Sign up for our free newsletter:

She Needed Jesus
The little girl I met on my missions trip didn't fully understand God's love. Then again, maybe I didn't either.

by Laura Hepker

Es loco! Es loco!" Five little brown hands covered five giggling mouths. Apparently, these clamoring little girls who wanted to "help" me paint their bedroom in the orphanage hadn't understood a word of my broken Spanish. Whatever I had said must have sounded pretty weird, because now they were calling me crazy.

Eight months earlier, I was feeling pretty crazy as I sat in a planning meeting for our two-week trip to Maracay, Venezuela. I was only 14. I'd never even been out of the Midwest without my parents, let alone gone to another country. And I wasn't at all sure how to share the gospel with people who'd never heard it. I wondered what I was getting myself into.

When I first arrived in Venezuela, I felt like I was in paradise. Little brown children with gorgeous black hair swarmed all around me, begging for my attention. They loved to give me hugs and sit on my lap, and they were desperate to be held and loved. I sure wasn't complaining about that!

I love kids, and these were some of the most lovable I'd ever met. They didn't whine for toys or grumble about their surroundings. They simply enjoyed life. And though they looked at us, the strange Americans, with wide-eyed fascination, they accepted us as though we had always been there. But we didn't just want the girls to accept us—what we really wanted was for them to accept Jesus.

My two-week missions trip in Maracay opened up a whole new world for me. The members of my church group spent the majority of our time working on the orphanage. The building needed a new roof, a new ceiling and new paint. Despite much rain, sore muscles and any number of dead mice and rats, the structural projects were fairly simple to accomplish. But our real mission—introducing the orphans to the God who loved them—was a bit more challenging.

The 12 little girls at the orphanage had almost nothing—two changes of clothing apiece and a small box of toys for all of them. They all lived together in two rooms, neither one as large as my bedroom at home. Their meals were sparse, and none of them had any extra pounds on their skinny bodies.

But their poverty wasn't what struck me hardest. What truly blew me away was their trust, their openness and their willingness to love and be loved. Each of these girls had faced more hardship in her short five or 10 years than I would in my entire life. Most had been abandoned by their parents, but not one was bitter or angry. They were mostly happy, content, and thankful to have a home and "sisters." It was obvious to me that God had been protecting these girls all along, preparing their hearts to receive his love from a bunch of "loco" teenagers.

By the second week of our stay with these girls, we had each "adopted" one or two of the girls as our special friends. I'd become quite close to Claudia, a tiny 8-year-old. She followed me everywhere, getting a big kick out of "helping" me with whatever I was doing, even following me up a ladder to help me clean the rats' nests out from the dropped ceiling. "Loco" continued to be my nickname, and I loved to hear her say it as she waited for me at the gates of the orphanage each morning.

I spent many lunch hours and siesta times with Claudia, reading to her from one of the Bible storybooks we had brought or telling her as best I could that God loved her. She couldn't get enough of the stories in the Bible, but she didn't seem to understand that she needed Jesus. She kept telling me that I loved her, and that her "sisters" loved her, and that was enough. I didn't know enough Spanish to explain to her that our affection for her was peanuts compared to God's unending love. Each day I tried, and each day I became more discouraged. I wanted so badly for Claudia to accept Christ.

Then one day I was working on the roof of the orphanage, holding down the sheets of tin so they could be bolted together. The guy underneath the roof banged on the spot where he was going to drill through, and I placed my hands around the spot, calling that I was ready.

Either he misjudged or I did, because a few seconds later his drill was digging into the palm of my hand! At first I didn't realize what had happened, but as I picked up a nut and a washer to secure the bolt to the roof, I saw the blood dripping from my palm.

Much cold water, gauze, and a few tears later, I emerged from the bathroom to find Claudia sitting on a bench, waiting for me. Small brown arms went around my waist, and she began to cry, saying something over and over in Spanish and pointing to my hand.

Eventually I found a translator and got her message. She was trying to tell me that when she saw the hole in my hand, she saw what Jesus had done for her. I guess she must have remembered the story I told her about Jesus' death, and the sight of my wounded hand reminded her that he bled, too. In that instant, she recognized Jesus' great love for her. She crawled into my lap right there and kissed my injured hand as she prayed that Jesus would be her Savior.

Watching Claudia's thankfulness for human love and then her tears as she realized God's love, it dawned on me how often I had taken Jesus' love and death for granted. So as she prayed aloud, I prayed silently that God would forgive me for losing sight of the very truth I was trying to share.

I went to Venezuela expecting to tell some Bible stories and paint some walls. I hoped God would use my efforts, but I never dreamed I'd see such a dramatic reward. I came home with a new understanding of love—and a friend I'll catch up with in heaven someday.

• See also page 48: Your Trip Starts Here

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Campus Life magazine. Click here for reprint information on Campus Life.
January/February 2000, Vol. 58, No. 6, Page 46

Read more from 'It Happened to Me'

				Try an Issue of Ignite Your Faith Free! Name Street Address City/State/Zip E-mail Address No credit card required. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. Offer valid in U.S. only. Click here for International orders. If you decide you want to keep Ignite Your Faith coming, honor your invoice for just $19.95 and receive eight more issues, a full year in all. If not, simply write "cancel" across the invoice and return it. The trial issue is yours to keep, regardless. Give Ignite Your Faith as a gift Buy 1 gift subscription, get 1 FREE!

FREE Newsletter Subscribe to the Ignite Your Faith Connection Newsletter    RSS Feed   RSS Help