So far the World Race has been a crazy adventure. Check out my teammate, Shannon Meador's blog to read an update of the past few weeks.
(photos courtesy of Marian Padilla)
Last night my team traveled to Santa Lucia for a street outreach put on by an organization called "Children's Garden". We spent the evening hanging out with the kids down a dark alley. Their favorite things to do were to jump on your back and convince you in tagalog to run around and basically play chicken against other kids on people's backs. We fed them, danced with them, prayed with them, and simply shared life with them. My biggest task throughout the night was to trace every child's foot. A member of their church is having her birthday in a few weeks and wants to bless the ministry by donating shoes to each child. Tracing foot after foot, I realized that I'm actually not too keen of feet. Each foot was different. Some were dirty, some didn't have toe nails, or their toes were all curled to one side. Some were painted and manicured to perfection. Some were rough and cut and calloused.
"How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news"
– Romans 10:15
This verse kept coming to mind as more and more feet ran across the paper. "How beautiful" describes perfectly the state my heart was in. God filled my sight with His eyes and my hands with His touch. My fear of "feet" drifted. And as I traced, slowly, aimless bodies would fall into the light casting shadows on the paper, creating a darkness that clouded my eyes and halted my task. So, I'd lift my head and smile at the eager child blocking the light and speak words that he didn't understand, and magically he'd move. Darkness was not welcomed there, and though it surrounded us, the light of Christ continued to shine. "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach"..looking down at my own feet I noticed the dirt that magically had found it's way to my once "clean" feet. I lost myself in meditation..God doesn't expect us to come clean and glistening in white before Him. Jesus lived amongst the dirt. He prayed over the outcasts. He loved on the street dwellers. If Jesus embraced the "dirt", I will embrace the dirt. These feet that are visibly dirty to my eyes are clean in Christ's.
Grace.
My "dirt" is overcome by God's forgiveness. God extends grace to me freely to free me of my "dirt". I danced around the streets for the rest of the night, embracing my dirty feet with a changed heart and a new perspective. I declare over that place that God will use those beautiful feet to preach the good news. God will equip their feet to walk into a relationship with Him.
The story doesn't stop there. God brought the word Grace into my heart for a reason. Near the end of the night, my squad leader encouraged me to talk to Sharon, a beautiful filipino woman inside and out that dedicates her life to serve this ministry. Since everything has been crazy with our ministry in Tondo due to the typhoon, it's a high possibility that our ministry site could change. I went over to talk to Sharon about possibly finishing out our month here with their ministry. And what I thought would be a conversation about her life and the ministry, slowly turned into us talking about Grace.
A brothel is located on this same street where we were hanging out. I knew this was true before going out to the ministry site and my heart layed heavy as we drove up. I knew that God was doing something inside me and that He was preparing divine appointments. I trusted Him not knowing where He'd lead.
As I talked to Sharon, God pressed on my heart about the brothel, so I started asking her questions about it. She pointed to a group of girls that were hanging out at the end of the street and told me that they worked as "call girls," – prostitutes. She talked about how open they are about their jobs and how they do it because they have needs that need to be met. As she spoke, judgement fell off my shoulders. Once again, God gave me His eyes and I saw those girls as beloved daughters of the King.
As my conversation with Sharon progressed and she told me story after story about these girls, one of them from the group walked up to us. She was expressionless. She looked hurt, disappointed, and confused. Sharon started speaking to her in Tagalog asking her if she was ok and what was wrong. The girl kept turning and looking down the street from where she just came, pointing at the only guy that was a part of the group. I started to put the pieces together.. that in some way she was connected to him. Sharon translated to me that this girl has a 7 month old baby with the guy standing in the street and she doesn't want to be with him anymore because he's not a good daddy for her baby. Sharon turned back to this girl and encouraged her to speak to me in english. She did, and Sharon left. Her english was beautiful – she was beautiful. All I wanted to do was hold her in my arms and speak truth over her body and watch Christ remove every doubt, fear, and worry from her life. Instead, I listened to her story.
She told me about her baby, Noah Gabriel, who was in that moment at the home where she lives being taken care of by the caretaker of the house. She told me she hated her baby's daddy and when I asked her where he was, she said he was buying her cigarettes. I asked her why she hated him and she said "he's a rugby boy, he will never be a good daddy for my baby". Rugby is a glue substance that these kids put in plastic bags and sniff to kill hunger pains. Many of them, like this girl's partner, know it's bad and wish they didn't do it, but they've become addicted. It has become a part of their lives, and they can't part from it. However, this organization works with the kids to bring them to a point when they realize they need a relationship with Christ more than they need Rugby. That Christ can cure all their needs.
She continued to tell me about her life, how she didn't have a family to go home to because she was embarrassed about her life: she's a prostitute with a 7 month old baby and use to live on the streets. She talked about her dreams of being a housewife with lots of kids and a loving husband to support her. She talked about her work and how she only has to give 15 minutes to each client and then she can leave. She talked about her need to save money to provide a better life for son. She talked about having to go feed her baby around 12am or 1am and then leaving to come back to the streets to work. She told me I was really tall and asked me how old I was. I told her I was 21 and she was shocked because she's 23 and so short. She was beautiful in every sense of the word. And even though some of conversation was a little "tacky" or "reckless" God allowed me to see past it. We laughed, she smiled, and we chatted as if we'd been friends forever. She talked about Jesus to another girl on my team and how she loves Him and prays to Him often to "change her life".
Throughout our whole conversation I never caught her name. As we were preparing to leave, one of my teammates came up and asked if we could pray for her. Little did I know that this teammate had spoken with her earlier in the night and too was captivated by her beauty and vulnerability. And as my teammate prayed, she spoke her name, Grace. I almost fell over, captured by God's uniqueness and timing.
"Oh Lord", I prayed as we left and sang this song to myself:
"So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise
Oh God
Your grace is enough"
Oh Father, YOUR Grace is enough. She's is a chosen daughter of you. You see past her life, past her job, past her "dirt" and You love her. Her name means blessing, from God, elegance, kindness, brilliance, flowering with joy, her name is prophetic. Father you chose her, may she choose You for the rest of her life.
She has a name. Her name is Grace.
