Actions speak louder than words.......
A group of 13 people from Faith Reformed Church in Zeeland, Michigan recently spent 9 days at Beautiful Gate showing God’s love by their actions.
They served the children and the housemothers every day by hanging clothes on the line, sweeping, washing dishes, changing diapers, preparing food, feeding children, playing with children, reading to children, they played soccer with children, painted the office interior, spent more time loving on the children, and they gave our entire staff new shoes.
All of these actions showed God’s love without a word.
Not that this team didn’t express love through their words, but their actions stood out and were so obvious to those of us who were watching.
All of their acts of service were equal in level of importance and impact. But we'll now focus on just one of them… the gift of shoes for our staff:
The entire staff was gathered for a Braai to celebrate Women’s Day last week. After the celebration, while we were still seated, Faith’s team leader stood up and spoke to the staff. He said how much they appreciate the people of Beautiful Gate and their commitment to caring for orphans. He expressed how much Beautiful Gate has meant to individuals from their church and community and that they had wanted to bless the staff in some way. They decided to raise money to purchase a new, good quality pair of shoes for each staff member; which their church eagerly contributed to. At that moment, our staff cheered, whistled, sang, danced, cried and celebrated in such a way that most of us have never seen before. There was so much joy in that moment, we were all overcome with emotion watching them.
One of our Beautiful Gate employees stood up and thanked the team for their generous gift, concluded by more singing and dancing. And without much hesitation, the first round of employees hopped into the team’s rental vans and were taken to the local shopping mall where they could pick out their own shoes. They sang the entire way to the store. They each picked out their shoes and then sang all the way home. The following day the team brought 2 or 3 more van’s full to purchase their shoes…again, more singing and thanking God for the amazing gift!
One of the staff members said that shoes were so important to him because he didn’t have shoes for much of his growing up years. This was truly a blessing!
The staff continued their celebrating and dancing across campus as they went back to work with joy in their hearts.
We all learned a lot that day….how to truly show thanks and how to truly celebrate God’s goodness.
Thank you Faith Reformed Church for showing Beautiful Gate the love of God through your actions.
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. ~James 2:26
