Jesusluvsall's Blog

Well it happened. Time marches forward. I hit my milestone birthday today. Most years I haven’t celebrated it and in fact had not for over 30 years until my birthday 10 years ago when my friends from my weekend groups at my church gave me an almost surprise party.

I love the picture from that day because it represents what my life has been about the past twenty years-sharing life with friends from many different countries. In the picture with me are friends from Belgium, Brazil, Congo, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Ukraine and Vietnam. At that time my church had a map of the world on a wall and the room my groups were in was next to that wall.

My friends decided to throw me a surprise party in the room during our class time. They really went all out in decorating the room with Star Wars and Lord of the Rings theme, cake, balloons, and had the lights turned out. Only one problem, my friend Olivier from Congo. 🙂

I had a meeting at church that morning, so I had to be there early. I asked my friend Yoshio from Japan to pick up our friends Neil and Olivier from Congo because I needed to be at church early. When I got to church, Olivier came out to meet me in the parking lot, shook my hand, and carried my laptop bag in for me. That was at 8:20 and my class started at 9, so my first thought was, “Why is Olivier here are 8:20? He came with Yoshio and Yoshio would never be this early.” So the surprise was given away. I still acted surprised when I opened the door and they shouted, “Happy Birthday.”

I guess it is customary to share some sort of wisdom when one reaches a milestone birthday. I don’t really have anything to enlighten people with that has not been said before, but one thought I have from spending so much wonderful time with people literally from all over the world.

When Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life,” he meant exactly that. God loves all people from every culture, race, ethnic group, language group etc. God LOVES US. My greatest blessing, after knowing Jesus of course, has been to experience a little of God’s great love for us as I interact with my immigrant and refugee friends. My role and what God created me for and called me to, is to show his love to those I teach, befriend, help, interact with etc.

When I was a child, I used to dream of seeing far away places that I read about in school. God has blessed me to have had the opportunity to travel to Romania seven times, Brazil twice, France and Mexico once each, and because of my trips to Romania to also visit Austria, England, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland. The reason for my trips was to share the love of Jesus.

Here in Lincoln I have met people from so many countries, I can’t list them all. They have enriched my life. They have changed me and my life. It has been through spending time with my refugee friends that I have come to understand and appreciate what Mother Teresa said when speaking of the people she helped, “each one of them is Jesus in disguise.”

We never know how many years God will give us in this life. I am actually amazed I lived this long after what I went through because of that I never made any real plans, but God led me to the life I have now, so I could show his love to diverse people. My desire is to continue to show and share his love until he takes me home to heaven.