We arrived home from a great Labor Day weekend to the following letter from my little boy Amanuel in Ethiopia. "My mother is sick so she can not fulfill any job. My sister and I go to our grandparent. Please pray for my mother to be healthy and then she can grow me and my sister."
This news would not be so upsetting except that Amanuel's father passed away 5 years ago. Widows in Ethiopia often struggle to provide for their children, but through our sponsorship and the help of Compassion, his mother had been able to start a business to provide for her children. So for her not to be able to take care of her children, much less work, worries me greatly. I do not know what his father died of. I just know that I love this child, I loved his mother, and as of two years ago when we met, she was not a Christian.
I pray things have changed. I pray that my little boy will not be one of the millions of orphans in Ethiopia every year due to AIDS. I pray that his mother will recover from whatever illness she has so that the Compassion church project will have more time to minister to her both emotionally and spiritually.
Again, these children are not just faces on a packet. They have names, they have needs, and they have the love of God above - who has asked us to love them too. Sometimes it is easy to live our happy and privileged life in America and chalk the pain, hunger, and sickness of the third world up to just a sad story we occasionally hear about on the news. And sometimes that pain smacks us in the face and wakes us up to the real world. Would you please pray for Amanuel's mother with me?
And more importantly, is God calling you to reach out to a real child, in a real relationship, and be the hands of Christ to them? There are so many children like Amanuel who are more than just statistics. To be a missionary does not require you moving to another continent. Will you?
1 comment:
I will definitely be praying for her!
Post a Comment