July 8, 2014,
I’m sorry that I didn’t blog about Vietnam this past week. I actually got one of those week long migraines, and I had to go to Urgent Care two times to get better. If you could please pray for me, that would be great! Please pray for healing, against discouragement, and that Jesus will mold me and use me during this time. It was hard to fight discouragement this past week with feeling so sick. And a little bit of fear! Sometimes I would think “How am I going to be able to function on the trip when this happens?” But again. I have to keep focusing on God and that He called me to do this, no matter how I feel! Also, that I am not the only one going through pain, and I should reach out during these times and not direct all my focus on my own issues.
Some of my favorite people to think about when these things happen–and I will probably mention them again because I LOVE them so 
—are William Wilberforce, Betsie Ten Boom, and David Brainerd. There are many others, but I was concentrating on these people this past week. Every one of these people was told to stop their ministry because they were struggling with physical illness, and that they just didn’t seem qualified to continue. But they did not stop!
I actually only learned of David Brainerd when I was teaching in Saipan a few years ago. We were going through missionaries, and suddenly there was this young man who was a missionary to the Native Americans in New Jersey, and suffered from tuberculosis for years until his death. Yet, the Native Americans adored Brainerd and he had a particularly fruitful ministry!
Betsie and Corrie Ten Boom, sisters, were sent to a concentration camp for hiding Jews in World War II. Betsie suffered from pernicious anemia from birth, and continued to grow worse until her death in the camp. Even as she was growing weaker, her ministry grew stronger among the prisoners in the camp. She helped and inspired everyone around her, as well as teaching them to see the best in everything, even in such horrible darkness and evil! Betsie loved the prisoners AND her captors, her enemies, in equal measure. Corrie helped with her ministry and took over it completely when Betsie died. I love these women and am so inspired by their story and words! Their story can be found in the book The Hiding Place.
“You can never learn that Christ is all you need, until Christ is all you have.” ? Corrie Ten Boom
“Corrie, if people can be taught to hate, they can be taught to love! We must find the way, you and I, no matter how long it takes.” ? Betsie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place
“What wings are to a bird, and sails to a ship, so is prayer to the soul. ” ? Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place
“There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.” ? Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place
“Happiness isn’t something that depends on our surroundings…It’s something we make inside ourselves.” ? Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place
“And so I learned that love is larger than the walls that shut it in” ? Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place
“And so I discovered that it is not on our own forgiveness any more than on our own goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.” ? Corrie Ten Boom, The Hiding Place
William Wilberforce is my homeboy! 
I had never even heard of his name before I watched the movie “Amazing Grace”, and then he became one of my heroes! I recommend this movie to everyone!
“So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition.” ~ William Wilberforce
William Wilberforce was a member in Parliament who worked alongside other abolitionists to get rid of the Slave Trade in the British Empire. It took him nearly 20 YEARS to succeed, and all the while he was plagued with illnesses, that caused at times both pain and depression. Although he did get to hear that the Emancipation Bill would be passed, his health had deteriorated so much that he died only three days before the official announcement. He was called by God to be one of the key people to END slavery in not only England, but Europe, and it happened! What can we do in our generation? What will God call us to do?
Here are some quotes from the movie:
“Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly. I’m a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.” ~ John Newton
“When people speak of great men, they think of men like Napoleon – men of violence. Rarely do they think of peaceful men. But contrast the reception they will receive when they return home from their battles. Napoleon will arrive in pomp and in power, a man who’s achieved the very summit of earthly ambition. And yet his dreams will be haunted by the oppressions of war. William Wilberforce, however, will return to his family, lay his head on his pillow and remember: the slave trade is no more.’ ~Lord Charles Fox
“We’re too young to realize certain things are impossible. Which is why we will do them anyway.” ~William Pitt the Younger
“Remember that God made men equal.” ~William Wilberforce
“It would just be you against them. But you could do it; you would do it.” William Pitt the Younger
So all of these people remind me that the Lord sometimes doesn’t heal when we want Him to, but that doesn’t stop His plan or His purpose in you. These were people of faith, conviction, and love who got to do amazing things for Jesus. We just need to trust that even when we are in pain, that God has not forsaken us or that we don’t have enough faith for healing, but that the story that He is writing—that we get to participate in—is something unique, mysterious, and ultimately victorious!
I hope that these people, their words and stories, encourage you as they do me! I ask that you would continue to lift me in prayer with health and perspective! I will continue to ask Him for healing, and but also pray that my relationship with Him and joy will only grow stronger as I wait.
Thanks again, everyone! God bless!
~Tori
