An alumni couple who lost their newborn child more than eight years ago say the transformation of their grief into blessing is the result of one thing: “The power of God to redeem.”
Janae and Rodney Hostetter, a Pennsylvania-based couple who are both 2005 graduates of Eastern Mennonite University, traveled recently to Namulonge, Uganda, to celebrate the ribbon-cutting for the Aliyah Joy House. The six-apartment building named in their daughter’s honor will house families and generate rent income for the Comforter’s Center, a crisis pregnancy center in the capital city Kampala.
“You know, the enemy comes to kill steal and destroy, and we did lose our daughter,” Rodney said recently. “But the Lord redeems everything for those who love Him, and so now, because of what’s happened and in her name, there is new life, and babies are consistently being saved from abortion.”
Funded through the Aliyah Joy House project via Janae’s aunt’s and uncle’s Ohio-based Konnection and Multiplying International (KAMI) ministry, the new $50,000 facility is expected to allow the center to be self supporting.
The dedication – a “really powerful time” of worship and prayer, a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the sharing of food – was attended by many neighbors and representatives of other local ministries as well as Faith Katana Mirembe, secretary to the president of Uganda, and center clients, who attended with their children. Accompanying the Hostetters were 17 others from the United States, who helped finish painting the Aliyah Joy House and visited the center.
The opening of the house is “definitely something we’ve been believing and praying for, for more than eight years,” Janae said. “Of course you can imagine that this dedication service felt amazing, after such a long time of waiting.”
Standing for life – “absolutely”
In 2010, just three months into their pregnancy, the Hostetters learned that their baby had brain abnormalities and would likely not live. Most people in their situation, medical providers told them, would opt for an abortion, but the Hostetters decided instead that they would “stand for life absolutely,” Rodney said.
They turned to scripture, for Janae specifically Isaiah 60:1-3: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”
After Aliyah Joy died while being born, the Hostetters’ family and friends contributed money for them to use in her honor, and they sought a cause to support.
“Throughout the pregnancy,” Janae said, “we really thought that we were supposed to stand for life.” Through KAMI they learned of the Comforter’s Center, which was founded by Veronica Nakyewe, a woman whose disabilities had been caused by her mother’s abortion attempt and whose sister had died from abortion complications. They realized that “here’s a place that does this on a regular basis.”
Affirmation and redemption
Then and since, the Hostetters have believed that “it’s the power of Heaven, the power of Jesus Christ,” that can change situations.
“It’s an easy thing to become bitter or become callous after pain and after trial,” Rodney said, “but anything that is instead committed to the Lord will be redeemed it in a sweet way, one hundred percent of the time.”
They have felt “supernatural” affirmation of this, multiple times, including not long after Aliyah’s birth, when Janae’s aunt and uncle traveled to Uganda in part to surprise Nakyewe with the check honoring their niece.
There, Janae said, they had a surprise of their own: Nakyewe eagerly showed them a gazebo-like structure being built beside the center for a prayer house that – after reading about the Hostetters’ story and commitment to life but before knowing about the Hostetters’ financial gift – she had felt called to name the Aliyah Joy House of Prayer. The money, they realized, would pay for its roof.
Another moment of affirmation came in 2013 at the groundbreaking for the Aliyah Joy House project. Janae had “felt God say, ‘You should pray [the Isaiah] verses over the land,’” and so read them to Nakyewe, who began crying and then told Janae that they were “the very verses that God gave me when I started this center.”
The verses are now inscribed on the Aliyah Joy House sign, and the Hostetters are clear: the house is the fruit of not their own good works, but of the loving kindness of a God who “really does take the weak things of the world and makes them strong and shines his glory on it,” Rodney said. “That’s what we feel we’re an example of.”
“God seriously can redeem any situation, no matter how dark it is,” Janae said. “God’s redemption is always greater than the work of the enemy.”
The newly dedicated Aliyah Joy House is nearly finished – its remaining needs include plumbing fixtures and tiling – and then the apartments will be ready for tenants.
Donations are received through the KAMInternational website.
That is a beautiful prayer that was from your heart may God continue to bless you abundantly