How Do You Know You Love the Lord?

That was what church’s message was about today. The pastor preached from the passage in Mark that talks about the two greatest commandments: love God and love people. We hear this command and we so desperately want to live it out, but sometimes it can be difficult to discern what that looks like. The pastor laid out seven wonderful signs you love God well and six signs you love people. It was such an encouraging day at church!! (Although if I’m being honest, I think every single time I go to church, especially overseas, I am struck with how good our God is and how much I value His people)

One thing he said that stuck out to me was “Obedience is our language of love to the Lord.” He even pointed at our GHO team saying that we are all here because we love the Lord and love people and through that are obeying His commandments in our lives. He also mentioned that all our translators and volunteers are speaking love to the Lord and to people in their service with us this week :)

After church, Jim and his family (our national partners who set all this up) took us to a very nice restaurant on the water. And I mean right on the water! The dining rooms were on stilts in the ocean — it was pretty cool and so beautiful :)

Then we dropped off eyeglasses and water filter kits at the gym where we will be holding the clinic and got to look at the work all of our brothers and sisters did in preparation for our arrival and oh my goodness!! Our setup is so nice and my whole team is so excited to get started!! We’re in a big open air but covered basketball court, but they got some tents to separate it out a bit — we have a private space for viewing sensitive patients, fancy dental chairs, a pharmacy tent, and an eyeglass tent.

Tomorrow, the mayor will come down to have an opening ceremony for the clinic! This seems to be a big deal for the town too which is unusual for me, most of the time it doesn’t seem like the government cares very much about what we do on these trips. Anyway, they have invited 400 people every day to come to the clinic! (Which is an insane amount, but we are unsure how many will actually come, and what they are there for. Glasses versus seeing a doctor versus getting teeth pulled  may spread the load out to be bearable.)

The head doctor at the government’s health department is also coming down and will identify the four people they would like trained in public health, and I am still curious (pronounced anxious ;)) about how the training will go, but that will likely start Monday afternoon or even Tuesday.

We also spent some time in prayer and anointing the building in preparation for tomorrow. I think saying tomorrow’s going to be a crazy day is an understatement!! But God goes with us and before us, and I’m sure it will work out, even if there’s a bit of excitement :)

We finished our day by organizing and pre-packaging things like vitamins and pain killers and had some great times getting to know the team over the packing party!

Please be praying for one of our teammates, Carol, who seems to have caught a bug from the plane. She’s a bit sick and we are hoping that she recovers in time to go with us to the clinic tomorrow, but she may stay back and get some sleep to recuperate.

As always, thank you so much for your prayers and support, they mean the world to me halfway around the world ;)