Faithfulness

Tonight as I watched the skies in Zambia roaring with thunder and lightning I could not help but to notice the evening star shining unperturbed as if nothing was happening right next to it. What a picture of God's faithfulness! Faithfulness was a word I thought a lot about in the last few days. Two days ago I sat with Andrew and Patricia in a village called Mpatamatu. It was a wonderful time together as we haven't seen each other for more than a year. The first time I met Andrew he was cycling for twenty km into the bushes (with his wife on the back!) to reach the refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo where they stayed in the mountains of Zambia called Mpata Hills. He came a long way since then and today Andrew and Patricia have more than two hundred volunteers caring for the dying and their children. It has not been an easy road, in fact the last two years was really tough.When I entered their office I still found everything the same as all the years before. In the one room they were busy training young orphaned girls how to cook; in another room I found Patricia busy with mundane tasks like packing medicines in small packets for the nurses. Andrew is still as excited about caring as he was when I met him. As we sat in his office he told me of a young orphan boy he met that morning, and I could see the pain in his eyes as he shared the story ... the same pain I saw years before. Andrew and Patricia could have done a lot for themselves in this life, but they chose to be faithful. As I left them my thoughts went far back to where we started together in 1999, and while driving on the bumpy road I cried, “Lord help me also to stay faithful.” What a wonderful testimony in a world where it is ok to change at any time and to justify that it was just a better option.