House of the Elderly

Love with all your possessions, with all your emotions, with all your thoughts and with all your heart… with everything you have because, you are loved more then you know.

Last Tuesday was out first of which will be many times serving at the house of the elderly with the missionaries of charity. It was really hard seeing all of the old people and seeing how they had to live. First off, the house is inside of a temple of idol worship, and the housing area is small, dark, and dirty. Also, the people we take care of are the “worst off ones” meaning they can’t take care of themselves, so we have to help. Our jobs were to wash them, wash their clothes, wash their bedding, feed them, wash their dishes, and most of all, love them. One of the hard things about washing them is we have to do it outside. First, we would pump water out of a well then bring the water to the wash area, where we would then dump the water over them and begin washing them with soap.  Some of them can’t go to the bathroom by themselves so they end up going in their clothes which adds another challenge to it all. After that we washed their clothes and bed-sets by hand.  The clothes and bedding were filthy. After that we served them all food and helped feed some of them while others we just made sure the flies weren’t on their food…or them. After that, we washed all of their dirty dishes and gave them back to them, as each person has their own special set. My main job that day was to pump the water out of the well. The pump was very old and couldn’t go all the way up and down so it was very hard to get the water out. Also we haven’t had any rain here in the past six months. It sprinkled a little bit two days ago, but it wasn’t nearly enough. That made my job hard. However, without the water, none of this could have happened. So TYJ! (Thank you Jesus) for the water we had that day.

You could tell the people there, including us, really wanted to love these people the best we could. You could tell the only way we could love and serve these people was because Jesus first loved us and our love for these elderly people was the overflow of that love. On Tuesday, I saw the power of love and touch. One of the old ladies there had some mental problems and she would spasm and shout. One of the workers there saw this and sat down beside her and gave her his arm. She reached out and grabbed his hand. After doing this she began to calm down. Then, she hugged his arm and the worker placed his hands on her face. As he was doing this she became calmer and calmer and began to smile. You could see her sitting there soaking up the love the worker was giving her just by touching her. Think about it, when you were young and you would get a boo-boo and your mom would kiss her hand and then touch your boo-boo didn’t it feel better? I remember when I was younger my dad would kiss me on the forehead before he would leave for work. I can still remember how his cold, freshly shaven face felt on mine. I can even remember how his aftershave smelled. When one of your friends gives you a high five for doing something cool, doesn’t it make you feel good? Or when you receive or give a hug to a friend, can’t you just feel the love? Now that I think about it you can also tell when you are being touched and it’s not a reflection of love. I think there is a huge difference between touching in love and just touching. Touching in love fills you and the other person up, as it makes them and you feel better, I don’t know how to explain it, but you can just tell when someone wants to show you love…which gave me another thought. What if we could figure out how to love with all of our positions, all our thoughts, all our emotions…all our everything! I believe God gives us things, emotions, and thoughts because he loves us and so that we can love more people in more ways. Like, he gives us all these things just so we have more ways to reflect his love for each of us which is so cool if you think about it! Jesus loves us so much that he gives us all different kinds of abilities to love each other. For example, I can love people like no one else can, and other people can love people like I can’t, and all these different abilities we have to love each other are all the different ways he loves us with the huge, passionate, pure, and right love Jesus has! With that said, we could learn how Jesus loves us just by loving people with everything we have. Also by loving people with everything he has given us, we are in turn loving Jesus back which helps us understand more about his love for us!

Needless to say I’m learning a ton here, this time it was love.

Remember the truth and forget the lies… and love one another with all you have.

Wes Tatum