Growing
up in a small town in Kentucky I was always taught in church about people who
were doing daring and dangerous things for the Lord and serving Him in such
wild places as China or Africa or a war torn Eastern European country. I was
taught of how extreme their faith was to go to the ends of the earth to
proclaim the simple, freeing news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and honestly it
seemed like something only few people did and I never truly understood why they
went.
Then my
family and I became one of those faces on a Sunday school room wall of a family
serving in a far off, poverty stricken land and began to call Haiti home.
Having my family move to Haiti has been one of the hardest things in my short
life, but it has also brought forth the most growth and love I have ever
experienced. I quickly began to realize that it didn't take anything special or
extraordinary to become a full time missionary, my dad owned a tire store and
my mom worked in a dentist office, but they simply followed the call that the
Lord not only placed on their lives but everyone’s which is to proclaim the
gospel to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)
We as Christians
are called to serve one another and share Christ’s love for us to everyone we
meet in our communities and around the world, both of which we often neglect. Love
becomes hard when you receive nothing back or worse, when you receive hate
back. But we are called to selflessly love everyone as Christ does for us. My
mom beautifully displayed this while I was in Haiti over Christmas break
through a sweet little girl named MaCarona (pronounced Makauna). This sweet
girl isn’t the cutest or most talkative but she has stolen my heart. Her
parents both have mental disabilities and she isn’t quite all there but there’s
no way for us to formally determine what is wrong with her. You can usually
find her running around the village naked or outside the mission gate. The
other kids make fun of her and she has become so shy she only talks to her
family and has only muttered a few words to my mom and me. But my mom has loved
her selflessly, she takes her in to our home and feeds her, clothes her, lets
her take a bath, but most importantly she loves her. This girl, regarded to
others in the village as an idiot or a beggar, is loved by God and on a lot
smaller scale my mom and me. How much so should we approach everyone like this,
even when it is hard, to love them and wrap them in the love the Lord has them.
As
Katie Davis, author of Kisses from Katie
and missionary in Uganda said, “We are not called to be safe, we are simply
promised that when we are in danger, God is right there with us. And there is
no better place to be than in His hands.” So whether or not your face becomes
one on a Sunday school room wall or not, let us all live our faith that we
follow the Lord’s will in our lives wherever He may take us.
This is MaCarona and
her brother with me outside the mission on my last day in Haiti.
MaCarona started school this Janurary, getting a meal every day and this cute uniform!
