Throughout our trip I was encouraged to realise that, yes, my prayers do make a difference and in awe of the fact that that God has chosen me to be a part of the work that He is doing on the mission field.
I felt so humbled and privileged to get to see and experience the many different ways that lives are being touched through God’s love. To see the love on a widow’s face as she expressed her gratitude for the hope that she has found in God or the life and excitement in the eyes of the children at the Bridge of Hope centres we visited. Their smiles and joy reflect the fact that for the first time in their lives they have hope and a future ahead of them.
What an honour it was to get to pray for the missionaries who give up everything, face persecution and count it all joy for the sake of reaching those in need! I felt so small alongside them and yet they would ask me to pray for them. Because we are a team and both the senders and the workers, the prayers and those on the front lines are absolutely vital to this work that God has called us to.
I was touched by the example of the Sisters of Compassion we met serving in the leprosy colony. They are willing to go beyond the barriers of culture and society to serve and actually touch the lepers. Through this they show the lepers that in God’s eyes they are worth loving and touching and holding. They are no longer just lepers but precious men and women, so valuable in the sight of God!
To sum it all up I would say that the one thing that impacted me the most on this trip was the love that I experienced, God’s love. It was expressed in the lives of the missionaries who are love in action. It shined out of them in a way that made me say, ‘there is something different about that person.’ God’s love is what causes the Sisters of Compassion to touch the lepers, wipes away the tears of the widow and gives the destitute children hope.
In response to all I have seen and experienced my prayer is that God’s love would also shine through my life in such a way that all those around me would be drawn to Christ as a result. May His love be the reason behind all that I do and the focus of my life. Only through God’s love will I be able to lay down my life and be the hands and feet of Jesus to the world around me.
As it says in 1 Cor. 13:1-3 “If I speak in the tonguesof men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,but do not have love, I gain nothing.
And verse 13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”