Rehoboth Ministries

This is the third in a series of posts sharing stories from our years in the mission field. (This post is written by John Adams.)

A few years ago, I broke my ankle playing basketball and was on crutches for about six weeks. As a result, my house started getting pretty dirty. Sister Elaide, the grandmotherly little lady who had cleaned my parents’ house for years, noticed this and showed up at my house unannounced one Saturday with cleaning supplies and began tidying up. Confused, I reminded her that since she worked for my parents, she was under no obligation to clean my house.

“I know,” she said and kept right on cleaning.

When she was done, I offered to pay her for her labor, but she looked offended and refused.

Looking at me sternly, she told me, “I didn’t do this for money. I did it because I love you.”

I was floored and had nothing more to say. I humbly accepted the gift.

A few years later, Sister Elaide had to stop working because her body would no longer allow her to do so. A few months after her departure, a friend brought me word that she was on her deathbed in one of the city’s worst slums. He asked if I could send her some money for food and medicine. Since it was too dangerous for me to visit her, I gave the money to him and he took it to her. A few days later, I received word that she had gone to be with the Lord.

I have meditated often on that encounter since she passed away. On the one hand, it was a humble act of kindness that I greatly appreciated. On the other hand, it was also a solemn assertion of her own dignity. Although she was poor, childless, and an old maid, her actions seemed to say, she was rich in love—so rich, in fact, that she could offer it to someone much more fortunate than herself in terms of material possessions without desiring anything in return. Poverty tends to rob people of agency, but she managed to assert hers that day.

Years ago, I read the story of a missionary to Pakistan that the locals loved like a native son. When the author of the article investigated the reason why, everyone gave him the same answer.

“He asked us for money,” they said.

“What do you mean?” the author asked them, genuinely puzzled.

They told him that the man’s son had died on the mission field, but that rather than going to his donors, he had allowed the churches he planted to support him with love offerings so that he could travel back to the U.S. and bury his son.

“You missionaries come here to give to us,” they told the author, “but you don’t need us. The reason we love this man so much is that at his hour of greatest need, he came to us for help. That’s how we know he truly considered us friends.”

Over the years, one lessonI have learned while working with impoverished people is that even the poorest of the poor have to be able to give back in some way. The Apostle Paul wrote that his church in Macedonia, in spite of its extreme poverty, “overflowed with generosity…begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints.” (2 Cor. 8:2, 4) Sometimes, it takes more humility to accept a gift than to give one. When the poor grasp that it is more blessed to give than to receive, we have to be humble enough to let them bless us.