MONTH 1: Village Chief’s Home, Sielmat, India:
We are helping orchestrate a free health clinic. I’m with fellow racers in the prayer room. We talk to the patients, get to know them, and then pray for their illness or anything else they want prayer for. A young man is carried in on a bench. His name is Seiboi. He fell off a roof, becoming paralyzed from the waist down. He has been laying on this bench ever since, his muscles and bones already fused together from lack of proper care, making him unable to sit up like he should be able to. We all lay our hands on Seiboi, calling on the Lord for a miracle. At first, I cannot pray, only weep. For three hours we pray and beg the Lord, believing that he wants Seiboi healed and that he will in fact heal him. Nothing happens.
God, he is so young. Don’t you want him well?
My heart breaks. My soul cries out.
MONTH 2: Club Destiny, Pokhara, Nepal:
We meet two girls in a dance bar. Ranja is 14. Nicea is 15. We become friends, visit them in their one room, dirt floor home, have them over for a beauty day with other girls, share the gospel, and just love them. Neither has a parent alive, but both have younger siblings to care for. We offer them work making handicrafts and a community of girls and women outside of the dance bar. Still they continue to dance, in fear of the unknown, of not being able to provide, and of the bar owner coming after them. They continue to live in bondage, to sell their bodies, and to let man after man attempt to fulfill his need for love with a perverted lust at the expense of their innocence, dignity, and identities.
What can bring them out of this darkness? Lord, you have to show them the way.
My heart breaks. My soul cries out.
MONTH 3: Vision Café, Da Nang, Vietnam:
I meet a Vietnamese woman, a regular at Vision Café, a citizen just like every other seeking to improve her English. She tells me her name, but I cannot pronounce it (a usual occurrence), so she tells me her English name, Amber. She tells me about her life, work, family, and thoughts. I tell her about mine. She is shocked and confused as to why I would leave my studies. I tell her it’s because I encountered Jesus and began to believe in Him. She still doesn’t understand, so I proceed to tell her the gospel as simply as I can, recognizing that she has probably never heard the name Jesus in this closed country that forbids it. She nods with understanding as I talk. When I finish, she asks, “Jesus is your boyfriend?”
She doesn’t understand. Will she ever?
My heart breaks. My soul cries out.
MONTH 4: King’s Palace, Phenom Penh, Cambodia:
Idols are everywhere. Big and small. Gold, silver, bronze, bedazzled. Every structure on the palace grounds is full of them. I’m overwhelmed. In this nation where less than 1% of the population knows the name of Jesus, there are more idols than missionaries and more powerless, gold shrines than churches. These idols are trusted, worshipped, and sacrificed to. People live to please them.
How will this nation ever know the love of their true Creator? How will they ever see that these manmade statues are worthless and powerless tools of the enemy to make them work, strive, and strain for their worth, provisions, and identity?
My heart breaks. My soul cries out.
S21 Prison Museum (previously a local high school), Phenom Penh, Cambodia:
I walk in and out of the classrooms, once full of laughter, learning, and dreaming, now turned to torture chambers full of cries for mercy, dehumanization, and the devil’s schemes. Chills run through my body and my stomach churns as the audio tour recites account after account of the horrors that occurred here. For four sickening years, over 2 million innocent people were tortured in these prisons. In their pain they begged for death, for an end to this hell, just to be met on the other side with eternal hell?
Most of the nation doesn’t know your name, Jesus. Did they even have a chance to?
My heart breaks. My soul cries out.
MONTH 5: Childcare and Preschool for Vulnerable Children, Molepolele, Botswana:
It’s day 11 at the preschool. The kids aren’t scared of us anymore. Many of them are smiling and laughing for the first time since joining the preschool according to their teacher, Teacher Tiara. Again, I am drawn to Koketso, a little boy who does not speak to, laugh with, or play with the other kids. His eyes are dark and solemn. He doesn’t focus well. He stares off a lot. I see thoughts, fears, and dark memories run through his mind. I’ve given up on trying to get him to play, talk or laugh. I now just sit with him, loving and allowing him to be as he is. He taps my arm for the first time and looks at me as if he has something to say, something he wants to share or ask. He looks into my eyes with pain so clearly in his. He doesn’t speak a word. He won’t share what is keeping him silent, distracted, distant, and unhappy. I want to crawl in his little mind and expel all the lies, comfort all the pain, and tell him how incredibly precious, worthy, and loved he is. But I can’t.
God, you’ve got to do something. Can’t you see your child is hurting?
My heart breaks. My soul cries out.
MONTH 6: Beam Africa’s Afterschool Program, Mamelodi, South Africa:
We finish the Bible lesson and songs with the kids. They wash their hands and take a seat, their distended bellies rumbling for food. We begin serving them meager portions of pap, gravy, chicken, and carrots. Only half the kids have been served, and we are already running out of food. Again. We ask the Lord to multiply the food, knowing He can; He has done it before. We are down to a small scoop of pap, one bite size piece of carrot and some watery gravy on each plate – at most 100 calories. I continue passing out plates, shamefully apologizing to the kids for the lack.
Father, we know you can multiply their food. Why don’t you do it for them now? Show them you are a provider. Show them you care. They are hungry.
My heart breaks. My soul cries out.
MONTH 7: Murray Camp Care Point, Mpholi, Swaziland:
The kids, most of them wearing the same dirty rags they have worn every other day this week, line up at the front of the class. Taking turns, they begin their daily recitations of their name, how old they are, who their parents are, where they go to school, etc. One after the other, they are prompted by their teacher, “My father is…” then, “My mother is…” Child after child stands in cold silence, their bright smiles gone. With empty eyes they painfully wait for the teacher to prompt the next line because they have nothing, no one, the finish the statement with. Daily, they are reminded of their loss in that dim classroom. Most of these children, at the mere age of 4 and 5, don’t have a father or mother because the spread of AIDS has destroyed the family unit across the entire nation.
God, how can this be? How can you let this be?
My heart breaks. My soul cries out.
…
The number of times I have cried out, “God, where are you? I don’t see you anywhere. Don’t you care?” in the past several months are too many to count. The pain, suffering, hate, and deprivation that I have seen often seems to outweigh the goodness, joy, life, and beauty that’s there. And I haven’t even seen the worst of it.
How do I cope? How do I believe in a God who is good and who cares? How do I keep going? How do I not seek comfort in the blissful shelter of ignorance? How do I not give up?
I’m not sure.
The Lord has somehow given me hope. He has given me peace.
He has given me assurance that His hurt for these situations is far greater than mine. His love and concern for these people is far deeper than mine. And His resources and capacity for bringing healing, redemption, and life into these dark places are far more vast and are far better than mine.
To Seiboi, the Lord sent four N squad racers. They befriended him, did physical therapy with him, and raised money for him to be admitted to a hospital where doctors could take care of a newly discovered bed sore wound that would have killed him had he not been hospitalized when he was. Seiboi is now getting treatment and is expected to be able to sit and operate a wheel chair with more physiotherapy and treatment. Thanks to the Lord’s sovereignty and provision, Seiboi will live to watch his son grow up and hopefully even be able to wheel him to school.
*See his story and support him: http://biblesfortheworld.org/seiboi/
To Ranja and Nicea, the Lord has provided a group of His children, Maya Himalaya, who live in Pokhara and have dedicated their lives to loving and caring for girls like them. They will continue to pursue them and love them regardless of what decision these women and girls do or do not make. They go into the darkness night after night to bring light and life to those stuck in it, and they won’t give up on the girls because the Lord didn’t give up on them.
To Amber, the Lord has ordained a steady flow of racers passionate about loving people and sharing the good news to work in Vision Café month after month, helping her improve her conversational English as well as explain His truth. He is using the café and the staff there to provide a safe space for Jesus’ name to be discussed and for His love to be poured out until all know Him.
To the citizens of Cambodia who pray and give offerings to worthless shrines day after day, the Lord is sending out the body, the church, His hands and feet to seek and save the lost. He is using faithful partners in His mission like the staff and members of 5P church in Phenom Pehn. He is reaching out to them through free English classes, pool parties, and family dinners. He is creative and relentless in His pursuits of this beautiful people group.
To the nation of Cambodia, the Lord is redeeming the loss and suffering of the genocide that killed one fourth of their population. He’s not undoing what man has chosen in his own freewill, but He is using the genocide to make His truth and love known to the nation. Christianity has grown 9,000% since the genocide. Masses are learning of God’s truth, love and grace and finding new life, abundant life in Him.
To Koketso, the Lord has provided an incredible, loving teacher and a licensed counselor to care for him, help restore his mental and emotional health and well-being, and show him love day after day in that classroom.
To the kids in Mamelodi, the Lord is calling the nation together to seek His face, repent, and ask the Lord for change, for restoration, for peace, for provision. A gathering of over one million South Africans just recently came together for prayer and worship on behalf of their country. I can’t wait to see how the Lord responds.
And finally,
To the parentless children across the nation of Swaziland, I’m not sure what the Lord is doing. I don’t know how He is working to redeem and restore the broken family structures and the unintended neglect. He hasn’t shown me, and even if He never does, I trust He is doing something.
This is my God. He is faithful. He is relentless. He is patient. He is good.
I haven’t always been able to profess those things, but now I can, and I do. I profess them with full confidence and faith because they are true, and because He has proven to my doubtful, pessimistic, hurting heart that they are true.
He loves me, and He loves you.
His love is changing the world, and I’m finally letting it change me too.
