The Fragrance of Christ

June 30, 2006

This week we had a Korean-American brigade from Calvary Presbyterian Church, Maryland, brought by Korean missionary Jabez Jang. Brother David Kang, another Korean missionary who works in Honduras, joined us for a few days.

Each day we visited a different church in the poor barrios around Tegucigalpa, as well as Tatumbla, a village outside the city.

Several pastors joined us even when it wasn’t their day to have the team, and they prayed for each patient seen by Pastor Rafael, aka Dr. Maradiaga, in the medical clinic.

Pastors Ana Julia, Elías and Mario lay hands on a patient just seen by Dr. Rafael Maradiaga.

The U.S. team brought 4 laptops and we held computer classes in the evenings.
Brother Chong Park was our presenter, and I was translator and assistant.

In the daytime, the 4 teenagers had activities for the kids the and Sister Mickey Park and Sister Angel Song, cosmetologists both, did haircuts and nail-painting.

I was helping in the beauty “salon” (a makeshift carport), and as always the women and children were crowding around Sister Mickey and Sister Angel. Brother David was helping Mickey with haircuts for the boys. He asked for tickets and crowd control, so I became a police officer: “Back! Back! Give them room to breathe! Don’t bump the table! Where’s your ticket? Back! Back!”

Mickey and David deserve medals for plowing through all that hair despite a goodly number of lice-infested heads. Pray for them – they have been feeling a bit itchy!

The nail-painting has been especially popular all week. Sister Angel always has a rapt crowd of girls and women around her. One girl of about 10 years who did not have a ticket I must have shooed out ten times at least. I couldn’t really be mad at her for continuing to pursue a good thing. And finally we put one of the teens on to do the little girls’ nails, so she got what she wanted after all.

I got to thinking, what if we all had as much persistence in seeking God as that girl had for getting her nails done?

The “fragrance of Christ” was very much in evidence throughout the week in the ministry of the whole group, but Sister Angel really exemplified it as she labored non-stop with tiny paintbrushes over each lady’s nails, finishing each one off with a Korean-accented “Dios le bendiga!” (God bless you!) May we all exude that fragrance more and more, so that people beg us to help them get what we have…