Three Hundred and Seventy Days Ago

My mind goes back to that day — three hundred and seventy days ago. . . .

We had just ended another Sabbath — wonderful as usual, but very different. That was the weekend that the Adams and Stafford families came to our church to share about the work at Sunshine Orchard Children’s Home and Learning Center. The story was a familiar one to me. I had been carefully reading every update for at least a year.

Now they had given a mission report for the second year in a row at our church. I listened carefully to each word. The conviction that had come a year before and grown since then, only deepened. I must do something. For all I knew it might mean simply raising funds while I finished my education and then maybe helping in person when I was old enough to be on my own. What I didn’t know was that it wouldn’t be long before I would be making preparations to go–not simply go fundraising, but go and do.

That evening as I stood in the kitchen cleaning up from supper, I overheard words that I didn’t really know what to think of. “Could they really be asking us, our family, to help at Sunshine Orchard? Or are they just ‘talking’?” It wasn’t long before I knew that it was more than just “talking.” That night I was just seeing the beginning of a wonderful plan that God had in store for us. He had placed a burden on my heart for a reason, and now the door was open to go and do.

What I hadn’t even begun to imagine was the affect that this journey would have on me. I was expecting that I was going for the benefit of others, which certainly is true. But only God knows where I would be today if it wasn’t for the experiences that He has brought me through since then. There have times of doubt, then of amazement at His faithfulness; times of sadness and of song; times of weakness on my own and of strength while holding His hand, times when it was me, and times when it Him that was seen.

So much has happened since that evening–three hundred and seventy days ago. But one thing stands out above them all, and that is the faithfulness of my heavenly Father. Every penny we have received, every word of encouragement given to us, every good thing that has been done is from God. Nothing we have done or could do makes us deserving of such unconditional love and untiring faithfulness.

“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my life

— it’s that my Redeemer is faithful and true.”