Frank C. Laubach

My friend Steve loaned me the book Streams of Living Water by Richard J. Foster. I try to read a few pages everyday but with work and so much reading for school it's going to take a while to finish. In the book there is a story about Frank C. Laubach, he was a missionary educator in the Philippines during the 1920's and 30's. While living on the island of Mindanao he worked along side the Maranao people but had little success in educating them. Every evening he would climb Signal Hill to have alone time with God. These are his words of what happened on a December night in 1929.

One evening I was sitting on Signal Hill looking over the province that had me beaten. Tip (his dog) had his nose under my arm trying to lick the tears off my cheeks. My lips began to move and it seemed to me that God was speaking.
"My child" my lips said "you have failed because you do not really love these Moros. You feel superior to them because you are white. If you can forget you are an American and think only how I love them, they will respond."
I answered back to the sunset, "God, I don't know whether you spoke to me through my lips, but if you did, it was the truth...Drive me out of myself and come and take possession of me and think Thy thoughts in my mind..."
My lips spoke to me again: "If you want the Moros to be fair to your religion, be fair to theirs. Study their Koran with them."

Laubach climbed down the hill and told some local priests that he wanted to study their Koran and the next day his little cottage crowded with people each with a Koran under his arm.

He goes on to say "After that night on Signal Hill when God killed my racial prejudice and made me color-blind, it seemed as though He were working miracles at every turn" From this watershed experience two great pioneering efforts emerged- one internal and the other external- both inextricably bound together. The first explored the growth of the soul under God. The second involved the development of a literacy movement that eventually reached an estimated sixty million people.

My point in sharing this is; when we turn to God, listen, and take action , great things will happen.