Susan's family and friends raised funds to help construct the orphanage/care center, which is located in one of the poorest regions in the world.

To those in America, the children have lovingly become known as “Susan's kids.” But the young bride will never meet any of the QwaQwa children. At least not on this earth.

Susan, a born-again Christian, went to be with her Savior, Jesus Christ on January 7, 2004.

A part of her is forever present in the place that her faith and love helped to build. Susan's photo hangs on the wall of the orphanage's main hall, welcoming each child into the caring arms of Christians, who are living out the call of Jesus to care for widows and orphans.

A born nurturer

Susan never set out to be a missionary, says her mother Debbie Roberson. Her dream had always been to work with at-risk children in her home state of North Carolina.

Debbie remembers her daughter as someone children were attracted to.

“From the time she was very small she had always loved kids,” says Debbie.

Susan, the only daughter of Debbie and Bruce, was a born nurturer. She looked out for her younger brother Steven and often babysat other children in the Jamesville community where she lived most of her life.

“If there was a baby around, she wanted to hold it. She was just drawn to children,” explains Debbie.

It was Susan's desire to work with children, particularly at-risk youth.

In 2001, Susan was on the path to obtaining her goal. She was a college student pursing a degree in Child Development and Family Relations at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

In the fall of 2001, Susan's studies were interrupted. Just after her 21 st birthday, Susan was diagnosed with, a rare genetic disorder, Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP) that causes hundreds of polyps to develop in the colon.

Though Susan wanted desperately to finish out the semester at college, doctors told her that she needed an operation to remove her colon immediately.  

After two major surgeries in three months, Susan was able to resume her active lifestyle. She went back to school in January 2002.

“It was an amazing thing; God put her in almost a protective shield,” recalls Debbie. “She knew she had the disease and how bad it was, but if she was frightened, she didn't show it to us.”

It was during this time that she met and fell in love with Bryce Thompson. The couple met when Bryce visited Susan's church , Cedar Branch Baptist in Jamesville . They were married October 12, 2002, just a year after her ordeal with her illness had begun.

“She opened up to Bryce with her fears and anxieties,” says Debbie.

The mother saw a special bond between the couple. “He was her knight in shining armor. He was sent by God for Susan for that season of her life.”

The year was a good one for Susan.

“She was doing great. She'd gotten married and she was back in school,” says Debbie.

But Susan's health was still fragile. The family knew that it was possible Susan could develop desmoid tumors, a complication of her disease.

“We thought that everything was fine,” remembers Debbie.

In July 2002 desmoid tumors were found in Susan's abdomen.

The young wife and college student began a number of drug treatments. But none could curb the growth of the tumor. “

But still Susan charged on.
With all that she had going on she was determined to finish school,
  says Debbie. “She went to class until she had to be hospitalized.”

On December 11, 2003 Susan was admitted to UNC Hospital at Chapel Hill. She underwent emergency surgery for complications from the tumors. She spent the next month fighting for her life in ICU.

“We were all convinced God was going to pull her through like He did the last time,” says Debbie.

While the family prayed for Susan's recovery they knew whatever the outcome, she would be okay.

“She had no doubt of her salvation and that Heaven was ahead of her,” says Debbie. “That's been a real comfort to us.”

During Susan's final days in ICU, her family received a message that they believe was straight from God.
The message came from a man who had never even met Susan but was a friend and co-worker of Susan's uncle.
Debbie remembers it was on December 23, 2003, when they got a message they thought meant Susan would walk out of the hospital.
“They had both been praying for Susan's healing,” Debbie recalls.
Susan's Uncle Edwin came to the hospital and delivered the message that the Holy Spirit had placed on Andy Taylor's heart. It was God's promise to Susan and her family.
The message was that Susan would do something big for the Kingdom and her impact on God's kingdom would have a far reaching effect and will bring Glory to God.
Susan might even be a missionary, he said.
While Debbie believed God could completely heal her daughter, she wondered about the missionary part of the message.
“Being a missionary was not her thing,” she says.
It would be years down the road before the Roberson family would see the fulfillment of this vision they'd heard that cold night in December 2003.

A new way of seeing things

Susan made it into the New Year but on January 7, her body gave out and she died from complications of her disease.

In the summer of 2005, still deep in their grief, Susan's parents sat in church on a Wednesday night and listened as their friend and fellow church member, Marvin Gurganus, spoke of a far away place in Africa. Marvin, an avid photographer, was the photographer who'd captured Susan's wedding portrait on film.

Through the Internet, Marvin had struck up a friendship with missionary and South African native, Wim van Rensburg,

Marvin says he felt called to tell the people of Jamesville about QawQaw.

He describes QwaQwa as a place where multiple generations of families live in one-room mud huts or rusted corrugated shacks. A place where five-year-olds are babysitters for younger siblings and where the entire villages often go to bed with empty stomachs. In the tiny region, 2 million people struggle to eek out a living.

Marvin wasn't asking for money, only prayer Win and his ministry in the QwaQwa valley of South Africa.

During his talk, Debbie says she felt pulled to this place-a place where Susan or any of the Roberson's had never been.

“I knew then that we were supposed to be connected with it in some way,” remembers Debbie.

After Susan's death, the family had asked that donations be made in memory to her church.

The Roberson's felt that money should go to a cause Susan's so dearly loved: helping children. A donation was made her in memory to the QwaQwa ministry.

Soon after, the Susan Roberson Thompson Memorial Fund was established to help the ministry in QwaQwa.

Susan's Kids

Susan's Kids, as the fund is known, has donated around $25,000 to the BreakThrough Ministries in South Africa.

In November 2006 Marvin traveled to QwaQwa to the orphanage built by BreakThrough Ministries in South Africa.

Years before Marvin knew of the plight of the children of QwaQwa, the photographer helped capture Susan's bridal portrait on film. In one poignant photo, Susan, dressed in her wedding gown, gazes upon her great-grandfather Robert's Bible. Marvin randomly selected Isaiah 49:18 which mentions the word bride.

Adorned in white, the bride's faith is forever captured in time.

Susan had no way of knowing that the verse she studied in her wedding portrait would be one of the many threads that would band together strangers from across the globe. Isaiah 49:18 says “Lift up thine eyes round about, and behold:  all these gather themselves together, and come to thee.  As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on thee, as a bride doeth.” (King James Version)

Debbie, who has written many pages since her daughter's death, some to family and friends and others personal devotional to God, found Isaiah 49:18 to be especially meaningful.

“I have thought about Isaiah 49:18 many times since Susan went to Heaven,” she wrote. “I believe it to be prophetic scripture – a message from God about Susan's life and the impact it will have for His Kingdom.  

“Susan adored children and would have been a wonderful mother.   It was not in God's plan for her to have children here on earth, but in Heaven Jesus will ‘lift up her eyes' and she will ‘look around' and see all the ‘children of God' who have been drawn closer to Christ because of her.

“At the wedding supper of the Lamb, Susan will be even more beautiful than she appears in her bridal portrait.   She will be dressed in a robe of righteousness. Jesus will say to her, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.' He will bestow upon her a crown of precious jewels – a jewel marking each life that she has impacted for His Kingdom.”

The greatest of these is love

BreakThrough ministry has built two small foster homes where children can come from their homes to receive food, a pre-school education and learn about Jesus. They are also planning to build a school for older children and help locals with gardens to grow food.

Wim and his wife Hylien both gave up high paying careers and a lifestyle that afford them materials luxuries in answer to God's call to help those in QwaQwa.

Wim visited Martin County this spring and met the Roberson family.

“When we started this ministry God didn't promise us luxury,” he said. “But he did promise He would guide us and carry us through the good and the bad.”

Debbie often looks at what has happened since her daughter's death and sees how one of Susan's favorite Scripture verses, Romans 8:28, has also come true.

“After Susan passed away, my prayer was that her life would not be in vain,” explains Debbie. “God has answered that prayer through (Susan's Kids.)”

“That's what makes me so proud, to know that Susan would be so proud of it.”                                                                                                                                                             

Debbie hopes she and her husband can visit the children of QwaQwa some day. For now they are happy to raise funds.

“Our job is to help get things on the road on this end,” says Debbie.

The family also shares Susan's story as a way to show God's faithfulness in the midst of so much pain.

“I want people to know how God was here,” says Debbie. “His hand was in everything. He was comforting us, comforting her.”

More than three years after Susan's death, the family has seen a stranger's vision of Susan as a missionary come true.

“(Susan's dream) is happening even though she's not here to carry it out,” says her mom, Debbie Roberson. “Looking back now, I'm so amazed at it. We didn't see any way of that part of it being fulfilled. But she truly is a missionary from Heaven.”

“Our family is so blessed and so honored that God is using her in this way.”

When the Roberson's buried their beloved Susan, they chose to engrave a portion of one of her favorite Bible verses, 1 Corinthians 13:13, on her memorial stone. Marked on stone where her earthly body lays are the words “But the greatest of these is love.”

Through Susan's life and faith in Jesus Christ as her Savior, her love for children continues to touch lives.

Susan's Kids continues to raise money for Breakthrough Ministries and the children of QwaQwa.

“Her story is being used in ways I never, ever imagined. My desire is just for those kids to be helped,” says Debbie. “I hope through meeting their physical need that they'll become open to the Gospel.”

Donations to Susan's Kids may be sent to P.O. Box 400, Jamesville, NC 27846.

On the web: www.susanskids.com

www.breakthrough-ministries.com/