Anna Hanninen
I’m grateful for the possibility given to me to write for the Tishrei Journal and to be able to share between the readers the matter God has laid on my heart very strongly. It concerns the distress of the poor and in many ways suffering children in different parts of the world. I know that this sad matter isn’t unknown for any of the readers of Tishrei Journal and many of you may have given much of your time and funds to this precious work and prayed for it. Definitely it is God’s will that it would touch every one of us who declare that we love God from all our hearts and our neighbour as ourselves. These little helpless children are most precious capital in the world and God’s frailest gifts for the cold world.
Even just a year back I personally looked at this problem like from a distance without it greatly disturbing my thoughts by day or causing sleepless nights. Now everything is otherwise. God in His love and mercy has influenced a change in me and I’m very grateful to Him that even at the end of my days I’ve been called to love and help at least some children to better life and to know their best friend Yeshua, the Good Shepherd.
God called me through two dream-revelations at some month intervals. They were not ordinary dreams that we see and forget at once, but they are still vivid and real before my eyes in my mind. In both of my dreams I saw different kinds of suffering, very shocking kind that children experience today. In the first dream I was looking only at the situation of one girl as a child slave in India and in the second one great number of hungry children in Africa. For lack of space I can’t tell more of what I saw. Always when I remember these dream-revelations of mine, tears are streaming from my eyes. You may think that in it isn’t anything special, if elderly women are moved to tears. However, I’ve experienced that God through these dreams filled my heart with special compassion for these abandoned and suffering children. Pity is one manifestation of love.
I challenge all of us, as readers of the Tishrei Journal, to close our eyes for a little while alone in silence and to allow our thoughts to move to the places, where millions of children live today; refuse dumps, sewers, stairways and dust bins are for them the homes we offer for them. By “us” I mean externally well doing body of Yeshua especially in the West, today’s followers of Yeshua, His disciples. What do we think Yeshua would say to us, if He lived still in the carnal body among us?
Already some time ago I read a following unforgettable true story from a newsletter of one missionary organization: In the slum area of one big city a mother had left her newborn baby naked in the midst of all untidiness by a roadside and walked away. There wasn’t anybody who would have felt pity for that baby. Perhaps it was too familiar everyday sight in that slum. Nearby happened to be a dog that had also newborn puppies. When it saw the baby, who was crying because of its coldness and hunger, with dog’s maternal instinct it understood the cause of crying. It moved with its puppies beside the baby and taught the baby to suck milk of its nipples like its own puppies. The dog warmed the baby with its body and fed it until some worker of a childcare organization being on a check trip in that slum noticed the baby with the dog and took the baby into her care.
When we put our own children, grand children and great grand children into warm and soft beds in the evening, kiss goodnight and play a CD telling about the Good Shepherd who loves children – so – may before our eyes rise picture of children who sleep in refuse dumps and sewers, perhaps in the best case a piece of cardboard as a mattress under them. They are to God as dear and precious as our own and close children. We remember, what was Yeshua’s attitude to children and what He said to His disciples, who were preventing mothers from bringing their children to Yeshua to be blessed by Him: Mathew 18:1–10, Mark 9:36–37 and 10:13– 16. We, today’s disciples of Yeshua, can also prevent children from coming to Him by having a negligent attitude towards them. We see that government members and leaders of the nations are unable and perhaps also unwilling to see to the children’s problem throughout the world.
My own experience has been that after receiving the call of the Lord to do what I can to help the children many doors opened before me soon after it. After answering just to the call of the Lord, “Yes”, He started to bless my ideas when going forward on the opened path that I experienced to be the path opened to me among many other ones. The Lord doesn’t expect from us other than that we give to His hands, for Him to bless what He has first given to us. The work is His. We remember how He blessed the 5 loaves and 2 fishes of the small boy for nourishment to thousands.
In India and Africa Tishrei ministry has already its own place. The ministry partners living in these countries, Pastor Lyson B. Moyo and Pastor J. Alan Robert Hitchin could inform us of their hopes and need of financial support to be able to fulfil their visions of the ministry centres within which would be also premises to AIDS orphans (and other homeless children) in Africa and in India for untouchable children salvaged from slums. It isn’t a question of only physical needs, but these children can be guided also to the Good Shepherd, Yeshua. Who knows what kind of vessels of blessing God will make of these children to the world. I have strong faith that if we all who are involved in Tishrei ministry in different ways will join our strength to help the suffering children, so God will give great blessing to come over the Tishrei ministry. This could be one additional sector besides what we already do when waiting the return of the Lord.
I think that I have received from the Lord the theme that I have shared with you, although through my imperfect vessel. May He through His Spirit speak straight to your hearts.
Greeting all of you with the love of Yeshua, our Messiah,
Your sister in Him
Anna Maria Hänninen from Finland
Anna has been a committed prayer partner for the Tishrei ministry for many years.
(This article was first published in the third series of Tishrei Journals, Number 7, December 2009)