Hi, my name is Rick Martin, and I’m a missionary in the Philippines. I’ve been there for a long time. When I first went there, I didn’t have the right attitude toward public officials. I thought every country is corrupt; they all want your money. They want to hurt you. There is some truth to that; there are some people. But I’ve found that most public officials in our country want to work with you, and if you will reach out to them and do that, they’ll respond after a while.
We started having Police Appreciation Day out in our city. The first time we did that, being a foreigner, I felt kind of weird doing that, but we did that, and they liked it. We started doing it every year. Now they are such a help; they allow us to go into every precinct in our city and teach the Bible to the men, to the officers. A year ago Christmas, we had a police officer bring 276 visitors to our Christmas musical.
They are just so helpful. They are just such a great blessing to our church. We do programs with them. We’ve reached out to the Fire Department. We’ve worked with the Social Services there. We have a lot of people who have fires in our city, who have problems in our city. Anytime there is a tragedy, we just try to go help the best way that we can. Now instead of worrying about what they think, they’re an asset, not a liability. We love them and thank God for them. A lot of them have been saved. We thank God for our mayor. He’s a good man who loves our church. We invite him to our church when he can come.
Just reach out to them and try to think of ways that you can use to be a blessing to them, and normally they’ll respond. As with the general public and all the other people in your city, you should love them like Jesus did. Just ask God to help you love them and find ways to be a blessing.
I’ve found that if you will find out what people’s problems are and try to help them with them, then they’ll help you if your motive is right.