Hi everyone!!!
This morning, two fourteen year olds sat on the couch at El Jordan. The girl quietly hung her head. She had puffy, red eyes… The boy with his dyed, gelled hair awkwardly laughed, not really sure how he was supposed to act… She had rolled over in her sleep and smothered their six week old baby…
They had just decided to call him “Etsy”… but even before they got his birth certificate, they were trying to figure out how to get a little coffin and a death certificate…
Flashback… I first met the boy´s mom maybe 10 or 12 years ago… She was standing outside El Jordan´s gate, with her deceased baby boy… While sleeping on the streets, she too, had unknowingly rolled over on her 11 day old baby… Sadly, history repeating itself…
On Friday, an El Jordan mother called to talk... her 14 year old son has completely rebelled… refusing to go to school… not caring about any discipline… showing addictive behavior, openly defying mother and step father… The 13 year old brother is following his example… The mom has been off the streets for about 8 years… but their father is still deeply trapped in addictions and the streets…
On Thursday, another of our girls asked to stay after class to talk…she was broken hearted… her 12 year old daughter had been caught red-handed hugging a boy and then callously denied it… One might say, “its that age”… but when the mom is daily suffering the consequences of having many children (starting at a really young age) with multiple fathers, you can understand her desperation of not wanting her kids to follow the pathway she took…
Before that, my heart broke for the way some of the kids that come to El Jordan pay such a high cost for the decisions their parents make… A girl who used to come to El Jordan but who has made choices to basically abandon her kids to be on the streets has a 13 year old that is SO going astray… and an 18 year old who was in grade 11 who had to drop out of school to basically be the mom to her 3 younger siblings… (For those who got cards when I was back in Canada, she is the one who was using her money from the cards to be able to study… and she was so proud to only have one more year of school after this one… It all makes me so angry, disappointed, sad, and frustrated at the same time…)
The week before was more encouraging… My Monday Bible Study class has boiled down to just a few girls… Matilde first came to El Jordan in February. At 35 and after almost 2/3rds of her life living on the streets, she wanted to learn to write her name. Matilde would come to Bible Study hung over from the weekend and would spend the whole class with her head on the table, sleeping… She had 0 patience… and had nothing to ask God for during our prayer time… Since then, she and her boyfriend have moved off the streets into a small room at her mom´s house… They started off on the floor… then saved up their money (from watching cars) to buy a blanket… mattress… and bed… Matilde now stays awake and actually participates in class… She can see how God is softening her heart… and it shows on her face… She is SO proud of learning how to write… (and so are we!!!)… She is beginning to see how futile her life has been… and now will interrupt our prayers if we´ve forgotten something she´s asked prayer for… On Monday she asked me to write down the questions and Bible verses that we talked about in class so her boyfriend could think about it too… He doesn´t have a Bible so we sent home a New Testament for them…
On Tuesday, another new girl - Mónica - who had no introduction to God before coming to El Jordan wanted to talk to me after class. ¨Do you have a Bible I could buy?” Her reason for wanting to know Christ is so that He can change her… and so the lives of her kids can be different than her life has been… I love being able to teach the Bible to hearts like these!!!
The other day, Tania wrote in my class, “Before knowing Christ, my words hurt others but now since I´ve gotten to know Christ, my words have changed. Now the words that come out of my mouth are words of love for my neighbor, of sharing, forgiving and not swearing. That´s why I ask the Lord to give me wisdom to not continue sinning and hurting those I love.”
Then a week ago, we went to a baptismal service where 3 of our workers´ kids declared their faith… The church they are attending has been reaching out to the neighborhood where many of our families live… I saw 9 different families from El Jordan represented in the service… some were teenagers who came alone, others were moms and their kids and there was even one dad and his kids (his FIRST time ever in church!!) One of the girls is someone who we´ve been praying very specifically for to make a decision for Christ this year…
In front of my eyes I saw another of our prayers being answered – that El Jordan would not be an END but a BRIDGE… for people who used to be street kids to get involved in the local church…and for the local church to get involved with people used to be on the streets…
It was a special anniversary service… at the end of the service I was so proud to see ¨my¨ girls who had taken the initiative (and put their money towards) making hundreds of banana muffins and pails of “chicha” (corn drink) to share with everyone at the end of the service!!! Wow…
So you see, our life and ministry is full of extremes… not very monotonous at all… there are always difficult, sad things… but there are also rays of hope and signs of God´s hand working in people´s lives…
I was going to write my family about something that happened on Saturday, but I think I´ll share it with all of you, if you don´t mind, because again, I´m awed at God´s grace and mercy…
I went (with two other volunteers from El Jordan) to the airport at 2:30 in the morning to pick up Heidi and her cousin who were arriving from Canada… Everything went well, they got the “green light” for customs which is always nice… and we were on our way home…
There is a section of the highway that is always kind of dark at night even with the street lights that there are in the median… maybe the palm trees make enough shadows or the lights aren´t that bright… anyhow… I´m in the left lane… Heidi is up front with me… and she said something like, ¨Is there a tree?” I look ahead on the highway and don´t see anything except a brick or chunk of cement my lane. I swerved right so that the brick would go under the middle of my vehicle… when something hit my side mirror and made it fold in… and something scraped the top of our roof…
Heidi said, ¨Do you think we should stop and look?” I didn´t because the damage was still going to be there when we got home so I thought I´d avoid the truth as long as I could.
As we unloaded the bags, I noticed that my rack was gone (we never heard it falling off!) but everything else looked intact… I figured someone for sure had already picked up my rack BUT I was curious to see what I had driven into… Heidi was the only one out of 5 of us who ¨kind of¨ saw something…
As I was going towards the airport again, I found a truck, terribly smashed, that had run into a light post in the median. The police had arrived, with their lights flashing… but I still had to find a place to double back to see what had happened to us…
In the conversation on our way to the airport, I had mentioned that there is really nothing that can make me lie awake at nights… that I´ve been blessed with the ability to sleep…
What I saw made me stay awake for a good long time when I got home… There were several police men out in the middle of the road with flashlights getting everyone to go out onto the shoulder to go around a light post that was bent and hanging across the road…I went cold, because I HAVE NO IDEA HOW we made it underneath without doing a lot of damage – to the car and us… I wished I had a camera with me because it’s hard to believe it was true… My head was filled with “what ifs…” and the question of HOW both my mirror AND my roof could have hit the pole… and yet, beyond not having a rack anymore, there isn´t a scratch on my vehicle…
I can only humbly say (once again), Thank you Lord. …and thanks to each and everyone one of you who pray… (maybe one of you had insomnia and was praying for us!)
Well… please continue to pray for us… we are moving into our busy quarter starting on Friday with the 10 day International Fair… In a couple weeks it will be 20 years since I arrived in Bolivia to serve… and 20 years since God engraved street people and drug addicts on my heart… and its coming up 15 years since El Jordan was born… WOW…
God is Faithful… and its only because of HIM that we are here… Thank you God… Thank YOU… We are so blessed. Wow.
Have a great week…
Lots of love from… Corina… for Marco, Keiden and Marlee… (and everyone at El Jordan!)