Home missionaries

Nicole and little Patience

Our Perfect, Precious, Princess, Patience turns 1-year-old this Saturday. This morning I awoke to her clinging to me, as she is accustomed to doing most of the night, and realizing just how much I love nursing babies and sleeping with them. Then I reminded myself that this may be my last opportunity, that I am "getting up there", perhaps already at the end of these blessed times. No amount of money or influence could ever replace the charms our home has known because of our little babies.

One of my grown daughters just returned from a missions trip to Peru. Among the stories she shared with us were the heart-breaking tales of the orphans; victims of tragedy in a desperate land. My mother's heart was stirred, and besides praying, I found myself wishing I could do something more "tangible".

Right now there are myriads of people who need the tangible. My husband is in touch with people who go throughout the world, often risking their own lives (some die) putting their faith into action. Because of the economy, etc., donations are down all over. If someone ever wanted to give financially, now would be the time. Also, if someone was called to go and do, there are plenty of opportunities.

But I am the mother of 15 children, and I have a nursing baby, and it doesn't seem as though I am caring for the world at large at all, so I asked God what He thought.

He told me that I, and others like me, are also doing and going, just in a more visionary sense.

Every time I speak blessings over my children, I am expressing my faith. Every time I pour God's Word and vision into them, I am walking out and spreading the Gospel of peace.

Each time I take my job seriously and give them boundaries and teach them responsibility, I am involved in vital ministry.

Every time I go out in public and love my children and they are well-cared for, with clean clothes and clean faces and hands, I am showing forth God's goodness.

When they see me actively supporting and loving my husband, I am changing a culture. When they witness me doing without and thanking God for the privilege of staying home with them each day, I am preaching sermons to thousands that I may never meet.

My dear daughter was able to go half-way around the world and play with orphans and give them a little of herself--why was that? I'd like to think some of myself was there, too, in the way she saw them all as precious and worth caring for. She knew how to do silly things like paint the little orhpan girls' fingernails and fix their hair up and color with them, things we were always doing together in our house as she grew up.

Although in the middle of a desert, without even any way to wash her clothing, she wanted to stay; she wanted to love and treasure and state by her life that children are precious gifts from God, no matter if they are the product of a br*thel or r*pe, or if they have been beaten so badly they are disfigured in body and mind.

I can't hop in a plane and fly to an emerging world to give of my all, but I can grab my six-year-old and squeeze her when she comes up to ask me a question. I can tell my teen-aged son that God sees great things in him, and encourage him to keep up the good fight on his way to noble manhood. I can tell my daughters they are lovely; I can listen to them when they share their hearts with me.

When my husband calls me on the phone, I can put aside all of the things I have to do and give him a little encouragement as he is out there in the midst of the mess that is the "rat race", courageously thrusting ahead and guarding and providing for our large family--what a man I have married!

We should never squander the opportunities we have each day to be "world-changers", one precious person at a time.