In this blog, I am sharing the innermost parts of my heart
with you, my readers. Some of this has
only been shared with a couple of close friends. Most of what I have written
here has been shared with no one up to this point. My prayer is that it is first and foremost
for the Glory of God but that it also blesses your life and inspires you to be
ALL you can be in serving Jesus Christ our Lord.
I arrived in Guatemala on April 3rd of this
year. Within two weeks of arriving, Mike
and Walter asked me if I would help out in the Angelitos dorm. They had a Guatemalan worker who was getting
married and leaving Casa Aleluya on April 30th. Working on the weekends would give Irene, our
coordinator, time off to be with her family and go to church. I told them I had come here to serve and if
they needed me to do that, I would be happy to help them. After I said that, I felt very good. After all, it sounded very self-righteous at
the time and it was also the right thing to do.
However, within two weeks I was thinking entirely differently. I wanted to be anywhere but Angelitos because
it was very hard. Within one week, many
changes took place, because of my recommendation to the director, and the mood
here was not good. The children were
great and the light of my life – the problem was with the workers. Considering I am the only American in charge
over here, it made for a strained relationship to say the least. I cried out to the Lord and told Him I wanted
the girls to like me and I wanted a relationship with them. Also, at some point in the future we were hopefully
going to do ministry together. However, with
these decisions, that just wasn’t happening.
The Lord very kindly said to me, “I will be the ONE who makes
relationships with you and the children and then I will receive the Glory and
not you.” Ouch! So, I told the Lord I would continue to work
here. Some weekends, I must confess, my
attitude was anything but good. Then, at
a staff meeting, I learned that we had another missionary coming in June and
she was going to live in Angelitos. I
was elated as I thought she would take over and I would be freed of this
responsibility. However, Casa had
different plans for her and wanted me to stay in Angelitos on the weekends. To say that I was disappointed…is an
understatement.
I cried out to
the Lord again and asked Him to please give this dorm to someone else and He
lovingly said, ‘No’. On one
particularly difficult weekend, I was so very tired, overwhelmed and
weary. We had a lice outbreak in the
nursery and everything had to be washed:
blankets, bedding, cribs, etc.
Then we had to shampoo 10 children’s’ heads and leave the shampoo on for
10 minutes. Let me tell you that
entertaining babies and 2 year olds for 10 minutes is difficult to say the
least. I have never seen so many
blankets and sheets in one place in my entire life. I thought we would never get through washing
all of them. Glenda does the washing for
the entire dorm on the weekend so I offered to help her with this because of
the large amount of things that needed to be washed. Early Sunday morning I arose, read my Bible
and prayed to be released from this duty again, even cried some (actually a
lot), and drudgingly walked to the laundry room to get the last of the blankets
we had washed the night before. Upon
entering the nursery, I laid the load of blankets on the counter. I began folding them when one little boy
grabs my left leg and another grabs my right leg and says, “My mommy”, “no, my
mommy” and a tug of war ensued. I looked
up and in my heart said, “Lord, Is this the answer to my prayer?” I knew that it was and that this was the
place I was to serve.
The situation
has gotten better but it is like riding on a roller coaster at the County
Fair. It has its ups and downs. Recently, I had to take charge of yet another
difficult situation and the mood here was tense. I did what I had to do and what was right but
the response from some of the workers was not pleasant. The children here have been so hurt in their
young life, that when anyone of us on staff has to correct them, sometimes they
won’t speak to you for a long time. That
attitude kind of permeates throughout the entire dorm to the other workers as
well. You might say, ‘It is a united front’.
I prayed constantly and asked God to show me how to bridge this gap and
show these girls how very much I love them.
On the following weekend, the Lord said to me, “Serve them”. Two very simple words were my answer from the
Lord. My first thought was - that’s easy;
serving is one of my spiritual gifts and I like working with the children. So on Saturday, I took my sewing machine to
Angelitos so that I could keep an eye on everything and altered clothes all day
long. The boys had received new dress
slacks and they needed to be taken up and hemmed. For the clothes to be ready for church the
next day, I worked until late at night and then retired to my apartment. I got up early Sunday morning and went back
to Angelitos. I greeted the girls in the
kitchen and helped with setting the tables for breakfast. Then after breakfast, I went to the nursery
to help bathe all the children while the girls dressed them. After finishing with the bathing, I played
for a while in the floor with the babies and toddlers. Then I went to help one of the girls in the
kitchen (the other one had asked to go to church). I asked her what I could do to help, and she
gave me the job of chopping vegetables for the sauce they were making. Since they cook for approximately 50 people
each meal, it was a HUGE basket of tomatoes.
I asked her how she wanted them chopped and she showed me. Let me mention here that she wanted them cut
into ¼” pieces. I told myself I could
do this… however, only part of the way into it; I told the Lord that this wasn’t
my idea of having fun. The task seemed
like a never ending job. While chopping tomato
after tomato, the Lord, like the gentle loving Father He is, began to remind me
that He came to serve. He brought to my
mind all the stories of the New Testament and how He, the King of Kings and
Lord of Lords, humbled Himself, left the splendor of Heaven, was born in a
manger and served mankind. He even
served those who rejected Him, spit on Him, and beat Him. He died for those same individuals as well as
for you and me. By the time, I was
finished with those tomatoes; I had a blister on my hand from the knife I was
using and a new attitude in my heart. ‘Who
am I Lord to question serving you with these menial tasks when you showed me
the perfect way to serve by giving Your life for others?’
Philippians Chapter 2, verses 1-9
says,
“Therefore if there is any
encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any
fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete
by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent
on one purpose. Do nothing from
selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as
more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal
interests but also for the interests of others.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who,
although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a
thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant,
and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming
obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him
and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name…
I spent the rest of that Sunday talking with the girls (workers) about their school work, their life, and telling them how good they were doing. I have worked in this dorm every weekend since the first of May and for the very first time, I began to feel, a sense of camaraderie between me and them. In a cry of desperation, the Father showed me how to reach them and bridge the gap of our differences. Being desperate is exactly where the Father wants each of us, then we depend solely on Him because we can do NOTHING ourselves. In a devotional book from Beth Moore, she says, “Victory always begins with a cry for help. When we come to the end of ourselves and cry out for help, amazing things happen.” I began to realize something this week. Being in Angelitos has stretched me in ways both physically and spiritually that could not have been attained by doing only sewing classes. My Father, who knows everything about me, knew this and that is why He so lovingly said ‘No’ to my request time and time again. I wouldn’t trade being here for anything because I have fallen totally in love with these children. I enjoy my time here, and hope to be here a long time and see these boys and girls grow up into fine men and women of God. I am sure that I will have more roller coaster rides here and that is fine because my Father is molding and refining me in His own sweet, gentle way. I want to be refined, as painful as that is, to be as pure silver (Psalm 66) with no impurities and then He alone receives all the glory and honor forever. Amen.
