Greetings, Floris Family,
Today I’m sharing a few photos from our journey that show some of the holy conversations taking place as part of our work. Nabs Nabieu, HCW development staff member and Floris member, who was a child in the former orphanage at the CRC, has worked diligently with our team and particularly me to give context to our joined ministry with HCW, the CRC, Mercy Hospital, and the UMC in Sierra Leone through conversations and interviews.
Colossians 4:6 advises: “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt…” Through many deep, gracious, and insightful conversations, I have learned so much more about the present work of God through the ministries here. I feel I will step away from the people in this place changed, “salted” if you will, through their wisdom, perseverance, and deep reliance upon the grace of God in all things. They have shared their hearts and dreams with me, and in that, I feel humbled.
While we have captured some video, I wish I could download all my learnings with each transformative story. For example, today, I met a 16-year-old girl who is first in her classes. Yet just a short few years ago, she was not in school because she had to work selling goods on the street so that she and her mother could eat after her father left them. With support from the CRC, including much needed counseling, the girl is thriving with hopes of a bright future. Her mother is a recipient of business training and a microfinance loan to help strengthen her seamstress business. This girl tearfully spoke about how her life had so radically changed to the positive since meeting a CRC caseworker on the street one day who noticed her condition.
Processing that conversation and several others like it will take me some time, because other conversations have involved the limits to the work here due to financial constraints and an inability to meet the full needs of even all those who are in the care network. Resources are scarce, even with progress and hopefulness. The limitations of those resources can be the difference between life and death and security and adverse poverty. That is why our support and generosity remain critical.
Even in challenge, there is incredible inspiration that emerges with each shared encounter shaping the conversations to be holy in nature. I’ve heard so much hope expressed from the people working here. This might be in a life saved in screening a young child with malaria and providing lifesaving treatment, or about the desire and hunger of children to learn the ways of God, or in a person learning about how to manage diabetes or hypertension which are both killers here, or through the expressed dreams of a youth who sees the need for healthcare for the children in the street, so she is working hard in her studies with hopes of training to be a pediatrician.
I pray that your conversations today hold some holy, gracious content and “salt” as well, and that you can see God at work from your vantage point.
-Gina