For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.
Psalm 20:18
Imagine you live in a place so terrible that a few hours stay gives your clothes a stench that won’t leave.
Imagine your expected life span is hovering somewhere around thirty because you drink sewage and breathe in the lingering smoke from a thousand fires every day.
Imagine that your only school has dirt floors, almost no books, and you can’t get in because hundreds of others are waiting for a place in that same school.
Welcome to life in the water town.
You enter this place from the main road, walking through a narrow side alley for several minutes until you reach the shores of the standing water. You immediately notice the number of people who live here as they get in and out boats at the makeshift docks.
You gingerly crawl into one of the boats, hoping it doesn’t send you on an unexpected trip into the black water. The boat takes you slowly through narrow roads of water onto the main highway where the missionary tells a story about a previous trip where a passing motor boat almost sent them all for unexpected swim.
Comforting, right?
Finally, you arrive at the only school, a building that is slowly collapsing under its own weight, looking forward to the swarm of children that will soon surround you.
This is where God has called us, because He loves the poor and the needy, and if we are His hands and feet, we must love them just as He loves them.
Without Help
The director of the school, a man named Noah, told me that the only way the school gets funded is by locals or foreign organizations. The government refuses to send any help of any kind, whether supplies or funds.
We spent some time talking and praying with him. Pray that God provides the funds for us to upgrade the structure for the school. After looking at the school’s structure, which is bending under the weight of the upper story, we’re confident that if we don’t do anything, there could be a disaster.
Pray for Noah and pray that God provides the funds and supplies for this school to keep operating. Noah gives a lot of his own time and money to make sure the school runs, even to the point where he’s chosen to live among his own people so that he can do everything he can for them.
A Bible for Every Student
With the help of someone from my church who works for the Gideon society, we were able to provide Bibles for every student in the school as the teachers had asked us. The Bibles will be a powerful tool for them to practice their English (which is a second language for them) while learning the scriptures.
Since we started coming and teaching the scriptures, there has been a massive difference in the attitude of both the teachers and the students. The students are now intensely alert during classes, asking good questions, and even quoting scripture that they’ve learned back to us.
Thanks to the education they’re receiving, some of these precious ones will be able to further their education on the mainland. Pray for their physical and spiritual condition - that they would come to know our Savior, and that God would provide for them so that they can escape the cycle of poverty and bring others out with them.
Intercepted by Hope
After we’d given out the Bibles, I was walking to go photograph the students in their lessons when I saw two young men reading John 3:16 aloud to themselves. If God had ever provided a clearer opportunity to hear the message, I don’t know what it was.
“Do you understand what you’re reading?” I asked as I sat down. They shook their heads. “No.”
For the next forty minutes, my brother Gabriel and I sat, reading scripture with them, asking them questions, and explaining things they didn’t understand. When we finally asked if they had any questions, one of the young men asked, “If there is a man who is an idolater his whole life, yet comes to Christ three days before his death, what will happen to this man? Will he go to heaven?”
Rather than answer his question directly, we took him to the story of the thief on the cross, who asked Jesus to remember him just hours before his death.
When he was finished reading, he told us, “It’s clear that the idolater who comes to Christ will go to heaven.”
I pointed at Gabriel, “Did you know he was an idol worshipper for many years?”
The young men sat back, surprised to find such a man sitting among them. Gabriel then shared his testimony, about how much God hated his idolatry and sin, yet how God still had mercy on him through Christ.
When he was done, the men said that they were ready to come to Christ. We prayed with them, and as the conversation was winding down, I found out that John normally worked at a factory on weekdays, and didn’t even live in the water village any more. Yet because he was sick on this particular day, he decided to visit his brother at the school.
In other words, God used his sickness to bring him to hear the gospel.
I don’t know the end result, but please pray for the three young men who listened – that the seeds we planted will sprout and grow into the hope that only Christ can give.
Praise God for being a God who orders the steps of His children, that they would come to know Him.
Psalm 16:9
The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.
Acts 17:26-27
And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us
Grace and peace,
- Paul
