A Light in a Dark World

We were in a missions conference in Tucson, Arizona a couple weeks ago. The conference went very well. Friday night Elizabeth had an accident that required clean clothes. Normally I keep an extra set for her in the car but the dress that had been in there was too small so I left it out. We only had underwear in the car. So I had to take her to the prophets chamber where we were staying and bathe and change her and get clean clothes. It was about a 20 min. drive there. On the way back we passed a road that I recognized as coming out on the other route we took to church. So I exited the interstate, thinking going that way would cut off a little time spent sitting at traffic lights. It was “San Xavier Mission Road”. I’ve seen Spanish missions before and knew what to expect when I passed it. Sure enough, there was an old adobe building that they are working to renovate along with several other buildings and schools. We rounded the corner and came up over a hill an there, in the dark, was a Catholic graveyard spread before me. Tiny lights flickered from candles lit by living people for their dead relatives, in hopes that those people would get into heaven. It made me cry, not for the people who died in their darkness, though that was part of it, but for the living people continuing to live in that darkness, ever hoping that some deed will win them enough favor with God that they can get into heaven. As Christians we must carry Christ’s true light into this dark and dying world. Everywhere we go on deputation we see another place that is just as great a mission field as Uganda. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest”