Are You Willing? -- Lifesong India

Listen in as Bob Stoll, Lifesong India shares an experience from his time overseas...

I was a guest in a leper colony for a week. I watched as the clinic doctor worked on the ulcerated hands and feet of the lepers. Most had no fingers and toes. They are injured, burned and infected without knowledge because leprosy robs extremeties of the gift of pain.

I stood and watched a woman as she struggled to latch her sandal.

She finally succeeded. The Lord chastened me for not helping her. It occurred to me that I didn't love her enough to even offer my help. Despite my regret, the opportunity was gone. Conviction made it's home in my heart for the rest of my stay at the colony. I hated myself.

But God redeemed my error in a beautiful way.

On the day I left, the doctor assembled the lepers. They sat on the grund under a thatched canopy as I spoke to them from the Bible. When I finished, my friend brought twelve lepers up front, provided me with a towel and besin of water and said "wash their feet". I had not told him of my experience. How did he know I needed to redeem my error? I thanked and praised God for the opportunity and practically dove into the water as I proceeded to wash twenty-four leprous feet.

Since then God has presented me with multiple opportunities to show love to to the unlovely. Sometimes I fail. Will I ever learn? Lord help me...

-Bob Stoll, Lifesong India  

...A man with leprosy came and knelt in front of Jesus, begging to be healed. 'If you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean,' he said. Moved with compassion, Jesus reached out, touched him and said, 'I am willing.' 

Mark 1:40-41

the life of an outcast

"...these deformed hands receiving some money tell a story from a present chapter in this leper's life, which could be entitled "Outcast" The first chapters are known only by the leper and God. We can only guess what his life was once like.

Was he a child when the patches first appear on his skin?

Perhaps his parens were wealthy or poor. Was he an illiterate poor farmer or was he a schoolteacher, a doctor, or a merchant?

It wouldn't have mattered. He would've been forced to leave his village and his family...leaving his wife and children."

Lifesong-India has the privilege and opportunity to love him, help meet some of his basic needs today...

~ Bob Stoll (started orphan care work 30 years ago in India)