At the end of March 2003, I had the opportunity to travel to Russia and the Ukraine. I spent a couple weeks there with my father, Rev. Kim Johnson. During my visit to the Ukraine the biggest miracle occurred in my life. I saw a whole new world outside of my own selfish life. I was blessed to meet some great lovers of Christ. These people are nothing like what I’ve seen in our churches here in America. These people live on about $100 a month, yet they have so much love towards Jesus. When I first saw this, I was strongly convicted. God spoke to me and told me to open my Bible. Before He told me to look something up, I had already been thinking of starting a compassion center in Ukraine for the homeless children. Let me go ahead and quote these verses that God revealed me to. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ As soon as I finished reading, my father and I looked right at each other; we were speechless. We were so amazed at what I had just read. It seemed that God was telling me that before I could build, a spiritual foundation had to be laid in my life. For some reason I closed my Bible without noticing the passage. For the last six remaining days of my trip, I could not locate this passage.

It was time to return home to Phoenix, Arizona, and that’s when God really got a hold of me. It was when watching one of the worst movies I had ever seen, while on my flight back home. Half way through the movie, God spoke to me and said, “Drop those headphones and open your Bible.” Immediately I threw them off, opened His word, and there before me was the very passage of scripture I had been searching for, for nearly a week. (Luke 14:28-30) A fire begun to burn inside of me and that’s not all, God did not stop there. He then had me turn to James 1:22-27, and after reading these scriptures about caring for the widows and orphans, that’s when I knew God was calling me. So I asked the Holy Spirit to come into my life and work through me in a way that He’d never done before. I felt a cleansing come over me for the first time in my life. I've been sanctified.

I know that, “Faith without works is dead.” and at the same time, “works without faith is dead.“ I am ready to move ahead in faith as God leads me. This is my story on how The House of James was born. Please keep me in your prayers.

A Disciple of Christ,

Sean Johnson
Director/ Founder