I am so thankful that Tina is so very good at keeping you all updated on the work going on here. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about not contributing so here is MY thought for the day:

When Ivan first approached me about going to Nigeria my first response was yes but I am not a compassionate person so I may not be the best fit. He responded with “I think that is why you are the perfect fit.”  As time went on and we completed some of our personality profiles it came out that I did have a little compassion I just have no empathy, seriously on a scale of 0 to 100 I scored a 0, of course Tina scored 100.  I really understand now how that can be a good thing. Let me explain.

In Gembu Nigeria we are surrounded by Poverty, Sickness, and Death just to name a few things.  Every day we have someone come with a need.  In just the last few days we have had so many requests for assistance. A church looking for money because a storm took their roof off. A father came looking for assistance to help his daughter who is 16 get some computer training, his concern is that if she does not get some training that she will not be able to continue her education after High School. A private school is raising money to start a scholarship fund for orphans to pay all their school fees. A young man came that is an orphaned and has no money to continue his education at a University, and there is not the availability of “part time” jobs like we have in the US for him to supplement his fees. A 26 year old woman came; her father had 7 wives and did not care for his children well. She got pregnant at 16 and the father of the child told her to terminate the pregnancy.  She did not but is struggling with how to support herself and get her 10 year old daughter an education so that she will not end up in the same situation. People come to the clinic every day that are ill and struggle to have the funds to purchase their medication.  I could go on but I think that you get the picture.  On top of that we are working hard to get the AWANA program going in as many churches as possible. We are trying to distribute food that we have to malnourished children. Again the list goes on.

So we are forced to make choices every day, which one will we help. If feels like some days we are asked to choose to let one child go hungry so that we can “teach another how to fish”.  I may have no empathy and little compassion but you cannot live with this every day without wondering if you are making the right choices. So every day we pray that God will give us the wisdom to make good choices, that we will have his heart, to have the ability to say no when we must say no and to know that all is in his hands and that he knows all.  We know that we are just the tool that he has chosen to use here. Most importantly we understand that he has everything in his hands and we turn it all over to him knowing he has a bigger purpose, he can see the complete picture.

Tina closes each post with a “thought for you” so I will close with a question a missionary friend that is on her way to Sweden posted on Facebook this week:  This is a challenging thought to ponder….can you honestly say… “God have your way with me”