My eight week Sabbatical ended with a bang and what wonderful ending! For those who want to wade through all the words that follow, here is a summary of my first week off Sabbatical (or last week before going back to my secretarial job).
Saturday:
On August 13 a group of 20 of us left from BWI and headed to El Paso and from their drove to Chihuahua, Mexico for a week of ministry. It was a very different trip from others our church has participated in. For one thing, the majority of the group was women. Seven brave men accompanied thirteen of us ladies. We were met at the airport by Lisa, wife of the pastor of Capilla Calvario and Heather, wife of the head of the LightShine program. Ater a stop in New Mexico to pick up some packages that had been shipped ahead, we headed to the border and all received our visas with no problems. However, there was a problem with paperwork for one of the vans so it was decided that that van would return to El Paso to correct that problem and one van would continue to Chihuahua. Those of us who had been part of a mission trip before elected to return so that most of those new to Mexico would not miss the church service the next day in case we were not able to cross the border that night. Happily, we were able to correct the problem and cross the border two hours later, arriving at the Ministry House very tired but happy at 3:00 am. Since Mexico is two hours behind us, that meant that most of us had been awake for 24 hours! Beds were all ready for us so we all fell exhausted into bed, grateful for comfortable beds.
Sunday:
Unbelievably, I was up early and had time praying and reading my Bible before breakfast at the Ministry House and worship at Capillo Calvario. It was an awesome bilingual service and we were bathed with God's Spirit. Since I had been there eight months before and communicated with several people in the ministry there, it was wonderful reconnecting with them. Lots of hugs and smiles, even when words weren't understood!
The rest of the afternoon was spent eating subs and fellowshipping at the Ministry House and a meetng to prepare for the next day's activities. Then we packed back into the vans and headed to the church where we were put in groups, each with an interpretor and then got on a bus and headed into Chihuahua City. We each received a Love Bag and headed out to the walk the streets to bless whomever God put on our hearts. All we had to do was give them the bag and tell them that God told us to give this to them. We were able to give all ours out, pray with people, hear their broken hearts. One man tried to pay us! We had to tell him it was a gift that we just wanted him to have. We gathered back at the plaza to eat pizza and fellowship. It was sad to see little Tarahumara children brought to the city to beg and so hard to turn them down. We shared our pizza and gave out Love Bags but were cautioned not to give them money because that only kept them enslaved. The whole mission of LightShine is to free them through the gospel and have them learn to rely on the Lord and earn their way by selling items. In the evening the church led a time of worship in the plaza and several of us agreed to share our testimony. I was way out of my comfort zone but felt God wanted me to share and so a stood on the plaza behind a microphone and shared stories from my life (through an interpretor) with over a hundred strangers. God was good and saved me from an outbreak of hives! Then we headed back to the church for delicious fruit popsicles in the Cafe 1040.
I was amazed at how I felt so connected to these people who lived hundreds of miles from me, many spoke a different language and lived a very different lifestyle. But we had our identity in Christ and it was amazing! Sharing my testimony was scary but as I stood in front of them speaking, God just gave me an incredible love for the people of Chihuahua and I wanted them to know the truth so that they would have what I have...faith in the one true God and life forever with Him! That made it incredibly easy; I couldn't NOT do it.
Monday:
Today we had a meeting with Chris Nickerson, the head of the LightShine program to hear an update on LightShine. We met with him in what had been a carpentry shop right next to the building used for LightShine. It will be the Tarahumara church, the first Christian church in their community. After meeting with Chris and hearing his vision, we broke into smaller groups and each took a street in the Tarahumara community. We each had an interpretor with us in case we needed to speak with any of the people and stopped in front of houses and prayed for those who lived there. Donna and I walked over to the school and prayed for its opening in a week and all those children who would be attending. I saw a rough looking man leave one of the houss and felt compelled to go and pray for the family (or probably families) living in that small house, the size of my small living room. It is heart breaking to see the conditions they live in but over and over this week it was impressed on us that we are not anyone's savior and that our job is to pray and point them to the One Who is their Savior. It is not our job to improve their living conditions or "save" them from poverty but to lead them to the one who can save them eternally.
I saw Daniela briefly as she was on the street with a few coins obviously going to purchase something for her mother and gave her a hug and received a shy smile.
We left the community and had lunch at Pollo Feliz (happy chicken!) which was excellent even though it had a funny name. We returned to the LightShine building to get ready to lead the program. Before the program the kids are fed lunch and I was able to sit and be served by my Daniela. Not surprisingly, the other kids at my table were all boys! My lot in life! I loved it though and enjoyed teaching them the hand game in which everyone piles their hands on one another and each person pulls their hand out from the botton and moves it to the top quickly. Much laughter broke through the language barrier!
Our team had been put in charge of all the activities for this Monday. The kids went through each of four stations, devotions (an object lesson on sin using dirty water to show sin in our lives, vinegar which looks clean but tastes nasty to show hidden sin and then clean water to show that Jesus cleanses us from all sin); craft (zipper pull with colored beads symbolizing the steps of salvation), outside play (they learned the game of baseball with equipment donated by the Orioles) and a station where the kids hands were painted and imprinted on two banners, one that stayed at the Ministry House and one to take back to Open Bible. This is the station were I was assigned. I had a table with an activity for the kids to do while waiting to have their hands painted or after they finished. The kids enjoyed this preschool activity...even the older kids! They placed colored shaped wooden blocks matching to shapes on cards to make pictures. They worked diligently on this but I found myself having to use one of the few Spanish words I know repeatedly...comparte, comparte (share) as tried to gather the blocks for their own use only! Kids are the same in every language! It was neat to watch Sergio take the kids one by one to the hand washing station after painting and patiently explain to them as he washed the paint off that this was like God patiently works on us to remove the sin in our lives little by little.
The afternoon ended with more baseball with all the kids. They caught on to the game amazingly fast and it was hard for all of us to stop and say good-bye when it was time to return to the Ministry House. We found Rocio and Amanda busily at work making us a delicious supper of burritos. Wonderful ending to the day.
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