Pebbles from Jesus
Have you ever had one of those moments where you feel like you’re in the right place at the right time? Those moments usually happen very rarely but when they do, you know that it was planned perfectly by God. Last week my team and I had the privilege to stay at pastor Forges house in Haiti. He lovingly provided a place for us and another World Race team to stay for a week. Not only did he provide a place for 13 racers to stay but also provides tents outside of his home for about families who lost everything in the earthquake. One evening I was waiting outside with a few other people to leave for church..which by the way was an awesome service and have never heard or felt such passion for the Lord during worship. Anyways I decided to follow one of the little boys around that lived in one of the tents, I was bored and he seemed fascinated by this game of follow the leader so I went with it. About 10 minutes into the game I realized that there was a little girl watching me and I motioned for her to come and play but she just looked at me. One thing I’m learning on this trip is that when first meeting a child from another country, they are usually very shy, so with that in mind I decided to give it another try and asked her if she wanted to sit next to me. It worked!! She came over and sat down but the conversation did not go far since I don’t know much Creole and she knew little English. After a while it looked like the little girl was getting restless so I invited her to go for a walk with me. Oh yeah another thing I forgot to mention, is that in Haiti there is hardly no grass and when there is, it’s usually mixed with lots of rocks. As we were walking I felt like God gave me a brilliant idea, “Use the rocks to communicate with the little girl”. So we sat down on the pavement and I asked her to help me spell out her name with some of the small rocks. She sat there quietly as we started forming the letters J-A-M-I-A, I was so thrilled after doing this because 1: I could actually pronounce her name and 2: we were actually getting somewhere with getting to know each other. Next I started spelling my name as she looked and smiled. Then God gave me another great idea, I grabbed some rocks and made a heart and then spelled J-E-S-U-S..then pointed to each one and said Leslie loves Jamia but Jesus loves Jamia and Leslie more. “Jesus loves Jamia” Her face lit up and all she could do was smile and I knew at that moment that I was in the right place at the right time because of Gods perfect timing. The next day I decided to go out to the tents to see what some of the little kids were doing. I found Jamia hanging out with her brothers and decided to sit next to her. She got up and walked away and then came back with a hand full of little pebbles. She started making little shapes with the pebbles but then something happened, she stopped and started spelling J-A-M-I-A loves J-E-S-U-S. I was so surprised that she remembered the rocks and even more surprised that she spelt “Jamia loves Jesus” Jamia touched my heart that day but most importantly God showed me something new. All it takes is one little act of love towards another person to show them that you really care and somehow God finds a way with those actions to make himself known to others. Wow! I was so proud of her and I can’t help but wonder how much prouder God was for Jamia, his little girl. God is good and I will never forget eight year old Jamia from Port- Au- Prince.
