Mighty

My dad serves a congregation a few miles outside the town I grew up in.  It is small but mighty.  The church and the town.  I spoke awhile back on their Mission Sunday and shared a little about Haiti.  I was asked then to speak today for a LWML Spring Rally.  I, of course, said yes, cause I just cannot talk enough about this place and these people.  I will gladly speak to a willing, mission-minded audience!

LWML-Lutheran Women's Missionary League. I spoke today to a group of 50 or so ladies.  These LWML ladies are rockstars in the Lutheran world.  They don't know they are and you wouldn't realize  it by looking at a roomful of them.  Lots of gray hair and slacks and jazzy accessories.  Rockstars. Every one of them.

Their sole purpose is missions, both domestic and international.  They pass out these little cardboard mite boxes and through donations of what is found in the laundry or on the floor after sweeping, or from emptying their coin purses each day, they are able to do mighty things.  It's like the loaves and fish.  It all just multiplies.  
Each fall and spring they get together with other chapters from churches and do a rally.  A speaker comes and they gather items and/or money for whatever cause the speaker is toting.
Today, I was toting Haiti Lutheran Mission Society and more specifically House of Love and Hope Orphanage.  
This wasn't my first time speaking to a LWML group and quite frankly, get me talking about Haiti and I could go on all day, so it all went well. 
What struck me today as I got up to speak is that my 94 year old grandma, my 90 year old grandma, my parents, my mother in law, my little sister and my daughter were all there.  This audience had some ties to me and this place.  My Grandma Dahlke at 94 was able to hear how the young men she and my grandpa knew and loved years and years ago, continue to work to spread the gospel in Haiti.  She heard how her granddaughter now knows and loves these same people.  My parents got to hear how their daughter and son in law hope to add a few more grandchildren to their lives by way of adoption.  People were able to hear how years and years ago, my grandparents started down a path that would eventually lead me here.  To Haiti.  To Josie.  To these children. To adoption, we hope.  To a place that has changed and shaped us in the most incredible ways.  
Simply put, it was a pretty cool moment.
Back to the rockstars of this story.  These ladies brought shoes.  Much needed shoes that we'll get to take to the orphanage.  And the money raised was in Godly proportions.  More than I could have ever hoped or imagined.  Loaves and fish, today.
I sit in awe and with profound humility tonight knowing how much it all means to the 22 children that Josie cares for.  And if I'm honest, I consider at least of few of children mine and so it feels like they are caring for my own, as well.   It gets me more than a little choked up and it makes me feel like I could fly to Port Au Prince without a plane.  God moves in mighty ways.