My day started as usual: Quiet solitude with God, which usually includes a cup of Jehovah Java (coffee), prayer, and the Word of God. This day was a little different though. I was in Thailand with a mission team that was not yet awake. My mind and body had awakened early trying to figure out the 12 hour jet lag from ATX. The rest of the team would be going for the next couple of days to encourage, teach, and bless a group of 70 ladies in an International Women’s Retreat and I would be spending time with a local missionary. As God would have it, the ABC church staff has been reading through the Bible together this year since January 2026. We are reading Genesis to Revelation in Biblical order. This particular day of reading I was in the 11th chapter of the Book of Acts. As I read, I found that it had been prophesied that there would be a severe famine in the Roman world. And picking up in verse 29 I read: “Each of the disciples, according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brothers and sisters who lived in Judea.” (Acts 11:29 CSB17) As only God can do, later that morning, I received a call from the missionary I was to spend the day with. He said there had been a change of plans, that we would now be spending the day with another missionary who led the SendRelief mission in that area. SendRelief is a mission agency of the Southern Baptist Convention that provides food, water, medical care, rescue, and many other resources in major crises worldwide, things like flooding, tsunamis, earthquakes, drought, wars, and famines all in the name of Jesus. If you have heard of a crisis in the news the last 30+ years, SendRelief has been there on the ground ministering in real ways to hurting people in devastated communities. The agency also helps underserved communities around the world even when there has not been a major recent crisis. This day we would be giving out 2000 lbs of rice and going to check on a youth hostel, one of about 40 that the SendRelief office in that area helps on a regular basis to provide food and safe lodging. The hostel we visited housed 36 young students whose families lived in the remote hill country, hours from the city. They were living in the hostels so they could attend government schools to get an education and learn language and skills that are not available in their remote villages. With this education their parents hope they can escape poverty and protect themselves from ending up in the human trafficking industry. The three of us drove about an hour, hearing stories from the director of his missions of rescue and mercy around the world for the last 3 decades. He was a kind, brilliant, God-and-people-loving man with a thick Louisiana accent. We arrived and found a godly house mother and her staff in a covered outdoor kitchen preparing to feed the 36 kids aged 6-18 after they arrived from school. She offered us some really good tea and smiled and talked excitedly about the kids and staff the whole time. We prayed with her and went to look at the boy’s “dorm,” which was a large one room building with open windows and doors. Each of the boys had a locker with 3 school outfits and one towel (they had just gotten new towels that someone had donated to replace the years old threadbare towels that wouldn’t dry them, just move the water around on their skin until it dried). They all slept on a large wooden platform on their own bed roll. The bathrooms out back had ramshackle doors that were falling apart. I learned that the missionary’s home church in Louisiana would be coming to paint, build some doors, and help improve the living conditions for these boys, who were all just happy to be there.
After a long day of observing God’s amazing work in the lives of so many people, I couldn’t help but think of how much He loves us all. He sees each of us and loves us and cares for us in the ways we need it most. When we belong to Jesus we are encouraged to do the same thing for others. James tells us, “Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.”(James 1:27 MESSAGE)
Hang in there people! God is glad to be With Us! I’m praying for us all.
