Well, we have made it through our second day of vision clinic. Today of course was a little different than yesterday. We started this morning at 8:30 and worked until around 12:30. We saw around 160 people today! Amazing!
Things went much smoother today. We all had gained a rhythm yesterday and found it again easily. We began running out of some of our prescription strengths today. Unfortunately we ran out of some that were needed. In those cases, we would give them the highest power we had and if it helped we would let them have them. Twice today I had someone that I could not help at all. Their eyes were too bad. Its heartbreaking to turn people away, but we knew that would happen when we came. On the other hand, its wonderfully rewarding to see them suddenly see. Most importantly a lot of people have come to see spiritually. I don't have any exact numbers, but they are significant.
All of the things we are doing this week started as a dream. Whose dream you may ask? Gods dream. Now to whom specific he revealed it to I don't know. The original dream to be involved with this church began a couple of years ago. Two trips have been made since then and now we are on the third installment of that dream. It has taken many different dreams by many different people to get us to where we are today, but the dreams all came from the same place. Or rather the same person.
It is always so beautiful to me to see people working together to make dreams possible. People just rally together to help. They learn new things if needed. They give of their time and/or money. Sacrifice is not often associated with dreams, but few dreams are brought to reality without some degree of sacrifice. One of the greatest dreams ever, required the sacrifice of a fathers only son. The dream was that all people my have the opportunity to have eternal life.
We were created by a creative God who gave us the power to also be creative. Dreaming is a powerful way God allows us to be creative. All of your dreams put together can never come close to Gods dreams. Think of your most beautiful amazing dreams, now think what it might be like for God to dream. We are talking about the God that created the heavens and the earth out of nothing! Nothing! Often our creations are based on things we have seen, but God created from nothing! The bible says God has dreams for us. His dreams, not our dreams. How exciting! The creator of the universe has dreams for us!
When people choose to follow those dreams, something beautiful happens. What started as only a mere image in someones head has impacted an immeasurable amount of people. Both physically and spiritually. Jesus himself, during his missionary career met not only the spiritual but also the physical needs of people. In fact, it was brought to my attention this week that Jesus met the physical needs of people before he focused on their spiritual needs.
We should not try to limit our dreams to what we think is possible. Rather, our possibilities should be limited by our dreams. It has been a year since our first trip to the church here in Mata Redonde. It is so amazing to see how God has been able to take what we did and multiply it. If we are only willing to do what we are asked, he will do the rest. We can build, fix, hold VBS, pastors clinics and vision clinics, but only our Father can change their hearts. He could do it all without us, but he allows us to be a part of his dreams.
The service tonight was great. Brother Lyn conveyed the story of the prodigal son, or more importantly the loving father. It is so easy to focus on the son in this story. We focus on what he did and how he realized his mistakes and asked for forgiveness. But if you focus on how the father acts in this story you will discover the true nature of our heavenly father. He grants us the freedom to choose how we want to live. Unfortunately he does not shield us from the consequences of our actions. He does however wait patiently for us to return to him and then opens his arms and welcomes us back. He never asks us where we have been or why we strayed, he simply rejoices in our return. The saddest thing about this story is all the fellowship the son missed while he was gone. All the time he spent squandering his earthly wealth could have been invested in a relationship with his father. Precious time that can't be made up. What dreams are we missing out on by doing our own thing? Is it time to run back into his arms? How else will we be able to live the life of our dreams? Or more importantly, his dreams?
For His Purpose,
Heather
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