tools in the prison itself, the prison saw a miraculous transformation – which we give honour to the Lord for.

But with any ministry where there has been an attack on the ‘gates of Hell’, there is sometimes opposition and even danger.  Although Jeannine and her co-workers are greatly used of God, this doesn’t mean that they are left alone by the ‘enemy of souls.’  There are the death threats, the accusations, and the lies – yet as it encourages in one of Jeanine’s favourite Bible verses, they are confident that, “…Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death. For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”  (Philippians 1: 20-21).  Each of us are called to share our faith and to live in such a manner that reveals to a lost world that we have an inheritance that is not of this earth, eternal in the Heavens.  Some of us may be called to pour out our lives reaching those that society and governments have given up on, like the inmates of Bellavista Prison, while others may be called to lay everything on the line in prayer and support of others.  Whatever you and I do with this life God has given us, may we never give up obeying our Father’s will, knowing that there are things He desires to happen which may not necessarily be witnessed in our time.  Jeannine and her fellow workers and supporters have entered into the work begun by others, it may be possible that what we do today will become evident in transformed lives in the seasons ahead.
Reverend Chunillal Pema.