7-3 Reflections at Grandparents' House in Kaohsiung

July 4

Acts 16:25
25About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.

Something tells me that when my temperature reads, 39.4 C, things aren't going too well. A quick mental calculation tells me that in a more familiar scale, my temperature is 102.92 F. Lets see, so, here I am, in a foreign country, with a relatively high fever, barely getting past quarantine, and away from my missions team where I am supposed to be. Pretty much, things are looking pretty bad. To further my dilemma, if I go see a doctor, I risk getting me, and my entire team quarantined. Here we go again with God’s humility lesson. Let’s just say that when you can barely move, are in pain, and can’t do anything about it, God is the only place to turn. At one point, I felt so miserable and helpless that I was pleading and crying out to God for help. God seems to always have His amazing way of getting His message across doesn’t He. When things aren’t going so well, you realize that there’s really only one place to turn. And well it’s true that when you need a Bible verse, it’ll come to you in times of need. What immediately came to me was the story of Paul and Silas in prison, praising God, even through they were “stripped and beaten”, “severely flogged”, and had their feet “fastened in stocks”. They were WHAT? Praying and singing hymns to God? Guess that’s why they were men of great faith in the Bible because I know I certainly would be doing much different things if I were beaten and thrown into prison. I don’t know why but just the thought of this amazing comfort God gives made me feel a lot better and I was able to fall asleep. Ever since I’ve started on this trip, God’s been actively teaching me things. This time, it’s that I just have to trust Him and His perfect plan. It’d make a lot more sense for me to not be sick and be serving Him in the missions’ field, but that’s not what he has planned for me at this moment. I also have to trust Him completely for everything as I’m an extremely fragile portion of His creation and can’t do anything on my own. I’m still not completely healthy yet, so I ask for your prayers that I may be able to fully recover quickly. More importantly however, please pray for the work we are to do here, that everything we do may be according to God’s plan, that we can trust His plan, no matter how difficult it may be. It is my prayer that throughout this trip and all the hardships that might be ahead, we may be able to continue “praying and singing hymns to God.”

-JC