Rachel Michelle Sawyerr is the founder and CEO of HUGS FROM HEAVEN/ZUO’S GIFT, INC. an educator and minister.  A native Chicagoan, born the third of six children to the late Bishop-elect and Mrs. Claude D. Lewis, Sr. she is the mother of two lovely daughters: Robin and Dianna (Terrence) with six beautiful grandchildren raising the two girls from infancy and toddler age as a single mom, after a contested divorce.  After 20 plus years of teaching with the Chicago Public School system, she recently took early retirement. Her educational background includes an A.A. in Secretarial Science-Richard J. Daley College, a B.S. in Interpersonal & Group Communications-Trinity University, two teaching certificates in Elementary and Early Childhood Education, a M.A. degree in Early Childhood Leadership & Advocacy-National Louis University, and soon to complete a Ph.D. in Christian Education-Trinity College and Theological Seminary.

Her broad range of services have included: Author, seminar and conference speaker, minister, missionary, teacher, pianist, Minister of music, Day Camp Director, Outreach coordinator, Youth Leader, recording artist, liturgical dancer, psalmist, over 25 years in jail ministry, spanning to cook, usher, and janitor.  She has been the victim of almost every crime on the books several times over, except murder (and that almost) and lives to tell about it.  A sample of crimes perpetrated against her include: rape~several times, home invasion ~5 times, assault, battery, robbery, domestic violence, auto invasion~3 times, auto theft, fraud, slander, libel and abandonment, a few causing suicidal tendencies.  She has advanced from "public aid" to "aiding the public" and is now the owner of 3 companies.  Learn from her experiences and feel the undying love for humanity in her "Hugs from Heaven".

Her life long dream had been to serve on the foreign mission field. This dream became a reality in about 1994, when given the opportunity to travel to Bristol, England and 1995-96 to Accra, Ghana with Youth With A Mission-Mercy Ships on short term trips. She was honored to serve at the UHCA Zuo Mission Monrovia, Liberia West Africa for 3 short-term mission trips: encouraging rebuilding war-torn churches in neighboring villages, doing radio features and other publicity forms, teaching school, training children and adults, running sports camps, working the farm, and tenderly caring for orphans. She has traveled to 48 states and over 13 different countries, including Japan, Israel, Greece, Canada, Mexico, The Canary Islands, The Bahamas, England, France, Spain, Panama, Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, sharing love wherever she goes.