Mexico City Day 5

Another good day of VBS. Things are progressing well. We had over fifty children here once again. Everything seems to running smooth. We are looking forward to Thursday which is the evangelistic emphasis day. Lynn Sasser, pastor of Capital City Baptist Church, will be presenting the Gospel to the children. Please go before the Lord concern-ing this time. The group from Southside is doing a great job of being intentional in their teaching. They are pointing the children toward Jesus, which is what VBS is all about. I am so thankful for this team that gave up a week of their time to come and teach these children about Jesus. Yes, we are blessed by God for being here and yes we are having a good time, but it is still a sacrifice to be here. Most of them gave up a week of vacation to be here. All of them traveled for more than twenty-four hours in the van to get here. The really amazing thing is they do not see it as such a sacrifice. They just came to be obedient and to teach children about Jesus! But the Lord says of them in Isaiah 52:7, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the herald, who proclaims peace, who brings news of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” I pray that God will use them while we are here, but also that He will reveal Himself to them in a way that is new and fresh to them.

This afternoon we made our first trip to Casa Hogar Adulam. This is a place that takes in homeless children and children living in adverse circumstances. Currently there are around fifty children living in this place, but there are many more who come to eat and shower and then head back to life on the street. Homeless children are numerous in Mexico City. It has been determined that this city has the biggest population of homeless children in the world. We met one young man who was living with his mother on the street. She decided to move one day and did so leaving her four children behind in Mex-ico City. Only one of the children lives in the orphanage. This is not a rare occurrence. As children would walk while we were talking to the pastor who oversees the home, he would tell us the story of that child. All of them were heartbreaking. The ladies spent the afternoon cleaning rooms and organizing a library. The cleaning was not cleaning up a lived in room—well at least it was not inhabited by humans. They said there were nu-merous inhabitants but they had six legs and scurried away from the light. Those working in the library spoke of the difficult in arranging the books by topic. Understandable when you remember the books are all in Spanish!

Then men were told their work would be “very difficult” by the overseer. We walked up the stairs to the third floor then the overseer climb out of the stair well and began to make his way to the roof by walking on pallets that had been strapped to metal beams. He told us to be careful just about the time he took his second step. That was the step where his foot went through the rotten wood. He caught himself and continued to the roof. There were six of us standing there looking at each other in disbelief. Jose, Steven, Davis, two teenagers from Capital City Church and I are thinking about the climb. The teenagers, including Davis, are ready to jump on the pallets and head to the roof. The Capital City guys make their way up there. Davis starts to climb and I grab him and tell him to “forget it.” I am now trying to determine the best way to save face and still let the boss man no in a polite way, “There is absolutely no way I am getting on that roof.” To be quite honest, I wasn’t worried to much about saving face. I am old. I am terrified of heights. I wanted to what needed to be done to help the orphanage, but surely there was some other way to get to the roof. I could handle being on a roof with no guard rails more than forty feet about the concrete and tile floor. I could not however bring myself to climb out of a stair well on to rotten pallets to make my way to that roof. What about a ladder? I am a US citizen. Doesn’t OSHA still cover my work practices in Mexico? Surely they would fine me if they heard about what I was doing. After all, the Bible does tell me to “obey the law of the land.” That must include the law of the land where I live, even though I am not in my home country. I could never be so disobedient and break the law of the land in which I live, at least not when it suits my fears.

It was about this time that the overseer says we need only one more guy up there to help. We were not in the basement (see yesterdays’ blog) so God COULD hear my heartfelt pleas. Now all I had to do to save face was simply find a reason why one of the other guys had to go instead of me. At the time the boss made the statement I was working my outside the stair well. I immediately got down and allowed one of the others the “privi-lege” of working on the roof. Jose and Steven were left and neither one of them really wanted to go, but Steven did. He made the climb—slowly and carefully, but he made the climb. The rest of us were escorted to the place where we would be working. Somehow it seemed so appropriate. We were led down stairs and then back up to a room in an adja-cent building where we were to remove the roof consisting of plastic table and other odd pieces covering the room. There we would be handed the rebar from the guys on the roof of the other building. At least we were surrounded by walls. What was so appropriate about this room? When we opened the door at to make our way into this room, it was filled with…chickens. Was this a word from the Lord? Was He pointing out my character so plainly? It was obvious. There was not just one or two chickens, but more like twenty or thirty. There was also a turkey! What was God telling me? Am I a turkey with a chick-en heart? Don’t answer that. That is between me and Lord. I simply chose to interpret that as coincidence. There was absolutely no meaning to that room being full of chickens. And besides, the real reason for them being there was to give Davis something to do in between rebar passing’s. I think he caught every chicken in there and held the turkey too. He also was able to hold a couple of the rabbits that were in there, but we won’t even be-gin to think about the spiritual implications of the rabbits being in the room.

Please keep praying for us and forgive the typos. I don’t prook reed these befor postin them.