Written on Their Faces || Meagan – July 22

You can see it in their eyes. They’ve seen more of life in the short years they’ve lived than most of us will ever see in our entire lifetimes. Hurt. Abuse. Disappointment. It’s all written on their faces. That’s what I went to sleep thinking about last night. The kids that we worked with in Rocafuerte were definitely a challenging group. They took all the love and energy we could pour out on them, and we still only seemed to scratch the surface. I had a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that our group, coming for a few days and then leaving, was just another in a long line of disappointments for these kids. In my discouragement, I turned to Philippians for my Bible reading this morning. Philippians 1:6 flew off the page at me: “being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.” It is not our job to complete the work. Christ will take care of that. It is ours to obey. To plant the seeds. To love the hurting He has placed in our lives today. He will take care of them tomorrow when we are no longer with them.This afternoon, we did a program for a town right outside of Rocafuerte. We had a great turnout, and thankfully, we were under cover, since it started pouring rain about halfway through the afternoon. As the program drew to a close, the rain stopped and Micah came over to me, pointed to the sky, and said “look, a rainbow”. As we were leaving the program that day, the pastor in that town left us with 1 Corinthians 15:58, "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain." God knows just what we need. He knows that we need to be reminded that He will complete the work that has been started. He knows that we need to be reminded that our labor is not in vain. And some days, He knows that we need an extra reminder that He is faithful to keep His promises.- Meagan W.