We started the day early around 6 am to give everyone time to get some breakfast and some good strong coffee. Unless you have a good nose or some one is kind enough to share the top secret information, you have to be pretty persistent when it comes to getting coffee. The coffee pot is hidden around the corner of the south entrance to the kitchen…..shhhh. Not having a real good sense of smell, I had to ask and was given directions to the coffee.
Worship started at 7 am. I love it when Doug Wible leads us in the freeing practice of releasing all our cares to Jesus and then recieving His grace, peace, mercy and joy.
We do this in a physical sense by:
1) holding hands out in front of us, palms up representing the burden s we carry.
2) turning hands over, palms down, representing placing it all at the feet of Jesus.
3) turning hands back over palms up, we pray to be filled with God’s grace, peace, love and
joy.
After this, we were privileged to be able to worship the Lord in song together. Even though it is still early and some of us aren’t completely awake yet, this group of men really know how to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. What a great way to start our day here at Faith Mission in Del Rio. We sang “Open the eyes of my heart Lord”, “Come, now is the time to worship”, and the great Hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty”.
Doug Husen led us in morning devotions. He shared a couple very real stories about God speaking to him and prompting him to do something that didn’t make any sense at all until later on. Without going into all the details, God made it clear that when we listen and are sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading He will use us in unexpected ways to impact the world around us. It may be a simple matter of packing an extra pair of underwear in your bag, or stepping out in faith to fix something that you know relatively nothing about, God will use us if we step out in faith.
POWER OF FAITH. Doug touched on the verse of the week–1Jn. 5:4 and also pointed us to two other “Faith” verses. Galatians 5:6 “Faith expressing itself in love” and Hebrews 11:1. “Faith is the assurance or confidence of things hoped for and the evidence or conviction of things not seen.”
CS Lewis defined faith as “the ability to see something that I cannot yet see.”
Lastly, Doug reminded us of a key goal for these ministry trips: For men to grow in their faith.
The 4 work projects in Acuna MX for today:
1) Pastor Julios Church roof truss installation
2) Sister Blancas House–roof removal and replacement.
3) Jose Morales Church–building and setting up trusses
4) Pastor Casios House–framing and siding
I had the pleasure of working with Loren Vander Schaaf and Scott Anderson this morning at Pastor Casio’s house. It was cold this morning, but fortunately most of us were able to get the blood moving by moving stacks of lumber from the nearby church building to the jobsite. A good percentage of us guys don’t always have a clue as to how to do many of these projects. We rely on the patient leadership of experienced contractors like Scott and Loren. I am really thankful to learn some of these very practical skills. One thing I love about working with my Power brothers is how gracious everyone is when I accidentally mess something up. We work really hard, and even though we end the day tired and sore it’s a great feeling to know we accomplished something important–not just in the material, but for eternity.
We gathered for lunch at 1pm at Pastor Julios Church. We ate some authentic homemade tacos provided by Pastor Julios church. We were blessed to be able to meet Pastor Raul and Pastor Julio and some of their family as well. They both got up in front and shared using a translator. Pastor Julio has recently lost his wife and things got a little emotional as he shared a bit from the heart how she must be overjoyed as she watches the transformation of their church from a little tin and cardboard shack to a 30 X 60 building.
I got to work on the Pastor Morales church in the afternoon with Brian Albright We had a good sized crew and all of us got a real good workout loading the trusses (in very organised fashion) onto the roof. I can’t wait to see the finished product on that one. Keep up the good work Brian.
Whew…bedtime. It’s about 11:20pm. and almost everyone is settled into bed. There should be a nice chorus (snoring) in the sleeping porch to sing me to sleep. I might break out the earplugs. Looking forward to trying on the Marine Green shirt in the morning.