Blessed to be a blessing

  I started the day off by being woken up at 7.30am when I had only fallen to sleep at about 5am due to the firecrackers....with a phone call from the last person I was expecting to call me to wish me a Happy Christmas : the man who is helping my get my birth certificate.  He has quite a high up position in the Southern region of Sri Lanka and is able to get it me, in fact he has done it and I will be going to collect it on 

Friday, but his main aim at the moment it to try and be my ‘special friend’ which is not going to happen!! But it's very exciting about the certificate as it has taken nearly 2 years to get it!!  But... ooo it was too early, I couldn’t even speak properly yet and it was very hard to try and find valid excuses for why I didn’t want him to come and visit me!!! After that I felt I had to open up my presents to make me feel better!  I actually ended up opening them with tears running down my face even though I was so happy to receive so many chocolates, sweets and things, but I was sad to be here on my own again with out my friends and family in th UK!! But then ate my Christmas Lebkuchen Stars present  and it was all ok again!! :)

The other week I was wondering what to do for Christmas, in fact I wasn't planning anything but then I felt like I should invite the people who I give buns to who are on the streets begging.  I thought I am alone here and they are alone on the streets, so if I invite them to my party then none of us will be alone!! 

Sharing the gospel with pictures

 I started a few years ago to just give them buns in order to be able to talk to them a bit and just be loving.  For a while I wondered what on earth it achieves and whether it's just from 'pity' that I was doing it and just because you give to those who beg...but God gave me a genuine love for them and I found that I was able to have really good conversations with them and one lady even accepted Jesus through it... but when I came back here this time, I wondered what I was to do with them and for the first few weeks I was here, I would just pass them and have an urge to do something but didn't know what and  I 

didn't have a lot of money to be able to buy them food all the time, but I felt God saying to me, give them the buns and I will provide for you. So I started to give them again a couple or so times a week and just strike up the relationships again. So this week when I went round to tell them that I was having a party and that they are invited they all got quite excited and just accepted!! 

 I must also say that God has provided for me!! :)

So today I went round collecting them all in tuc tucs around the area I live and along the main road. It was a matter of just saying come and because of the fact that they know my face they just came!! There were about 15 of them.

It was an amazing time.  When I saw the number that might come I asked my good friends down the road whether I could do it at their house as it's bigger and also I live alone...and so they said yes as they don't do anything on Christmas day (pics of people at the end, husband and wife and wife's sister).

I got tasty food packets for them all and made fruit salad and got ice cream to give them, coke and other nice things to celebrate and make it nice for all of us  . Another friend also came too and together we served them, one of them went to get shirts out of his cupboard when he saw what some were wearing and we gave presents to the children and skirts for the women and we talked to them and shared the gospel with them all and prayed and from it all they felt loved and one of them accepted Jesus through tears. It was amazing!!!
Even in the terrible state that they are in, we have to be able to see beyond it (without ignoring it though) and see that there is still hope for them in Jesus and offer it to them.

my good friends

In Habakkuk I was reading in chapter 3 verse13 "You went out to rescue your chosen people", and with it being Christmas Day which celebrates Jesus coming to earth to save us, reminds me again of the importance of needing to GO OUT and seek those who need rescuing and bring them in because they are out there waiting and nothing will happen if we don't, we miss the opportunity to be a blessing. I feel so blessed to be able to have been a blessing for those people today and all it took was to see them, to stop and to share the love of Jesus and He takes it and does what He does : brings abundant life.

and my other good friend

I did get people saying not to do it, not to bring them into our houses as they are dirty and then they will always come and beg and bother after you let them come once and so on. Sometimes we don’t want to do what God asks us to do if it seems stupid and unnecessary through human eyes...so we seek more wisdom and then if it still seems odd we  wait for more wisdom and more wisdom till what God was asking us to do is slightly modified...and becomes completely...sensible and safe...but unfortunately not quite what He asked us to do at the beginning.  But sometimes the things that we are asked to do are not sensible and are risky!! Which is why it has not yet become a normal thing to do...but risk is an important part of being a Christian.  It doesn't mean that we do things without thinking, without wisdom or discernment, but it means that we add to these things courage and boldness..and trust God that He knows what He is doing and that  He will be faithful.