My team was told that we’d be visiting an orphanage. I was so excited because I had really been missing children’s ministry! I was ready to play with some kiddos!
We got to the orphanage and immediately I saw a young woman, maybe 30 years old, sitting on the steps by a sleeping baby. God totally put her on my heart, which was weird because I was certain He was blessing me with time to be crazy with the kids. But I couldn’t ignore the tug on my heart, so I approached her and sat down beside her. She didn’t speak much English, just enough to tell me her name, Luksimi. I introduced myself as well and we just sat there smiling, looking around for awhile. She offered me the cushion she had been sitting on. About five minutes went by and I was asking God how to minister to her when suddenly she looked at me and said, “Christian?” Woah!
“Yes!” I responded. “You?”
And she smiled so big, nodding yes. I knew then that God placed me there to be an encouragement to her. I called over our translator.
I asked Luksimi about how she found the Lord and she began to share her testimony with me. Her whole family passed away and her husband left her. She was completely alone with no way to provide for herself or be cared for. That’s when she went to the orphanage, seeking shelter. The orphanage, run by an amazing Christian woman, welcomed her in and gave her shelter and food in exchange for her work, so she does all of the cleaning for the orphanage. It was there that she heard the Gospel for the first time and was saved! WOW!
I told her of how beautiful that redemption story is; in her brokenness and loneliness, God swept her into His loving arms and provided for her and saved her. She smiled and nodded. While we were talking, her left eye was watering and she kept touching it. She eventually asked me to pray over her eye. I laid my hand over her eye and prayed, asking God to heal her if and only if it was in His will. We said amen and she was smiling so big. All of the watering stopped and she said in Nepali, “All of the pain is gone!” We celebrated and she called over a child and two other women from the orphanage who needed prayer for healing. Those three people didn’t experience immediate healing, but it was encouraging nonetheless to see her excitement result in confident prayer for her sisters. Man, God is so good and so powerful! We sat and chatted some more through broken English about random things and laughed together. When it came time for me to leave, she gave me a hug and kissed me on the cheek. We said we’d both be praying for each other. It was such a sweet, God-ordained moment!
Thank you, Jesus, for Luksimi and her amazing testimony. Thank you for encouraging her through me. Thank you for healing her, Jesus! That’s only you! I pray that you would bless and keep her and continue to send people her way to love and encourage her. You are good, Father. You always provide! In Jesus’ precious name I surrender her to you and pray all of these things, amen.
-Anna 🙂
