Sometimes our lives, our days, are just about one person. The one important connection we make with another human or moment in which we reflect Jesus to one person in our lives.
What about missions work? We think it's about helping a whole lot of people, about helping a group of people accept Christ, or changing the trajectory of our faith walk. But what if God's purpose for us on a week long trip is to touch just one life...are we, in our efficiency and goal-driven society, okay with that?
Years ago when I started physical therapy school, my mom gave me a starfish necklace (and later earrings) with a copy of the story of the man saving starfish beached on the coast. He threw them back into the sea one a time, when there were far more than he could ever possibly save on the beach. He knew what he did mattered to that one starfish. My mom, knowing my compassionate and want-to-save the world heart, knew I would need this reminder throughout my schooling and professional life.
She arrived at Emmanuel Church in Cite du Soleil, one of the poorest and roughest neighborhoods in Port Au Prince, with her mother on Monday morning to enroll in a new school for children with disabilities. The church does not have a full roof, and now four classes of children meet in a dark, small space about the size of my dining and living room. Michelina has spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, meaning both of her legs are affected by her disease. At three years old, she had never walked.
My team encouraged me to begin to play with Michelina and her mom, because she seemed to have good potential to respond to therapeutic play and somehow seemed to like me...must be the fun hair :).
With less than an hour of therapy, Michelina was walking with a walker....THEN she began to walk short distances without assistance!!! It was amazing to see how much she liked walking, to see her face light up, to see her mom keep encouraging her to try and try again. Her mom, at first visibly nervous and stand-offish at a group of white, American missionaries, totally warmed up to us. The next morning, she came up to me with a huge smile and bonjour, trying to get Michelina to remember me and wave (she totally didn't!).
I truly believe Michelina is the one person I was truly supposed to touch during that short but incredibly busy week in Haiti. For children with disabilities, the ability to walk and perform some of their own self-care is critical in them surviving beyond their teenage years. Sadly, when people with disabilities get too big, too heavy, too difficult to care for in a survival driven culture, their families often choose to not care for them...to let them starve to death. Seeing the way the parents of these children with disabilities love on and interact with their children, I cannot imagine that this is an easy decision, but a decision they are still sometimes forced to make.
I wonder if there are Michelinas in our everyday life, people we need to reach out to, love on, give a little attention, to visibly demonstrate the love of Christ...and that will make all the difference for their lives and their eternities. I love that missions gives us greater awareness of the great needs around us, although their are equally great, albeit less visibly obvious, needs in our own neighborhoods.
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