Today was our year-end staff lunch...a time set apart after everything else is finished to treat our hard-working staff to lunch, to reflect on the year, and for lots and lots of speeches!
Every year the students ask us to pray that they would grow spiritually, and because of THESE 25 men and women, Emmaus is absolutely the place, and now is absolutely the time.
These are men and women who are of character, on and off the job. Men and women who are leaders and servants and servant leaders in their homes, in their churches, in their communities. We live together, we eat together, we work together, we know each other well, and it is with such joy that we are able to say to our students: "Be Like THIS."
Be like these women who serve us good meal after good meal together, with joy and in peace, without bickering and complaining and gossip. Be like these security men who are faithful and firm and kind and serving humbly and continually every day. Be like these staff who take your calls at night, have their office doors open, are always ready to help and pray and listen. Be like these professors who are working together and praying continually and working to teach in the most practical and heart-forming ways.
It has been with much prayer and training and pouring and changing and growing and following that God's formed for Emmaus the men and women of character that you see here, men and women whom we can tell our students to follow. These are the change in Haiti, the different in the world.
And listening to everyone's hearts today was a joy...Junel sharing his desire as an 8-year-old boy to be a person who would listen close for the Lord and would be ready and quick to obey...
Elize sharing his desire to do better still...
Phida's praise to the Lord for the family she never had He has surrounded her with...
Fanfan talking about the ways, just at lunch, that Emmaus is a family, not by word but by action...
Jodenel talking about all that Emmaus invests in him so he can invest in others...
and enjoying being together, all the while.
Anything exciting or meaningful or transforming we see coming from Emmaus is because of Christ in these men and women, the leaders. The servants.
Passing Him on, here and now.
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