Saturday, February 16, 2007
The rest of squad B left this morning for Costa Rica. We are now just Nessa (with 4 from the media team). This week Nessa, Agapetos, and Revolution went out into the barrios, to the dumps with our leaders here at the church we’re serving this month. The barrios are a network of small one room shacks, made out of either concrete or tin plates, with tin roofs. Some have concrete flooring, many are still dirt. Most homes have gates, locks, barbed wire, as theft is prevalent (theft of what, I don’t know). Many of the people who live here make a living out of going to landfill to find aluminum cans, plastic bottles to recycle and turn into other items. Still more go to the dump to find used clothing, food scraps, and home decor to refurnish. This is how they live. We’re told it’s a mixture of lack of education (teach them how to fish) and laziness (you find many just laying around in their homes during the day).
For the past week we’ve lived in a hotel in Jinotepe owned by the Schweitzers. This place is gorgeous, and Scott and I have even had a room to ourselves (a huge blessing). This afternoon we move to La Quinta, the church grounds, located close to the dumps in Diriamba. Glenn and Lynn Schweitzer are busy putting together this property for a church, a clinic, and soon (prayerfully) an orphanage. The land is an oasis in the desert. And in the desert the people are thirsty.
This week we’ve been going door to door. And as we begin conversations (many of these people have already been greeted by the church leadership, Glenn, Manuel, or Diego), if you ask if they know Jesus, many say yes, but if you ask them if they have Jesus in their heart, most say no. God opens doors wide here. Many times we’d just say, well, do you want Him? (We don’t ask this in America, as we’re afraid to offend people… we make sure that before we talk about God we’ve formed a relationship, which really takes God’s power away from Him. We don’t really believe that God has already been doing the work to bring unbelievers to Him.) And most times, the answer is, Yes. Whoa, how does God do that? It’s as easy as just asking. We get taught how to evangelize in church, and even at our christian schools and colleges, but it’s just as easy to present truth as it is. God uses whatever He wants to use.
So, as we will continue to go door to door under our churches’ leadership, our team is learning more and more how to function in community. How we are the body of Christ. It will look different in every country we go to, and it will look different every day. We’re learning how to work under leadership, how to play a supporting role, how to go out when we’re called out, how to be bold, how to be quiet and intercess. We’re learning community, we’re learning family as it was meant to be. Community is hard for North Americans who are used to doing what we want when we want to do it. And when the church was formed in Acts, it was formed as a tight knit family, who I’m sure went through growing pains. As long as we’re selfish beings (we’ll never get away from that), there will always be room to grow, there will always be a time time where we’ll need to cry out to God and just let Him love us. God doesn’t really care what we do, He cares about who we are. We are love, and love will look different every time we do it.
We have a long way to go. Our whole lives we’ll never have it totally figured out. but God is preparing us for our eternal family. He doesn’t wish anyone to go it alone, or think that what we have to offer can only be done in solitude. God created the family. Let’s begin to BE who God created us to be.
