Day 8: God gives us strength...

Hello!

I hope everyone is doing well. It's been raining here a lot, but today, the sun has finally come out.

We started the day, yesterday, going through Colossians 3:12-17. But it was not this passage that spoke to me yesterday morning. A friend emailed me verses from Isaiah 40.

28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.

30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;

31 but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

At first I thought, "How perfect this verse is for us (the team) right now. The children have been difficult to handle and we end up exhausted at the end of each day." However, as I dwelled on this passage throughout the day, I realized that those verses are for the children. Most of the children come with heavy hearts, with many reasons to be angry, and lacking love from their parents and the neighborhood. The differences among the children who come from a healthy family and those who come from a struggling family are evident. It's difficult to express to the children that there is a God who loves them and will strengthen them and care for them. It hurts, but I can hope and pray that God will take care of them.

Yesterday's VBS was about how God gives us strength to be brave. As I prayed on this point, all I could think was, "God, please give us the strength to love the children, especially the ones that are the most difficult to love."

We've been writing vaguely about how the kids who have been coming to the VBS come from very difficult backgrounds. I would really like to share a story though, about these twin sisters who have been coming to the church after school everyday for a bit of time.

The twins (예 린 Yea-Rin and 예 진 Yea-Jin) are 8 (in Korean age) and are in the first grade. Their father is a truck driver and their mother is runs a restaurant in the middle of the mountains. Since their father is a truck driver, he is away from home most of the time. Their mother basically raised them on her own.

As they were growing up, there were many times when the mom tied the twins' legs to a post while she went to work, leaving them their until she returned. Other times, she would leave one twin on the post while tending to the other. The twins grew up with absolutely no discipline, no guidance, and with a strong sense of competition towards one another since their mom would compare them a lot. All these things are evident in their interaction with other children, adults, and each other.

Pastor Ahn and his wife have been taking care of them after school for a while now, teaching them, guiding them, and loving them. When the twins began coming over, other parents stopped sending their kids to church and stopped coming to Pastor Ahn's church altogether because they did not want their children to be playing with these twins.

However, the twins have been doing very well since coming to the church. When Pastor Ahn or his wife pray for them when they act up, they know that they can calm down. Pastor Ahn's wife really has a way of taking them aside and listening to their woes and disciplining them with love. Many parents have begun sending their children to the Ahn's because of the noticeable change in the twins.

The Ahn's are doing amazing work here and I am so encouraged and blessed by their never ending faith in God to help them and provide for their every needs.

During yesterday's Wednesday evening service, Pastor Ahn's message came from 2 Corinthians 12:1-10. He grew up with many hurts and has scars from his past. He wondered why God wouldn't just swipe clean the hurts, but realized that it is through these weaknesses and scars that he could minister to the families and children, that the experiences he went through, enables him to see the hurts and burdens in others. For that, he is so thankful to God...

Prayer Requests for Thursday:

1. That our love may increase.
2. Continued alignment with the will of God.
3. For JOY to overflow.
4. Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual STRENGTH

Thank You : )

*miranda