Send Me!

“ Love your neighbor as yourself.” Mark 12:31

I am always in awe of people who can really love their neighbor as much as they love themself. If one can put another’s good, another’s comfort, before their own, that is truly exemplary. Megan Boudreaux was a 24 year old when she heard God in dreams telling her to go to Haiti. For months, God would wake her up in the middle of the night to ask her to leave her comfortable American life, her good job, family and friends to do His work in Haiti. He did not give her a clear plan and when she reached this God forsaken, poverty stricken place that was just devastated by an earthquake, she wondered what she was doing there. 

On her second day in Haiti when she felt so alone, she asked herself, “Am I crazy? My friends are right. I must be crazy to leave such a great life in the States for a place like this. I don’t even know why I’m here. Oh Lord. Did I make a mistake? Should I just go back home?” 

A few days after that, she walked up to the top of a mountain. She found the tree in her dreams, and it had these dead cats hanging on it. She didn’t know that in Haiti they used mountain tops for voodoo rites. She noticed two little girls crying there. They looked very pitiful, as if they had been beaten up. She asked them what was wrong but since she did not speak Creole, they could not communicate. She looked up in desperation asking God what was she doing there if she couldn’t even help these two little heartbroken kids! Right then and there God gave her the gift of speaking, and understanding Creole! She had her own Pentecost up there in that voodoo mountain! She found out that these precious little kids were child slaves! 

Three years later, Megan was able to build on six acres on that same mountain called Bellevue a school for 500 children. She founded nonprofit Respire Haiti where a staff of 200 educate, feed and address the spiritual, physical and medical needs of these children. "The amazingness of what God did after I made the choice to be obedient is incredible," Megan wrote in her book, “Miracle on Voodoo Mountain”. 

We have so many opportunities to love our neighbor where we are with what we have. And we certainly don’t need to wait for God to call us to uproot ourselves and leave everything behind. Let us not be afraid to say, “Here I am, Lord, send me!”