nitty gritty

Spring 1986: It was a late spring wednesday afternoon.  Our new Youth Pastor @ Crossroads had been around a few months and he and I had started hangin’ out.  We were eating at the Del Taco on Main St.  Tony asked me a surprising question, as I chowed through my green burritos with sour cream… “Hey, why don’t you quit your job and come work at the church doing the Jr High stuff and then start at PCC in the fall?”  After I swallowed my ample mouthful I leaned back and came up with several bullet points as to why not.  Tony just replied with, “Just pray about for 2 weeks.”  ”Okay.” I said.

Early 2010: Again, Tony & I eating - talking about the joy of serving.  I told him that after the summer of 2009 I had a few fleeting moments when I didn’t want to be with students.  I didn’t hate them or even bristle at their craziness.  Just the opposite, even today, I love the way Jesus speaks to them & through them (tear……………….) Okay I’m back, sorry. We then talked about what we should do.  Again Tony said, “Just pray about it for a couple weeks.”  ”Okay.” I said.

In churches when a Pastor senses the Holy Spirit moving him to focus on a different set of lives, one is faced with the high possibility of having to quickly discover what that focus will be - then see if their current church leaders will let that happen there (most often the answer is “Sorry Brother, but we will pray for the Lord’s blessing as you grow.”) - then find a new community to be a member of.  Not so at Fairview.

After much prayer and thought and discussions, we were able to go to our Godly leadership team (Elders & Staff) and ask them if we could begin working through a transition.  Train up 1 or 2 young men to take over the Student Ministry and take it where God wanted and simultaneously let me discover how the Holy Spirit would have me invest in our community.  They had questions, but guess what?  We did it.  And our Leaders have been an immense blessing to Judi & I.

So, last night, July 13 2011, Judi & I sat in our home for a Student Bible study for the last time (Sawyer - 15 & Kellan - 13 in attendance).  tear……………  I’m trying to keep that from happening again, sorry. After 13 years hear at Fairview Christian Church in Carthage, Missouri, 3.5 Years @ The Gate Christian Fellowship & 8.5 years @ Crossroads Christian Church both in Corona, California… just over 25 years of Student ministry, Judi & I are excited to see how the Holy Spirit is going to use us.

When we moved to Carthage and started serving @ Fairview we began telling people that we wanted to grow old & fat here.  Guess what, we’re working on both.  Just physically though (P90X here I come)! I am amazed at how spiritually fired up we are! We are PUMPED to serve families through investing in Marriages, Parenting, Men & Global Outreach (+ a little creative and music in there too).

I cannot tell all of you whom the Lord has blessed us to serve and serve alongside, how much you have meant to us.  You have taught us about relationships, about genuine faith, about joy, about pain and about how rich-wealthy-oppulent (in our hearts and memories) life is lived because one serves the King.  We will always be grateful to each of you and would welcome you to our home on Carrie St in Carthage, MO.  Thank you for touching our lives, YOU ARE MY HEROES!

One Last Thing…

If we have been allowed to invest in your life, and you are reading this, I want you to do some of the following…

1. If you’re not going to church (for whatever reason, even if you were hurt), please go back.  Just find a church that teaches the Word and soon after take a pastor to lunch and ask them to invest in you.

2. If you know someone that needs to be loved back to the flock… DON’T HESITATE! They need you to love them.

3. If you’ve settled into life and not spiritually invested your life into someone else… GET UP AND DO IT!  

4.  If you ever want to talk, please don’t hesitate to contact Judi & I.  We love you and will always make time for you.

undone,

chris

Sundown over the Guatemala City Dump, 2nd largest landfill in the world.

I remember getting disappointed when I was a kid after watching a favorite show and at the end of the episode, in little yellow letters at the bottom of the screen, “to be continued…”  The TV people didn’t seem to take into consideration that a 10 year old boy with ADD couldn’t possibly wait 7 days (or heaven forbid, an entire summer) to find out if Steve Austin, AKA - The Six Million Dollar Man - would be able to defeat the robotic Sasquatch!  Then I met Jesus and He kept telling me to, “wait for it.”

I am terrible at waiting.  Here’s the thing though, I get to live everyday with Him.  Like the last 9 days. Devin, Jake, Kristen, Sally, Marisa, Rachel, Joy, Ivy, Cory, Chris, Clayton, Dawson & Stefan and I have seen Him do something captivating several times each day.  And guess what, there’s more!  He promises that each day’s life is to be continued.

So, tomorrow we leave SETECA, our comfy home-away-from-home, we get on a plane and arrive in Houston.  We go through immigration & customs, then wait 3 hours. Next, we get on a smaller jet plane and we fly to Tulsa where Nate Stokes will be waiting to pick us up (THANKS NATE!).  Then we will drive 2 hours back to Carthage. Arriving at approx 11PM, the tired travelers will soon be tucked into their beds at home, still spinning in their thoughts about the world as they now know it.  Do you think that during the long day of travel that Jesus will put His wonders on hold? NO WAY! He taught us how to be kind, the way He is kind.  So, I expect Him to use us in the airports.

Even though we are leaving Guate, we are not being put in a holding pattern. FOr certain, the “to be continued…”” will start again when we wake in our beds here at SETECA.  So, see ya on Wednesday night @ Fairview at 6:30PM for a great night of story telling.

oh yeah - Steve Austin did defeat the robot Sasquatch!

THIS IS EDNER…
Edner is 13 years old. I first met him 3 years ago when I was fortunate enough to go to Mama Carmen’s, an orphanage in Guatemala City, run by none other than Mama Carmen (more about her in a moment. I asked Ed how long he had been at Mama’s. He said, “Siempre.” Always? “Si.” I asked someone later. It seems the Edner, and many of the other 47 kids currently living there, were simply dropped off by hospital staff or young mothers, when they were just days old. Mama Takes any she can and raises them as her own. I asked Ed, “So this is your family?” He looked around at everyone, smiled and said, “Yes, but not the Gringos, they are my Brothers.” 

This is Mama Carmen. She is a 70 year old Pioneer of the Second Chance. When she was a young mother and Guatemala was gripped in civil war, she promised God that if she got her son back from war safely that she would serve Him by loving homeless, family-less children. 46 years later, she is still taking orphans and loving them like they are her own…. I guess they are her own.

Do you need a 2nd chance?  DO you know someone you could give one to?  I dare ya.

Trash seems to be a global issue.  Al Gore would have a field day in Guatemala City. Air pollution, garbage, sewage… this place a cornucopia of issues for the tree huggin’ earth day green movement.  Have you ever noticed what we consider garbage?

We throw away so many different things.  Banana peels, shoes, clothing, kitchen trash, friendships, dreams, milk cartons, dull saw blades, hopes, light fixtures, respect, forgivenness… oops, I am sorry, I was just looking around at the rubbish hear in the dump in Guatemala City that our G10 Team was serving in last night.

At the end of Jonah, the Lord reminds him that even though Nineveh seems like a lost cause, there were over 120,000 people living in darkness… the dump has 200+ families living in it and the government is going to relocate 300+ more families into the dump.  What a deal, rent free, just pick through the garbage for recyclables and we’ll even pay about ¢2 a day!  Rubbish!  Enter Iglesia Cristo es el Camino (Christ is the Way Church). Twice a week this little church (members include residents of the dump, homeless people and very poor, hardworking people) has a vision to love the dump families. They feed them twice a week.  And at the very moment that I type this they are giving showers for the homeless men (some needing help being undressed and bathed).  NOT RUBBISH

Yesterday, Devin & I had the chance to sit and talk with 5 gang members that Tita and Shorty call the Caballeros.  Neither Devin or myself could decide what to talk with them about.  Tita & Shorty had great expectations.  Lately I have been reading in Leviticus… hmmm I don’t know if the regulations for a peace offering are going to speak to these guys.  Moments before we were to go and spend 2 hours with them, Devin said, “Acts 9.”  Okay, Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus it would be.  Little did we know that all of our previous knowledge was useless… RUBBISH.  THe Holy Spirit had a plan and it was amazing.  For the next 2 hour we talked about conversion, leaving their gang to join a NEW GANG, it was beautiful.

Meanwhile, our team was upstairs on the 2nd & 3rd floors of the school being greeted by children from the ghetto, “Rachel!  Como estas?”  ”Cory, Chaupin” (which means you’re one of us).  Joy having a great discussion realizing that the Lord could use her as a missionary psycologist.  Sally understanding just how far from the right priorities she had wandered.  Jake seeing how God wants to make him more humble.  Can you see the rubbish being refined into gold?  BEAUTIFUL RUBBISH.

Paul said, “4 though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more! …I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. ⁸Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ ⁹ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, ¹¹ so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead!” (Philippians 3.4-11)

So, if I want to know Him I am gonna have to get dirty & uncomfortable.  I am going to have to go to the dump in my heart, the trash heap of relationships, the doubt sewer of lost dreams and fear.  Phew this just got messy didn’t it?

Oh, by the way, yesterday was the best day of the trip!

La Limonada is a serious place.  We live in a world (in the USA) that is not very serious. Even when we think things are very serious, they soon pass and we are able to relax. We feel stress at the littlest issues and, if you’re like me, we often don’t take things serious that we ought to.

We live n a great culture and a great country, but we might have life too easy.  I think it makes us a little weak.  12 year old kids in La Limonada are always on their guard.  They don’t walk out of their houses without fear or caution.  They suspect everyone, even best friends, as potential threats.  It’s like they are always at “Threat Level Red!”

Yet today, we played.  We played futbol (soccer); we played with Lion masks the kids made as they heard the story of Daniel in the lion’s den; we played duck-duck goose; we went to the Lord’s Kitchen and smiled with and upon homeless people of Guatemala City. We sat and talked with them and listened (even if we couldn’t understand their Spanish) as they let their guard down and relaxed.  For a homeless woman in GC that is as good as play.

Children and parents laughed and played in the park in La Limonada… the forgotten and overlooked street people laughed and sipped kool-aid.  What a great day of play. I can’t wait to talk with Gang members in La Limonada tomorrow.  I can’t wait to encourage the Teachers and staff of the schools in the ghetto.  I can’t wait to PLAY!

I heard recently that Oprah Winfrey has decided to deny that the Judeo-Christian God does not exist and that she would not follow Him if He was real because of the fact that He is jealous.  Someone needs to explain to Oprah that His jealousy is four our love for Him.  He is not jealous of us, He is jealous for us… that is a big difference.  It is one of those things that makes Him God and us, well, us.

We, humanity, have a problem. The Bible calls it sin.  Even if someone is clearly doing a God thing, filled with love (such a medicine is love), some people either hate it or look for a way to take advantage of it.  Much of this behavior is linked to jealousy. It is all rooted in a pride that sees me as the center of my life.

Enter the team in La Limonada.  A group of heros who risk their safety everyday to love children and families who no one else will. Their effort and gift offered to the people of this extremely poor and hostile neighborhood has not gone unnoticed by both Godly people and those who are jealous and want to extort $$$.  I have to admit, while La Limonada sits in the shadow of the Ministry of Justice building (like the Supreme Court), there is little justice being shown to it’s citizens.

Is this a rant.  Yes and a praise.  A rant, in that I am frustrated with the hearts of those who would try to hinder such love and peace and joy.  A rant, in that, when we are there, the Teachers and leaders have to be concerned about us in a way that could slow their love.  A rant, in that we limited our outpouring of love today!  

A praise that we got to love some children and teach them about hope and courage!  A Praise, in that, today a groups of High School/College Students fasted and prayed for the blessing and success of the staff in La Limonada!  A PRAISE, in that, Jesus name cannot be stopped.  The gates of hell cannot stop the Church from being beautiful and powerful.  WHAT A GREAT DAY!

Are ya jealous that you aren’t here with us?  You should be.  Someone call Oprah…

PS - Check out the pics on FB

If you’re like me, you may have noticed how often water is a key part of Biblical stories and or situations.  You know, the Red Sea being parted, the rivers that mark the boundaries of Eden, Moses in the Nile… this could go on forever.  Water brings with it many things.

Power.

Destruction.

Change.

Cleansing.

Safety.

Again, the list could go on for a while.

G10 has been in Colonia Santa Faz in Guatemala City for the last 2 days and I have been so very impressed and blessed by their hearts and actions.  TOday was finished off by a birthday celebration that included a massive water balloon fight, Gringos VS. Guatemalans!  It was a draw.  We were all soaked.  At the conclusion, it started to rain as if God wanted in on the action.  Today was a very fun day with the kids and their teachers.  We even managed to get our translator Adriana good and soaked.  Even though she was hiding in a corner.  As we gathered tonight to sing and pray and talk about what the Lord was doing and to prepare ourselves for the next 3 days in La Limonada, I noticed one of our G10 crying.  I asked him what was going on.  He was simpy hurting over the real possibility that he would not see a particular little girl again. Hmm… Tears,

Water.