Jesus' call to community and surgery

Yesterday we went to visit Philia's kids club. Let me tell you about Philia. 

She is the cleaning lady at our hospital. She lives in a one room house with 2 small beds and 12 people. Her house is packed in amongst other houses in her small village. She has few belongings. She has bad teeth and and a tired look about her. She is a beautiful woman of God.

Philia  is my new favorite "Christian person" and the perfect model of community outreach for the church. Philia leads the women's program at our church and is a strong believer. At our home church in Canada (The Meeting House) we talk a lot about community outreach and in our home churches we teach our groups to get out there and make a difference through compassion in their communities. Philia embodies that spirit. Every Friday she holds a "kids club" in which needy kids from her village come to learn about Jesus. She has a core group of about 40 kids from teenagers down to 1 year olds. On Saturday's she has a bit more teaching and when she can afford to she feeds them all. Now talk about ultimate sacrifice. Cleaning ladies here make the lowest salary on the mission (but still better than no job) around $3.70 US per day. That is only $19 us per week. On this she needs to provide for her family and others that live with her; 12 in total. It is also out of this salary she buys food for these precious 40 children 1 day a week. Recently she has been unable to buy the food due to the increase in food prices. 

After I (Cheryl) watched her teaching those children, I told her, "you are a special woman of God". She says to me, "Jesus has blessed me so much" and sweeps her hand over her house and small dirt yard and over her kids. As I ponder this I am struck by the simplicity of the situation and tears well up in my eyes. 

This is true community, this is the call of the "church" to our fellow neighbors, this is sacrifice, this is Jesus' call to take care of orphans. We were blessed to have had this experience. 

Tomorrow Cheryl will travel to Hinche with one of our orphans named Jaqueson to have cleft palate surgery done. Jaqueson is 12 years old and has not had this surgery done yet. As each year passes, his speech gets more and more difficult. He has waited for this his whole life while at the same time not really wanting to change. 

We are going to Operation Smile an organization that you may have heard of before. We are asking for a lot of prayer on MONDAY the 7th (in 2 days) as this is the day of the screening. Please pray that they will be able to see him (there are lots of patients lined up) and that they find him a good candidate for surgery. We am so scared of the possibility that they say "no". Please join us here in prayer for Jaqueson that it is God's will he have this done now.