One Full Day

From Dan...
It's been a wonderful and typical first full day in Mexico...

One of the questions that arose during out team's preparation was "Are we invited down there or are we just going (invading)?" It was and is a great question, one that cannot be answered in a simple sentence but in the moment I remember saying, "You are invited not to what you think. You are invited into a relationship." Today typified that.

We began the day trying to go to church in the neighborhood next to the enormous city dump. I had researched it, talked to the pastor's wife about coming and we even drove and found it (which is a miracle since the directions said, "make a left on the next road after the blue building and if you reach one with ducks on them you've gone too far." Seriously. Those were the points of interest. Well anyway, when we got to the church, there was a note on the door saying, "Special Worship Sunday Night 6 pm." In other words, they had moved the morning worship until evening. (those pastor types, I tell you). In America, we would have yelled and screamed because we demand our churches to cater to us and so if it wasn't properly advertised using the radio, paper, internet and newsletter, we feel as if our rights were violated. We didn't have that luxury...we just turned around and headed back to the orphanage for church.

It was great. I could barely understand a word, but the 30 or so members that were there were really worshipping and engaged with the Word. I was privileged enough to be asked to pray at the end too (actually someone had to tell me in English that he had just asked me to pray in Spanish). it was fun.

Here's where the story comes together. From that point on until now (10 pm local time), we have DONE, aka ACCOMPLISHED nada, zero, nothing. No walls to build. No orphans to save. No prayer services. You see if we were to work on these days, then our Mexican hosts would too and they don't do that. They, instead watch football (soccer) (Mexico beat Paraguay and they literally had a superbowl-like celebration in the streets over a simple win...awesome), they hang out and talk, they eat, they engage with each other. And what I'm learning is that in that, they are engaging God in them and God in others. They were not rushed and neither were we. We just enjoyed.

Tonight Zach and Laura took some of the Mexican high school boys and girls to get pizza and ice cream. When I saw them after, they both were excited and I could tell that they had made connections that will change their lives. And imagine that all that happened without hammering one nail.

We were invited to relationship. We are invited to relationship. It's not about what we do. It's about Him.

Hasta luego.