How God Answered A Passion He put in me for 10 years

How God Answered A Passion He put in me for 10 years

Part 1

My very first Christmas here in America made me realize the reason I always longed to spend the summers with my grandma. During these summers, I saw what most people will term poverty but yet a very high level of contentment. There were kids without shoes, young girls with babies, least to say babies having babies. To me, there were very poor but the look on their faces showed contentment. They played in the dust, drank contaminated water from streams, had “jicka’s” (foot parasites) on their toes but all the same happy. I later realized these kids were happy because they had strong relationships. Besides, they did not miss nice shoes and clean clothes because they never had it before.

The message here is you don’t miss what you have never had, or seen. Poverty can be a state of mind, although it exist, it can be created by human discontentment.- E.A

My new environment in America only gave me flash backs of what I had seen growing up. To see majority of American kids with many toys at Christmas that ended up in toy bins blew my mind away. Christmas basically was about the number of toys a child got as shown on TV. All what I could think of, was how to get these toys to the kids in my grandma’s village. Thus, the birth of this passion.

Every Christmas was a reminder that I needed to find a way to send toys to Cameroon. I started praying about this passion, wrote it down in my journal as a reminder. Fast forward 10 years later, January 2013 my husband and I planned to make a trip to Cameroon. This will be my first trip back since I came to America. I took out my journal, wrote out my prayer request for the year, a routine I do each January. This time the first prayer was for God to provide the toys I needed to take to Cameroon. I did not know how to go about it except to pray and watch God work. “Therefore I tell you, that whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24.) I tried contacting some charities but did not hear from them about any help. Also note that I did not tell anyone but my husband about this plan.

Six months into the year, as our travel plans continued, I was beginning to think this was not going to happen. I kept praying but wondered if God wanted us to buy the toys and how expensive that would cost us. For this trip, my husband had plans to run a free clinic to celebrate 4 years of his mom’s death. He needed medications for his mission trip, and went to his job to ask for help with this since they have a missions fund. They were very happy to help supply all the medications he needed and asked him if there was any other way they could be of help to him. Obviously! he said no because toys were the last thing in his memory. They even asked him before he left if toys could be helpful for kids and he said no. Really right!

Well, my husband came home from work that day very happy to tell me all about his day and how God had provided all the medications he needed. He even was happy to tell me they asked him if he needed toys and he said no. You needed to have seen the look on my face. All I told him was you must be joking! Well, he had to go back and tell them the toys will be highly appreciated. It was an answer to my prayers! About 3 weeks later 8 boxes full of toys got dropped off at our home. I mean close to a 1000 toys came in from Saint Joseph Hospital Mishawaka, IN. “ And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” (Philippians 1:6.) 

The God I serve is awesome in Power and forever shall he be praised. He planted a passion in my heart for 10 years, not only did he provide the toys but also provided the funds to ship the toys to Cameroon. “ This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him.”( 1John 5:14&15).

Stay tuned for the pictures and see how the toys where also an answer to prayers to the orphanage it went to.