Learning about Leading.

Sometimes people think living in another country is an adventure. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't.

Sometimes people think being in full time on a mission field is rewarding.
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't.

If you are called to serve a community of people long term there will be times of much fruit and encouragement and also times of challenge and discouragement.

Our motivation can never only be people. It must be Christ.

In my husband I see a servant leader. Continually helping people behind the scenes as well as leading from the front.

In my husband I see a leader who stands up for injustice and will not let unfairness have any place.

In my husband I see a leader who speaks the truth in love. If someone in our care has done something wrong, he will tell them in a way that will rebuke but encourage them to go on, go on and be better.

In my husband I see a man who will stand up to encourage others during times when his own heart is discouraged. In fact I have seen him stand up and speak words of encouragement to the very ones who have done things to discourage him.

In my husband I see a man who goes on and serves not because people are watching.. Not because hundreds come back and say thank you. Some do. Some don't. But it's not about that. He leads and serves and serves and leads because in this season he believes this is what he is meant to do.

He has many gifts. He wont take them forward unless God clearly open the door. He wont push himself to a place so that people will hear him.

A patient man. A kind man. A gifted man. A genuinely humble man. A giving and generous man.

He would give away anything and everything. He holds no material thing tightly.

I've seen him give away things of great worth and I've seen him come home soaking wet without a t shirt having given it away to some one that was colder than he was.

A perfect man. No.

A great man. Yes.

I am so thankful he is my husband.

I am thankful I am learning about leading by watching him do it. 

I know the ONE who is leading you.
I know who holds your hand
I see Jesus in your walk and the ones you stop for
You stop for hopeless ones others walk past. You stop and you do something.

I know the One who is leading you
I hear Him in your songs
It's heavens words sang through you
Music that make  forgotten hearts know they have Someone to belong to.

I know the one who is leading you
I see Him in the way you lead us
With patience, giving, forgiveness and strength
He's part of you. You're part of Him. Both part of us.

So keep going. Keep leading. He'll carry you when you can't. He'll awaken the next song you should pen that will encourage your heart to still lead, still serve. Still serve. Still lead.

Josiah and our hero- Daddy.

My responsiblity.

"Please God. Don't show me anymore new needs today" was the whisper of my heart this week.

I know that sounds so selfish and silly.
What I meant was that we (the team) are dealing with so many needs already and it seems that every time we set foot on the dump site we are presented with more critical needs.

Urgent needs. Desperate needs.

 I don't mean that people come and ask us for  anything. I mean individuals and families are really suffering and the needs are just desperate at times and right in front of our faces. No sooner had I uttered that sentence in my heart than I heard and felt the following words like a loud, booming compress in my spirit;

"If we the church don't respond to the needs then who will?

If you don't respond who will?

IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY"

The fact is it is our responsibility as the church, the body of Christ, the hands and feet of Jesus, a fellow human being to do something to help people who are hurting.

Yes it will hurt to see such suffering.

Yes some nights you wont sleep because you feel the burden of their situation weigh heavy on you.

They will be on your heart. On your mind.

You will think and pray and wonder about the most helpful and sustainable way to respond.
In some cases there is NO other option but to respond straight away.
Budgets will be adjusted and priorities re-arranged again. You will constantly reassess the most pressing needs. It's not renovations or making the place look nicer. It's not repairing the vehicles . It's no longer a field trip or purchasing another instrument- it's helping someone to survive- to make it.

We need to ask God to let us see our communities as He sees them.
He doesn't see them as a mass numerical blur.
He sees individuals.
He sees them and He cares. He sees them and responds.

The hungry are our responsibility
The hurting are our responsibility
The widow, the orphan , the sick, the lonely are OUR responsibility.

But there is too much need and would never know where to start right? We could never help everyone right?

Start with those around you. Start with those whose stories you hear. God will clearly lead you to that someone... and the next.... and the next.
Ron and I find that God clearly puts the next person or the next family in front of us to help and we just KNOW.

Response doesn't have to mean money, though it can. The greatest response to need is LOVE. Loving those who don't have anyone else. Response is our TIME. Response is LISTENING. Response is using our RESOURCES to make things a little easier for them.

A real response in genuine love and care is sacrifice and according to what Jesus demonstrated through his life that is what true love  should be- sacrifice.

Sigh, how often does our (my) selfishness get in the way. I, me, my can run out our (my) mouth so easily can't they? Our feelings. Our needs. Our expectations.

Loving the hurting stranger, loving those in our community, loving our children, loving our spouses should be a sacrifice and with that sacrifice would come joy because  it is better to give away than get. An upside down, radical principle, but a biblical truth nonetheless.

I am learning that loving is not always doing something immediately, but can be just being there. In many ways it's so much easier to go into a slum community and DO something. DO a program. DO a ministry. DO a "thing" (and they "things" whatever they are can be of great value) But for me personally doing the things are easier than just sitting beside someone who is the embodiment of human suffering and doing nothing but listening with everything in that moment. To really listen to the stories, to their lives and hurts is one of the most difficult things and yet this is where relationship and often friendships are built.

The day I said "please don't show me any more needs today"

He did show me more.

Raquel.



Raquel in her home talking to Ron about her situation



Raquel in the KCM "Mama and Me" playgroup

Raquel has been coming to the mother and babies group for a couple of months. Initially she always sat alone because she comes from a different area of the dump site than the majority come from. It's only in the past couple of weeks that we have learned more about her situation. She has never asked for anything. She has never spoke about her troubles unless asked.

I noticed the fist time she and her 2 children joined the group at the way her face would light up when her youngest baby girl smiled. Her 7 month old honestly has one of the most beautiful smiles I have ever seen. She is such a happy baby. Small for her age, but really obviously happy.

Raquel is often the first mother to come through the gates and just always starts to play with her kids. One day a couple of weeks ago she began opening up about her situation after I asked about her husband.

"He left us 7 weeks ago. He took my middle son with him"

For 7 weeks 22 year old Raquel has had no income as her husband was the one to earn through recycling.. For 7 weeks she has been grieving and missing her 3 year old second born son.

Her Father left when she was a little girl and her mother is dead. She doesn't have anyone to support her, apart from neighbors who "sometimes give rice when they have it". 
She has been doing her very best and has been determined to try and feed her children something each day sometimes by peeling garlic to make a few pesos and sometimes selling pag-pag (waste food that is recycled)
Other women in the community told me they see her picking food from the trash, sometimes to feed her children and sometimes to sell. Can we even begin to imagine what we would do if there was no other option for food to fill the ache in our children's stomachs?

Her home is situated in one of the worst parts of the area. You have to step though so mush sludge, water and trash to reach it. Her home is 2x5 foot long. No electricity. It is a tiny shanty with holes in the roof and chicken wire and old boards for walls. She has wood on the ground where she and the children sleep. There are pieces of tarpaulin covering it which is kept spotlessly clean for the babies to lie on.

What struck me about Raquel the first time I observed her in the mothers group and every week after was how gentle she was with her children and the way her face glowed with a big beautiful smile every time her children would smile.

Ron and I spent a long time with Raquel one day this week in her home and I just cannot get her out of my heart. We both felt that  her children were the only reason she has kept going. Kept surviving. Kept trying to provide somehow.

Would you pray for Raquel please?

Her youngest child is now on our daily feeding program where she is fed twice a day. I was encouraged to hear from the lips of the women from the  other side of the dump site that they have began getting to know her and talking to her.
She is being given weekly groceries and rice delivered by our feeding team. We will do a house repair soon to help keep the rain out and  a micro enterprise business which she can operate from home so that she could earn money without having to leave her children.
More than all this though, we would like you to pray that through her getting to know other mums at the group and those in our team she would no longer feel so alone. We want her to know she is cared about, thought about and loved. What a brave and loving mother to have kept going.

"it's because I have strength inside" she told us.

"Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble.." James 1:27

Oh that I could have a heart to never want to miss a chance to do this. Oh for eyes that could see past myself and see people like Jesus would.


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