My favorite book of the summer was Mother Teresa Missionary of Charity by Sam Wellman! When I started reading it, I couldn't put it down and I could stop talking about her weeks after I had finished reading it.We all need heroes, people to look up to, to aspire to be...Very few of us will ever touch as many lives as Mother Teresa did. She not only believed in Jesus' two greatest commands, but she lived and breathed His commands, Love the Lord God with all of your heart, with all of your mind and with all of your soul! The second greatest command was Love your neighbor as yourself.
From a very early age, Gonxha (Teresa) worked alongside of her mother taking meals to people in need, allowing people to stay at their house, visiting the sick, distributing clothing and money to the poor. She had parents with a vision to look beyond their own needs and the needs of their immediate family and challenged their kids to do the same.
Teresa went to school, did chores, helped with the poor, was an interpreter for her priest, played musical instruments, and she composed poetry. She had a very good work ethic and never sat idle. One week missionaries came through from India to her church. Teresa was so intrigued by their stories and began to dream big dreams. How many of us dream big dreams or are we just content to sit in our own comfort zone? She clearly heard God's voice that she was to go into ministry and she joined a convent at the young age of 16! Ireland was her first step to India. When she left, it was on a ship alone from Albania to Ireland. Within a year she transferred to India. Her comment when walking through the slums was "I cannot be of material assistance to them, for I have nothing; but I go to make them happy." Her prayer was "Give me the strength to be ever the light of their lives, so that I may lead them at last to you. "
In 1942 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor many Indians were starving to death. More than 2 MILLION died. After the war in 1948, war broke out at home between the Hindus and the Muslims. Teresa found herself in the middle of a political war. Eventually they split apart creating a new country called Pakistan. When she was 36 she left the convent to start her own order to live among the poor, the Missionaries of Charity. They ate a simple diet, wearing a sari like dress with sandals. Their living quarters were simple, no electricity, stoves, washing machines. Only a chair and a bed were allowed. Her motto before starting any new mission was "But God will provide!" In order to to maintain their strength and power she said, "The religious need silence to hear God speak to them. There is no life of prayer without silence." They started schools, hospitals, a mobile hospital, a shelter for the dying "Place of the Pure Heart". They would go into the slums, carry out the ones who were just about to die and bring them to this place. They started an orphanage because they would take the babies out of the arms of the moms who had died in the streets.
When she visited America to speak in Las Vegas years later, she was meditating in the desert outside of Las Vegas before her speech. She gathered thorns from a cactus and twisted them into a crown. She would take this as a souvenir and put it on the crucifix at home. She didn't like to take credit for all of her ministries but she would take all of the money from her appearances and use it to fund her next vision. She believed that prayer leads to faith, faith to love and love to service. One of her most profound quotes for me was this "Many people want to do the big things, no one wants to do the small things-writing a letter for a blind man, washing someone's dirty clothes, cleaning someone else's house."
She had charity houses in Bangladesh, Australia, Gaza , Yemen, Ethiopia, New York. By the end of her ministry they had 158 houses (68 in India), 1,718 sisters, 495 clinics treating 4,100,000 people medically, they treated 258,000 lepers in 103 houses for lepers. They ran 107 slum schools with 15,800 students. They cared for 2,770 orphans and regularly fed 165,000 people who were poor. How staggering to think of all of these people, each who had a name, and a story who were in need. All these millions of people were touched by the hand of Jesus, through one small woman named Gonxha with only a high school education, who dreamed big dreams, with a child-like faith and a big heart for Jesus!
What does He want to do with your life?
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