Father Damien was a Belgian missionary in Hawaii. Hard place right? Back about 150 years ago, he began to plant churches on the island of Molokai. He planted several churches on the main part of the island, but there is another part that nobody ever went to, willingly. It's a small Peninsula that juts out north from the island and is separated from the rest of the Molokai by an almost sheer cliff 2,000-3,000 feet high. The only ways to get to that peninsula were to jump off the cliff or go by boat in the open ocean. That deserted peninsula was where the Hawaiians abandoned all their lepers, If you got leprosy in Hawaii, you were taken to this peninsula and abandoned. And Father Damien felt a call to the people there who had been cast off, outcasts removed from society. And he worked there just as he had done on the rest of the island. He built a church with his own hands and helped them build a society - even helping them build houses for themselves - and he lived among them and sought to humbly serve them in any way he could. One day, after he had been there for about 15 years, he was cooking a meal and boiling some water when he spilled the water and it hit his foot. And he realized that there was no pain when it hit. So he tried again. He purposely poured the boiling water on his foot, and there was no pain. That could only mean one thing. He now had leprosy. The next Sunday in church as he began to lead the people in worship, he didn't give his normal greeting. You see, every Sunday he would start, "My fellow believers." But this Sunday he began, "My fellow lepers." He had in every way become one of them. Even taking upon himself their greatest pain.