Just In Time 

Written by Melodie Sankey 

   Does God work “just in time”? Does He orchestrate circumstances and happenings in “just enough time” to make it happen? I had an experience in Honduras this past week with the Medical Team that made me wonder.

 

   Early Tuesday morning, the team packed up totes full of medicines and supplies and we headed  to the remote village of El Colirio...over bumpy roads, across a couple creeks, past breath-takingly- gorgeous mountain views, finally arriving at our destination at the village schoolhouse to find a line of people already waiting.

 

   EFM's Honduran pastors and children's workers assembled them in groups and began to preach and teach the Gospel to them – always a precursor to being seen by a doctor in the traveling clinic. We set up our clinic in a spacious and surprisingly clean school classroom and began what was our longest day and biggest turnovers  – 385 people heard the Gospel and were seen in our mobile clinic that day. 

 

   About mid-morning, I had a young woman with a baby in her arms approach my station as a patient and we began to converse. I translated for Dr. Dave Boardman to examine her and her baby and prescribe them several needed medications that we had brought with us. 

   In my suitcase, I had brought a supply of small gifts for our patients with Spanish Bible verses written on them. Among them were some cute pencil toppers with the verse: “Dios es amor//God is love” on the back. When Dr. Dave went to the pharmacy to get her medication, I asked if she'd like a pencil and a topper to take with her. She smiled shyly and said she would. I asked if she could read, since many of the people we see cannot read and we have to make sure someone at home can help them with the prescriptions and medications we send. She happily told me that she could read. I asked her what the topper said and she read, “God is love” (in Spanish, of course). I smiled and said, “He really is, isn't He?” She replied, “Yes”, as tears welled up in her eyes. 

   If you've ever felt “God's thumb in your back”, then you know what I'm talking about. I felt it – big time! I said to her, “Are you a Christian?” She said, “No, I've done so many bad things in my life and the worst thing is that I'm living with a man right now who isn't my husband”. I assured her that God loved her and had provided a plan of salvation through Jesus Christ, His Son, to forgive her of those sins and make her a new person inside. 

   She went on to tell me that God had come to her in a dream 2 nights before and showed her all the sins she had committed, all the wrong things she had done, the condition of her heart before Him and that she had awakened crying because she didn't know what to do about it. Then she said, “And two days later, here you are – a white woman who speaks Spanish – sitting here talking to me, in my own village, telling me how to make my heart right with God and how to take care of all those terrible sins He showed me in my dream!” Tears were running down her face by now, as hope shined a light into her darkness – that Hope that only Jesus gives! 

   I held her hands and we prayed together. Leading someone to the Lord is an experience like none other. I got to witness the miracle of salvation all over again in that little rural village in Honduras that day as Glendy became a new creature in Christ. I gave her a Bible and wrote her name in the front: “ Glendy, saved on February 19, 2013”. Her teary smile was radiant as she walked out the door, baby boy, medicines and new Bible in hand, a brand-new person in Christ Jesus! 

   So, does God work “just in time”? Isn't 2 days cutting it kinda close for a foreign country and all the details that needed to work out to make that divine appointment happen? I'm going to let God be God and trust Him that His timing is always right. It's amazing the lengths that the Good Shepherd will go to in order to save a lost sheep...a lost sheep named Glendy in El Colirio, Santa Barbara, Honduras.