By reason of breaking

By reason of breakings they purify themselves. Job 41:25

 This word has been speaking to me longer than I have known to be listening for it. It is when a beautiful grain of corn is broken up in the earth and by death, that its inner heart sprouts forth and bears hundreds of other grains. God must have broken things. Those who are broken in wealth, broken in self will, broken in their ambitions and broken in their beautiful worldly reputations, those broken in their affections, those who are despised and helpless… those are the ones the Holy Ghost is seizing upon and using for God´s glory. Isaiah says the lame take the prey. I have seen and felt this in my own life as well as the lives of the Mayan people I am living with. These people are powerful because of the authority Christ has given to them. One moment that I hope never escapes me is when I heard the church members pray over us and over the church when we arrived, it was no rehearsed prayer but it was full of life and response. I had no idea what was being said but I was crying along with most everyone else, I believe about 30 of us were in tears because of the life behind this prayer. I took note. We as Christians are called to this form of life, we are called to suffer for Christ, to take risk, to be a dangerous threat to the darkness around us. What is a Christian without such?

The first day we arrived in our village La Cama. We were marched up to the church we will be helping to construct. We had a group of about 30 members of the church follow us up there. It was pretty cute cause we are the first group to actually take on their lifestyle and live with the people. Anyhow it was cute cause the children don’t know what to think of all us white TALL folk. I think the average height is 5 foot. Anyhow all the people giggle and laugh at us trying to understand one another. We do a lot of pointing and uhs and ahs. The primary language is called Quiche or something like that, and the second is Spanish. By the grace of God we have 2 who speak Spanish so we are somewhat able to communicate.

The church is hard work we has several days of intense shoveling of dirt clumps, sand, and rock. I cant describe in words how sore my back is. But the site of the church is sooo beautiful. Our village is in the mountains I think around 6000 feet. And the church is set on the ridge overlooking a glorious mountain range, so we couldn’t ask for better conditions to work in. oh and when I was told not to bring warm clothes…. I shouldn’t have listened. It gets around 40 degrees at night and in the early morning. The church came together and gave us some of their ponchos to wear around. We all look like we have snuggies on at night. The pastor of the church and his family moved completely out of their house so that we could have a place to set up our tents! The hospitality is indescribable. Mama cooks for us and makes us coffee at night when we are near frostbite.