Hello everyone!
My first week in Cambodia has been awesome and the Lord has taught me a few valuable lessons!
This month, my team and I are staying at an orphanage in Phnom Penh called “Bykota House.” Our host is incredibly sweet and amazing. She is 25 and 19 kids call her “mom.”
Two of my team mates and I work with special needs kids in the morning for three hours on week days. The kids we work with are beautiful and amazing and when they smile or laugh, they have the power to melt your heart.
One morning before I went, I prayed and asked Jesus to help me love them as if He truly was the one in the room. I asked Him to help me interact with them, because He knows what they need far more than I could even begin to imagine. He was faithful to come through, like always.
As I would walk around the room and start to interact with the kids, I would get an image in my mind of what Jesus would do or He would put a thought in my mind of what He would do.
Like, “If I were in the room, Meraia, I would dance around with this child because he loves to dance around and have fun.”
That’s just one example. And the kids loved it because I was following Jesus’ lead.
Jesus also began talking to me saying, “Meraia, these children do have special needs. They can’t communicate as well as others, or walk as well as others, but they are full of love and joy. However, everyone that lives on this planet has special needs that only I can fulfill. Including you.”
That’s such a sobering truth that we all need to remember. With out Jesus, we would be crazy. We all have needs that only Jesus can truly fulfill.
If you have a relationship with Jesus, His love should be flowing through you. There is a saying that goes, “Broken people break people. Healed people heal people.” That statement is true when we allow Jesus to heal our wounds and meet our needs. When we can point others to the great physician, when we can allow His love to pour through us to share with others….we can help people.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 25:40 “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Often, we picture the least of these as the poor, the homeless, the widow, the orphans, those with special needs…but all of us have been the least of these. People all around you may have the least bit of hope, the least bit of joy, the least bit of love. So they, like we do when we aren’t focussed on Jesus, go to other places to find something that can meet their needs. When we go wherever else…wether it’s to food, to drugs, to sex, to alcohol, to wherever else that isn’t Jesus…it does not help us or make us better…it makes us worse. We end up needing more healing.
If Jesus has and is still meeting your needs, I encourage you to share that with others. With out Jesus, we all would be as crippled spiritually as anyone that is physically crippled. Which can be much, much worse.
I’ve come to find that these beautiful children I help watch during the week has taught me a lot more about Jesus than I ever could have imagined. While helping them, they have helped me.
Please continue to pray for my team and me, and my whole squad! I love and miss you all!!
Sincerely,
Meraia
Philippians 4:19
And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.
