The Bible tells us this about love, “So we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16) In the very same epistle we find that Scriptures warn us with, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
James C. Hefley wrote an article titled, “White Man” to “God’s Man.”
When Wycliffe’s translator Doug Meland and his wife moved into a village of Brazil’s Fulnio Indians, he was referred to simply as “the white man.” The term was by no means complimentary, since other white men had exploited them, burned their homes and robbed them of their lands.
After Doug and his wife learned the Fulnio language and began to help the people with medicine and in other ways, they began calling Doug, “the respectable white man.”
When the Melands began adapting to some of the customs of the people, the Fulino gave Doug greater acceptance and spoke of him as “the white Indian.”
One day, as Doug was washing the dirty, bloodcaked foot of a very badly injured Fulnio boy, Doug overheard a bystander say to another: “Whoever heard of a white man washing an Indian’s foot before?’’ Washing feet to the Fulnio Indians was a very caring and humble gesture. Then the Fulino Indians started saying, “Certainly, this man is from God!” Not long after that, whenever Doug would go into an Indian home, it would be announced, “Here comes the man God sent us.” (Knights Treasury of 2,000 Illustrations)
Doug showed the necessity of showing love and support to a
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