I had been struggling to find the words and the way to move through the painful process of seeking restitution, relief, revival, redemption, and reconciliation for the last seven years.

In an attempt to keep gossip and conflict from the wider body of the congregation I had attempted to dialogue with the individual, then with the administration of the denomination and the church. Because protecting the person from harm even though we have been harmed mattered to me.

God kept prompting me to write the email that had been sitting unwritten in drafts for quite some time. I kept delaying – telling God that I had no idea how to say it all in the best possible way. He kept promising me that if I began He would have the words flow through me. I hesitated and hesitated and composed beginnings in my head for so long. I didn’t want to offend or harm anyone. I didn’t want to start a fire that might burn the house down.

This morning, Friday, September 12, 2025, as God led me to Psalm 112, I am accepting the invitation to no longer delay bringing this to this church body.

Praise the Lord!

How joyful are those who fear the Lord

and delight in obeying his commands.

Their children will be successful everywhere;

an entire generation of godly people will be blessed.

They themselves will be wealthy,

and their good deeds will last forever.

Light shines in the darkness for the godly.

They are generous, compassionate, and righteous.

Good comes to those who lend money generously

and conduct their business fairly.

Such people will not be overcome by evil.

Those who are righteous will be long remembered.

They do not fear bad news;

they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.

They are confident and fearless

and can face their foes triumphantly.

They share freely and give generously to those in need.

Their good deeds will be remembered forever.

They will have influence and honour.

Living in the community with love has always been my goal. Tending to wounds of division and nurturing the broken and the hopeful has been my passion. Learning to do this according to God’s pattern as taught by Jesus matters to me more than anything else.

My Journey of Sacrifice and Building

In 2011, as a new mom, I closed the business I had built in Surrey and moved to Aldergrove so my children could attend FVAA. It was a huge financial sacrifice, but I had been taught from childhood that Adventist schools were the safest and best choice.

I continued to serve and support the community while parenting my daughters and the foster children in my care. With their significant trauma-related needs, I sought ways to merge my passion for nurture with generating income.

By 2016/17, I began building the other level again. I had closed one business to facilitate church school and it was time to build up again—this time in response to meet a need that God highlighted for me. And I was building with others in the community who shared my vision to build a network of care around struggling families.

Someone in the church saw our venture and invited themselves in as a partner, offering their position and network as an answer to prayer. Though I was hesitant, I trusted the certainty of the others, and it seemed as if God might have opened the way, so I agreed.

The Harm

What I did not anticipate was how that invitation would instead open the door to harm. The vision we had poured our hearts into was taken over. Our labour was minimized, our voices erased, and what had been built from love and sacrifice was stolen because they had more influence and power than we had.

This decimated us emotionally and financially. It added crushing weight to an already fragile family dynamic.

A Distorted Teaching

I could not understand how this could be seen as an acceptable way of doing business until I revisited Pastor Jamieson’s sermon from March 3, 2018 (Breakthrough – Part VI).

Pastor Dave’s sermons had usually been encouraging and instructive, and were a part of the journey to my historic double-dipping rebaptism with Walter.

On March 3, 2018, in a sermon titled Breakthrough – Part VI (watch here on Vimeo), Pastor Dave began rightly—by saying that Jesus honored the widow in Mark 12. And then, almost seamlessly, he reframed the story. He slotted the widow into “Financial Crisis” (Level 1) and placed those with financial surplus into the “God-honouring Lifestyle” (Level 4).

It sounded smooth. Logical, even.

But what began as divine honour was quickly reinterpreted as human lack.

What was sacred became sad.

What was prophetic became pitiful.

In that moment, the very widow whom Jesus uplifted as the truest expression of faith was recast as trapped in crisis—less than whole, less than free, less than what “God really wants.”

Jesus never shamed her.

He never measured her gift by her purse.

He named her gift as greater than all the others.

To twist her offering into a financial tier is to distort the Kingdom itself—to align God with the wealthy and make the poor a cautionary tale. 

If Pastor Dave could make a mistake like this then it makes sense that anyone else could be influenced by this kind of mistaken teaching. Those subtly flipped ideas often create big devastating consequences. The enemy has been deceiving us in this way from the very beginning. And here we are, all wounded on Earth as a result. 

That distortion bore fruit here. We were not seen as co-labourers but as pitiful crises whose work could be taken and claimed as someone else’s “God-honouring” achievement.

The Call to Redemption

But Psalm 112 says differently:

Light shines in the darkness for the godly. Their good deeds will last forever.

This is an opportunity for the church to embody that promise, to show what accountability and integrity truly look like. My family needs tangible relief, and the church has the power to help provide it—not to erase the past, but to redeem it.

Redemption requires action.

It means acknowledging that what was taken must be restored for “loving God, loving people, and serving the world” to be more than empty words.

It means stepping into the gap where harm has been done, not only with words of comfort but with tangible action—just as my family has done for many in this community.

For years I poured out what I had, even when it cost me more than I could afford. I gave my time, my gifts, my heart, and my strength because I believed this is what it means to be the body of Christ: to carry one another’s burdens and build up instead of tearing down.

Now I am asking the church to stand in that same posture toward me and my family. Restoration is not optional. It is the heartbeat of faith.

Redemption is not abstract.

It is practical.

It is financial.

It is relational.

It is spiritual.

And for our family, it is urgent.

Our Present Reality

Leaving us with house devoured and destitute because we trusted is not within God’s heart.

I followed Matthew 18’s steps for resolving conflict. Instead of accountability, I was met with threats to silence me through legal means. Rather than pursuing truth, reputation was protected.

I recognized that they are living in fear. And vengeance is not mine, because vengeance is not for any of us to seek. Not one of us is without sin. So who would justly cast stones?  God knows the source of their fear and anxiety, and He will provide the healing and fulfillment that they need. 

So instead of taking this to court, I have chosen to pray for their redemption and appeal to you, the wider body, for help.

Our family has been left vulnerable and wounded, but not without hope. We are over $20,000 in debt.

I attempted to rebuild again with I AM With You House in 2019: Aldergrove Star coverage, April 22, 2022.

That work folded primarily because I was not meant to do it alone: it was meant to be held in community. I could not carry my children, myself, and the house alone.

Things became further complicated when I developed Long COVID in November of 2022 while serving as cook for the first Boundaries series with CIV and AOK. On the final night of that series, after co-creating with God the most amazing meal of my life, to honour and elevate the mamas and their children, I nearly collapsed as I left the kitchen. Laurie Brownlee was thankfully there to catch me and help me to my vehicle.

Even so, I pushed through, impossibly, at great cost, in survival mode. In May of 2024, in the middle of big ongoing trauma waves as my Anjali was being abused by someone with whom she had sought connection, I had to close the house.

I intended to move to Alberta to seek protection for her, since we had no protection here. And while that move helped in the height of that crisis, it was not possible to make it permanent. 

Long COVID has had a devastating impact on our family. My children have lost the mother who could and did drive over a thousand kilometres per month and sometimes almost twice as much to facilitate healing and connection for families in crisis – while still managing the day to day physical, mental, and emotional needs of the traumatized children in our home and in the community. 

And now we are in great need – abandoned by those who seem to prefer to protect reputation rather than to facilitate restoration. 

I am asking you, as the church, to step into this gap with courage and compassion. To respond not with silence, but with action. Not with dismissal, but with integrity. Not with defensiveness, but with the generosity and justice that reflect the heart of God.

The SDA administration responded first with absolute silence, and then with a message in person from one of their employees, that the only response I would ever receive would be from their legal department. Seeing years before that this was the way of the denomination, as I studied how oppression had been handled over the generations of Adventism I was already separated from the denominational books – while remaining a part of the community even before I began to actively seek accountability directly with the individual in February of this year. 

The corporate denomination is not Adventism. This body of seekers of love which extends beyond global borders is the Adventist community. 

And so I reach out to you as the part of the body to which I was connected and with whom I served faithfully for almost twenty years. 

I applied for Disability Assistance in July of 2024 and was finally fully approved this March. I had to fight through that process. I now receive $1,535.50 per month, while rent alone is $1,700 plus utilities. I have done Uber Eats deliveries to make the financial gap smaller, but with Long COVID and upcoming recertification as a Social Service and Community Health Worker (starting September 29, 2025), even that will no longer be possible.

Our very basics—housing and food—are deeply insecure.

How You Can Help

If you can help, please e-transfer to adianneka@gmail.com or contact me directly at 236-514-4491.

In this deep dark valley I have been writing poems and essays and prose as a part of my grieving and healing process. I am working now on having them published. 

This is my latest poem. Hopefully it encourages you as much as it encouraged me. 

And hopefully revival of the Spirit of God among us will erase the pain and eliminate all exploitation and fear, and ignite the Loveolution

Please do not ask me to name the individuals. I will not. God knows, and healing and wholeness in their hearts is a private matter between God and them. 

Why Do We Keep Trying to Cage Love?

By Saran Lewis

Why do we keep trying to cage Love?

Why?

 

We cage people with it.

We cage them in our doctrines, our nationalism, our rituals of control.

We claim it is holiness,

but it is fear wearing a mask.

 

Fear says:

“If Love is free, it will be abused.

If Love is free, it will be wasted.

If Love is free, it will expose our fragility.”

 

So we build cages —

and then call the cages sacred.

 

And then worse yet,

we set a wrathful god as guard…

patient until the day that he snaps

and consumes the disobedient in a blaze of final rage.

 

When has that ever been

whom Yeshua showed Him to be??

 

The God Yeshua Revealed

Yeshua showed us a Father who runs toward the prodigal,

not one who waits to strike.

A Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine,

not one who burns the lost sheep.

 

A Neighbour who speaks no shame over the woman

who has lost her bride price,

but waits with her —

inspiring her until she finds it,

and then celebrates.

Celebrates.

 

A Friend who lays down His life,

not one who consumes life in anger.

 

Even on the cross, He revealed mercy:

“Father, forgive them,

for they know not what they do.”

 

This is the God He unveiled:

not a wrathful guard over cages,

but a Love that breaks them open.

 

The Yeshua Who Refuses Cages

He touched the leper,

skin against skin,

restoring what human hands had refused to touch.

Not from a distance, not with a word alone

but with His hand,

the warmth of His body saying, You are not untouchable.

 

He let the bleeding woman touch Him,

though everyone else recoiled in horror.

He didn’t flinch.

He didn’t recoil.

He called her Daughter,

naming her family in front of those who had cast her out.

 

He healed on the Sabbath,

not to erase the Sabbath,

but because the Sabbath was made for us —

a day meant for love, for rest, for restoration.

He would not let it become a prison.

 

He let His disciples pluck grain on the Sabbath,

because a day of love and rest and nourishment of connection FOR people was what mattered

not the legalistic protection of the day.

Hunger mattered more than rules,

life mattered more than appearances.

 

He told the story of the Samaritan on the Jericho road,

not to shame Israel,

but to show that mercy itself is the heartbeat of God.

It was the despised one who stopped,

who bent low,

who bound up the wounds and paid the cost.

That was Yeshua’s definition of holiness.

 

He lifted the Syro-Phoenician woman’s voice,

an outsider, a foreigner,

a mother begging for her child.

Her plea carried more faith than Israel’s gatekeepers ever imagined.

And Yeshua said so,

making sure she was heard,

making sure she was honoured.

 

He met the Samaritan woman at the well,

and ended the centuries-old argument about holy mountains.

“It’s not about the mountain,” He said.

“It’s about spirit and truth.”

He saw her whole story,

named her reality,

and still offered her living water.

曆

The Heart of It All

This is the Yeshua who keeps refusing the cages.

Who keeps touching the excluded.

Who keeps teaching us that God’s Love

cannot be locked inside one religion,

one nation,

one system of supremacy.

 

And still 

we keep trying to cage Love.

We keep trying to chain people with it.

 

But Love cannot be caged.

Love keeps breaking the locks,

shattering the bars,

and walking out to touch those whom we call untouchable.

 

God is Love.

God is freedom.

God is covenant mercy.

 

And the Spirit is still speaking 

in every language,

through every outsider,

on every Emmaus road.

And while we rebuild we need your help, dear community.

Thank you.