I’ve never made a video before, other than in high school, and I know it is anything but professional, but I hope you enjoy a glimpse into our life here. Without realizing it, I choose a day in which Julio went to Guatemala City on errands, and so he doesn’t make it into the video. This was earlier in the year when my parents where here visiting, I think maybe February. I have a missionary friend nearby who very graciously helped me edit and put together our video. (Thanks Steph!)
Currently my Bible reading plan (this one), is taking me on a journey through the Old Testament. Though there are some chapters (maybe books), that I enjoy less than others, I am gaining an appreciation for the Old Testament and what we can learn about the character of God through it. He surely is the same; yesterday, today and tomorrow.
If you are familiar with the story of the Exodus, and the Israelites leaving Egypt, you will remember the miraculous way in which the LORD freed his people from slavery, showing himself mighty and powerful to save. The Israelites saw and experienced miracle after miracle; God’s hand inflicting plagues upon their oppressors, parting a passageway through the Red Sea, God’s provision of water in the desert, the daily miracle of God’s provision of manna for the people…I could go on and on…but you can read it for yourself here if you like. Yet, even so, they doubted God’s goodness and his power to save them. Every. Single. Step. Of. The. Way.
Another drop of sweat ran down her back as she walked up the dirt path in the mountainous region of Guatemala. — If they would only come to us, we wouldn’t need to come all the way out here — she thought to herself. She worked as a nurse at a local health center, and today her task was to search out the children who didn’t come to the health center for their vaccines with two of her colleagues. As they walked the village paths, she heard the faint cry of a infant. Shack to shack they went, finding wide eyed children wherever they looked. That cry didn’t diminish. Indeed, as faint as it was, it didn’t seem like there was any response to it. Considering their profession, it seemed like a given that they would seek to intervene or at least see if intervention was necessary; and so they began to follow the sound of that little voice.
As they listened and followed the sound of that faint cry, the homes became further apart and far between, and they wandered outside the village. Latrines in rural Guatemala are often located at a distance from homes and communities, and that is what they saw in the distance as they searched. As they approached, the cry faltered, paused for a moment, and then weakly resumed. They stepped up their pace, raced to the latrine and pushed the tarp door aside. It was dark and smelly inside, and she fumbled with her phone to turn on the flashlight. There was no babe to be found on the floor, but the sound emerged from the opening in the roughly constructed outhouse seat. Sure enough, as they shined the light inside, there he was. Naked. His tiny form laid among the sewer.
They began to yell for help. They needed something in order to reach the babe. Something they could use to pull him out. The seconds rushed by, and in minutes, finally they found a nearby farmer. “Help! Help! Do you have something? Anything? We need something to pull an infant out of the latrine! Your hoe, can we use your hoe? It’s urgent!” Together they raced back to the latrine and lowered the hoe into the latrine and as gently as they were able, they gathered him and pulled him up towards the surface.
Tuesday July 9th, 2019, we received the final signature and authorization to open our Life Children’s Home. The coordinators of the children’s home have been busy preparing a celebration on this coming Friday to announce the opening of the home and going to all of the surrounding judicial offices to invite local authorities to our celebration and make them aware of the opening of our home, so they can begin sending babies our way. With the anticipation of our long time dream becoming reality, I struggled to know what to feel. Was this actually happening?
Yesterday afternoon, the coordinator of our home received a phone call.
–Can you receive a baby?
–Yes!
–Okay, we are on our way. We will be there in 30 minutes.
–So soon??!!
And the scrambling began. 6 days after receiving authorization, we received a nameless baby. 4 days old. 3 lbs 5 oz. We had the privilege of naming him. The couple who will be living in the baby home rushed over, without time to think about gathering their belongings. Protocols which have been in the works for months need to be finalized. This is the culmination of many lifelong dreams and hopes.
More personally, I dreamed of working in an orphanage when I was in high school. A friend of mine shared this dream too. I felt drawn to missionary work, but most specifically orphan care. James 1:27 was my key verse.
Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. – James 1:27
Contemplating life after graduation, I toggled between spending a year with relatives in the Caribbean, where I could serve in an orphanage, and serving in Guatemala with Impact Ministries. Asking the Lord for guidance, I became confident that he was directing me to come to Guatemala. I felt elated to serve the Lord in this way, yet it seemed like saying yes to the Lord was closing the door on my dream of participating in orphan care.
God, in all his sovereignty, has been so good to me. Though I thought I was giving up a dream, he brought it back to me again approximately 6 years ago, when Julio and I were invited to become part of an Orphanage Committee. As part of this committee, we began to dream about how we could care well for orphaned children in Guatemala, knowing how great the need is. Year by year, we saw advancement little by little, among many obstacles, and two years ago we had a building ready to receive babies…but without the approval and authorization of government authorities…our hands were tied.
One part of me is elated that we are able to offer a warm bed and loving arms to this beautiful child. Yet on the other hand, I feel so enraged that this care is even necessary! My heart is broken as I contemplate the story of this precious babe, and I am filled with sorrow. I hadn’t anticipated this surge of negative emotions. What a cruel and broken world we live in!
In all of this, I know deep down in my heart, that in the midst of this broken and suffering world, God uses us as his hands and feet, and I am right where I need to be. I believe that there are no coincidences. My mind wonders; What if those nurses weren’t required to vaccinate children in that village that day? What if they didn’t hear his cry? What if they ignored his cry? What if he had fallen face down? Yet, in his sovereignty, God orchestrated all of these things, including the recent authorization of the home, for a purpose.
May your will be done, O God, on earth as it is in heaven.
“Good afternoon. We are missionaries from Canada, and we work with Ministerios Impacto in Tactic, and we’ve come to the hospital to visit patients and their families and to pray with them. Why is your daughter here in the hospital? What is she sick with?”
“My baby’s not sick. I brought her along because I didn’t have anywhere safe to leave her. My 5 year old is here because she was raped last night. It was my brother. We came to the emergency right away.”
What can you even say in light of a situation similar to this one? We took a few minutes to pray, but it seemed to me like something more needed to be done. As I walked out of the hospital that day, my heart was shattered by the realization that something had been done to her which could never be undone. The question “Now what?” echoed in my mind. What will become of her? Will this lead her through life questioning? Will this lead her to make poor decisions and pass on the chains of brokenness and pain to the next generation? Will she find healing? What does the path to healing look like? What next?
Then I looked up at my Heavenly Father, and I questioned him, “Why did I encounter her? Her situation? What do you want from me? What should my response be in light of such pain and brokenness as this?”
Sometimes God’s response to us comes like a gentle waves. Before I realized it was in answer to my question, God caused me to seek out a piece of audio I had heard more than a month ago in which I had heard the phrase “We are all sexually broken”. Without avail I searched for a number of days, knowing I had heard it somewhere, but I couldn’t remember for the life of me where it had been. In his grace, God softly nudges and reminds us in his good timing, and he brought to mind the website where I had heard the comment about everyone being sexually broken. It was on the Revive our Hearts website, which was introduced to me by a dear lady who now goes to my home church, who I had the privilege of meeting this past Christmas. As I began to search, I found exactly what I was looking for.
As I listened, I began to understand a concept which, beforehand, wouldn’t have thought that I didn’t understand. Snippets like: “God intentionally gave us sexual desire for a holy reason”, “It is a profound metaphor that’s a tangible way that teaches us about God’s covenant love”, and then brought further to talk about two different types of people we see as reflected by Jesus interactions in the New Testament. The distinction is not between the righteous and the unrighteous, or good and bad people. Rather, the difference is in knowing that “Only God is truly good” (Mark 10:18) and “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The distinction then is between those who believe themselves to be righteous, and those who recognize their sin, their brokenness, and their need for a savior. I think this concept is definitely something that those of us who have found salvation in Jesus Christ are familiar with. But I personally had never taken this spiritual truth to have meaning in human sexuality.
I know that in general, we often have this idea that humans have good hearts. The scriptures teach us that this is false, that we are inherently evil, and that we need redemption. This is never a concept I struggled with. But now, I was taking this truth, and seeing it applied to sexuality. Sexually, as in every other area of our lives, we are inherently broken. When we have this idea of a checklist of sexual sins, and we can say, “I didn’t have sex before marriage, I don’t participate in extramarital sex, I don’t look at pornography…”, we have this idea that we are sexually sinless unless proved otherwise. Somehow we compartmentalize sexuality, and we make ourselves believe that it exists in a different sphere, and doesn’t intersect or connect with our spirituality.
Reflecting then on that little 5 year old girl I met in the hospital, I recognize that I had come to the conclusion that she had been sexually broken, and therefore the assumption that this wound would be near impossible to heal. But, in relation to the previous paragraph, if we see only two types of people, we can define these by those who recognize their brokenness and those who hide their brokenness. I don’t want to be a hypocrite, as Jesus called the religious teachers of his day; one who claimed holiness and denied brokenness. My sexual brokenness looks very different from this little child who had her innocence taken from her. But in recognizing that I too am sexually broken, because I too have fallen short of the glory of God, I can place myself on the same side of the spectrum as her. There is no “us” and “them”. God’s perfect intention for human sexuality has been broken both in my life and hers. In all of us actually. And we all need healing. Her healing will look different than the healing I need. But we are on the same journey; broken people needing the redemptive intervention of our loving and good Father.
I am still unsure of the fullness of the purpose of this experience that God desires for me. I am confident that God is in all things, and I am determined to seek Him and lean deeper into Him as he continues to reveal to me his purposes and plans in my life. I am very encouraged by the realization that things are not what I had previously assumed, which was probably something along these lines, “As a sexually whole person, how can I relate to and offer hope to a sexually broken person?”.
As a sinner in need of God’s grace, and a broken human being in need of God’s redemption, how can I not walk alongside others who are in the same condition I am, regardless of the details of our walk.
Julio and Julie Lem 