I hope you can bear with me for this e-mail. It’s going to be longer than normal. Before I go into my story I’ll share a little about where I’m at with finances.
This month has been amazing. So far my expenses have totaled $4,944.94. For the months of August and September, $375 and $500 came in, that left me about $4,000 behind. But like I said, this month has been amazing. The Father has brought in $1,500 for October! I was in shock when I looked at my monthly profile. That’s a whole $400 over my monthly expenses for October. I am still behind about $2,500 but I am so happy and astounded at His provision for this month.
Thank you so much for remaining faithful to the body and to the Father. Knowing that I have you at home lifting me up and supporting me gives me so much encouragement. Please continue to give and pray. I love you all so much and I want to support you too. So please, let me know how you are doing! So send me an e-mail and let me know how you’re doing!
Okay onto my story…
When I was in college I read a book by Mother Teresa. I learned about her life and how she went to the streets, literally. She went walking up and down the streets gathering people and taking them in. She would go to the dirty, the sick, the mentally ill, and the lost and look past their smells and their dirt covered faces and see J-sus.
“As you’ve done it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matt 25:40)
She was completely devoted to these people, to her each of them were just J-sus in another form. One of my favorite quotations is from her:
“Love has a hem to her garment,
That reaches the very dust.
It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes,
And because it can, it must”
I wonder if it was always that way. I wonder what it was like for her when she went searching for the first person, when she smelled a mixture of body odor and trash from the street; I wonder what it was like for her the first time she was rejected by them, when they didn’t want her help.
I remember reading her quote in college; I was completely taken by it. I wanted to be that way. I wanted to go to the streets, to see J-sus in the beggars and the poor, and I wanted to have a burden for it, “because it can, it must.” But the truth was, I had never been, I was ignorant of what going to the beggars was like. I prayed for a burden for something I had never experienced before.
Since being in China, I’ve seen more of what it’s like. The beggars in China aren’t just the old men or women pushing shopping carts in America, some are much more violent. I’ve seen people pulling themselves up the street by their hands because they have no legs, I’ve seen people’s faces swollen or covered in some disease or arms burnt off. I’ve seen an old woman lying while a young boy prostrate swung his head down violently, saying over and over, “xie xie, xie xie” (“Thank you, Thank you”). I won’t lie and say I ran up to them and poured love on them because I saw J-sus when I looked at them. I looked and them and was afraid. I know each of them were created and are loved by the Father, but I am at a loss to know how to love them. I feel I have asked for a burden from the Father that I don’t know how to fulfill. I had a similar experience with this last week.
I went to my first orphanage in city about two hours from here. As soon as we went up the stairs to where the kids were, some ran at us. They were so happy to have visitors. I followed some of my friends into a room where many of the younger kids were kept. I stopped short in the doorway, three babies, 2 years or younger were lying on the floor, two other babies one of them less than 6 months old and the other less than 1 were in cribs. All of their heads were flat in the back because they don’t get picked up often. (Let me make a disclaimer and say this neglect is due to a shortage of staff and not to intentional neglect from them.)
I ended up spending most of the time with one of the kids who were originally on the floor. He was about 2 and had never walked because his feet were curved (not sure what he had). His whole body was stiff when I picked him up and he reeked of the orphanage. After a while and with the help of a friend we got him to bend his legs and sit up in my lap. I followed the direction of another friend and started singing to him, “Oh, how He loves us” and he began to smile and do his best to sing with me. I have no idea what his name was, where he came from, even what was wrong with his body, but I got to spend an hour with him, singing to him and remember that He was created and is loved by the Father.
I won’t lie and say it was easy. Honestly, I hated the orphanage. I hated the smell, I hated that the kids were just lying on the floor, and I’m extremely uncomfortable with mental illness. But I know that the Father loves each of those children with a jealously enough to split the sky to come to rescue them, just the same as He does for me, and I want to love them with the love He has. I think if you have a hard time loving something and you just do it anyway and act like you love it, you’ll eventually find yourself loving it (C.S. Lewis said something like that). So while I hated the place I chose one person. I looked at him and thought about how each curve of his face was formed by the Father, I thought about his past and his future and smiled at him and sang to him until he smiled and sang back at me. I found I formed what attachment you can in an hour with the little guy.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get to go back and see him or any of the other kids again, but the people who live in the city will and I hope that one of them or one of the workers keeps picking him up and singing to him. Please lift him and the other kids up to the Father, there’s no way for me to know what will happen to them but we can lift and have faith that the Father will take care of them. Also, please continue to lift me up; I still have no idea what the Father wants for me or why He gave me a desire for a burden in the first place. I feel totally inadequate but I’m slowly learning how to love.
I also want to ask you, Thanksgiving is such an important time in America. Please, don’t just spend it in your comfortable homes. It’s so great to do that, to be comfortable and enjoy time with your family eating and loving each other. But don’t just stay there, go to where people are alone and poor and don’t have families to love them. Go to the nursing home or to an orphanage. Go and love them or try to love them.
Thanks for reading and for your continued support.
Ashley
Here is the kid when I first picked him up.
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