When the world around me stumbles

I’ve been in a weird mood recently. I couldn’t put words to it, I couldn’t explain it well to others, but something just felt off around me. I felt like my surroundings, my daily life was unsettled, unbalanced. It felt like the world around me was in chaos and yet nothing was really going on. Life was continuing at the normal daily pace. My interactions with the people in my life also were normal. Nothing was really different and yet I felt so… off-kilter. I couldn’t understand it.

I wondered if I was possibly experiencing spiritual attack, which I have experienced a few times now since I’ve come to Chile. With nothing in my physical world acting as a stimulus to explain my feelings, I wondered if possibly I was being attacked. My only recourse was to go to prayer. I began searching out more opportunities to be alone and spend time in the Word, to speak with God and to be in His presence. In case it was spiritual attack, I wanted  to bathe the situation in prayer.

What I found, and what was so impactful, is that in the world swirling around me, I found balance when I was with Him. Every time I began praying or read the Bible, my world settled around me, picking up again when I stopped. It was incredibly strong the distinction between my time with Him and my time with the world. I know I’m being redundant, but the difference was remarkable.

I had the realization that perhaps what was happening was actually an answer to prayer. I’ve been praying that God would give me more of a desire to spend time in His Word, a hunger to be in His presence. It’s a prayer request, a desire that I’ve wanted to see grow for awhile. What I realized when I noted the difference between the world around me and my time with the Lord, is that I believe that this is how God has drawn me more closely to Him. With my world swirling around me with no understandable cause, my desire to be in His presence grew hugely, because there I found peace, calm, balance. My preference was to turn to Him. This deepening of my hunger came about so strongly and quickly that I believe this has been God answering my prayer.

Praise God for His faithfulness. Praise God that the best gift He can give me, the best answer to any prayer I pray, is to turn me ever more close to Him. Walking with eyes trained on Him gives this world balance. Praise God for deepening my desire to praise God!

Mission’s Flame

Today at our team meeting, this video was shared as we prayed for the unreached people groups around the world. I wanted to share it with you because I found it powerful. There are so many who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ. What does God lay on your heart? Will you pray for them? Will you pray for missionaries to go out to the field? Will you go?

 

Team Prodigo

One of the ministries we have here with OM Chile is the skateboarding ministry. They are a small group of guys who have come to know Christ through the ministry. They now join Yerko, the leader, in putting on demonstrations and sharing about the love of Jesus. Two of the young guys had an amazing opportunity about 6 months ago to fly and join Yerko at TeenStreet Germany, where they did skate exhibitions and workshops. The whole group right now has travelled to CIMA where they’ll do the same. It’s been awesome to see this ministry continue to develop and the opportunities God is giving to them to share His love in a unique way.

Homeless Ministry

So like I’ve mentioned, I write the stories that are posted to OM’s news website. I also, being a native English speaker surrounded by many non-native English speakers, revise and edit others’ stories used for publication, like in OM Chile’s newsletter. I want to share with you a story that a guy from this year’s Intensive Training program wrote recently. He writes of an experience from OM Chile’s Agape homeless ministry, which is a ministry I’m not a part of and so its representation in this blog is sadly lacking. This doesn’t balance things out, but this important ministry should get some attention here.

a homeless ministry friend

Crying silently, but still with hope

Lukas, Intensive Training participant

It’s an experience that I would rather have not had during my time here in Chile, but perhaps it will help me in the future.

It was a Friday evening and, like every Friday evening in OM Chile, the people who participate in the Agape homeless ministry met at the OM house to eat together and to prepare the bread and tea for the homeless. We made our way to Santiago’s main plaza, Plaza de Armas, and headed towards the part where we normally find some of our homeless friends, Colo-Colo, Luis and Diego. This Friday night, however, no one was in the usual spot. After awhile we saw a homeless woman we knew and we asked her if she knew anything about the other guys.

She told us that in the past days, Diego was drinking a lot. He drank so much pisco, a Chilean drink, that it was really hard on his body and his health. They took him to the hospital, but there he died.

The leaders of the homeless ministry, Roel and Nati, went to the hospital to confirm if the story was true, which sadly it was.

For me, this has been the hardest night of my life so far. Since the beginning of my time in the homeless ministry, Diego had been special to me. We somehow became friends as the weeks turned into months, and I remember one time giving him one of my hot dogs and a Coke. Every time I went to him, prayed with him and asked him how he was, he cried. I believe that he was really unhappy about his situation and ashamed for me to see him how he was.

Two weeks before that Friday, Diego had told me that he was fed up and tired of living. I took this seriously, so I asked him if he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior and God; that He is the only One who could save his life. Diego told me that yes, he believed. I prayed with him that night and have the belief and hope that one day I will see my friend Diego again in Heaven. Praise God!

Loving Every Child

I’m going to copy and paste a story that I wrote for OM International’s news website (which is really a pretty awesome website that you should check out, updated all the time with new stories and photos of things happening around the world with OM – a great resource for information and prayer inspiration – http://news.om.org ). I wrote the story in third person and with a british-style of English, so that’s why the story is going to sound how it does, but I wanted to share this with you all as well because it was a beautiful experience that also broke my heart. Please hug a child today, whether your own or one you care for, and tell them they are beautiful, loved, and have value.

 

Loving Every Child

Chile

 

The young boy did not come over to greet the OMers when they arrived at the children’s home in Santiago, Chile, where he lives. He didn’t participate in the programme the OMers put on. Instead, he stayed in the corner of the yard all afternoon, digging in the dirt.

 

After their programme, one of the OM team members, Whitney Guthrie, went over to see what the young boy was working on so earnestly. She bent down next to him and saw a small pile of worms next to his foot, the results of his toil.

“¿Qué haces?” she asked. What are you doing?

“Venga, Tía,” he responded. Come, Aunt. He led Whitney over to an enclosure in the yard where two chickens scratched in the dirt. He sat down in the dirt and held out a worm towards one of the chickens, smiling as it stretched its neck out to snatch the worm.

Whitney watched as the little boy, one by one, fed his painstakingly-gathered worms to the chickens. At one point, he pulled one of the chickens into his lap to let her eat straight from the pile of worms in his hand. When she had gobbled them, he gently and quietly talked to her.

“Here, let me clean your beak off,” he murmured. “You’ve got mud on it.” He lifted the hem of his t-shirt and wiped at the chicken’s face, the hen remarkably calm throughout his ministrations.

As the boy put the chicken down and left the enclosure, Witney called him over and knelt down in front of him. “You know, I love watching you with animals,” she said. “You really like them, don’t you?”

“Yeah, they’re great,” he replied simply.

“I’ve seen you with the dog of the home, too, and you’re very gentle and loving,” Whitney said to him. “I want you to know that I love seeing that side of you. You have a great heart. I love you a lot. You know that, right?” she asked.

“Yeah, I know, Tia,” he answered. “I love you, too.” He grinned at Whitney, gave her a big hug and ran off.

The boy, Luis*, is 13 years old and has been in different children’s homes since he was a baby, along with his older brothers. He has experienced so much insecurity and rejection in his young life that he now has difficulty connecting with other people, preferring the company of animals over that of the other boys at the home. Please pray for this young boy’s heart, so loving and already so scarred.

*Name changed

"Rex", the ever-patient dog of the hogar

OM Chile’s New Base Project

Members of our communications team have been putting in long hours to prepare a video presentation about the huge project OM Chile has undertaken by buying a new base. Along with creating a cd of information, videos and cost breakdowns, they have created this video with the overall idea of the project and have posted it to YouTube. Please feel free to share this video. The more eyes that see it, the better. God bless!

 

 

 

Are You Really Free?

I posted awhile back on the first project we did with our front gate and gluing a painting to its bars. I was so pleased with the result and it held up remarkably well with only using flour and sugar to make a paste (it also helps that it didn’t rain once for 5 weeks).

I decided it was time to change out the painting for some new messages so we began the whole process again. It’s very time-intensive and detailed to get everything into place correctly after painting, but the final product is completely worth it. We’ve had some great conversations come out of it with people passing by who want to know more, and one of the guys from the training program here told me that the other night, he woke up around 2AM and heard noises outside. He looked out front and there was a group of people standing around our gate, looking at the paintings and then taking photos with them. I pray God touched their hearts with the messages.

We did two paintings this time with a paired message. The first painting asks the question, “Are you really free?” as a man’s hands hold the bars of a jail cell. As a person walks past the gate, if they turn around they will see the second painting, which says “Jesus sets you free”. In that painting the hands of Jesus are bending the cell bars open.

 

beginning stages

 

 

hand upclose

 

writing the message

 

"Are you really free?"

 

"Jesus sets you free"

Humbled at the Hogar

I go to a children’s home (hogar de niños in Spanish) here in Santiago two or three times a week to spend time with the around 40 high-social risk boys who live there. I’ve been going there ever since I arrived, about a year and a half ago, and those boys have my heart. It’s incredibly difficult work and one of the most fulfilling things I do. These are not your Sunday-school kids; these boys have experienced things that no one should experience- abuse, neglect, abandonment, and much more. When I get to see a light turn on in them and an “ah-ha” moment happen, it’s incredible.

About a month ago, Monday was a very difficult day at the hogar. We arrived at the hogar with a program prepared but first we just spent time with the boys. A young boy about 9, we’ll call him Charlie (an obvious gringo-name replacement to care for his privacy), at one point playfully and lightly smacked a girl from our team on her face and ran away with our soccer ball. I walked over to him and said I wanted to talk to him. I knelt down and said, “Charlie, you know you shouldn’t hit the tia, right?”

“Yes, tia,” he replied, smiling at me (“tia” means “aunt” in Spanish and is the term of respect used by the children).

“She’s a girl and it’s not right to hit girls,” I reminded him. “I’d really like to you to go apologize to the tia.”

“Okay, tia,” he said, and ran off to do so. I thought, well that went well, and it’s nice that Charlie’s in such a good mood today. He is a boy whose moods change rapidly and dramatically.

We got underway with the program and it went well, that is, until Charlie had a meltdown. He began to fight with another boy and then ran off in a full-blown rage to begin throwing things. It was the worst behavior we’d seen in awhile at the hogar. We continued our program with the background noise of his anger, and by the time we wound down so did he, so that he returned in time to participate in drawing his ideas of his future, and the future God has in store for him.

He quickly blew off the idea of the drawing, though, and when another little boy showed me his drawing of wanting to be a firefighter, he laughed at him and said, “God doesn’t have a plan for your life.”

“You don’t think so?” I asked him, “because I do. What about your life? Does He have a plan for your life?”

“Nope. He hasn’t cared so far,” Charlie replied. The other little boy ran off to play, but Charlie stayed close, obviously wanting to talk. I asked him why he felt God didn’t care, and this little boy of 9 years old just looked at me with incredibly old eyes, eyes that had seen too much in his short life. I asked him if he believed in God and he said, “Yes, I believe.” He looked at me again for a long moment, then quietly asked me, ” Tia, if God loves me, if He has a plan for me, why did He make my mom a drug-addict?”

 

My heart broke.

 

“I don’t have a good answer for you, Charlie,” I said. “God didn’t make your mom a drug-addict, but there are sad and really hard things in life. God loves your mom. He’s even more sad than you are.” I stopped and prayed for the words to say to this little boy. We ended up speaking for a long time, a surprisingly long time for a 9 year old, and about deep things related to his life and to God, about Charlie’s anger and his hurts. At the end of our conversation I said to him, “You know, Charlie, when you were so angry this afternoon, when you were throwing things and almost hitting people, I was scared. I was scared that you were going to end up hurting someone. It made me sad to see how angry you got and how you acted.”

“I know, Tia”, he said with his head down a little, “I’m sorry.”

“I say this to you, though, Charlie, because I want you to know something. Even though I was worried and sad today, I still love you. Even when you get so angry and can’t control it, when you’re throwing things and breaking things, I still love you. There are times when I don’t like your actions, but I love you.” He gave me a small smile. “Charlie, God loves you so much more than I ever can. My love for you doesn’t change when you’re happy or angry, and neither does His. He loves you so much, Charlie, and He has amazing plans for your life.”

We talked more that day about a lot of things, but at the end of our time there, as I was leaving I reflected back on what just happened and I was so humbled by what I’d experienced, what God allowed me to experience. This little boy, this angry little boy wanted so badly to talk, to be heard and to have someone share with him. I pray for his beautiful heart, hurt, scarred and angry, and also filled with love, creativity and a wonderful sense of humor. I pray that God touched his heart that day and that He will also take away Charlie’s uncontrollable anger. He is a beautiful, much-loved creation of our Heavenly Father.