Gito

When God let the Good Samaritan message burn in my heart, He told me, “Heidi, I want you to stop for them all.” It was a prophetic statement. When I first arrived in Mozambique, I was on my own. Rolland was finishing writing his doctoral thesis. I went out with a one-way ticket and no possessions. After two days I ran out of money. I was sitting alone on the curbside, wondering what to do, and God met with me there and told me, “This is where I have sent you. You are going to see revival here, and all I want you to do is stop for the one.”

So that is all I did. I didn’t have some strategic plan for how to reach the city by 20XX. I didn’t have it all figured out in my mind. All I knew was God had told me to stop for the one. He told me, “Heidi, I want you to see. I want the passion I put inside you to be so full that compassion flows out of you.” So I began to sit with the poor and pick up little children and love them.

One day I picked up Gito. Gito had been beaten and raped and was dying there on the street. He was a skinny little kid who had been violated, abused and left for dead. He was dying on the road under a flyby, and I sat with him and held him in my arms and loved him. He had AIDS. I held him in my arms and said, “Come home with me, Gito.”

His was the face of revival.

There was no snazzy plan, no slick brochures. Later, God totally healed Gito of AIDS. We received the negative tests back from the doctor. There are thousands more orphans like Gito. They are the face of revival. Jesus said,

“Whatever you do to the least of these you do to me” (see Matthew 25:40).

I have seen the face of Jesus in the faces of the street children. I have seen His eyes looking at me through their eyes.

When you stop for one person like Gito and pour the compassion of God into him and tell him he is adopted, it has a dramatic effect on him. Many others on the road are bleeding, desperate and dying, yet they are well-dressed. They work in banks and offices; they attend universities. They do not look poor. They look affluent, but they are wretched, naked and dying. Can you see them?

Excerpted from Reckless Devotion by Heidi & Rolland Baker, Copyright © 2014, Chosen Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Used with permission.