More snow (D'oh!) and learning to just be

Well, it snowed again this past Monday in Nogales. I want to share a couple pictures of the snow covered hills at sunrise.

We had a group from the University of Arizona with us this past week. The weather, which had been in the 80s for the past 2 weeks, turned very cold and it began to snow on their first day in Nogales. We were all surprised, especially me. I was convinced that the cold time was over in Nogales. But, just like springtime back home in the Old Dominion, it can snow unexpectedly here. The college students had not brought many warm clothes and we all shivered together. We "suffered" for two days at the most. Many people in the Colosio are cold all day and night for lack of warm clothes or decent walls to keep out the cold. It was good for us to share in their discomfort.


On Monday, the temperatures began to rise just a bit but it still snowed and hailed on and off all day. By Tuesday, the weather was back in the upper 60s and by Wednesday, it was in the 80s again. The plan for the week was work in the neighborhood, experiencing the culture and taking time to learn what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I think what I enjoyed the most this week was the return to morning, afternoon and evening chapel services. As the only person at the Cuirim House, it is often difficult to maintain the Celtic rhythm of work, study and prayer. Sometimes Carlos shows up very early and needs help with his work. Sometimes I get side-tracked. The three times a day prayers and meditations are a wonderful way to refocus on God and get the focus off of me. It is what I enjoy most about the Cuirim House summer schedule. There is something really wonderful about worshiping God with other people who love him and are like-minded in wanting to be like Jesus.

Along with the group from U of A, two college students from Lynchburg, Virginia and one of their friends from New Jersey flew in to work for a few days. It was great to meet new people and to share with them the work in the Colosio. We mixed cement and poured part of a floor at the church, we put in a concrete barrier at a single mother's home so water won't run through her house when it rains and we replaced the roof on the home of a man who is a paraplegic. The college students worked closely with the men from the church who headed each project. I was in charge of one project with three students and at times it was difficult because I do not like being "in charge". I realize that it is part of my on-going character development to learn to be more flexible and to value people over any schedule or plan. With great patience, my Mexican friends are teaching me this lesson. When I came here, I thought I would be the one helping them. Instead, they are teaching me to be more like Jesus.

Further south of the border

Recently, I was invited to go with some men from the church to a town south of here called Navojoa. Navojoa is located about 8 hours south of the U.S.-Mexican border and minutes from the Gulf of California. The population is estimated at over 270,000 people in the greater Navojoa area. It is modern and clean, a huge change from Nogales.

The purpose of the trip was to visit with one of the men from our church, Juan Pablo, who had returned to his home town to start a church and minister to the poor there. As he begins his ministry there, he has been beset with several obstacles and he was a bit discouraged. We went to visit, encourage and strengthen him. I have been wanting to see more of Mexico and I was very excited to go. My traveling companions, from left to right, were Miguel, Mario, Juan Carlos and Ramon (the pastor). We crammed into Ramon's Isuzu Rodeo and prayed for no mechanical problems as we headed out.


The 7 1/2 hour drive started on Sunday after the Sunday service. The service ended about 5:30 p.m. In true Mexican fashion, we actually didn't get everyone in the car and on the road until about 9:30 p.m. We drove all night. I don't like driving all night, partly for safety reasons and partly because I want to see where I am driving especially if it is a new place for me. We took major highways and toll highways all the way there but still we made poor time. This was due in part to hitting an incredible amount of dense fog in and around a town called Guaymas. We creeped along at 20 mph for close to 45 minutes. The other reason was numerous stops for coffee and stretching of legs. Each time we stopped, I think we took longer and longer. As the sun rose, we were approaching Ciudad Obregón, a city about 45 minutes north of Navojoa. We arrived in Navojoa around 7:30 a.m. Our 7 1/2 hour drive actually took around 10 hours. We first stopped in to visit Carlos' family. They live in a small house in the urban part of Navojoa. They live right off of one of the main roads through the city and beside a river:


After visiting for a few minutes and freshening up, we went directly to the outskirts of the city where Juan Pablo lives with his wife and two children. Here is JP sitting with us outside his house:


We sat outside, under the shade of a small tree with chairs in a circle, drinking Fanta and Pepsi. We took time to relax and catch up on the latest news. As I looked around me, I realize how much the area reminds me of the Tidewater area of Virginia. I became a little homesick during the trip just because I could imagine myself driving to Virginia Beach on 460 East instead of being thousands of miles away from there. Frankly, I couldn't believe the abundance of water and green here. Having spent most of the last year in the high desert, the lush countryside was a real treat.


As we explored the area on foot, I noticed that many people use horses and carts to get around. They drove their carretitas (little carts) along the dirt roads as well as paved roads. Carretitas and motor vehicles amicably shared the road.


The folks here live a rural life. There were lots of horses, chickens and pigs everywhere. People often live in adobe houses. The feeling I got is what it must be like to live in Appalachia minus the Spanish language. The fields surrounding his house are filled with alfalfa and corn. There are mountains in the distance, partially obscured by humidity, reminding me of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Huge irrigation channels surround the neighborhood, providing an abundance of water for the crops.


One memorable visit was with a Christian lady (whose name I can't remember) who lives by herself now, her husband having died some years ago. She is 76 years old and has lived in the same house for over 40 years without plumbing or electircity. She told us many stories but one really struck me. She said they haven't had a Christian pastor in a long time, the area being overwhelmingly Mexican Catholic. (Catholicism in Mexico is very different than Catholicism in the U.S. and Europe but more on that another time). She said the last pastor would not visit someone to pray for them unless they paid for the prayer; the more serious the illness or problem, the more it would cost. I was disturbed by this and Mario, Carlos and I agreed with our hostess that God doesn't make you pay for his help. It is vitally important that people know that God is always available and wants to deliver us from our trouble. Here, some of the people now have the idea that God wants their money before He will help them. It is truly a shame. We left our new friend with a chorus of "Dios te bendiga"s (God bless you). Here she is along with a picture of her adobe brick house:


We had lunch out at an outdoor restaurant, situated beneath a huge tree. Festooned amongst the limbs of the tree were stuffed animals....real stuffed animals. Snakes, armadillos, possums and iguanas were among our friends as we ate. In this picture, you can see a stuffed raccoon on the branch to the right of the top center of the picture. It was a really interesting experience.



The day began to draw to a close and I realized that I hadn't slept in over 36 hours. When we got to Carlos' mom's house ready for bed, she had made us pork tamales. Lots of pork tamales. Although we had already eaten a late lunch, we obliged her and partook. They were delicious but I was so full that I was actually uncomfortable. The family gave up all of their beds for us and we all slept soundly until 6 a.m. the next morning.

There is still more to tell you about. I will try to do that in the next week or so. But first, because I just figured out how to add videos, here is a short of all of us crammed into the pastor's truck, heading into the city to sight-see and to look for livestock to take back with us to Nogales (more on this later). I was amused by how we must have looked, cramming in as many people as possible into the truck.

Moving into the 20th century

A lot of things have been going on here in the neighborhood. Believe it or not, the city is finally putting in sewer lines in the Colosio. I kept seeing trucks with huge pipes drive through the neighborhood but I wasn’t sure what they were. Then, I found where they were storing the pipes and equipment for the work.

It is hard to tell when the work will be finished. Public work projects like this seem to take a long time to complete here. For instance, the pipes in the picture have been sitting there for 2 weeks now and I haven’t seen anyone working in that time. However, when it is completed, it will mean a lot less contamination and pollution from poorly-made baños (bathrooms). Many (if not most) bathrooms in our neighborhood are outhouses. Some are barely standing with an old blanket or cloth of some kind as a door. Here is a picture of one of the better outhouses in the neighborhood:

When it rains, especially with the torrential rains during the summer, you can smell sewage as you walk down the street or dig into the wet earth. I don’t know how our neighbors will go about getting hooked into the sewer lines or even if they will be able to afford to. But this is certainly a step forward.

These things remind me of how blessed we are back in the U.S. Yes, there are still people living like this in the U.S. but not you or I. I appreciate little things now like a single electric heater to keep me warm (kind of) when it is in the 30s. I appreciate blankets, hot water and shoes without holes. I appreciate a solid front door to keep out rain and wind. I am paying more attention to the little blessings of God.

A typical Saturday morning in the Colosio

The ladies of the church are having a spiritual retreat at the Cuirim House this weekend. It started Friday night at 8 p.m. and is going until an hour before church starts on Sunday. I don’t know what all the husbands are going to do; the wives here seems to do most of the cooking. Not wanting to distract anyone at the Cuirim House and feeling a little odd, I beat feet to the McDonald's. Along the way to the McDonald’s to access Internet, I drove through the Saturday swap meet and thought I would share it with you.

One thing that I really like about living in Mexico is the constant moving and bustling of people. Informal commerce is everywhere. On Saturday mornings, cars and people start to gather early on Calle Abraham Zaied. On the sides of the street are vendors selling just about anything. Not only are used electronics, clothing and households items for sale, but there are also small stands selling tacos, burros, carnitas, carne asada, hot dogs and hamburgers. It is a place where you will run into your neighbors or get a good deal on something you need. The people browsing overflow into the street and traffic creeps along as drivers look at what's for sale without leaving their cars. It is very important to pay attention to driving, however, because children will often step into the street without thinking and in front of your car. The crowd reaches it peak between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and the street is almost impassable but nobody seems to mind.

What the salvation of God really means for you and me

Over Christmas, I was given a book by a good friend. It is called Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. I read the book in about 3 days, mostly on the plane returning to Mexico. I highly recommend reading this book whether you are now a Christian or if you are interested in the new kind of life that Jesus offers. It beautifully explains what the life of God is and the reason for Jesus’ sacrificial death. In Chapter 4, Bell writes about the restorative power of Christ in our lives.

“In one sense, salvation is a legal transaction. Humans are guilty because of our sin, and God is the judge who has to deal with our sin because he is holy and any act of sin goes against his core nature. He has to deal with it. Enter Jesus, who dies on the cross in our place. Jesus gets what we deserve; we get what Jesus deserves. For Jesus, however, salvation is far more. Salvation is living in harmony with God, a process that will go on forever.

When we understand salvation from a legal-transaction perspective, then the point of the cross becomes what it has done for us. Nothing more to be offered and nothing more to be sacrificed. Jesus’ death perfectly satisfies God. But let’s also use a slightly different phrase: the work of the cross in us. There is Jesus’ death on our behalf, once and for all, but there is also the ongoing work of the cross in our hearts and souls and minds and lives. There is the ongoing need to return to the cross to be reminded of our brokenness and dependence on God. There is the healing that we need from the cross every single day.

Which leads to forgiveness. The point of the cross isn’t forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to something bigger: restoration. God isn’t just interested in covering over our sins; God wants to make us into the people we were originally created to be. It is not just the removal of what is being held against us; it is God pulling us into the people he originally had in mind when he created us. This restoration is why Jesus always orients his message around becoming the kind of people who are generous and loving and compassionate. The goal here isn’t simply not to sin. Our purpose is to increase the shalom [peace, presence of the goodness of God] in this world, which is why approaches to the Christian faith that deal solely with not sinning always fail. They aim at the wrong thing. It is not about what you don’t do. The point is becoming more and more the kind of people God had in mind when we were first created.

If we only have a legal-transaction understanding of salvation in which we are forgiven of our sins so we can go to heaven, then salvation essentially becomes a ticket to somewhere else. In this understanding, eternity is something that kicks in when we die. But Jesus did not teach this. Jesus says that when we believe, we have crossed over from death into life (John 5:24). God always has been and always will be. And when I enter into a relationship with God through Christ, I am connected with God now and I will be connected with God forever. For Jesus, salvation is now.”

I grew up with the belief that the Christian life was mostly concerned with “don’t do this or that”, focusing on the negative. Rather, when I look at Jesus’ teachings, he talked a lot about “do this and do that”, framing everyday life in the positive. Jesus doesn’t focus on not sinning. He focuses on acting righteously and lovingly toward God and man. When I first began to understand this some time ago, it was absolutely radical. I understand now that to act righteously toward God and others requires a transformation inside; it isn’t my nature to be like Jesus. But Jesus living his life through me transforms me all the way down to my motives (read Matthew 5).

Bless God today with your words, thoughts and actions. Bless him for being the right, true and unchanging God.

It's snowing in Nogales

I had just finished making the previous blog entry and I was thinking that two months between blog entries is an eternity in the world of blogging. Then I thought of something that everyone would be interested in. It snowed here today. It started about 8 a.m. and came down fast.



Our neighborhood as well as the colonias on the hills that ring the city, were covered in snow all day and still are as I write this at 7 p.m. However, down in the city streets, it was snowing but not sticking. I'm not a big fan of snow but this really did make things beautiful here. You can see that, having been in the 80s for the past week, it seems like Spring is right around the corner. The fruit trees next door are starting to blossom. Thankfully ( in my opinion), it will be back up to 60 degrees tomorrow and into the 70s for the next week.

A visit to a Mexican orphanage

Carlos, the children’s pastor in my church, had a great idea recently. He wanted our children to visit an orphanage located in an area of Nogales called Buenos Aires. It is in a colonia like ours but located very close to the border. The orphanage is for girls only. The ages of the girls were from about 18 months to 15 years. Before we met the orphans, our pastor talked to our kids about the situation of the children in the orphanage, some having been abandoned purposely by their parents and others whose parents have died. Our kids had gifts to give the orphans.

All of the kids played together. I was impressed with how our kids engaged the orphans and were very concerned for their lack. One parent from our church who visited with us said that two little girls asked to visit her home. There is a program to allow the orphans to visit with families for one weekend one time per month. It was really sad to hear some of the stories, especially the stories of parent’s abandoning their children. I am reminded of the Scriptures that remind us to care for orphans, widows and foreigners living in our country.

Please remember to pray for these children and all those who have been abandoned in one way or another. Thank God for your parents, your families and those who love you and care about you.