A Healing Touch

For some reason, our electricity has decided to take a vacation-its third one this week. I don't think it likes the cold that we're finally getting.

Luda, John, Zhenya from a previous visit

Yesterday, Doug Stoddard (www.manaworldwide.com) and I went out to Kamarivka, a village where Doug has been ministering in the orphanage and in a local hospital that has become a de facto nursing home. A couple of days before, Doug had come to the Safe Haven House and had told me that he was heading to the orphanage and that Zhenya keeps asking when I'm coming back to see them. I met Zhenya, 12, and his sister Luda, 10, the first time I went to Kamarivka and right away they came over to me, hugged me and just wanted to walk around hand-in-hand. When that happens, I wonder what the kids have been through that leaves them so longing for affection.

As soon as I saw them, Luda and Zhenya came running over and greeted me with big smiles and hugs. We talked a little, but mostly just walked around, each of them in one of my hands. When Jesus was in a crowd, a woman who had been bleeding for years (making her an outcast, unable to meet with or even to touch others) just wanted to touch the fringe of his robe in the hopes that she would be healed. She was taking a huge chance that Jesus and the crowd would reject her and throw her out, but the desire to belong, to be removed from the ranks of the outcast, was compelling. She reached out in faith, was healed and was brought back into the fold.

Kamarivka

After we left the orphanage, Doug and I went to the hospital to see Baba Pasha and several others Doug has gotten to know. They all lit up when they saw Doug. In between her jabs about Doug's poor Ukrainian (it's not bad), Baba Pasha smiled as she looked at and listened to Doug. He had left her a booklet with inspirational Bible passages and when Doug tried to read it, Baba Pasha said she didn't want to hear it. But I saw that she had left an old photo of her and her sister in the middle of it, by a meaningful passage of Scripture.

A line from a song by Steve Wiggins says "All the darkness in the world can't put out the light of the smallest flame. I pray that many will be shown that light.