Joan Williams received a burden from the Lord in 1998 for the children of Africa as she prayed for her country, Sierra Leone, which was embroiled in a brutal civil war. She began to sense the heavy burden on God's heart for the plight of the children in Africa. She embraced this burden as her own. The Lord emphasized to her the importance of taking the gospel to the "forgotten people group" - the orphans, the unaccompanied children, the displaced children, the street children, the ex-child combatants and the poorest of the poor. She began to get a growing awareness that God has a plan and purpose for these children. She began to see the tremendous harvest of young souls that she never saw before. Reaching the children of Africa with the love of Jesus Christ is now Joan's passion.

She firmly believes that evangelism and discipleship go hand in hand. She also firmly believes that the whole child should be nurtured - spiritual, physical, and emotional. Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Joshua International has grown from caring for fifty children to now caring for over a thousand children at six campuses in Freetown. Joan sees herself as merely God's steward in the ministry. God is the controller and she implements the instructions given to her by Him.