Dresses For Refugee Girls

Shortly before I was to come to Indonesia for this trip I was given a special gift from Jim and Leslie Huffman. Jim told me a part of this was to be used to buy "frilly" dresses for some of the little refugee girls. I was to purchase the dresses in Indonesia and find a group of refugees girls to give them. I asked some of our Indonesian female staff to go down town Manado and get as many "frilly" dresses as they could buy from the donated funds. Who said ministry is not fun. Woman love to shop anyway and now they are doing it in Jesus name. It is hard to beat that! They came home with nearly 20 beautiful dresses. The sizes were for a girls about 5-8 years old. I selected the refugees in a site called Kakanturang. There are 50 families there and so the number of girls age 5-8 would be small enough to assure that every girl that age there would get a dress. These refugees had suffered greatly in the attacks and had 150 from their village killed. All the girls who would receive a dress were terrorized for nearly two years. What a day it was for them. God's mercies in the form of "frilly" dresses. I wish you all could have seen their faced when they were selected by age to stand in line to get one of these gifts. It was a divine moment. The dresses were given to these beautiful little girls. They were told to wait to put the dresses on--but they were too excited and the dresses went on over the tattered cloths they were wearing.

God moved the heart of a family in Alaska to bless a small group of refugee girls. You might say--couldn't you use the money to feed these people instead of buying dresses? Yes--but there is something about the nature of God that says--be extravagant. After all, His grace is extravagant. He doesn't just promise life to us--he promises abundant life. He didn't make Kool-Aid for the wedding feast of Cana--He made the real thing--the best. Do any of us deserve the overflowing extravagance of God's grace? I have to believe that the God of the Bible is a God who would get in on the chance to surprise a small lot of refugee girls with a gift they would never expect. Just for the chance to see the wide smiles of these candidates for a blessing. Don't you love a God like that--who puts new garments over rags. Maybe it is a reminder for all of us--the God of grace will take off our soiled garments and put of white raiment. What a day that will be for all of us. Maybe we will have the same stunned smiles as the refugee girl at Kakanturang.