“While the leader was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” — John Wesley, May 24, 1738
God calls us to tell our story so that others may come to know Jesus Christ. “Hearts Strangely Warmed” was created to share these stories about transformational encounters with the Living God.
While I was in confirmation class at Christ Lutheran one of my Sunday School teachers told the class that if we were very quiet and asked God what we should be when we grew up God would tell us. Initially I thought she just wanted us all to be quiet so she could have a moment of peace, and none of us took this seriously. However, I was intrigued by this theory so I went home and tried again. Shockingly to me, I heard God tell me: missionary. But I flatly refused and assumed, morbidly, I would die early before I ever actually needed a job.
After several mission trips to Brazil, Baltimore, Kentucky, and Connecticut I realized my understanding of missionary needed to change. Then I traveled to Thailand. Part of the experience included an internship which I fulfilled at an HIV/AIDs orphanage teaching English. While I was there I met a young man named Bunyalite who changed my life. He was 8 years old; however an infection had stunted his development physically and ostracism from his community stunted him socially, so he was more like a 5 year old. His very first day at the orphanage we became friends; he pulled me all over the grounds to play various games and explore but when it came time for me to leave he burst into tears. After about 20 minutes of trying to sooth the sobbing child, and holding up my peers waiting to leave, one of the other children who spoke both Thai and English told me he was crying for his mother, who was dying in a hospital as I held him.
I couldn’t not reconcile the image of a loving, caring God that I treasured with the fact that this 8- year-old beautiful little boy had been born with the illness that would most likely kill him as well as take his mother from him at his tender age. How could God be so cruel that I was born to an upper middle class family in America and he is born to a poor family in rural Thailand?
I was irate at God. We didn’t speak nicely for several months. But after my “Jeremiah moment” I realized that God‘s desires were not for Bunyalite to live and die in poverty. This was why God created me and the church, to care for the poor, the widow, and the orphan, the constant command of the Hebrew Bible.
God expanded my call from the important work of an international missionary to the call of a missionary pastor to the churches in my own backyard. To have the hard conversations of reaching those who don’t know Christ, and by getting the church out of their building to care for the deep needs of those around us. We have been called and blessed to bless others.
Stephanie was ordained as an Elder
at the 2019 Susquehanna Annual Conference.
at the 2019 Susquehanna Annual Conference.
