This is an excerpt from Daniel Marquez – a member of the Global Outreach team in 2017. In this excerpt, Daniel reflects on his time in Haiti and the service he provided for a young boy named Johnny. This is an example of how amazing God’s love is – not only does He always provide us with His love, but we are also able to use that love to give to others.
We have been helping to build a hospital for the community that we are serving. The worksite of the hospital is surrounded by many houses which have provided us with a lot of chances to interact with the people of the community. One of these people is Johnny, who is an 11-year-old Haitian who always has a big smile and a desire to want to play and help our missions team. The first day our team met Johnny was very memorable – he ran around the construction site and asked everyone to play with him. By the end of the day, Johnny was covered head to toe with dirt – his feet seemed very dirty as he didn’t have any shoes. As our team was leaving, I remembered thinking to myself about how I personally could serve Johnny. I took this request to the Lord at night as I was thinking about the day. The next day, our team arrived at the worksite and Johnny was very excited to greet us and then proceeded to hold my hand as we walked to the worksite. On the walk, I noticed that there was a lot of mud on the ground due to the previous day’s rainstorm. I then proceeded to pick Johnny up so that he wouldn’t get his feet dirty. I was very excited to be able to “serve” Johnny this way and he seemed to be very happy as well. The next day at the worksite I was also able to give him a pair of sandals that our team brought for the kids that we would see at orphanages. Even though the size was a bit small, Johnny was very excited about his new pair of sandals. As I look back at this experience, I am very grateful for the Lord providing, not only the experience to get to know Johnny, but also the opportunity to show him an example of servant-minded love just as God shows us each day of our lives. #CUGO
Posted in: Global Outreach