MISSION STATEMENT

MISSION STATEMENT -
WORKING TO SEE THE LIVES OF THE POOR TRANSFORMED BY THE POWER OF GOD AS IT IS SHOWN THROUGH THE LOCAL CHURCH





Saturday, March 16, 2013

Disciples of Jesus Do Things Like That

where the couple we met was living (behind the wooden skids under the tree) when we arrived


Last week we welcomed a team from New Norway Alberta to Hermosillo.  They were a team of 9 men who came down in order to do some construction on a few different things.  The main project was a perimeter security wall around our church building.  The other was an additional room on a very humble house in a poor neighborhood next to our church.  The people who live there are committed believers who attend a Free Methodist Church right down the road from us.  The mother of the family serves faithfully at the soup kitchen we started a few years back. 
Anyway during the 2nd or 3rd day of the trip we were informed by the director of an Orphanage that we help out at from time to time that there was a house that burned down close to the Orphanage, only a week prior to the team arriving.  So we went over to investigate.  The elderly couple had been cooking on an open fire (their normal means of cooking) outside their home when a wind blew up and carried some sparks over to their house and it was destroyed in minutes.  Now the word “house” is being used here very loosely.  In very poor situations, the people use what we would call tar paper to cover the walls of their home, instead of cement block which is normally used.  That was the case here.  It is stinky and being black (providing no insulation), well you can imagine the temperature inside when it is 48C outside!  This couple was sleeping under a tree with some tarps and skids pushed up around the tree to try to form some sort of privacy.
Well the team decided to purchase wooden support beams and cross pieces from their own money and in a day and a half had a structure up.  We even had some extra steel from another project last month left over and used that in order to support a good roof.  The roof hasn’t been done yet.
I talked to the couple and translated back and forth between them and the team and the thing that they kept saying was “why in the world would strangers from so far away come all the way down here to help us like this”?  It was the same sentiment echoed by the mother of the house that they came down to extend.  They were taken back by the kindness of strangers.  They looked at me and asked me why they would do that, expecting an answer.  I thought for a second and replied, “Disciples of Jesus do things like that”. 
It is true isn’t it?  It makes me think of Mark 12:31 – when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was.  He answered “love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength” but then he added another that they hadn’t asked for.  “The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself”.  I think He added the 2nd because we should never separate the 2 of them.  If we truly do love God, we will truly love and reach out to our neighbors.  Who is our neighbor?  I would ask a different question.  In this global world who isn’t our neighbor?  These men from New Norway proved that people who live 2 countries away who speak a different language can be our neighbors. 
We prayed with both families who received much work toward a new improved house.  We gave the couple whose house burned down a bible; their other one had burned in the fire.  I told the Orphanage directors who live close by that they now had a bible and he said he would go by to guide them through God’s word.
One last thing.  I know the men who came from Alberta gave a lot.  They really did.  Not just money, but time away from families etc as well.  However I know that they all received more than they gave.  You can’t measure what they received however.  How does one measure what happens in the heart?  But they saw this past week that Jesus’s words are true,  “it is more blessed to give than to receive”.  Acts 20:35       

The team of guys with the couple who lost their home in the fire

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