Jeannine Brabon

Jeannine knew that she would have to suffer for the sake of the Lord. Thankfully, she had great preparation from her parents. They challenged her to memorize scripture, including the entire book of Philippians, and they discipled her well. While attending boarding school in Florida, she felt the Lord directing her to pray often. She began praying every hour of the day and then began collecting index cards with the names of people she was praying for regularly. The number of names eventually totaled over 2,000. “I realized the power of prayer. I saw it,” Jeannine says. “I mean, God would burden me. I’d be praying for a missionary… and then I’d get word from the field [of] a near accident that could have easily happened if I hadn’t been praying. And so God really encouraged me at an early age to the importance of prayer.”

The Power of Prayer: A Life of Intercession and the 1970 Asbury Revival

That call to be faithful and fervent in prayer followed Jeannine to Asbury College (now University). She felt burdened to pray for the school and for issues facing the campus at the time. Then, during her junior year, the monumental 1970 revival took place at Asbury College. “Everybody was surprised. I wasn’t because I’d been praying for it for nearly three years,” Jeannine says.

She continues, “It was incredible… to see the people that I knew were real troublemakers on campus go down at midnight to the altar and then stand up and give a testimony.” She specifically remembers one fellow student who had such an experience and went on to lead a ministry to former prisoners. That is just one story of radical transformation among many. “It’s just absolutely amazing what God did,” Jeannine says.

From Student to Seminary Professor

Jeannine gained an appreciation for biblical Greek and Hebrew, largely inspired by Dr. Dennis Kinlaw’s chapel teachings. Her time at Asbury Seminary also fostered her love for the biblical languages. Though she originally focused on Greek out of fear of Hebrew, she eventually fell in love with the dominant Old Testament language. “I’m in Hebrew every day,” Jeannine says. “I mean, I’ve been out of seminary 40 years, but I still read from the text every day and I carry it on my phone.”

She continues, “I concentrated on my studies because I really wanted to be able to have a good base. It helped me incredibly when… I mean, I never dreamed I’d be translating the Hebrew grammar in Spanish and using it the way I did. But [Asbury Seminary] was very influential in my life, and I was really grateful to be able to be an alumni.”

Before finishing her undergraduate degree, OMS International sent her a letter asking if she would return to Colombia as a missionary. She was able to return in time to overlap with her father’s last six months on the mission field before he suddenly died of a heart attack. She spent some time working for OMS in Spain before the seminary in Colombia which is closely related to OMS needed someone to help teach Hebrew. They asked Jeannine, and she began to teach Hebrew at the seminary while also translating the Hebrew grammar textbook into Spanish. “And so I taught for over 26 years here in the seminary, teaching biblical Hebrew here,” Jeannine says.

Transforming Lives: Prison Ministry and the Power of the Gospel

Though the situation was slightly different from when she was a little girl, Colombia was still an extremely dangerous place to live. “When I came here, Medellin was up against the death culture,” Jeannine says. “Killing was a way of life in Colombia. We had the drug wars and I’d see people killed right in front of me.” Still, she sought the Lord about what she could do. The Lord eventually led her to speak at a prison in front of a group of incarcerated hired killers. After she shared a message from an Old Testament passage, over 20 of the men responded to an invitation to follow Jesus, tears streaming down their faces. 

Ministry to these prisoners has marked a significant part of Jeannine’s life in Colombia. She has many stories of the most unexpected, violent men turning to follow the Lord, many of them becoming leaders and pastors. In one such situation, a prisoner who was known not only for being a killer but for having a business of hiring out killers became a Christian. Having never been to school, he wanted teaching on how to follow the Lord and live life in the Holy Spirit. Jeannine’s connections in the prison asked if she would come and teach them. “The Lord put it in my heart before I even left the prison that day to start a bible institute inside the prison,” Jeannine says. “The faculty laughed at me. They said, ‘Jeannine, that’s the most dangerous prison in all of Latin America.’ I said, yeah, God loves to do the impossible with the most unlikely.”

Jeannine started the bible institute in the prison in connection with another prison ministry in Colombia. She would teach on days when she wasn’t teaching in the seminary and would get new seminary students to help run the program. The ministry is still running today, and she has seen unbelievable life transformations and supreme acts of God’s grace to former violent convicts. Though she faced death threats and was caught in dangerous situations, Jeannine saw how the Lord was working through her obedience. “If I wasn’t going through what I went through, then how could I minister to other people?” she says.

Sharing the Gospel Every Day

Though Jeannine has technically retired as a missionary, she is far from seeing her work as finished. She still provides mentoring and resources to the students at the seminary in Colombia and looks for opportunities to tell people about Jesus daily. From prison guards to people she meets at the pool where she swims, she shares about the peace that Jesus brings and writes down their names in a small notebook. “Every day I lead people to Christ,” Jeannine says. “I want anybody that meets me to meet Jesus. So that’s what I do.”