February 1 in Ciudad Juarez (across the border from El Paso) 15 teenagers were murdered when a couple pickups full of assassins pulled up on both ends of the street and shot up a party. Around 14 more were wounded. This is an example of the kind of violence that has plagued Mexico since early 2007 when President Felipe Calderón moved to combat drug gangs throughout the country. The LA Times reports that 9,900 people have been killed since then. Many of those are people who are part of the problem, but there are plenty of innocents in that horrific figure.
Puebla, while we were there and up ’til now as far as we can tell, is relatively untouched by the violence (there are a few possible reasons for that). We’ve been thankful for that. But please pray for the situation. One of our colleagues said that “there’s a battle for the soul of Mexico.” And that’s true–on a number of different levels. Mexico’s ultimate hope is not in more and better police, or an end to drug trafficking, but in Jesus.
The Psalms speak much about violent men. They describe evil, wicked men who breathe violence. And those are the sort of men who dominate areas of Mexico today. But read Psalm 73:6 and then read all of Psalm 73 for an idea of their end. And pray for Mexico.
One of the realities of disaster relief that I’ve noticed after living long enough to see some major disasters (from a distance always so far) is that people (Americans from our personal experience, not to exclude others) can respond with phenomenal generosity to the initial need (9-11, the Tsunami, Katrina, now Hati). It’s funny how disaster can bring out the best in people (image of God). But generosity can come with it’s own problems. And sometimes (since we have short attention spans) the immediate problem gets all the attention, and months later when the needs continue the interest is gone. Now, it’s not likely that the responsible aid organizations (Red Cross, World Vision, MSF, and many others) will run out of money for Hati for a while (hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated) but a few months from now when the need is for hands, not money, who knows? It’s my belief that most massive problems in the world (hunger, poverty, housing) is less an issue of money but rather of organization (logistics, access to resources that are there, corruption…). And all the money in the world won’t cause houses and churches and roads and schools to be rebuilt tomorrow (or in a year) in Hati.
Ok, that’s enough of my spouting off on a subject that I’m hardly qualified to comment on. But, one month after the quake, we’d encourage you to stay in tuned with what’s happening, keep praying and see what needs (financial or otherwise) you can help with.
Here’s a place to look at. EBM’s been in Hati for a long time. A couple from Hati, Pierre and Yvette Cadet, are EBM missionaries there (they were in Florida during the quake). Pierre is in Hati helping a church with the recovery process. For 20 years EBM has had a partnership with a ministry in Hati, Double Harvest, that was well positioned to provide great help. Here’s the link to EBM’s information page about Hati, and you can see photos from the ground here.
We’re playing around with different photo services for the best, freest, most unlimited, most viewable photo storage and sharing service: Flickr, Snapfish, Shutterfly, and now Google’s Picasa… So here’s a link to a few photos from Pueblo Nuevo, just to see how this looks.
If you have any suggestions we’d love to hear them. Ideally there would be virtually unlimited storage, easy uploading and management features, a nice display–slideshows that are easy to put together, view, share, embed–and a low cost. Or maybe there’s a tool we can run on our own website.
We decided to bag church reports after each visit. 1.There’s not always a lot of interesting stuff to say and 2.”Thank you” is best said personally. But we’re making an exception for our church of yesterday, formerly Burien Bible Baptist and now Seattle Church of the Open DoorSeattle Open Door Church. And, boy, have they opened their doors.
Our relationship with the church goes back 7+ years when we visited raising support. At the time Lee Scholes was pastor and the church was, to put it truthfully, kind of a white island in a rainbow neighborhood. They had a Spanish-speaking church meeting in the afternoons, but they were struggling with how to adapt and reach the new population of Burien. They wanted to, but they didn’t know how. I can sympathize. In fact we began to pray along with them for God to help them reach out. Well while we were in Mexico Pastor Scholes retired and Brian Cho, a Korean-American pastor, came. We don’t know all the details or the story, but we saw the results yesterday. There is a contingent of Bhutanese refugees that has integrated into the church. There are Koreans and Japanese and Samoans and indy-rockers and, yes, how-do-you-say-it-Europeans. There was an energy and vibrancy to the church that you could feel. They are working hard to form one church composed of many “nations” and not several different churches. And the preaching was…well, Tim preached, so it was maybe passable. But surely on other Sundays it is good! Sometimes first impressions are wrong, but we really felt that God is doing something special at Seattle Open Door church. It seems that the church leaders are really behind Pastor Cho and working at making this happen. Just a hunch, but we suspect that bringing in a non-white leader of the whole church may have been a major step in this direction.
Now we know that there are struggles and ups and downs and we’re sure this isn’t coming easily. And being there for a few hours on one Sunday doesn’t begin to tell the whole story. Nonetheless, it was as mixed a group in a church as we’ve seen and definitely a shot in the arm for us on our first weekend back on the road. We’d encourage others to pay them a visit and check it out–Seattle Open Door Church in Burien.
Ok, since we’re posting prolifically, here are some more photos from our Christmas with Miguel and Socorro: Christmas Eve, Day and a trip up to Mount Rainier.
Some of you have asked for our schedule from time to time. So for general perusal, here is the list of our churches that we’ll be visiting this year:
1/10/2010: Bible Baptist Church, Burien, WA 1/17/2010: Scholls Community Church, Hillsboro, OR 1/24/2010: Edgewood Bible Church, Edgewood, WA 1/31/2010: Skyview Baptist Church, Vancouver, WA 2/14/2010: Prarie Baptist Fellowship, Yelm, WA 2/07/2010: Grace Community Church, Tacoma, WA 2/20-3/7/2010: Treasure Valley Missions Conference, Boise, ID 3/14/2010: Puyallup Community Baptist, Puyallup, WA 3/28/2010: Tabernacle Baptist Church, Shoreline, WA 4/11-4/25/2010: Bethany Bible Church, Kenmore, WA 5/23/2010: First Baptist Church, Colville, WA 5/30/2010: Valley Baptist Church, Priest River, ID
So we’ll have plenty to do. If you’re nearby, we’ll look forward to seeing you!
Well, we’re done with the festivities (but not the bowl games–how dumb is that?). It’s time to move forward with the year and start moving ahead.
Some of our big steps in 2010: 1. Tim has a thesis to write (well, actually to propose, get accepted, then write). 2. We have 5 months of reporting to our churches (coming soon: our calendar). 3. We are going to be working on putting a team together for work in Pueblo Nuevo. 4. Of course we will be getting ready for a road trip back down to Puebla in August.
So it looks like we’ll have plenty to fill our time until then. And of course we’ll be working a bit of fun into things, too!
We’re thankful to God for another year of life, for the potential and opportunities to serve Him in 2010. So Happy New Year! May God let you know Him better this year!
Start with 2 Samuel 7:8-16 move on to Isaiah 9:1-7. Then add a pinch of Luke 1:26-38 and a dash of Luke 2:1-7. Then for a touch of frosting on top jump to Revelation 5:5-10. There’s quite a bit more of the recipe normally, but this is the bare-bones version.
We’re here with Miguel and Socorro traveling, showing off our beautiful neck of the woods and enjoying their company. And that’s meant not much time for new posts. Today we did our big family breakfast–usually a Christmas Eve extravaganza–and opened a few gifts. It’s a wonderful thing to be with family and friends. And it’s a wonderful world God has given us, though it bears remembering too how broken it is. For that reason Jesus came. So we look back at God’s Great Gift and look forward to the culmination of that Gift–Jesus on the throne and a restored world. That’s particularly meaningful in light of the violence back in Mexico–and of course this year we’ve had: war, disease, economic turmoil, social unrest. If 2009 doesn’t convince you that the world is broken (with the corollary that we need a Savior), well you’re world view is in disarray.
So we celebrate with joy this year, but hoping for more. May you be blessed this Christmas, but long for more, in a godly way.
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