GYC Africa 2024 Conference: ONE

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GYC Africa

Work Place Ambassadors

Mildred Mabirizi

Victoria Okotie

01 Juggling Career, Faith, and Personal Priorities

If you're thinking it, you gotta know that somebody else is thinking it.

As you were sharing yesterday, I was wondering how are you able to juggle up between family, because I can see you're married, and a complex career, and also serving God in church.

But there's something we wrote in our book about the difference between the important and the urgent.

The things that, many things that scream for attention are not really important in the scale of eternity.

The dishes are in the sink, they need to be washed.

The kids need to be taken care of, and on and on.

But so what we have learned, we have learned strategies to be able to use the time we have to the maximum while having balance.

The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3, there's a time for everything.

And for everything under the sun, there's a season.

So, in the sense, because of that, we can't do everything.

And we can't do everything at the same time.

So when you see, when we read what we have been accomplished through the power and the grace of God, it wasn't accomplished at the same time together.

When we made the decision, actually, we made the decision, When I got married at the age of 26, and my husband and I made the decision not to have kids for 5 years, because we wanted to enjoy marriage.

But when we started having kids, everything took the backseat.

Because I realized that as a mother, that was the greatest role I would ever play.

I remember this lady, she was a geologist advisor.

She had ridden to the highest point of her career.

And she said to me 1 day, Victoria, if there's 1 biggest regret I have in life, was because I decided not to have kids because of my career.

So going back to what your question, how have we been able to accomplish it?

We have followed the leading of the Holy Spirit at every stage of our life.

And So God closes doors and opens doors, says yes and says no.

And then another secret is that we outsource.

I love a clean home, but you know, there's no way, there's absolutely no way I can go to school full time, walk full time, take care of my kids, take care of my husband, run my, there's no way and have a clean home.

And I do the things that nobody else the other way around.

You know, there's things that you don't outsource.

Yes, there are things you don't outsource.

And you don't outsource your time with your children.

They are going to be 4 years old, just 1 time.

I remember those days, every 3 hours feeding.

You know, in the Western world, it's expensive to have nannies.

I mean, like, it costs an arm and 2 legs, right?

I wake up in the morning, Sabbath morning, I take my time, get ready for church because my kids are getting ready, they're making their breakfast.

And sometimes I go to my work and I'm like, Nathan, I need breakfast.

So we'll leave if there's anything that I need to circle back, if it comes back again, I will circle back with something else.

We want to make sure we are answering as many questions as possible.

My initial question was similar to hers, but I have another question as well.

I remember when I was just about to start university, I was told there are certain careers that Christians should not be in because they don't give glory to God.

Or rather, you can't be actively in service.

I was told, you know, if you're a doctor, if you're a nurse, that's, you know, health reform, you can push that forward.

And so for my career, I was told, How can a Christian be a lawyer?

So how can I be a good Christian as a lawyer?

So this, for me, question goes back to our values, right?

And yes, I have heard the same thing, especially from a law standpoint.

Many times, we are told things, and then as time goes on, we get more light, right?

We are always looking at, and I'm going to address the low 1, because I heard this 1 when I was growing up.

We didn't think, I think back then, that we will have instances where we have litigation, or we have policies that need to be established, right?

And now we do know that we, not only just litigation, but we want to make sure that we are good stewards of the things that God entrusts us with.

And without people who are dedicated to read through these policies, I mean, she and I, that portion of reading through what you guys do as lawyers is not.

Reading through contracts, that what are we signing?

02 Juggling Career, Faith, and Personal Priorities

Our dear Heavenly Father, Lord we are grateful that you have brought us here.

Father we are thankful that you woke us up this morning in our right minds.

We're thankful for the sunshine that you have given us outside and Lord we ask that you fill us with your Holy Spirit.

Lord, we are also asking that you give us wisdom, you give us knowledge, you give us understanding.

We ask, my dear Heavenly Father, that we will not be interrupted by the devil, whether through technology, whether through anything else, that you speak to our hearts and impress upon us what you want us to do in our workplaces to represent you.

Father, you know that Victoria and I know nothing but speak through us to your children that they may hear your voice I pray.

Be with us through this session we ask in Jesus's name.

So again we welcome you all to our presentation this morning, Faith in the Workplace.

Workplace Ambassadors, Juggling Career, Faith and personal priorities.

I bet you guys are wondering, who are these ladies?

Before I actually start that, I did miss 1 thing.

So many, there are a few times within our presentation that we're going to ask you to pull these wonderful devices and you are going to be able to use them to be able to interact with us as well as with everybody in the session.

So like I said, My name is Mildred Mabirizi and I was born and raised in Kampala, Uganda.

And after, when I was 19 years old, I moved to the United States to go to college, or other people call it university.

And I have a background in electrical engineering, and I have worked in the industry for over 20 years.

And I've worked in oil and gas, which is primarily where I am right now.

But I've also worked in the cement manufacturing, and I've also right now within the oil and gas, I am in the renewables division.

And yesterday I was in the back, and I noticed that you guys, I have a poor sense of direction, sorry.

But I was somewhere, and I saw, you know, I was like, wait, does that look like a wind turbine?

Because right now, that's, you know, the area while in oil and gas, but I mean the renewables, you know, portion of it.

So I was like, they have wind farms, I took a picture of it, I'm sending it to my boss.

So that is, and then also along with my compadre right over here, we did start a company called Touchpoint, which is a career consulting firm.

And if you have questions about career transition, you know, how to make sure that you succeed, you know, we do coach young people and we have business cards right over there.

So I'm Nigerian and so We returned back to the US when I was about 2.

We returned from the US to Nigeria, so I grew up in Nigeria.

My elementary education, my high school education, and a bit of college or university.

But then I left back to the United States at the age of 19.

And I went to Corrado School of Mines where I got my chemical engineering degree, so I also have a chemical engineering background.

I have over 17 years of experience in the oil and gas industry.

And then several years ago, I left the oil and gas to start my own company.

And then I also co-founded Touchpoint with Mildred.

And so because we are both passionate about career.

So that's a bit about me, but we will be feeding our experiences in our presentation.

So we're gonna be telling stories, drawing from our personal experiences.

You cannot wait for part 2, because part 2 we're gonna be focusing on reframing the pursuit of success.

We also have a separate presentation for students, right, and that's in the afternoon and that is Faith in School.

So we're going to talk through both ends.

Again, we're going to weave in our stories through.

So looking forward to get let's get started.

So let's start with please grab your phones.

Go to your browser and type in slido.com.

So if they don't want to type it in, can they use that QR code?

And then the code number you would enter is 2828720.

So the question we're asking you is how many years of professional experience you have.

We want to get the feel of our audience in the room.

It looks like about half of us 40% between 3 to 5 years, alright.

We have about a third less than 3 years and about a third okay numbers are still shifting yeah okay let's wait a little bit okay I think we are moving to a third.

It still seems like many of the room are sitting between 3 to 5 years.

Which is a really good, I'll tell you Victoria, I feel like this is a really good presentation for this audience because you guys are still starting up in your career so really understanding what we're going to talk about will be very, very key.

And again, at the end of the presentation when we start questions we also want reflections because we want to hear your thoughts right you guys have rich experiences from your background so we'd love to hear that so let's go on and let's start with the who yes let's define so we are all on the same page.

So Mildred, who is an ambassador for Christ?

So I will start out with who, and I will appreciate if you go into the who is not.

So a workplace ambassador or an ambassador of Christ in the workplace is more than just somebody professing, I am a Christian.

This is someone who is actively living their faith daily in the workplace and actively witnessing so that we can be able to save souls in the workplace.

You know there's something we're talking about the difference between an undercover agent and someone who is off duty.

So what God is calling us to is that he is trying to get attention that our workplace is our mission field.

You know sometimes we say, okay, I need to go on missions.

I need to go to, you know, the Western countries.

But God is saying that, yes, yes, indeed.

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Series

Work Place Ambassadors

02 Juggling Career, Faith, and Personal Priorities

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Parts

01 Juggling Career, Faith, and Personal Priorities

1h 19m

02 Juggling Career, Faith, and Personal Priorities

1h 7m

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