However, there is a caveat to the title of this week’s blog. Before you ask God “why?”, perhaps you would receive a quicker response to your inquiry if you considered other interrogatives such as “how,” “when,” “what,” and “where”! After all, God is God. And his plans are far above our meager notions and understanding.

For ten years, I was a volunteer missionary with Buckner International, a Christ-centered privately owned humanitarian organization in Texas (USA), that works with vulnerable children, senior adults and helps to build strong families in the USA and also in more than six foreign countries. And during that time of traveling abroad to those foreign countries with the Buckner mission teams, I am ashamed to admit that I was full of “why” questions for the Lord.

Once when I discovered that I did not have enough supplies to teach the children in the orphan homes, or ample desks and chairs for them to sit on in the ‘make-shift’ class rooms; or that I was not assigned an english translator; or the building where activities were to be performed lacked ample electricity; I found myself complaining and crying out to the Lord. I realize now that I must have come off as an ugly American…spoiled rotten by the conveniences of the Grand ole USA. But boy, oh boy, was I ever smacked down by the Holy Spirit.

I shall never forget the spiritual lessons that the Holy Spirit taught me. Where is your faith, young lady? This mission trip is not about you, my child. Check your attitude and your motives. Smile and show my children that you represent a God who cares, provides and knows what is needed. Now go over to that corner and look inside that box, the Holy Spirit said to me. Guess what was in that box.

Several brown lunch bags were inside the box along with some broken crayons. Just enough for each student. The kids ran over and quickly grabbed a bag and a crayon. Each child found a chair and without any instructions from me, kneeled down in front of it and positioned them selves to use the seat of the chair as their desk. The children then turned to look up at me and I realized that it was time to teach the Bible story. 

As I told the story of Joseph leading Mary on a donkey, pregnant and heading down to Bethlehem, a child in the front row repeated my words in the language of the land. The children all begin to draw that scene on one side of the brown bag. As I continued telling each part of the story, the children would turn their bags to a clean side of their bag and draw the images. When I finished the story, all sides of the children’s bag was full of the story details. And the young man in the front row showed the class how to punch two small holes in the sides of their bag and slip their hand up in it and make a paper puppet.

Now the Holy Spirit whispered to me that now each child can take their puppet back to their village and become the ‘teacher’ and recite the story of the birth of the Baby Jesus to all their friends and parents. Glory, hallelujah! What if I had told that story by using my own drawings on a black board. There would have been no evidence for each child to take home!

I later learned that each child used their lunch bag to take back to their villages a portion of their lunch we provided for them to share with someone else. So the bags served two purposes and God was glorified and my faith was strengthened and my gratitude and attitude was emboldened.

Click http://www.tgifmasterminds.com every Friday for a new post from the Master’s servant manager…ME!