{"id":404,"date":"2021-04-07T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ewohaiti.org\/blog\/?p=404"},"modified":"2024-11-07T14:50:35","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T19:50:35","slug":"how-it-all-began","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/2021\/04\/07\/how-it-all-began\/","title":{"rendered":"How it all began…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was lucky to sit down via Zoom, with Allen Smith, to hear the story of how it all began. Allen is the founder of Ewo, originally known as World of God. He now lives in Mexico, but he was more than happy to share his story with me! We are so thankful for him and this vision he brought to life!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When did you start Ewo?<\/mark><\/strong>\u00a0 2009<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What inspired you to begin?<\/mark><\/strong>\u00a0 To set the stage, you should know that in my own life, I was wrestling with the possibility of retiring. As I\u2019m asking myself these questions, the sermon one Sunday was about Moses.\u00a0About God asking Moses to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land and Moses thinking, \u201cI\u2019m not the guy for this job.\u201d \u00a0And my pastor said, \u201cThere are people in the world that can\u2019t wait for you – they need you now.\u201d Those words stuck with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long after, I was able to travel to Bayonnais.\u00a0We arrived at dusk and as we approached the school, kids began to follow our truck.\u00a0They were all there to greet us.\u00a0One little guy approached us and proudly exclaimed, \u201cI\u2019m in school now.\u00a0 I got some shoes.\u201d Wow.\u00a0Talk about impactful. I returned back to the States and asked myself, \u201cShould I do something else besides retire?\u201d\u00a0I decided no. I ran the numbers and confirmed, no, it\u2019s not possible.\u00a0And I put it away.\u00a0Except it wouldn\u2019t stay away.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Sunday night, I was at home reading a novel, and suddenly I put the book down. And a powerful thought washed over me.\u00a0I heard, \u201dI have shown you my children whom I love, I have shown you the people that I trust, why don\u2019t you let me worry about the money?\u201d\u00a0The very next day I sat down and registered World of God – that\u2019s the name that came to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I reached out to 6 friends in Charlotte and told them my idea.\u00a05 of those 6 said I should do it, and they would help. And the first Board was created.\u00a0In the meantime, I worked with an attorney that specializes in non-profits and got the help I needed to get it approved by the IRS.\u00a0We were able to get everything complete within the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what happened next? <\/mark><\/strong>\u00a0We told stories.\u00a0There are so many stories of the people and students in Bayonnais.\u00a0The story of Actionnel and his sponsor Helen Hunter. We went to many churches, both big and small.\u00a0And before too long, we had about 100 students sponsored.\u00a0And that number continues to grow today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was lucky to sit down via Zoom, with Allen Smith, to hear the story of how it all began. Allen is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,16],"tags":[7,10,11,5,6,20,13,14,8,23,9],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ed-posts","category-our-story","tag-bayonnais","tag-educate","tag-empower","tag-ewo","tag-haiti","tag-icb","tag-mission","tag-nonprofit","tag-ofcb","tag-origin-story","tag-world-of-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1343,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/1343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ewohaiti.org\/Blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}