My team and I ended up being super blessed by our time at Sarah’s Covenant Homes, even though I would still say that it was one of the hardest months that I personally have experienced on the Race. I will forever have the picture in my mind of Wendy standing at the top of the stairs signing to me that she loved me as I walked away. We are a month and a week past leaving India and yet Wendy is still there. So are all of the other children we met and learned to love over our time at SCH. This is becoming a sobering reality: when we pack our bags and board buses or trains or planes, we leave people… we leave contacts and new friends that have sacrificed everything to proclaim the gospel… we leave children without parents… we leave staggering numbers behind of people who have never heard the good news that Jesus died to give them eternal life and then we move while they remain… we move to a new country, with new contacts and new friends and new children and new numbers… With every month that passes more and more faces and ministries and needs are added to my understanding of how vast God’s heart is for the nations… for every people group… for every tongue… for every color to worship Him.
I love that He is teaching me that though we leave, He remains. He is the God who rules over Pop Up, the ministry I served with month one. He is still at Michael’s Children’s’ Village in South Africa and He knows the name of every orphan that has or will find their home there. He is still in Swaziland and He sees those that harvest vegetables from the land that we cleared. He is in Hong Kong. He is still at work in China, drawing those who do not know Him to Himself. He walks down dirt paths with Janet and Veronica and Ate Tess as they bring food for bodies and souls to those served by Food for the Hungry. He is in the room watching Wendy and Marta and Chaya dance in India. He knows the name of every person in Romania… the woman who worked at the cash register in Penny, our grocery store, the teenagers we passed on the street, the people hidden behind the walls of their houses… all of them. His name is Jesus and He is everywhere I’ve been. He has gone before me and He comes around behind me. His name will last forever in every place, whether or not the people there choose to know Him.
He is in the Ukraine, where I am tonight… and in three weeks when I leave, He will stay. He is working when I don’t see Him. He is present when I can’t sense Him. He is here with me even while He is there with you. Whoever you are, wherever you are, He is….
