Wednesday: Day 1 at the colonia

I woke up early again today at around 5:30. I haven’t been able to get on the wireless but I’m also behind keeping the Word version of the blog updated. I decided to get up and work on it. We also have several wooden stakes that we plan to put into the ground around the colonia to “stake it” for God. Mark (our host in Fabens) asked me to take one and put a bible verse on it that I think is significant. I decided on 1 John 3:1 which says “See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called Children of God and such we are”. I wrote it on the stake in Spanish. During chapel this morning, this was one of the verses that Mark talked about and that was a real encouragement to me that I had picked that verse. Chapel ran a bit late so we needed to get moving as I wanted to try to connect to the wireless again (which didn’t work) and I had several things I needed to get done.

My job this morning is called the “overseer” – this job is to basically make sure all of our supplies get on the bus. I was a bit stressed about that but it all went very smoothly and we got everything on it that we needed to. We headed off to the colonia. We had another easy border crossing (three down, two to go).

Upon arriving at the colonia, the first thing we did was to put our first stake in the ground at the entrance to it. While driving into our host church, a church called La Iglacia Mi Dios es Real (The Church My God is Real), we passed a lot of different houses. The homes were interesting. Mexicans typically start with using pallets to frame their house. If they can afford it, they’ll put up tar paper to block the wind. When they can, they’ll next put a layer of cinder blocks on the outside. We saw some very meager homes – some that we’d be embarrassed to have as a kid’s playhouse. However, one thing we learned later was that this colonia has developed a lot since the last time he took a team in - the houses are in better shape. As we would learn, their spiritual shape has not improved.

Once we arrived at the church, we broke into three groups and started going door to door to invite people to our Bible Club where we’d serve lunch, sing songs, and play games. I was in group 1 with Justin and Lorna and their kids and Laura and Sarah. We stopped at probably 20-25 homes and probably only a quarter of them had anyone home. I really wasn’t expecting many people to show up but we probably had somewhere between 250-275 people show up.

The time here (and my perspective of it) might be a bit different from some other team members. I bounced around between several activities. After lunch, I again led a few songs of worship. I saw several pre-teen boys and early teens that seemed pretty uninterested in what we were doing. I’m really not sure if was a bit of a “macho” attitude that seems to exist with a lot of the males or something else.

After that, I went to the front of the church (a dirt area) where lots of the younger kids where hanging around. I started to see some aggressive behavior from a few boys so my antenna were up. I talked to several of these boys trying to understand why they were acting the way they were. I think part of it is just a cultural thing but as we’d learn later, many of the boys in the colonia are products of broken families. Of the boys that have fathers, many of them are abusive. I just felt like there was a lot of anger.

I had seen Phil in the street trying to talk to several boys that were standing around the edges and looked to me to be causing trouble. He called me over and asked my help in talking to a young man (I’d guess 14-15 years old) named José Jesus. Phil told me that he talked through the wordless Bible with him several times but that his heart was very hard. As we talked to him, we asked him why he would be happy with having a corazon negro (black heart) and he really could only shrug his shoulders. I asked him if he died today, does he know where he would go. He said yes, he’d go “abajo”, meaning down below. I asked him why and he couldn’t answer. I wish that I really could have been able to speak better Spanish to ask more probing questions to understand what really is going on in his life.

Kent called me over to ask for my help with some ministry time he had started with a few men. When I joined him, he was finishing up the wordless book (without a translator). I was able to bring Jose Luis (our Mexican ministry host) to help translate. I asked the men if any of them wanted to receive Christ as their savior and two of the 7 men said yes. Kent asked if I would pray for them and we led the men in asking Christ to be their savior. That was the high point of my day.

Cameron asked me if he could go play soccer. I told him he could – I knew Phil and Vern were about 20 yards up the street playing and watching over the game. However, Cameron came to me about 10 minutes later visibly upset. He told me that a really bad fight broke out. Cameron has never seen a fight and it was very upsetting to him. I tried to help him understand that it wasn’t as serious as he thought but it was still upsetting to him.

I went up to check out what was going on and the soccer game was going as if nothing had happened. I looked back toward the church and there was a group of boys and girls yelling at each other. I couldn’t understand what they were saying but it seemed pretty clear that they were taunting each other and calling each other names. I went over and talked to them; I can’t explain well what was going on but there was just a real heavy darkness that I felt. On the bus home, I heard a lot of stories especially from the women who had their ministry time inside the church about what a great day they had. As I told them, it felt to me like there was a spiritual battle on the street in front of the church. In hindsight, it seems to me that the church really was a sanctuary while the battle was in the streets.

Pastor Martin shared the story of how he came to minister at the church we were at. Much of the story was hard to understand as the translation wasn't too clear but I was so impressed that a man who has almost nothing (he and his family are very poor) still has his eyes totally on God. And as he said, "Though I have almost nothing, I have everything in Christ".

At the end of the day, we got on the bus to head back to HOC in Fabens. We stopped briefly at the Children’s Home (the bus was across the street) to drop off something that we had forgotten on Tuesday. Several of the children and Lupe came out and were excited to see the bus. We opened our windows, waved and were yelling to them Hola!

We continued to the border and were pulled over by the Mexican border patrol to be searched for weapons. We all got off the bus and were asked to stand in a straight line. As the guards got to the end of the line where I was, I noticed that Elvia slipped the guard a Spanish-language tract. I watched him open and look at it. I looked at Elvia and saw her looking down at the ground and not at the guard. I looked back at the guard and he took of his military cap and put the tract in it. I told Elvia what he had done and I could see she was excited (she is an evangelist at heart).

We were told we could get back on the bus and most of us did though Candi and a couple of others stayed behind. Candi saw the commander coming toward her with a couple of his men in tow. She was actually a bit nervous thinking he was going to be upset for our team giving the tract to the one soldier. He asked Candi if she had a New Testament which she had someone from the bus pass one to her. She then asked if his men wanted one too and she got three more to give to them. Candi then told him that we were praying for them and the job that they do and he said they do it for our protection. Afterwards, we learned that this was a first – no other team had the opportunity to minister to the Mexican military.

We got back to the HOC, had dinner, and then I again helped to get pictures printed out for the next day. It was a very late night and I was the one that actually locked up the dining room as I was the last one out.