Today we want to highlight the great work Hope Through Jesus is doing in Tanzania.

The mission of Hope Through Jesus, founded by Jesse Wellhoefer, is to bring Spiritual, Educational, and Financial Hope through the power of Jesus.

You can visit their facebook page Here

Tell us about the program you are doing to reach your mission and positively change lives.

Right now we are working on long term sustainable programs in Tanzania. More specifically, we are working within the local churches already established here. We are building them up so they can continue to better serve their community in a way that will make their church and people shine as the hands and feet of Christ.

In Africa, it is easy to come in and "give" people things. That always makes the missionary and donors feel great! But, Hope Through Jesus is taking a long term approach and working with Pastors whose hearts are to serve the people.

From there, we are doing a four-phased approach. Each phase includes building up the church and circling back to the first. We start with the first phase to test and work with people who have hearts to serve. The first phase weeds out those who just want money.

1. Community Outreach

   Community outreach is designed to share God's love by serving in a tangible way. This phase is designed to get the church members involved so they can learn that it is truly better to give than receive. This includes:

   1. Widow lunch program
   2. Street clean up program
   3. Door to Door evangelism

2. Ministry Training

   1. Missionary Training: Here we help train long term missionaries to go out and spread the hope they have in Jesus within their communities as well as long term trips to non-local destinations.
   2. Pastor Training: Here we work to help educate Pastors on their role in the church and help them become better leaders that can better serve their church and community.

3. Pastors Bible Study

   Here we work to bring pastors of different denominations together so they can become friends learning and sharing together with one purpose.

4. Small Loan Program

   Our small loan program is governed by the church we work with. This allows people in the church to contribute to, govern and benefit from it.

What is the biggest struggle within your mission?

Our struggles are pretty common, the three biggest being:

1. Sticking with work that will have long term, sustainable results when it seems easier to pass out food on the street (which tends to hurt cultures in the long term).
2. Finding the right people to partner with when building up leaders or choosing who to help.
3. Funding for our Mission.

What are some of the successes you have had that you would like to share?

Our biggest successes have come from the Widow lunches and our small loan program. The widow program has been growing and brings a lot of hope to the local community as they see their elders being cared for by the church.

This program is great and gives the widows a chance to meet together, learn about the Bible and the hope Jesus brings, meet new friends and get great food!

A recent success in our small loan program has been with Juma. Juma is a hard-working man who was renting a motorcycle to use as a taxi service in a small village. Even though he was working long hours, the rent on the motorcycle ate all his profits and he was still living in poverty.

We were able to loan him the money to purchase his own motorcycle to break his cycle of poverty! Shortly after that, Juma was able to buy his wife the supplies she needed to start her own juice business. She is now supplying a healthy, fresh made juice drink to people working in the village!

What technologies do you use to help support your cause?

We always need to make giving easy and keep our donors up to date. We use Continue To Give for our online fundraising needs. This has worked well as it makes giving easy, and allows our donors to manage their own recurring donations.

We use Continue To Give's Donor Management System to keep our donors up to date via emails, texts, and print mail.

Of course, we also use Facebook to post on a regular basis so our supporters can be reminded often in a non-intrusive way. We post a lot of great pictures which help people know they are part of something big when they donate online to our cause.