Dear Friends,
Happy New Year!
Last month our WMF children's home in Chennai, India had a couple surprise visitors-a little 4-year-old girl named Mary and a her 5-year-old brother Joseph. Thankfully there was "room in the inn" for them, and they've now become part of our extended WMF family.
When they were much younger, Mary and Joseph's father abandoned them. Their mother began working as a "rag-picker," or someone who scavenges through dumps and trash heaps looking for things that can be salvaged and recycled. Their young mother would sell the scraps that she picked out of huge piles of garbage, but of course it wasn't enough to provide for her family.
This past fall, there was a fire in the slum where they were living, and they lost everything. They were found living on a train platform, begging, neglected and slowly starving to death.
When they finally found the WMF children's home, they were so undernourished that even the introduction of routine meals made them sick.
It's been a while since we've had children that young in the home. In fact, most of the boys and girls that we first took in back in the mid-1990's are now approaching their 20's. So the older children have done a sweet job of tenderly taking care of young Mary and Joseph.
As you may remember, every year the children's home there in Chennai performs a nativity play for the neighborhood and friends of the community. The highlight of the play was that our little Mary and Joseph actually played the parents of the infant Jesus-a real Mary and Joseph! The kids loved it.
As 2009 begins, let us all be challenged and inspired by the hospitality of our WMF community in Chennai. May 2009 be a year when we are confronted with opportunities to offer selfless hospitality to those whose need it the most. And may Jesus, in the distressing disguise of the needs of those who are poor, visit us.
And please remember to pray for Phileena and me. Later this month I will be traveling to Canada where I'll be speaking at missions conferences for Redeemer University College in Ancaster from January 23-25 and then Heritage College and Seminary in Cambridge from January 26-28. After the conferences are wrapped up, I'll be in Toronto on January 29 for our first WMF Canada meeting; we're hoping to have a WMF Canadian organization registered and operating early in 2009.
In February we'll be meeting with nearly 40 of the international leadership community members of WMF at our Field Forum. This year our meetings will be in Nepal and the central focus of the gathering will be implementing the long-anticipated WMF Partnership Platform. This will be an exciting time for us as we move forward in a theological commitment to new and innovating ways of partnering in mission.
Again, we couldn't do any of this without your faithful support, prayers and friendship, so thank you for journeying together with us.
Our prayers are with you as you begin a new year, one full of hopeful anticipation for what good things God has for you.
Peace to you all,
Chris Heuertz