I share Him!

There is a little boy playing with the cap of a bottle. It is dirty. Not sure how long it has been on the ground. He puts it in his mouth, then in his hands, then throws it on the ground and kicks it a bit. It is his only toy. The cap from a Pepsi bottle.

There is a little girl with a growth on the side of her face. It does not look good. Her mother sits beside her on the hospital bed. There is no TV in the room. No IV's hooked up to her providing her pain relief. There is not a rolling cart with a finely cooked cafeteria meal in front of her. No sterile gloves, no thermometers, no syringes. The little girl's doctor does not have anything to prescribe and her family does not have the money to pay for a surgery, not that exploratory or repairative surgery are even normal protocol here.

There is a husband who welcomes us to his home. He takes plastic chairs from a stack in his living room. The chairs remain from the funeral of his wife they had just thirty days ago in the open area outside their home. He has his 11 year old son put a dvd in their outdated dvd player so we can watch this funeral on their small, grainy, outdated 20 inch tv. And his 13 year old son, sits quietly in the corner, hands behind his back, silently reliving the funeral of his mother. This husband tells the story of his wife's abdominal pain that led him to have to carry her to the hospital, in the middle of the night, on his back. A hospital like the one described above...no testing, no treatment, no pain medicine, no surgeries. And this same husband breaks down sobbing in the arms of a white woman he just met ten minutes prior because he so loved his wife and misses her so deeply.

And the stories haunt us.
And they are hard to digest.

And there are times when we are asked, "How was Africa?" and we just want to scream...

"IT WAS HORRENDOUS...PEOPLE ARE DYING THERE! I HELD A DYING CHILD! I HELD A GRIEVING MAN! I SAW STARVATION AND DISEASE AND DISGUST! AND RIGHT NOW I CAN'T COMPREHEND ANYTHING THAT YOU ARE TELLING ME ABOUT YOUR LIFE HERE IN THE U.S. AND I CAN'T WRAP MY BRAIN AROUND THE TINY DETAILS OF MY JOB AND ALL I WANT TO DO IS RUN BACK TO THAT PLACE AND THE ONLY REASON I KNOW WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT TO GO THERE IS BECAUSE...."

it was also GLORIOUS!

The children pierced my hearts! The stories stole my heart! The images I saw, the sounds I heard, the smells I took in and the view of CHRIST in what could be perceived as such a desolate place....

well...that is something I now CRAVE!

So...now what?
   I find myself asking that again...as I have so many times since my first steps off the plane two years ago in Sierra Leone, West Africa...

    NOW WHAT?

Well, right now...I rest in God's timing. I rest in the truth that He has a perfect plan for my life. That He hears the desires of my heart and He knows what is best for me. I dive into His word to learn more about Him. I share my stories with those who will let me get past "Africa was great". I work at the job He has provided me and I do it as if I were working for Him...and more importantly I share HIM! 

Right here...right now...in the midst of grading online coursework, in the midst of painting our house a new color, in the midst of figuring out a budget for our family and planning summer activities...

...in the midst of wondering what in the world is the reason behind much of what I do here in the U.S....

I share Him!!!

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my eye upon you."

Psalm 32:8