Archive for the ‘Missions’ Category

Song stuck in my head (Missing Mexico)

September 30th, 2008

For the past several days, I’ve had a song stuck in my head. It goes something like this:
///Si tienes problemas, dile todo a el///
Cristo esta en la linea hoy

///Llamale, llamale, dile todo a el///
Cristo esta en la linea hoy

Rebekah and I spent a fair bit of time singing that song. She was teaching me some Spanish songs out of the old rancho songbook “Alabanzos el Rey.” It’s easy to learn and easy to get stuck in your head.
“///If you have problems, give them all to Him///
Jesus is the way today

///Speak to Him, Speak to Him, Give them all to Him///
Jesus is the way today

I went on a walk with John and Casandra this evening. It made me miss Mexico. I miss looking up and seeing the Milky Way every night. I miss Rebekah. I was remembering the walk we all took late one night. Elizabeth and Luis were walking the track as well, but it was mostly just Rebekah and Tonio and I.

It was dark and there weren’t streetlights like we have here. It was truly dark, real dark that you can almost taste. Rebekah and I were walking along hand in hand when Tonio jumped at us out of the brush in the center of the track. I was too surprised to react, but Rebekah jumped and squeezed my hand tighter. We all three walked on together–and Tonio decided to tell stories to pass the time. Of course, it was all in Spanish. The stories lost something in translation I think, but Rebekah (who was translating for me) was obviously getting a bit frightened. She might have been just starting to relax her grip when he got to another scary part, then she’d grab hold of my hand again.

I startled them a bit that night–singing and dancing in the dark. I can’t help it that I felt so free, so alive walking around that darkened track.

I miss it. It took me a while to get really Mexico home-sick, but it’s setting in now. I miss singing with Rebekah in the schoolroom. I miss family devotions and prayer time. I miss Tonio. I miss homemade tortillas. I miss the sky and the air. I miss the boys from the rehabilitation center. I miss hearing Spanish all the time.

My experience in Mexico seems to have faded into the background as I’ve dived back in to grad school and work. Nothing “momentous” occurred in Mexico. Just lots of moments–moment after moment. Talking with Rebekah in the schoolroom. Trusting God for how to teach. Flirting with Berto (just the tiniest bit). Getting ice cream at the plaza when I had no idea what I was buying. Trying out my Spanish on some unsuspecting person. Teaching and being translated. Hugs and “hermanas”. The heat of the day and the cool of the night. Tunas from the peddler that goes door to door. Visitors daily, new people to meet. Girl talk. Dressing up to go out on the town.

I miss those moments. I miss Mexico. Maybe someday, I’ll go back.

Category: Following Christ, Missions, Reflections ◊ Comment (1)

Mexico Monday (a day late): 10 years ago

September 9th, 2008

Ten years ago, I made my first trip to Mexico. We traveled to Jaumave, where we painted a village church. A few years later, a massive storm sent water running through the wooden structure, causing the wood to rot. This is a picture of the rebuilt church.
church with block foundation

Ten years ago, on our way down or up (I can’t remember), we stayed at a place called “Way of the Cross”. I remember sitting in the white benches outside the building.
white benches outside building
I remember singing our trip theme song “Down at Your Feet, O Lord” around an electric piano in the chapel.
chapel
When we stayed at Way of the Cross on our way back up to Laredo this time, the chapel and other buildings had sustained damage from Hurricaine Dolly and were in a state of disrepair.

There have been many changes in the ten years since I first visited Mexico. Some have been good, some have been bad. One thing is certain, Mexico is in need of still more laborers. Pray that the Lord of the harvest would send laborers into His harvest.

Category: Missions, Reflections ◊ Comments (0)

Mexico Monday: State of the Unions

September 1st, 2008

Several years ago, while I was praying, I saw a vision of walls surrounding the church. The walls were broken and crumbling, threatening to fail completely. God spoke to me that the walls represented marriages in our church–and that I needed to intercede, to literally “stand in the gap” for the marriages in our body. By God’s grace, many of the marriages that had been struggling during that time are now strong and many of the gaps have been rebuilt.

During my month-long stay in Mexico, I had an opportunity to “survey the walls” so to speak. I discovered that, at least in Jaumave, things are not well in the church, because things are not well in many marriages. Mexico is greatly in need of people who will stand in the gap for marriages.

While I was in Mexico, Jim and Caroline spent many hours counseling and praying with Manuel. Manuel’s wife, Lupe, recently took up with another man and has been threatening to leave Manuel for the other man. She has used the threat of leaving as a way to control her husband–if he attempts to discipline their daughters or enforce any boundaries whatsoever, she tells him she’ll leave. As a result, Manuel and Lupe’s five daughters run wild–the older ones introducing their very young sisters to much older men. The entire family is in turmoil. Manuel struggles with giving up hope. He struggles to be head of his home. Lupe openly rebels against God and her husband. The daughters pit father against mother, and do whatever they please. The church–seven individuals–is in peril because of the breakup of a marriage. Manuel and Lupe need people who will stand in the gap and help to rebuild the wall.

Tonio, the sixteen (now seventeen) year old boy who lived with us, was married via a shotgun wedding at age 14. He hasn’t seen his wife in at least a year, hasn’t seen his baby girl grow up. He’s growing in Christ–and that means he’s in a really tough spot. He alternates between crying over his wife and his baby girl and claiming that they mean nothing to him. He’s not sure if the marriage was legal–but he’s not sure that it wasn’t. He’s a sixteen year old boy–he gets crushes and has girls with crushes on him. He’s also married. Or at least, he might be. Tonio has to wrestle with what he is to do about his past, with what was done before he became a believer. Tonio needs wisdom to know how to proceed–how to mend his section of the wall.

Santiago started coming to church and to Jim and Caroline’s couples’ Bible Study alone. He and his wife were separated–the children lived with her. The group of couples started praying, and one Sunday Monica and the children showed up at church! Santiago and Monica and their two youngest came to visit us during my last week there. I enjoyed coloring with their little boys, but even more, I enjoyed the obvious testimony being played out before me. Santiago and Monica are seeking God together and God is rebuilding their marriage–and expanding their family. Monica is due anytime. By God’s grace, He is rebuilding the wall.

I gave three examples, but the trend reaches far beyond. Broken families abound. A man marries a new woman without obtain a legal divorce from his first wife. Couples move in together without getting married. A woman takes off to a different town with most of her children–she leaves one nine year old daughter behind. Young girls marry much older men as a way to escape the mountain villages. Daughters engage in prostitution. Adultery, fornication, bigamy, abandonment. And this in the church. The walls around the Mexican church are in desperate straits.

May the church respond as Nehemiah did when he received the report that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down. “So it was when I heard these words, that I sat down a wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.” (Neh 1:4) Nehemiah fasted and prayed. He mourned over Jerusalem. Eventually, he went to Jerusalem–to survey the wall for himself and to rally the people to rebuild it. I pray that God will raise up from among us Nehemiahs, who will pray and fast for the Mexican church–and some who will go and help to rebuild the wall. Please join me in praying for laborers to enter this field.

Category: Missions ◊ Comments (0)

Mexico Monday: Rebekah’s Curriculum

August 25th, 2008

I have a hundred things to say about Mexico, but life isn’t stopping here to let me say them all. So I’m introducing a new feature: Mexico Mondays. I will be sharing a snippet from my Mexico adventures every Monday for the next however long. So tune in to hear what God did in me and others in July/August of 2008.

I’ve always thought it would be cool to be a teacher. It was on my list of top three career choices during high school. I’ve read up on it–probably way too much. But even more than being a teacher, I wanted to be a HOMESCHOOL teacher. After all, an ordinary teacher is limited by all sorts of things–government standards, boards of education, time, curriculum, and on and on. A homeschool teacher, on the other hand, can do it all. She can write her own curriculum should she so choose, she can set her own schedule, she can mix and match and have fun while she’s at it.

I’ve read a dozen dozen books on homeschooling, and taken notes on them all. I’ve read about the Classical education, the Montessori method, the Charlotte Mason method, the unschooling approach. I’ve read about homeschooling preschoolers, kindergartners, elementary aged children, middle-schoolers, and high schoolers. I’ve read about homeschooling certain subjects, about creating unit studies, about taking care of paperwork. And I’ve absorbed the ideas. For years and years, I’ve soaked up homeschooling theories, methods, and ideas.

But I’ve never really had a chance to put them into practice. Until last month, that is. Because last month, I went to Mexico to homeschool Rebekah. I arrived having no idea what grade she was in or what level she would be at. Because she’s fourteen and I’d been told she was behind, I guestimated that she would be somewhere between fifth and seventh grade. So my reading directly prior to going was focused on that stage–the transition from “learning the rules” (grammar stage) to “thinking through things” (logic stage). I arrived to discover that I was on the wrong track entirely.

The first day I was there, I got out the many books I had brought along and Rebekah and I started reading together. I quickly discerned that I was not dealing with a fifth to seventh grade student. Rebekah’s reading was halting. She was having a hard time decoding–just figuring out what the words said. She was definitely not ready to start thinking about what the words MEANT (looking at themes and literary devices and the like). I scaled down my expectations, prayed for wisdom, and started in.

Within the first few days, I learned some important things about my student. At fourteen years old, she is very self-conscious and afraid of being thought of as a child. Being behind in school only increases her nervousness. Unfortunately, that meant that she was scared to even put pencil to paper for fear that she would spell something incorrectly. She would rather guess at an unfamiliar word than sound it out, because she thought sounding out was a “baby thing”. She was desperately perfectionist–wanting everything to be perfect before she put it down on paper. She continually searched for my approval before answering any questions.

The first thing I did, to help her to overcome her fear of writing, was sit her down to do copywork. I opened the Bible to a passage and had her copy it out. Thus, she had a chance to work on her writing, to see how words are spelled correctly, and to see what some of the conventions of grammar are. The copywork served its purpose within the first few days, and then she grew frustrated with it. She thought it took too much time.

In the other subjects, which I was piecing together as I went, I started at too high of a level. I was discovering holes here and there and everywhere–and having to backtrack to cover them. But both her and I seemed to be getting frustrated at starting on one thing and then backtracking. Rebekah seemed bored with the schoolwork we were doing–yet it wasn’t because it was too easy. On the contrary, it was still above her level.

I wrote in my journal–”She’s bored with school work, Lord–what shall I do? Give me wisdom…” And God led me to Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”

I trusted God, and He provided. The next day, we began our new program. I shared with Rebekah what God had been speaking to me–then she did her journalling. We did math from a text–She played around with a mosaic while I read her a chapter from a book. We went over history–She taught me some songs in Spanish. We did spelling practice at the chalkboard–She reviewed her multiplication tables. She read from a book and answered questions about it. We played Yahtzee. We went back and forth, switching it up all the time. And it kept her interested for a few days. We tried a brief experiment with doing Hooked on Phonics–she wanted to do that instead of reading the book I’d picked (Mary Poppins). She changed her mind about doing Hooked on Phonics after she learned that I would not give her the answers.

She would continue to get frustrated with me when she would ask me if a certain answer is correct and I would return the question to her. “Well, does that answer the question?” I would ask. “If that’s the answer, then that’s what you should write down.” Initially, she took my response as a negative–that her answer wasn’t correct. So she’d try to ask me about something else. After a while though, I think she caught what I was doing. Then she started to tell me “I was just asking! There’s nothing wrong with asking.” And there wasn’t. I just wanted her to learn how to determine whether her own answers were right or wrong. Or, on other occasions, I wanted her to learn to sound out unfamiliar words instead of just telling her what the word was.

Those are the things you can’t learn about teaching from a book on homeschooling–or on pedagogy of any kind. I’ve studied learning styles and teaching techniques. I’ve studied material galore. I’ve read a thousand articles and hundreds of books. But they can’t tell you what individual issues you’ll come up against in the child you’re teaching. They can’t tell you about the heart issues behind behavioral issues. They can’t teach you about the passions that stay guarded. Only God can do that.

And by God’s grace, He opened my eyes to some of those issues as time went by. I discovered that my method of teaching history and science was a complete failure. It went in one ear and out the other. So God led me to do it differently. I discovered that I COULD NOT explain place values to Rebekah–despite trying for several hours (over the course of several days), I could not make it clear. Once I finally came to the end of myself, God told me how to teach–and she got it. She was writing extended form up to hundred thousands without aids after 20 minutes.

A new book, an abridged version of Jane Eyre, fell into our laps and we started reading it. Rebekah discovered her first favorite book. She has already read it over several times. A coincidence? I don’t think so. It was God’s grace. I opened an English text as I was sorting through the supplies that were there and discovered that it was just at the right level for Rebekah–and it was comprehensive enough to catch her up on all the grammar and writing stuff she hasn’t been doing.

When I arrived, Rebekah was a halting reader struggling with decoding and could only read out loud. When I left she was confidently reading silently. When I arrived, Rebekah was afraid to put pencil to paper because her spelling was so awful. By the time I left, she could write a page on a topic–with only two or three spelling errors. When I arrived, Caroline had all but given up on educating her daughter–she was exhausted, frustrated, and overwhelmed by the task. When I left, she felt she had a system that she could continue with despite the many distractions of their life in Mexico.

All this happened in four short weeks. Was it me? No way–I can’t accomplish that much. Maybe I am a good teacher–but I can’t take a student from a second/third grade reading level to a fourth/fifth grade reading level in a months time. Only God can do that. He made my time in Mexico more fruitful than I could have imagined. I am overwhelmed by the greatness of God.

Sidenote: I intended to tell you all about the curriculum I (by God’s grace) eventually set up for Rebekah–you know, what I actually ended up doing with all that homeschooling knowledge. But I got sidetracked by the greatness of God. I suppose that’s okay. But maybe someday I’ll tell you about the “curriculum”. ‘Cause I’m pretty excited about that too.

Category: Education, Missions ◊ Comments (0)

Hit the ground running

August 24th, 2008

I’m home from Mexico, but I don’t have time for culture shock of any type. The pace has picked up and I’ve been running since I arrived. Only 10 hours after I returned to Lincoln (in the dead of the night), I had my first meeting. It has been meeting, work, errands, and business e-mails ever since.

Perhaps the whole thing might not have been so bad–except that I arrived home to find myself without internet access. The addition my parents are building onto their house had necessitated the removal of the directional antenna that was supplying wireless internet access to my home. So, a month’s worth of business that had been undone had to remain undone. I turned out not too much worse for the wear–I only missed the first hour and a half of a mandatory internship meeting because I was relying on memory instead of the e-mail to tell me what time it started at. Oops! But now that I have internet again (Thank you Dad!), I have been franticly catching up. E-mail Northern Illinois University to tell them I won’t be enrolling. (They sent me my acceptance letter on July 29–after I’d already left for Mexico. I haven’t had any opportunity to reply before now.) E-mail my classmate to thank her for going through the agenda of the missed meeting with me. E-mail some photos back to Mexico. Pay my student loans on-line (except that they won’t let me pay my loan online because I am entering my deferment period tomorrow, 3 days before the payment is due.) With that done, I can focus on catching up on my favorite blogs–and updating my own.

Of course, that’s assuming that I will have time at my disposal. Today I skipped the “Big Red Welcome Street Fair” to do some online stuff, but I can’t do too much skipping in the upcoming week. Tomorrow, I begin my first day of classes as a graduate student–and my first day of work as a opening servery person. I’m not too worried about the classes (except for seminar) in this first week. Work tomorrow is a whole ‘nother matter. First of all, I’ve never opened servery before–and I understand it’s a pretty rushed job. Second, I just got home from Mexico and while I haven’t had to deal with jetlag, my bio-clock is definitely a bit off–which makes a 6:30 am position a little scary. Lord, give grace.

WARNING: GRAPHIC (but not pornographic) CONTENT AHEAD. FEEL FREE TO SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.

All the running and busyness probably wouldn’t be so bad, except that my body chose re-entry into the United States as a chance to reassert itself. It handled the chiles and lard of Mexico just fine, but almost the minute we crossed the border at the beginning of this week, my GI system rebelled. I don’t know if I had some food poisoning a couple of days before we left, or if the water that I rinsed my toothbrush under once we got into the states had something in it, or what–but I am definitely adjusting. My stomach starts churning, and I find myself praying that it’ll rest at least ’til the meeting’s over or my shopping’s done. So, if you want to pray for my trip–pray that traveling mercies will extend beyond the trip and that I’ll shake whatever this is quickly.

END GRAPHIC CONTENT.

I’ve heard talk of culture shock after even just a week in another nation, but I haven’t really experienced it after a month. The typical things I hear–shock at America’s excesses, anger at American’s insensitivity, etc–haven’t really affected me. I saw poverty, sure. I saw a lot of differences. But I don’t feel shock or upset over them. I find that I can easily transition from one world to another. In Mexico, I had enough clothing for a week. Here in America, I have enough clothing for a semester. In Mexico, I had access to a television. In Lincoln, I have no access to TV (and am never bothered by it.) I just ignored the TV as much as possible in Mexico. Here, I have makeup. I didn’t bring any with me to Mexico. There, I woke up when the sun or the dogs or the roosters woke me up. Here, my computer wakes me up playing worship music. There, I had only one task, without a rigid schedule–teach Rebekah. Here, I have a hundred tasks, all with strict timetables. Either one works. Yes, there’s the physical adjustment. The body has to deal with different eating, sleeping, working schedules. But psychologically? I don’t feel culture shock. Either place and situation works fine for me.

Maybe I’ve been blessed with the ability to be content in any culture. Maybe I’m perfectly suited to short-term missions. Maybe I was born to be a world traveler. Or maybe I haven’t slowed down long enough for culture shock to hit.

Category: Education, Everyday Life, Missions ◊ Comment (1)

Seis de Enero

August 8th, 2008

Yesterday, we took the day off of school and went to a mountain village named Seis de Enero (the Sixth of January). The church there is the first the family planted after arriving in Jaumave. Jim and Caroline pastored there for many years before handing the church over to another couple four years ago.

We picked up a hitchhiker on the way there–an old man who wanted a ride to San Lorenzito from Jaumave. We stopped halfway for a picnic, where we “visited the Oxxo”–a euphemism similar to “visiting Mrs. Murphy” (for those of you Cheaper by the Dozen lovers out there. Take a wad of toilet paper, find a convenient ravine where you won’t be seen. Do your business.)

When we did arrive, we sat in the church and visited for an hour or so before the service began. I got to meet an old man named Elefino, who has many awesome testimonies–bit by a rattlesnake just a week after he had been saved, he survived a five hour wait for medical treatment and is living today, ten years later. I shook hands and “Dios le bendiga”‘d the entire congregation, causing some children to hide their faces in their hands as I came by. My, but they were cute.

Caroline had gone off to talk to a friend, but we started the service without her. One person after another came up to lead the singing–they hadn’t had a service for a month and they were eager to worship. It was at least 40 minutes before the worship time ended. Elefino got up to share a dream he’d had–straight from the book of Revelation–a dream of Christ coming back for His people. A dream of Jesus saying He was coming quickly, at which Elefino, in his dream, fell on his face and said “Amen. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.” The dream is even more spectacular when you learn that Elefino has never read the book of Revelation–he couldn’t have because he can’t read. Another woman leads in more songs. A man stands up and sings some songs he wrote about Jim and Caroline–and about the missionaries from Grand Island who lost their lives in an accident on the mountains just days after sharing the gospel with the village of Seis de Enero. Jim is crying. A dog wanders up the center aisle and the woman who led singing earlier shoo’s him away.

Someone asks Caroline and I to sing, and we oblige, forcing Rebekah (who was quite unwilling) to come up and sing with us. We sing the songs Rebekah has been teaching me during our breaks at la escuela (school). Caroline accompanies us on the guitar. The entire congregation gets up and stands at the front of the church to sing us another song–this time they’re singing one I recognize. I quickly find “When the roll is called up yonder” in my “Alabanzas al Rey”–my songbook–and sing along with.

I share a five minute or so talk on hygiene–all about germs that cause colds and diarrhea, and how to avoid them. I teach the people about sneezing into their sleeve, about using a clean handkerchief, about washing their hands with soap after sneezing or coughing or using the restroom. They ask me to share about nutrition too–so I give them the very basics. What you need is fruits and vegetables, grains, and something with protein–eggs, beans, meat. The village people don’t have much education. They don’t know about these things we consider so elementary. They think that chips and a Coke make a good meal for their children. They just don’t know. I doubt my ten minutes had much impact, but I can hope and pray. They certainly listened intently–and even asked questions, particularly about preventing diarrhea. I tried to keep my message simple, but I still feel like I packed a lot of stuff into a very short talk.

Tonio shared his testimony and the congregation was riveted. I wished I understood Spanish better so I could hear it. I’ve only heard the most abbreviated version from Caroline and Jim.

Jim finally got up to preach and Caroline to interpret. We’d only been in the service a couple of hours or so by that point. He abbreviated his message terribly, but it still took a half an hour to forty-five minutes. We made our way out of the village as the sun was going down. I got some glorious pictures on the way back–sunset and the mountains, looking down over the valleys. Maybe I’ll post them when I get back. Currently, I’m doing all I can to adjust to the Spanish language and to the different keyboard.

Category: Missions ◊ Comments (0)

Here´s wishing I didn´t do my own HTML

August 8th, 2008

Mexican keyboards aren´t that incredibly different than American ones. The alphabet is all in the same places–with an ñ thrown in where the colon/semicolon should be. But the characters? All over the place. The dash that is ever present in my writing is located where the back slash should be–which means the back slash is up on the top line after the 0–which is also where the question mark is located. The semicolon is with the comma; the colon is with the period. The carats that open and close html script are located underneath the a–in the place where the shift key generally lies–the shift is shifted a bit over.

Why am I typing on a Mexican keyboard? I can hear you ask.

I am on a Mexican keyboard because a friend just happened to bring us a virus on his flash drive. It knocked out our laptop, leaving us computer-less. So I’m sitting in a Mexican “chat room” paying a whopping 10 pesos (1 dollar) an hour for the privilege of figuring out the Mexican keyboard.

I think it’s easier to just copy and paste my commands. It’s too much work to do anything else.

Category: Computers, Missions ◊ Comment (1)

You Asked

August 5th, 2008

You asked for pictures of what I’ve been eating. And I’m pleased to oblige. Yesterday, for breakfast, I enjoyed this:

Oatmeal with raisins

So that probably wasn’t what you were thinking of when you asked for pictures. But I did indeed have oatmeal with milk and raisins for breakfast yesterday. Caroline heard that I enjoyed oatmeal, so she served some up. What a blessing!

Besides that, I’ve been eating high off the hog–a friend in Laredo is about ready to travel deep into Mexico for language school, so she emptied her freezer and gave it to us. Which means we’ve been eating steak and hamburgers and shrimp–not to mention the Denny’s breakfast sausage that we’re absolutely rolling in. Biscuits and gravy, omelets with sausage, fried eggs and sausage. You name it, we’ve enjoyed it.

The more “traditional” Mexican foods have included enchiladas and tacos. I’ve also had some tunis, a Mexican fruit somewhat similar to a pomegranate–except that it comes from a cactus. I do have pictures of these meals–but it’ll take more work than I want to take to find them. So, I’m sorry, you’ll just have to look at oatmeal!

Category: Everyday Life, Home, Missions ◊ Comment (1)

The Lost Boys of Mexico

August 3rd, 2008

When some Mexican boys get to a certain age–generally twelve to fourteen–their mother’s can no longer discipline them and they begin to run wild. All too often, they turn to drugs and alcohol. They join gangs and take part in all that lifestyle offers.

These boys are lost–lost to their families, lost to decent society, lost from the kingdom of God. One might think–and many of these boys, angry, think–that no one cares for them. But there is One who, counting His precious sheep, discovers that some are missing.

And that One moves on the heart of men like Oswaldo and Danny. And, as His servants, they head out to find and recover the lost boys.

At least twenty such boys live at Quin Ler–what we call “the rehabilitation center.” It’s a drug rehab center and a place of ministry. Un lugar donde Dios te da la mano–an inscription on the wall states–A place where God gives to you His hand. The mural accompanying the inscription shows a huge hand from heaven reaching down to touch a tattoed hoodlum.

God reaches down His hand to touch the lives of these formerly lost boys through the ministry of this place.

Twice, I have had the opportunity to view a drama put on by the lost boys and their sisters. In it, one young person after another describes how they came to join the gang to which they all belong. Horrible things from their childhood. Being forgotten. Seeking a place to belong.

A young man comes in–he is beaten–but eventually is welcomed into their gang. Another man comes in with tracts–sharing Christ. They threaten him and eventually chase him off. The gang leader’s little brother saunters up, book in hand, wearing school clothes. He wants to leave school to join the gang. He wants to be like his big brother. The leader tells his brother No–He must stay in school, make something of his life.

At that moment, a rival gang bursts onto the scene, guns firing. When the smoke and dust clears, the little boy is dead.

Broken-hearted, the gang leader cradles his little brother in his arms and cries. One by one, the gang members share their thoughts. “I though it would be exciting. I thought it would be fine. And now I’ve become a part of this little boy’s death.” “The faces of my aborted children haunt my sleep.” “I see now the worthlessness of this life, but what can I do? I’m an addict. I’m a school dropout. My family will never accept me back.”

Perhaps their families will not, but there is One who waits with open arms for the lost boys of Mexico to return.

Please pray for the ministry of Quin Ler and other ministries that offer the hand of God to the lost boys. Pray that they would speak the truth in love. Pray for the body of Christ in Mexico that they would have God’s heart for these boys–that they would not judge and point fingers–but that they would open their arms to welcome these boys in.

Pray for the boys at Quin Ler–that they would come face to face with God. Pray that they would experience God’s forgiveness–and that they would experience deliverance from the drugs and alcohol that hold them tightly. Pray that they would be wholehearted towards God–not standing with one foot in this world and one foot in the kingdom of God. Pray that they would get serious with God.

Pray for Antonio, who is living with us, that he would grow mature in the faith–not a child but a man. Pray that he would love the Word of God. Pray that he would have discernment as he enters Bible school later this year, that he would hear the voice of God and not follow the voice of the stranger. Pray that he would have wisdom and boldness to deal with his past.

And pray that, in every place where the lost boys are, they would be found.

Category: Missions ◊ Comments (0)

Time for an upgrade

August 3rd, 2008

I sat down for a moment waiting for the shower to be free. Rebekah said “You should wear your hair down today. It’s so pretty when it’s down.” I dutifully put it into a bun so it wouldn’t get wet in the shower. If I washed it, it wouldn’t be dry in time for church–and the pretty waves from yesterday’s braid would be gone.

I walked back through the living room after my shower. “Is that the only skirt you have?” Rebekah asked. Apparently I wore the same one to church last week. “Do you ever wear long jean skirts?” she asked. I said that I have in the past, although I don’t own one right now. She has a jean skirt, she said, but it probably wouldn’t fit me. I took the hint and offered to try it on. It fit–so I’m now wearing a jean skirt and have my wavy hair hanging free.

“Don’t you have any dress shoes?” I do, just not here. I thought books were a higher priority than shoes on the trip down. Shoes take up so much room–so I have only tennis shoes, flip-flops, and a pair of lightweight old shoes to wear if we go to the river. Much to Rebekah’s disappointment, she could not fix my shoe situation. My feet are much to big for me to borrow any of her shoes. She conceded that the flip-flops are the best choice, for what I have available.

“Do you ever wear makeup?” Yes, I do. Pretty regularly when I’m at home, actually. But once again, I had to pay attention to my priorities in packing. I had a weight limit–40 lbs for the carry-on, 50 lbs for the checked baggage. I had size limits–my luggage had to fit within certain dimensions. And there’s the government’s rules about carry-on liquids, gels, and the like having to fit within a quart sized Ziploc bag. Oh, and there was that little thing about bringing books. Books got me awfully close to the weight limits on both pieces of luggage; hand sanitizer and medications got me close to the limit on the liquids. Makeup just didn’t fit into the equation.

“I have makeup. Maybe some eyeliner?” I hated to let her down, but with my allergies and the hypersensitivity of my eyes to developing infections, I just knew that wouldn’t be an option.

I showed her some pictures this morning on Facebook–wanted to introduce her to my family. She saw my “Posh Spice” pictures and said wistfully, “You wear such pretty dresses in the pictures.”

Rebekah loves beauty and places such great store in looking good. I almost feel bad that I didn’t bring along more “pretty” stuff. Maybe it is time for an upgrade. But then again, maybe not. I’m here to teach, not to be look good. Brains are more valuable than beauty in this instance. And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t harm Rebekah to see that the externals–makeup and clothing–aren’t what make a woman great, but that greatness is found in knowing God.