In the last couple of Saturdays, I attended a leadership class prepared by Suzanne Duppong, a missionary from JEAME, the non-profit organization I’ve been working with.

Suzy, as we call her, has worked for 31 years reaching for the needy and preaching the Word of God in slums, state shelters, and in the streets, seeking for children and teenagers in need, usually those who are somehow involved with drug addiction.

Even though the class I’m attending is technical, to prepare us to be social project leaders, she also shares stories. Stories of amazing things that God has done in her life and also to reach those lost young ones.

She expresses the love she has for the “little ones” (as Jesus called them) in many ways. Sometimes, explicitly in words; sometimes in expressions of joy when she tells of a single one of them that has decided to accept the Lord Jesus as their Savior and go to a rehab clinic to recover from their drug addiction; sometimes in her indignation on the way they are treated as outcasts, ignored by society and mistreated by the system that should protect them.

Coincidently, last Friday I was reviewing testimonies that will be available on the new JEAME’s web site I am currently working on it (it will go live in a couple of weeks). There were so many touching stories. People that had no hope, and found Jesus. People had no idea what love was all about until they were loved by the missionaries.

Many of the people who wrote the testimonies eventually became pastors or missionaries themselves. Now, many of them share their own stories with the ones that are going through the same situation.

If you believe that people can’t change, you should meet these people. They are the living proof of how God can completely restore a person from being a drug-addicted criminal, and turn them into a new person, who wants to do only good to others, who want to help others find the way as they did.

And as I heard Suzy’s stories and read the testimonies, one thing caught my attention. What is it that touches the lives of those lost people and opens their ears to hear what people like Suzy and other missionaries have to say about Jesus? It’s LOVE.

Love is what touches the hearts of the boys and girls that are so lost. Most of them don’t even know what love really is. But they start seeing God’s love in action through the love that the missionaries show them.

It’s not about what the missionaries preach, it is about what they do.

And that is a life lesson for me.

I may speak beautiful words, but that’s nothing if I don’t act what I preach.

Those kids observe before they start listening. And if they don’t see it, they won’t even bother listening.

My actions speak way louder than my words.

I have to live the love that I preach about: God’s love. If I do that, most of my preaching will be already done.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)