Letters from Liz: Funke

Funke is one of the most beautiful people I know, but I'm afraid that the pictures may not do justice to the beauty that she exudes. She will never win a beauty contest. By the world's standards, she could just be at the bottom of the totem pole, but she's at the top of mine.

Not much is known about Funke, she had no home, no known family. No one knows her age or the day she was born. Funke can't speak, so even if she did know about her background, she couldn't tell us. She was found on the side of the street, and since that day as been part of the Jesus Kids family.

Several weeks ago, we had a birthday party for one of the girls, and we could see that Funke was quite jealous, but also upset that she didn't even know when her birthday was.

So we decided to have a surprise birthday party for her today. We started out, just like any normal Sunday morning, with singing and then a Bible lesson. We read to them from the Jesus Storybook Bible, which has such a great way of putting the Bible stories.

I love the way they write the story of the woman who anointed Jesus feet with oil from the alabaster jar. The book makes the parallel to Samuel the prophet in the Old Testament anointing David as King. But there was no prophet to anoint Jesus as king. Instead, God chose a woman and a renown sinner to be the one who would declare that he was the Lord. She understood her sin and came to the Lord for forgiveness, whereas the men that Jesus was seated with considered themselves to be pretty good people.

I had just finished reading to them and said, I want to also recognize another very special woman, and we are going to look at a book about her. I pulled out a photo album I had made, full of pictures of Funke with the rest of us. When she realized what was happening, she just started squealing with delight.