Started the day at Border mission. I was astounded to hear that about 100 pastors a week come to Border mission to get food and supplies tor their Mexican congregations. It was so quiet and empty while we were there, it was hard to imagine the amount if food that passes through the place. Power Ministries has a warehouse on the compound that they make great yuse of for staging supplies for building projects, festival supplies etc.
Another great worship and devotional after breakfast. We all appreciate our worship leaders: Door Wible, Dan Careno, and Cody Gibbs. Even though the acoustics weren’t that great, we raised the roof on Our last song, How great is our God.
Doug Husen referred to James 1:2, “Brothers to count it all joy when you encounter variuos trials.” Just a note on Doug–it is pretty easy too imagine him taking everything in stride, and being joyful always. His presentation of the word this week was impactful and fun. I love getting out to projects, and understand the time crunch, but I just want to say that I would have been happy to have longer devotion times.
The part Doug shared about the conflict between God’s promise of great nations coming through Isaac the son of promise, verses God’s test of obedience when he asked to sacrifice that same son was POWERFUL. And Abraham believed God, exercising complete faith despite this incomprehensible command.
We left for Senda de Vida where we would work on some dormitories for single women with children. It’s exciting to hear that there will be homes for these broken families and that some kids will have a real place where they can call home and just be themselves. Children can add so much life and vitality to a place. I hope and pray that this will be a place of blessing, not only for the families that will live there, but for all of Senda de Vida and the surrounding neighborhood.
Hector Luna, the faithful man of God who started Santa de Vida, gave us a condensed version of the story of how Santa de Vida started, How the police said he had to move out, and how he stayed (under threat of prison time). God moved in the heart of the mayor who saw the true goodness in Hector and what he was trying to do and instead of evacuation, the city government got behind Hector and has supported him in many ways over the years basically giving him the property that is currently Send a de Vida.
I, like most of the Power brothers had heard the story before. We make the excuse that we make Hector tell it again “for the new guys”. The truth is, we were all hanging on every word and I doubt there was a dry eye in the crowd by the time Hector was finished. I think may be It’s one of those stories that gets better and better every time you hear it and there is much, much more to the story than what we heard today. I wonder if we have the full story on our website?
Had the chance to visit some more with Pastor Mario of the Alianza Cristiana church during our lunchbreak at Senda de Vida. I didn’t realize their church has a school with about 350 students. That’s really cool. They are training up a future generation of godly men and women.
I got to work with Pasor Mario and the Alianza feeding crew for the afternoon where we visited the poorest of the poor on the streets of Reynosa. I was glad to be able to feed them, but they need so much more than food. It was a disturbing, heart wrenching experience. I don’t know what else to say. Some of the people were thankful, many had blank expressions on there faces that spoke of misery and lack of real hope. I think I heard that the Alianza food bus makes it out there every day. What a witness of God’s love and faithfulness.
As always, the 3-4 hour van ride seemed to fly by, mostly due to the excellent conversations that happen. Sometimes I think It’s crazy all the driving around we do, but there is purpose in it. Another late night to bed followed by a 6:00 morning.
Whew…looking forward to catching up on sleep soon.
Dan Commins