right as we headed out the front gate of our casa in San Juan, it started to pour… it’s a 40-minute walk across town to Quija Quieta. Tara, Julian and I finally got there, drenched… found Jose, met his family, and picked up Achilly. We then left Quija to head towards Barrio Nuevo (another 45-minute walk) We laughed and prayed as we trenched through the mud on our way to this forgotten neighborhood. Just as I started to forget about how LONG the walk had been already, we come to this hillside. Jose and Achilly instantly start crawling, slipping, and sliding up this hillside as they are beckoning us to follow along, “ben!! ben!!” … I look down at my feet (realizing that I’ve been trudging through mud and rain in the flimsiest sandals ever) and tell God, “okay, you’re going to have to get my big booty up this hill somehow…” and sure enough… after scrambling, huffing, puffing, sliding… and being yanked up by my brother julian… I/we finally make it to the top of that mountain of mud! THEN we proceed to rinse the caked-on mud off in the street water… chuckling about this LIFE we are living… WE ARE REALLY MISSIONARIES!!! we then continued to walk a couple more miles through what had to have been the roughest slums of San Juan, DR… Nuevo Barrio [the new neighborhood]… the forgotten neighborhood- as we called it. there were so many different people staring at us… yelling at us. Jose told us that we were the first Americans to ever walk in those slums.
we finally arrived.. and the rain STOPPED! it was time for church, but no one was around because it had be raining so much. Jose said, “Esta Bien!” and scurried off to get a stack of plastic chairs… we followed him to this place he was calling CHURCH. it was a plot of muddy and rocky land. he set us the chairs and his make-shift podium, and we began to pray. 10 minutes in.. there were 15 people… 15 minutes in, there were 40+ people… and it had begun to rain again! some stood in the nearby doorways, some sat in the mud, some in chairs… some standing… but God’s people were coming! they were coming to hear good news!
Jose SURPRISE-attacked us by asking each of us to give a word. GOD gave those words that night. we each had a different word from God, but they all managed to fit together like perfect pieces to a puzzle. We poured out God’s heart for these people. This forgotten neighborhood is not so forgotten. This neighborhood is loved by God.. this neighborhood is valuable in God’s eyes… this neighborhood was full of God’s children.
before we left, we sang the few worship songs we knew in Spanish with the kids… and then walked away in the pitch black, yet somehow still surrounded by light… knowing that God was there with us.
“For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light.” Ephesians 5:8
—the video in my last post has been updated… and is now in full-working condition. go check it out again!!—-
