Kaitlyn Donihue
Connecting the Dots
Connecting the Dots
Justice For All
Team Be Nimble

In this Impact Report, we feature highlights from Justice For All (JFA) events that took place from March to September. Each highlighted event illustrates the way smaller training teams can help us make a bigger impact. We’ve found that empowering our trainers to do events on their own helps our team to be nimble and ready to meet the great need all over the country for good dialogue training—training that includes outreach whenever possible.

Team Be Nimble
Tammy Cook
Passing the Baton

Tammy Cook reflects on 28 years with JFA.

Passing the Baton
Steve Wagner
New Team Members and New Cities
New Team Members and New Cities
Steve Wagner
What God Can Do Through Every Human Being

This month we report on a different kind of impact that God has created through JFA, specifically through the work of our office manager, Eva Heath. This is the story of the impact God produces through human beings many have written off because of their circumstances or disabilities. It’s also the story of one woman’s testimony that even if we can’t see the good that God is bringing from difficulties right now, we must hope in Him, loving every human being precisely because each person is made in the image of God. We bid a fond farewell to you this month, Eva, and we trust God will care for you in the new chapter of your retirement!

What God Can Do Through Every Human Being

Our Interns Don't Make Coffee

Latte art courtesy anonymous barista at The Bean Pedaler in Cañon City, Colorado.

Latte art courtesy anonymous barista at The Bean Pedaler in Cañon City, Colorado.

One morning years ago, I came into the JFA office to find that a joke was circulating about the horrible coffee one of the interns had made that day. I never got to try it, and I confess I’m not sorry. The intern had forgotten to insert a coffee filter in the coffee maker!

Since about that time we’ve had a motto at JFA: Our interns don’t make coffee. But I assure you that it has nothing to do with this one intern’s mishap. Rather, our rather proud statement about our interns is meant to capture in a short phrase a very intentional emphasis at JFA’s heart: with God’s help, we see the raw potential within every pro-life Christian, and we train each one who is willing into a dialogue artist who skillfully trains others. So, when we think of interns, we think of all that potential. Sure, making coffee is an important skill, given how many people rely on the beverage to get through the day. How much more important is it to learn to change hearts and minds—something the unborn rely on just to see the light of day at all? And how important is it, then, to learn to train others to change hearts and minds? So, when God sees fit to provide interns for JFA, we wouldn’t want to waste even a few minutes of that great potential.

Recent Instagram Post: Kaitlyn, Susanna, Rebekah, and Mary pause for a photo during our outreach to UT Dallas in 2020. Each of these trainers began their work with JFA as interns. Seeing them become skilled at training others is one of our team’s greatest joys! See @picturejusticeforall to share!

Recent Instagram Post: Kaitlyn, Susanna, Rebekah, and Mary pause for a photo during our outreach to UT Dallas in 2020. Each of these trainers began their work with JFA as interns. Seeing them become skilled at training others is one of our team’s greatest joys! See @picturejusticeforall to share!

This emphasis is paying off. Current JFA staff members Kaitlyn, Mary, Rebekah, and Susanna all began their work with JFA as semester interns. Now they’re actively training others, continuing to refine their craft as dialogue artists who train others. Recently, Rebekah shared an amazing story related to public speaking. It illustrates our intern training emphasis, but more importantly, it also illustrates how it’s precisely our weaknesses that sometimes our loving God is pleased to fill with his strength! Read it and thank God with us.

I found him gazing into the sky

Years ago, prominent Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland was in Wichita to speak at a conference and we invited him to come to our office to engage our trainers in Q&A. A few minutes before the Q&A was to begin, J.P. wasn’t in the room with our staff. I wandered outside and found him gazing into the sky. He explained that he had to purposefully take time to give thanks.

At the start of every working day, our team pauses to pray. A common refrain among our prayers is “thank you for all of JFA’s supporters.” Like our friend J.P., we feel we must purposefully give thanks. I’d like to pause now and say these same words now in your presence: We thank God for you. We thank God for your partnership in helping at our office, in volunteering with us at outreach events, in providing space in your home for JFA activities, in providing better-than-restaurant meals and better-than-hotel accommodations for our teams on the road, and in praying persistently that God would use JFA’s efforts to finally make abortion unthinkable. You have provided funding during the pandemic and the 2020 year-end so generously and sacrificially! We are struck with awe by God’s faithfulness through you: We thank God for you.

Since that day looking up at the sky, J.P. has very publicly and very candidly revealed a bit more of why he must give thanks: he has struggled for a long time with debilitating anxiety and depression. Whether we struggle in the same way or not, would you join me in thanking God for his work through JFA? And please allow me to also say those same words to you: thank you.

The following updates from JFA trainers shows some of what God has been doing through you and JFA:

To learn more about J.P.’s book on anxiety, click here: Finding Quiet.

Please enjoy and give thanks with us!

Love3 Participant Has an Extraordinary Conversation…with Her Husband

“[In response to the Love3 assignment to create a conversation], I engaged in a conversation with my husband. I was surprised to hear that he is pro-life but only in certain situations. I kept asking questions to gather information, although I was struggling and wanting to challenge his position. I realized that I need to work on asking questions without the intent to engage, and I also need to work on listening.

“My husband said that he is pro-life, except in the circumstances of rape or chromosomal /health abnormalities in the child.

“I asked him further questions like, ‘Even in those circumstances, are you okay with an abortion in the seventh month?’ Although he said yes, I could see he was unsure of his stance.

“We concluded that he is pro-life except in the circumstances of rape or medical abnormality, and he believes abortions should only be legal in those circumstances...and it should be allowed at any point in the pregnancy, no matter how far along the pregnancy was.

“Afterwards, I asked him about his thoughts on how the conversation went. He said that he was ready to engage in an argument, but that because I kept asking questions, he didn’t feel the need to engage in an argument. He also said that my questions actually made him start to question some of his views and made him think that he might not be right in having certain views.

“I was absolutely shocked about his views, but even more so by his assessment of our conversation, and how he actually started to question his stance by the end of our conversation.”

(Note: This post was featured in JFA’s February 2021 newsletter.)

Instagram Comment

This morning I saw a comment referring to our recent Instagram post about Roe v. Wade (right).

I decided to attempt a conversation, even given the very unfavorable conditions. This post is really a text message format, and it’s a public post rather than a direct message. What’s more, there are no less than ten distinct assertions or arguments in the comment, and some of them refer to complicated issues for which sound bites aren’t helpful.

After a few false starts, I wrote a short response to move the conversation forward, aiming to live out our “Love3” idea by showing equal concern for the pregnant woman, the unborn child, and the person who wrote the post.

Watch the post to see what conversation comes of it. Then share the post and engage others in conversation!

This is just one example of JFA’s attempt to tackle one of the most important challenges facing pro-life advocates this year: getting thousands of conversations started in everyday-life situations. Please join me in praying for the conversations like this one that we’re creating and for insight into the best ways to train participants in our events (see below) to create conversations. We truly need God’s help to engage massive numbers of people in meaningful conversations that can help them change their minds about unborn children.