Thirty minutes have passed since we reached the playground. Ate Hale made a couple of friends, and so did Chantry. You bet, if they’re Ate Hale’s friends, then they should also be Chantry’s friends!

Ate Hale leaped toward me showing excitement upon getting a new friend. She approached and asked, “Momma, can I borrow your phone? I wanna show my friend the song ‘Mary Did You Know’. I wanna tell her about Jesus. I wanna be a missionary!”

This is the second time I have heard from Ate Hale’s lips the word ‘missionary’. She has read it in her books. She has it in her lessons. But maybe she didn’t really mean what she said. She doesn’t know the challenges before the life of a missionary, so why should she even want to be one?

I gave her my phone. She hurried toward her friend and played the video of a girl who was singing ‘Mary Did You Know.’ As she showed the video to her friend, I saw her emphasizing the line and explaining what it meant. She said, “Jesus walked on water and never drowned! He died to save us from our sins” Then, she stated audibly to her friend the lines that followed as if emphasizing the importance of the message:

The blind will see,
The deaf will hear,
The dead will live again.

The lame will leap,
The dumb will speak,
The praises of the lamb.

I was gazing at them. Benumbed. My daughter introducing Jesus to her new friend?

That night when we were back into our abode, I asked her about the encounter. She told me the child didn’t know about Jesus and this was the first time she has heard about him. The child has never heard the name Jesus from her mother who was only standing nearby… So, presumably the family to which this child belongs to does not know who Jesus is—and if they do, maybe they only know him as a prophet…

Bible Verse

“Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.'” (Matt. 9:37)