Tuesday, June 01, 2010

The Hand of God?

Today was a long day for me, Ben. Not to mention it was for Becky too, with the boys at home. Caleb's a handful, especially when he "tries" to help mommy with Samuel by sticking the nose suction thingy up Samuel's throat when mommy looks away briefly to answer the phone. Caleb's such a "helper"! :-) Most of the time though, Caleb REALLY IS a big helper, and he'll even sing a song with the following words, all in tune:
I'm a helper
I'm a helper
I am big, I am strong
I can help you all day long.
If you need me
Just call my name
You'll be glad I came to help you...
You'll be glad I cAAAAAme!

Sometimes Caleb will switch the words on the "If you need me" line and sing innocently:
"If you need me, just call YOUR name..."

What a silly guy.

So, for me, Ben, it was a long day, but it was a good day too. God reminded me today that He's in the business of preparing me and Becky for His plans. As you might know, I work with refugees who come to the USA from other nations, seeking refuge from the persecution or danger they are in. Right now, we have many Iraqis and Burmese. Some are Chr.istians, some are Mus.lims, some are Bud.dhists. Regardless, today I was doing an Orientation for this new family, not from Iraq nor Burma, but another place which we do not have any interpreters for in the Columbia, SC area. Talk about culture shock for them, having not a single soul who speaks their language! Anyhow, I had to find a person who spoke a language which only one of the family members spoke, who then interpreted to his family, and then back to the other interpreter and then to me in English. Wonder if the message got across? Well, I've been doing this for a few months, and most of the time it does. If not, their body language usually gives it away, or I'll find out weeks later they didn't understand something...but that's rare. So, I spoke to/with the family for three hours today in three languages, kind of: English to another language, to another language, and then back to me once in a while if they had questions. It was interesting.

So one of the interpreters, a "brother" in our "family", said to me during one of the breaks we had in translation: "Man, Ben, you have an interesting job...wow....wow." I smiled at him, saying, "Yeah, ****, I do, it's tough sometimes, but I like it, and God's preparing me to send Brazilians to all the cultures I'm learning about as they come through here. These people we're talking to here today don't even know it, but God is using them to send Brazilians overseas."

Do you understand the implications of this? While Becky and I wait to go to Brazil, God is "redeeming the time", making use of this time of raising our support base to better prepare myself and Becky to understand more cultures of the world; once we get to Brazil, I/we will have been exposed to so many more cultures than I could have visited in person, and sometimes never visited, such as Burma.

Thus the title of this post: "The Hand of God"? He's got His plans, and they are ALWAYS good plans for His Kingdom and His glory.