The greatest crisis I faced during my two decades as a pastor was not the result of a disagreeable deacon, a financial deficit, an egocentric worship leader, or a church gossip. Rather, it was due to an encounter with the Holy Spirit and God's Word.
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It's difficult to describe Nairobi's Mathare slum, because there is nothing to which it can be compared where you and I live. But try to imagine 500,000 people crammed into a hillside community of tens of thousands of tiny shacks clad with rusted pieces of corrugated metal. They are akin to structures where you might store old tires that you would never plan on using again. Imagine just a few water pumps and public outhouses to serve all those people. Imagine the stench of open sewage and rotting garbage permeating the air. That's Mathare.
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They came by the hundreds. Some traveled for days on foot, others rode more than 200 miles on motorbikes over rutted, unpaved roads. All came with one hope—to find relief from tooth pain.
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I was able to forgive those who had driven my family to death. God cleansed me of my past sins and healed me of the horrible pain of my wounds. Those are the translated words of two North Korean believers whose lives have been transformed by the Word of God.
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My head, and that of my husband, Jody, might have ended up suspended on a giant tree in Myanmar—if, that is, we had visited Ngai Zam Village a couple hundred years ago. Back then, villagers hung the heads of their enemies on a giant, now-800-year-old tree as an unmistakeable "don't mess with us" warning. Thankfully, in 1937, a brave missionary reached Ngai Zam with the gospel (and kept his head intact), and we were coming as friends to visit a girl named Cung Thian Kim, a former "orphan" now reunited with her family.
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Like the rest of the smiling children who sang praise songs with us that afternoon, Liza also tried to smile. But her labored attempts didn't fool us. Liza couldn't hide the tortured look in her eyes, nor the conflict of emotion that showed on her face. Something was deeply troubling her.
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Last month, in Part 1, I did my best to prove that since Adam, God has offered salvation to everyone and that He has granted salvation to anyone who repented and believed in Him. Those who do repent and believe in Him are characterized by obedience to the law that He has written in their consciences.
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It never ceases to amaze me. Just when I think there can't be a more difficult set of circumstances that poor believers live through year after year, God pulls back the curtain that surroun ds the Disneyland-like world in which I live. And then He introduces me to a few more among the "least of these" whose hardships I could not have imagined.
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Sadly, sin has consequences that often can't be reversed. At least, not until heaven. Virai spent her younger years selling her body in Thailand's sex-tourism industry to make money for her parents and younger siblings. She eventually married, however, and gave birth to a son, but found herself a widow not long afterwards. Left alone, Virai and her son, whom she named Top, struggled to get by year after year. Virai returned to her former profession to make ends meet. Things began to change for her in 2004, however, when she gave her heart to the Lord and began living for Him. She even opened her home to take in women who needed shelter.
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There was a saying among the neighboring villages: "Don't marry a man from Satawm—or you'll be carrying water the rest of your life." That's because Satawm's residents, all slash-and-burn subsistence farmers, were never assisted by any international development organizations—as were residents of many neighboring villages—with funding for water reservoirs and piping to bring water to their village. From Satawm's founding in 1860, wives had been carrying water up steep mountain slopes for drinking, cooking, washing and bathing, day after day. It was enough to incline eligible bachelorettes in the region to dodge the eyes of Satawm's bachelors.
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