For Bryan’s view on these events, check out his blog post at bryannoll.theworldrace.org/?filename=i-complicated-god
Enter scene:
It is Thursday. My teammates Bryan and Andy and myself were supposed to go to San Lucas to work on construction for a woman named Ninet in the morning, then head over to her office at 3:00 to teach English to a boy named Andre.
8:00
Bryan, Andy, and I arrive at our construction site only to discover that Ninet is not present. There will be no construction today. Instead, we wander the city of San Lucas.
10:30
We sit on a bench near a basketball court. We talk with an old farmer and some teenagers. The old man was very passionate about Jesucristo, el único Salvador. The teenagers told Bryan where he could get a haircut down the road. It was probably the best two dollar haircut Bryan’s ever received.
2:00
The three of us decide to head over to the English office. Ninet usually arrives at the office around 1:00. Maybe we can chill out on the couch until class starts.
2:30
We arrive at the office. The door is not only shut, it is locked. Ninet is, once again, not present. We decide to sit on the sidewalk until she arrives. As we sit, we are approached by a drunk Guatemalan man. Let’s establish something right now: Spanish is difficult enough to understand, but drunkenly slurred Spanish is nearly impossible. After failing to decipher(besides “Yo I’m Mike! I’m Mike!”) what he is saying trying to say, we ask him if he knew Jesus Christ and he proceeds to quote scripture. Namely, Romans 10:9 (If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.) and tell us about how his wife had died and, though his heart hurt, it was okay because now she was walking on the streets of gold because she has accepted Christ before she died. Mike bids us adiós and walks away.
2:45
Bryan needs minutes for our team phone. There is a corner store approximately twenty feet away from where we are sitting. There is a man standing leaning again the wall by the corner, but,given that there are people everywhere, this is not a concern. As we are walking into the store, Bryan is intercepted by the, clearly inebriated, man. He grabs Bryan’s hand with his own, which is caked in dirt and topped with unusually long, unusually sharp fingernails also coated in grime. He does not let go of Bryan’s hand as he stares intently at Bryan and I with his eyes that were once blue but are now hard to discern because they are so bloodshot, and mumbled slurred Spanish incoherently but very adamantly. After a couple of minutes Bryan and I explain that we need to go into the store, but we are going to pray for him before we did. So we do, but whether or not he understood remains to be seen as he was so out of his mind.
2:48
Bryan, Andy, and I enter the store. The shopkeeper tells us he cannot sell us minutes right now. We leave.
2:50
We turn the corner to go back to wait outside the English office. The man we had left standing against the wall two minutes ago is now laying on the concrete, a pool of his own blood forming around his head. The bottle of window cleaner that had been in his breast pocket is now leaking through his jacket. He is not moving.
2:51
Panic hits. What now? We cannot touch the man, we do not speak nearly enough Spanish to communicate this, we do not know the emergency number. At this moment, we notice a woman we have never seen before and a boy we have struggling to open the door to the English office. Bryan and Andy go over to help her. I stay and assess the man. His eyes are open, and he responds to noise. This is good.
2:53
The door is open and the woman, for the first time, notices the man laying on the sidewalk. She asks the boy if he knows the number for the police and he tells her no, but there is a police station just down the road. Andy and Bryan go with the boy to get help while I stay with the woman.
2:58
She looks at me imploringly and we begin to pray. This woman is praying to the all-powerful, merciful God and Savior to cast the evil spirits out of this man. Her voice gets stronger and more passionate as she prays. She is pleading. She is commanding. She is coming before The Lord with boldness. Father God, please rescue Your child. Please rescue Your child. Please rescue Your child.
3:02
The boy return and tell us that help is on the way. We continue to pray. Father God, please have mercy on your children. Please.
3:10
Our student, Andre arrives. He is shocked by the scene but joins us in prayer. Father God, reclaim Your child.
3:15
The ambulance arrives. As the EMTs examine the man, the rest of us go inside the English office. The woman, Marta, hugs us all.
3:20
Andre, Bryan, Andy, and I sit down for class. We are twenty minutes late. But before we begin, Andre prays for us. Ninet finally arrives. We have two new students. There is no time to dwell on the events of the past forty five minutes, we need to begin.
End scene.
I’m not one to see demons everywhere or spend a lot of time acknowledging demonic presence. I know they exist, it would be foolish not to. But I don’t believe in giving Satan more power than he has. I refuse to live in fear. But on that day, I was afraid. And that left me shaken. However, in words that are not mine, this has served as a reminder of how sickening and how bloody the spiritual war going on around us really is. And that these are battles God has already won. There is light in the darkest of places. He is the victor and through Him there is life.
Where there is Christ, there is no place for fear.
