God’s Grace and Mercy Part 1: The Missing Keys
For my keys to be “missing” isn’t extraordinary... but this was different... 10:30 on the last night of the international fair, my purse was stolen... I remembered a little girl, maybe 9 years old, standing in the corner behind me who I thought was with a family I was selling to... Maybe if I hadn’t been running on 10 days of little sleep I would’ve caught on a bit sooner... I had a few little things I had bought in my purse... a wrinkled tangerine... no money or documents... the only real loss was my huge set of keys... from El Jordan, the house and my truck...
Every year, our girls who work cleaning (and collecting beer cans) during the fair, find purses thrown in the garbage, under plants etc... emptied of their valuables... I talked to cleaners, roaming police, recyclers and Jenny, one of our students who was still working... asking them to be on the lookout for my purse/keys... There was nothing more I could do so I composed myself, tried not to ask “why?”... and went back to work...
So you can imagine how big this fair is – it must be 6 blocks by 5 blocks... and something like 400,000 people come through the fair during the 10 nights... my keys were somewhere in the middle of it all!!!
Close to 1:30 a.m. I borrowed Heidi’s car to go pick up my extra keys... (She was tending our artisan spot that closes a bit later...) I was two blocks away and she called me... “Someone just brought me your purse... with your keys!!!!”
Apparently my purse showed up on someone’s table in the artisan section. No one knew where it had come from... or who had left it there because there had been a bit of a crowd of people looking at things... Looking through the purse, the lady found a price tag from El Jordan (I had no idea that was in there!) and you know the rest of the story!!!
Actually... you don’t... If the story ended there, it would have been a great testimony of God’s grace... We have NO idea how the purse showed up... what made the little girl who stole it (or her mother who also had to be involved) not dispose of it right away... The fair is so huge... with crowds of people and SO many dark corners where my keys could have been, yet God kept them safe... and returned them!!! WOW...
The next afternoon I had Bible Study at El Jordan. Jenny was there with another lady... That morning when all the cleaners got together at the fair for a meeting/special lunch, Jenny asked different ones if they had found some keys... “They are a ‘sister’s’ keys... she helps a lot of people... and she really needs her keys...” She noticed one lady who was really sad, sitting on a curb... Jenny started giving her the same story... The sad eyes looked up... “What is that ‘sister’s’ name?” “Corina...”
The sad eyes brightened. “Hermana Corina? I’ve wanted to meet her for years!!!. I’ve always wanted someone to take me to her but no one ever has...”
So Jenny brought her to El Jordan... and the lady stayed for Bible Study... Isn’t God’s grace and mercy amazing??? If it wasn’t for my keys, Jenny most likely never would’ve talked to her... Jaquelin needed the money which is why she came to work at the fair... but when she got to work one day, she had been replaced... Jaquelin has a huge burn scar on her arm which partially affects its movement... I don’t know if that had something to do with it... but she’s worried that she might not get paid for the days she worked...
One of Jaquelin’s daughters lived in the streets for many years and through her knew a lot of street people... Doña Gorda who died a couple months back was a good friend of hers and had mentioned me... My guess is that if she was good pals with Doña Gorda, she probably shared some of her bad habits in life... Jaquelin cried and said, “I’m so happy... I’m so happy to have met you...”
I explained how God knew her sadness and hopelessness... and cared for her enough that He allowed my keys to get stolen (and returned) so that she would have a chance to come to a place that teaches about Him...
God is good... Please pray that Jaquelin will desire to come back and one day know Christ as her personal Savior...
God’s Grace and Mercy Part 2: A Cooler for Tania
For those who receive the Avant magazine, there was a picture of Tania and her family in the last issue... Her years and years of addictions and street life cost her dearly... Bismark, her oldest son starting sniffing glue when he was only about 10... Alison was stolen at age 4.. little Corina was stolen at a few weeks old... and a small son was taken away by social services and never seen again... (although she looked for him...)
Tania came to El Jordan with Florencia 6 and Joel 4... Rachel was born since she came here... Although she was no longer doing drugs nor living on the streets, she would still drink days at a time (either taking her kids with her... or leaving them in her rented room). She wants this family to end up differently... and has been faithfully coming to learn about God and other practical skills... even when I know that bus fares are hard to come by...
Demetrio, the father of her last three children, has a drug problem... and will disappear days at a time without leaving money or food for his family... Things have been getting worse... including violence... until the police got involved last week and Demetrio is not allowed to bother his family anymore... Unfortunately this means Tania needs to find the means to pay their debt of rent they owe... plus keep food on the table for the kids... A regular job means that her kids will be left alone too much so she would like to sell juice or food outside her room... wash other people’s clothes... and make crochet purses when her kids are sleeping...
...but... when you don’t have anything.... where do you start?
That’s where God comes in... Tania was walking Florencia to school the other day... and she found a plasterform cooler, thrown by the side of the road... it didn’t have a lid... but she was so excited... She brought it home... washed it up with bleach... and it turned out to be quite white...
The next day when Tania was walking somewhere... guess what she found??? I LID to fit her cooler!!!! In a country where usually nothing is thrown away unless it is broken and useless, God left both a cooler... and a lid that fit right in Tania’s path (before someone else got it!).
Tania’s path won’t be an easy one... but there is a God who loves and cares... whose eyes will always be on her...
God’s Grace and Mercy Part 3: God’s Perfect Timing...
I was witness to the dark, destroyed life a Bolivian friend (pastor’s kid) found herself trapped in... and I consider myself privileged to have witnessed how God incredibly rescued her life and stroke by stroke, transformed it into a beautiful portrait of His amazing grace. There are two testimonies that never fail to bring tears to my eyes – one of them is Marco’s... the other one is hers... because both are incredible displays of God’s unbelievable love, mercy, grace and power...
She has been studying and working in Spain for the last 8 years... and has always had a soft spot in her heart for El Jordán... She often phones to encourage me and let me know she is praying for me and the ministry... When she made a surprise visit back to Bolivia to visit her family a month or so ago, she brought $US 400 as an offering for El Jordán...
With our tighter budget because of the construction, I was excited... and already knew how I was going to spend it... (starting with the thank you gifts for our volunteers that we give out at graduation).
A few days later, we got $US 120 from a team that came from a church in Toronto... who spent an afternoon visiting our students... Then, “out of the blue”, one of our volunteers brought in a 900+ Bs. ($US 130 something) donation from a lady he used to work nearby almost 15 years ago who now lives in Spain!
Well... I already had the money in different accounts... for emergency medical expenses... for this and for that... Maybe I should have asked God what HE wanted the donations used for!
At our monthly chapel meeting, we had extra visitors – a team from Canada, other family and friends of our students... and as for volunteers, there didn’t seem to be many of us... and we all seemed to be one step behind things... The chapel meeting was great, the preacher communicated Truth very clearly... and then at the end, all of our vehicles are used as buses to get our students closer to home (more than 20 have fit in my 7 passenger vehicle!)...
Everything seemed fine... until the next morning when Abraham did his accounts... the lock on our money drawer was stripped... and $655 was missing... We usually don’t have that much money there but someone had just brought in their savings for safe keeping (ha!)... sigh...
Although the main door to the office was locked during chapel... the back one was open... all of the volunteers present were really busy that night... and we weren’t as careful as we should have been... With so many people around (about 120) it’s hard to even say who had the opportunity to steal the money... (We had our suspicions but looking into it further, we found no other indications to push the issue farther...)
Where is God’s grace and mercy in getting so much money stolen? Well... losing so much money at the best of times is terrible... but God knew that right now with all of our extra monies going into the construction we really didn’t have that money to lose... Through three donations from unexpected sources, our loss was almost exactly covered – even before it was stolen...
(It was also a very expensive lesson to be more careful...)
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Well... appreciate all of your prayers for us during this time... there are so many different things going on and knowing that you pray and support us is real encouragement to us... THANK YOU!!!
lots of love,
Corina, Marco... Keiden and the little lemon...