The Mother Teresa of Cairo Touched My Heart

Jasper Speaks:

I had the pleasure of attending The Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit this week. It was challenging. The speakers were great. One touched my heart and challenged me to the point that I am still trying to figure out all that God is telling me as a result. Her name is Mama Maggie Gobran and she works with the poorest children of Cairo. She was soft spoken and humble and the most challenging speaker I have heard in a long time. Here are some quotes:

• We don’t choose where to be born but we choose to be sinners or saints.
• We choose whether to be a nobody or a hero.
• If you want to be a hero do what God wants you to do.
• 25 years ago I heard my “tough call.”
• When God wanted to promote me, He sent me to the poorest of the poor.
• Everyone who carries the fragrance of eternity has to experience the dark valley of death.
• To be elegant comes from the inside.
• True love is to give and forgive, to give until it hurts.
• Forgiveness is not between you and another, forgiveness is between you and God. God holds our accounts.
• We are forgiven much but live so little.
• With God’s grace I left everything and found Him waiting for me with a crown of love.
• When you die to yourself you discover the beauty and power in yourself.
• Who are the poorest of the poor? The children.
• Children are hungry and starving for bread but also for love and affection.
• When one has nothing God becomes everything
• When I touch a poor child, I touch Jesus Christ. When I listen to a poor child, I’m listening to God’s heart beating for all humanity.
• We build a church in the heart of every child we reach in a country where it’s not always possible to build a church.
• Silence is the secret
• To be in silence is to be fully inside your own self.
• It’s not easy, but there you discover the taste of eternity.
• The Kingdom is within you.
• The silence is the secret – the first step – to finding treasure.
• There are secrets in silence.
• Silence your body to listen.
• Silence your tongue to listen to your thoughts.
• Silence your thoughts to listen to your heart beating.
• Silence your heart to listen to your spirit.
• Silence your spirit to listen to His Spirit.
• In silence you leave many and be with the One.
• If God has chosen me, believe me when I say I’m the least of any of you here.
  
  I am still not sure all God is telling me but I have spent two of the last four weeks of my life among the poor and God is quietly speaking to my heart.