By Joyell Nevins – CFFM blogger
Previously, Christian Family Fellowship highlighted a retired contractor who raised a family and worked decades on the job, and recently traveled with a missions group to Honduras in “On a Mission in EVERY Season of Life.”
Now, we’re highlighting another minister we love on the other side of the spectrum – a single young woman who is serving long-term missions in a village in Zambia, Africa. They are both operating in their calling and in the ministry of reconciliation, despite their age and life differences. God’s holy spirit knows no bounds!
Nicola Baker, originally from Huber Heights, Ohio and now living in Zambia, Africa (the red country in the map below), visited Christian Family Fellowship Ministry to share her testimony of faith and love. She also shared the mission and vision the Lord has given her for the Lozi people.
File by TUBS via Wikimedia Commons
“When you see Africa, and you see these places, it might grip your heart, but that’s kind of a cliché,” she explained. “There’s a lot of poverty, a lot of kids, a lot of needs. But when I went there, the Lord spoke to me at a place of desperation.”
The Lord put on Nicola’s heart a desire to flame the fires of God in the young children. She believes kids can start leading at a young age, not be prepped for ministry later.
“The question is, ‘what does the Lord have for you now?’ You’re never too young to preach the gospel!” Nicola exhorted.
CFFM believes this too, giving youth a chance to lead in groups and on stage, teaching them to operate in spiritual manifestations and their own gifts and talents. This attitude is most prevalent at CFFM’s annual YES! Camp, where generations have been affected.
That generational vision flows in Nicola as well. She said the Lord also taught her that if she can start with this generation, it will have ripple effects for multiple generations to come.
“If you can train up this generation, it will change the whole cycle of things that have been going on for thousands of generations,” Nicola declared.
Local Missions First
Nicola didn’t start off by traveling across the globe though. The Lord began teaching her in her ordinary jobs in the Dayton, Ohio, region.
“The Lord would say, in this retail job and that job, ‘this is your missions field. This is what you have right now, now what are you going to do with it,” Nicola recalls. “I said, ‘ok Lord, then show me how to bless this person. Show me what they need in their life at this time.”
She is now connected with Overland Missions, where they live by the African statement that “no one can reject the Word of God.”
When she goes up to a mud door, Nicola remembers that statement. Sometimes, the family isn’t interested, and sometimes, they say ‘stay one more hour, I will make you dinner.’
But regardless of the immediate outcome, Nicola believes that she and her team are fanning that spiritual flame.
“I’m there with my ministry partners to spread a fire in the western province of Zambia, and eventually it will be the whole of Zambia. Then we’ll see what the Lord has next! That is my vision; that is my heartbeat,” she explained.
A Life Saved
Nicola has personally experienced what that spiritual fire can do. She grew up in a religious setting, but a dysfunctional household.
From the age of eight-years-old, Nicola considered suicide, “contemplating it” until she was 17. That’s when the Lord stepped in and did a work.
At that time, Nicola had made an actual plan to end her life. But the weekend before the deed was to be done, she attended a conference through Bethel Church with 14,000 believers and plenty of miraculous healings.
“I thought, ‘if I live, that’s what I want to see in my life,” Nicola shared, referring to the healings she saw. “That’s worth living for.”
However, she knew that when the conference ended, she still had to go back to the life she was living with her father. It was there, sitting on the ground, crying her eyes out, that Nicola said the Lord “touched me.”
“I was saying the prayer I had said for so many years: ‘I just want a dad who will love me,” Nicola explained, “and in that moment, I had my eyes closed, but I saw this huge light, and then this love came from this light, and it was unconditional love. It pierced every part of me, my spirit, my soul, my body. In the blink of an eye, it changed me.”
Then the Lord spoke to her and quoted Jeremiah 29:11.
“For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
Nicola continued, “He simply just told me, everything bad that happened to you was from Satan. Everything good that had happened to you was from Me in your life, and now you have a life that’s worth living.”
“The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance [to the full, till it overflows].” John 10:10 AMP
When Nicola left the meeting that night, her youth group did not recognize her. When they asked what happened to her, she said “I met God!”
Then later when her mom asked the same question, Nicola exclaimed, “I met love!”
She is now taking that same love and light to the Lozi people. Learn more about her ministry partners at Overland Missions.
And even though you may not be working on an international mission field, you do carry the love and light of Jesus wherever you go. You bring the Father’s heart with you to His people around you. Now, the question is, how can you demonstrate that love?