Well… I’m beginning to wonder if I’m a Jonah (but I can’t think of anything I am running away from!!!) or a Job (although I don’t think I rank up there with the “justness” of Job!!!)
It has been exactly a month since the accident with the motorcycle... Eddy is home and in recovery… He still has to go in for check ups twice a week… please continue to pray for a quick recovery… and that God provides their needs… there isn’t any way for Eddy to work… and his wife really can’t either because she has to take care of their baby…
As for the case… well… the prosecutor is charging me with a “culpable crime”… basically saying that I was negligent, not prudent and I forget what else… so my lawyer is appealing… The police “investigator” hasn’t investigated anything…. So… that’s where that situation is at…
At El Jordán we’ve been busy with teams… one from Calgary… and the other one from Oshawa… We enjoy sharing our kids with them… and our desire is that our kids be encouraged and built up… and also that the team members would have their hearts and eyes opened to the spiritual needs of the people here… which can sometimes be overshadowed by physical or material needs… At El Jordan, our desire is to walk along side of our kids in their process of change… not running ahead of them… nor pushing them… rather walking along side of them to encourage, share burdens and model… Our visitors have a small opportunity to do the same… It is sharing your heart… your time… your faith…
This type of “ministry” isn’t really glamorous… we don’t have huge numbers nor “high excitement” days… but as kids have a desire to change… find Christ who offers new life to those who believe… and dig into and grow in that new life… it is amazing… To see fruits of a new life… not just a bunch of blab is truly meaningful…
Well… all this to say… is that this all takes time… and that is where “glitches” like the accident with Eddy are frustrating to me… I know they are for a purpose... that God has allowed it for some reason… but when things like that take me away from the people I love to “walk with”… it makes me kind of sad…
When the glitches start piling up… it is harder for me to understand… With the second team that came, I was taking a couple girls to visit one of our girls… and Royce wouldn’t go into reverse… and would barely go into first… nor second… I had to ask the girls to get out of the car… all I could think of is if I had an accident with them in the car, me knowing that something was wrong with my car, I’d feel awful… I drove poor Royce in second all the way to the mechanic… My clutch was shot and had to be fixed… but they were able to fix it that day… (That was this Monday.)
Something else strange happened that day… I came back to El Jordan after leaving Royce at the mechanics… and an hour or so later, I couldn’t find my Birkenstocks (sandals)… Okay… I admit… I always take them off and wander around barefoot… I often have to retrace my steps to find my Birks… But I’ve always found them! …except for this time… Again… In the big scheme of things, this isn’t anything huge… but they are what I wear…every day of the year… Years ago, a chiropractor suggested that wearing Birkenstocks might help my back problem… and I’ve worn them ever since… Now I’ve been 4 days without them! They have to be somewhere… and maybe mixed up with donations… I’m sure we’ll find them as we put everything back in order at El Jordan…
Well… yesterday I had another glitch… that made me wonder if I was a Jonah or a Job… Again… I was on my way back to El Jordan from a really great visit to one of our students (with three young people from the Oshawa team)… The car in front of me had to stop because of a parked car in front of him… I had no problem stopping because it was a really bumpy part of the road and we weren’t going fast at all…
WHEN… a truck (SUV) came up behind us really fast… and rammed into the back of Royce… and made us crash into the guy in front of us… OH DEAR!!!!!!!!!!! Can you believe it? Poor Royce… Thankfully… no one was hurt… no people anyhow…
The guy who rammed into us came over and started yelling at ME… saying that I had rammed on my brakes and didn’t give him any time to stop… which was totally false… and the guy in front of me vouched for me as well… I have to admit I was worried about the traffic police coming… I thought about the case against me already and could imagine it getting worse… I tried to get a hold of my insurance agency… and we talked back and forth a bit more… and the guy who caused the whole accident ended up driving off… His truck had no plates on the back or the front so it was impossible to trace him… Thankfully, my insurance is covering the damages to Royce… but not to the car in front of me… so now I have that man breathing down my neck saying that he helped me out at the accident scene and he would’ve tried to stop the other guy if he had known that my insurance wasn’t going to cover his costs…
Anyhow… Now Royce is in the shop again… they say he’ll be there for at least a week… Again… it is time… precious time… time that I feel like I am totally wasting… when I would much rather be teaching or talking with my kids at El Jordan…
So… with these “glitches”… please pray for me… pray that I would be “a David”… someone who in spite of adversities and problems, he would cry out to the Lord… but always end up praising Him… reminding himself that God was his strength, refuge and rock… Please pray that I would be learning what I need to learn from this… and that I would still praise the Lord “in spite of” circumstances… Please pray that these things wouldn’t make my heart uptight nor take me away from what I’m supposed to be doing…
Just on Sunday I was reading in Psalms… chapter 16… The last verse is one of my favorites… its says… “You show me the path of life, in your presence there is fullness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures evermore…” I had no idea what the week held for me… but my desire was, in any/every circumstance… to continue to “seek after God as my refuge” (verse 1), knowing that “with God at my right hand, nothing can make me fall…” (verse 8)…
Please continue to pray for Marco and I… the ministry here… the many little kids, adolescents and adults who come to El Jordan looking for hope and help…
Thanks so much…
Lots of love,
Corina (for Marco too)