Thank God I grew up a little and realized, it isn't about me at all, it is about Him.
There is a lot of deep theological topics I would love to discuss with you, in depth, that bring immense glory to the Lord, like perseverance of the saints or the fact that HE chose us and that we, in our depravity, not to mention our lack of sovereignty, would never choose Him. Or the fact that as I was reading the other night He hit my heart hard with the beautiful truth that He made me His not on the basis of anything I had done and that He will never ever take His gift of salvation from me - no matter what horrible things I do to deserve that it be taken away. How FREE I am to love Him, and to truly, in the realest sense of the word, "love" Him! That's because I love Him not out of fear that I may mess up and one day go to Hell, I love Him not because I am trying to earn anything, or keep anything, but just because He has loved me first with a love that nothing can separate. By the way, I can't "keep" (to keep is an action) salvation, it is mine because He, the unchangeable, gave it to me - freely.
I could go on and on and I know that people who live a life trying to win God's favor and "keep" something they never "earned" to begin with would probably love to debate me, but God has not given me the gift of debate and I tend to get a little fired up and mad that they'd distort God's beauty....
So I will just tell you a little of what has been going on lately here in the jungles of Guatemala.
A few weeks back a man was murdered on the road that runs between our land and another town as he was delivering a van he had been trying to sell. It was a brutal murder and the man was the father of our board member Cesar Macz. Murderers, not found.
The night after, a man heard his doorbell ring. He, a Nazarene christian man and a well-known professor at a reputable school in Coban, went to answer his door and was shot four times in the chest on his front porch and died leaving a bloody mess for his wife to find. This man was the brother of the contractor that is building phase 1 of the children's home. Murderers, not found.
We were shocked and saddened by the sudden and unexpected deaths in the families of our friends. As a gift, we wanted to buy Cypress trees to give to them to plant in honor of their loved ones. On the way to the nursery to pick out the trees, we noticed quite a few military men lining the streets with their guns out. We were not sure what was going on until we got back home that evening and learned that about 30 minutes up the road from where we live, two children were beheaded with machetes while in their classroom at their school. A group of men had entered the school with the intent of harming the teachers. The teachers escaped and the children were left at their mercy, or lack there of. An 8 year old girl and a 13 year old boy were slain. The one man that the community caught, was lynched and then set on fire in the school yard. The community knows that to put the guilty in the hands of the law here, nothing will happen. 99% of crimes are not even investigated, let alone the criminals prosecuted. The other murderers, not found.
Last Saturday morning I woke up and headed to the roof to take down the clothes that I'd hung to dry the night before. As I was removing them from the line, I noticed two small kids running on the roof of a house. One of them was chasing a puppy. The next thing I heard were the piercing yelps of a tiny, hurting puppy. The kids had kicked the puppy off the 15 foot roof and it lay on the ground crying in pain.
I am not one to stop and think real hard before I react to something traumatic. I ran down the stairs, out the house, and straight to the neighbor's house. I found the mother and asked her about the puppy. She freely admitted to me that it stole her kid's bread and he kicked it off the roof. I told her I cared well for puppies and would like to take it to my home and look it over real good and possibly take it to the vet. She brought it to me and it ended up staying with us for 5 days. It had also been hit by a taxi the week before. This puppy is as much a miracle as my baby Mighty, if any of you remember him and his story. It suffered from fleas, mange, malnutrition, parasites, fractured ribs, and an extreme lack of love. It barely weighed anything and was filthy dirty when we first got him.
He ate and ate and slept and slept. But he wouldn't just sleep anywhere, he insisted on sleeping on my chest. So I cuddled him and loved him and we took him to the vet on Tuesday and got him some good medicines to rid him of the parasites and the mange. Then I asked the mother if we could find him a home where he will be loved and cared for well, but she said no. I told her if she wanted him to get his medicine, he'd have to come to my house once a week so I could bathe him and give it to him, and at least she agreed to that. And we have a new relationship with a lost woman out of all this, and I look forward to growing that relationship and hopefully revealing the love Christ has for her.
Naturally I fell head over heels for this baby and a cried quite a bit when I had to give him back to the people. But I was able to teach the woman a little about caring properly for a dog and hopefully she will use her new found knowledge for the sake of this puppy and my own emotional well-being. I find it ironic that we keep saving suffering dogs when we are here to save suffering children. But the dogs are suffering, in Travieso's case, because of the children. And it makes me wonder....but the children we take in will learn to love animals and treat them the way that God intended for us to treat and care for His animals. They are, after all, His good creation.
During this time, Geoffrey and I went to buy some seizure medicine for Henry, who still suffers at the hands of his mother. If you remember, we had found a place for him where he would be well taken care of and receive all the medicines, therapy, and treatment he needs, for free. His mother refused to send him. So I am sitting on her bed and trying to breathe only through my mouth to avoid the smell of feces and urine that stained the blankets covering him. She is, like always, telling me how hard her life is because she is caring for Henry and then tells me that she gave him a bath today. I could feel there was more she wanted to say, so I sat quietly and listened as she began to tell me that the other day she came home and Henry was across the room on the floor crying. He had had a seizure while no one was there and had fallen from the bed and seized himself about 3 feet from the bed. Then she told me that the reason she bathed him today was because when she went to change his "diaper", which is really an old shirt she wraps around him and ties, she found a worm. At first, I told her that meant that he has worms in his stomach and he needs to get medicine to kill them. Then she shook her head and looked down at the ground and told me that this was the kind of worm that comes from a fly, we call this a maggot. She showed me where the maggots had been, and they were actually in his hair down there. I told her she has to wash him everywhere and use disinfectant soap...and she just shook her head and told me she doesn't have any money.
Last Friday we met with our Pastor who is helping us find Godly people to work with our association. Medics, Psychologists, Social workers, accountants, etc. We talked and talked and then he told me he needed help. He told me of three children who had just been abandoned by their father in Coban and were staying at the house of a sister from the church. I told him that legally we are not authorized to receive children yet because the home is not finished and we are only in the process of accreditation. However, I told him we would speak with the mayor (who we currently live with) and see if personally we would be legally able to care for the children until they are turned over to the courts. So I spoke with the Mayor and his wife and she told me that we most definitely should not attempt to care for the children until we have the home. We needed to have someone else call the authorities and have the kids turned in. She told me stories of which I had heard before of foreigners doing the smallest things like giving a child a cookie or taking a child's picture and the foreigners were stoned, beaten, and lynched. She told me that more than likely if we care for the children and the father comes back, just because we are white he will say that we kidnapped his children. She told us that she herself, the wife of the mayor, went with a group to a poor village where they took nutritious food and charted the growth of the children until one day no child would eat. When she asked why, one child stepped forward and said that they were told that they are trying to fatten them up so they could cut them up and sell them per pound. They were no longer welcome in that village and had to leave.
This is what we deal with here, ignorance. Where is the education, the common sense? We are working super hard every single day and thanking God for every gift you give us that helps us progress and move toward the goal of getting this home built, because once we have that home....we will take these children without risking our lives and give them an education and turn them over to their country, only after equipping them with the knowledge of the Savior and empowering them to go out and work hard to make a difference. Don't stop praying and don't stop giving. We may be the ones on the ground here, but you are the ones who are making this happen.
Just three days ago in Coban, there was a boy found partially decapitated under his bed. No one in the house but his sister. Murderer, not found.
We went two days without electricity which was somewhat difficult since the majority of our work is done through communication with lawyers and licenciados through the internet. Not to mention when it is dark, it is real dark. But who am I to complain? Yesterday evening we spent too much time in the office of a lawyer. This lawyer is the one who is doing our paperwork for the purchase of the land we made back in May. He has Q30,000 of ours which is about $3,800 and he has done about as close as you can get to nothing, except cause us problems. The work he wants to do is very sketchy and the people he associates with are even more sketchy. Dealing with him is like a living nightmare, one of those that stress you out really bad and you are so thankful it was just a nightmare when you finally wake up. Anyway, his mouth is full of lies and he is taking advantage of us without so much as a blink of an eye. But he has our money and we aren't sure what to do about it. Thankfully our board member, Cesar (mentioned above), is willing to step in a try to handle our situation with this lawyer. If we can't get our money back, I just pray that the job will be done correctly. Again, who am I to complain? At least I still have a head on my neck.
And to finish up this painfully long blog, I will tell you of Julio.
If you remember me writing about Julio last year, then you know that I thought he had experienced salvation. Salvation is a 'life-changing' experience and when a person is born-again, nothing in their life stays the same. Unfortunately, my drug-addicted friend here, I am afraid, only had an "experience" with the Lord. It was not salvation and he will be the first one to admit that to you. This morning, however, when he came over for his weekly English lesson (which is actually learning English using God's Word), he told me how the day before he was arrested at the request of his parents and taken to the capitol to be put in a rehab. During the day, he escaped the rehab when the guard was not at the door. He came back to Coban and was sitting at my kitchen table this morning. We did not have our normal English lesson, instead we talked about the things I mentioned to you at the beginning of this blog, the exciting things that bring immense glory to the Lord. I shared the gospel with Julio yet again. We talked about how God is sovereign and NO one can come to the Lord unless the Lord draws him. We talked about how people like to create their own God and make things up like purgatory and salvation by works. We read together word for word that God's perfect Word will never be spoken without having an impact on the hearer and that it is one thing to hear only, another thing to understand, but God is even sovereign over our spiritual ears. We spoke of Jesus' righteousness and the difference between grace and mercy. We talked about trees that produce fruit and those that do not. Julio is thirsty for truth and there is only One truth and he read it aloud to me for two hours. It was beautiful and I am clinging to the promise that God's word will produce something in Julio's heart.
Pray these things with me people. What is our life worth if we learn of the atrocities of this world and learn that there are multitudes of people dying and going to a Christless hell and yet we do nothing about it? You believe there is a God? Good, even the demons believe that. The question is, what are you doing about it?
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