Kyle Schaap Writes (one of our interns…)

There is a night on every mission trip that has affectionately become known as “Cry Night”. It is the night where the pastor pulls out all the stops and delivers his best message. It’s when the worship leader pulls out the best songs and they all try their best to give you a real experience with God before you leave. Now this night is usually reserved for the final night. Well…ours was tonight. Tonight, Pastor Brandon challenged us with something I have never been challenged with before. He challenged us to accept that God is as willing to save us as He is willing to save the world. As willing to save us as He is willing to save the drunk, or the prostitute. Now this may sound pretty obvious, but let me try to explain. Most of us accept Jesus as our personal Savior, but what does that really mean? It means that He is ready and willing to free us from every sin that entangles us. That He literally can’t wait for us to ask Him to take our sins away for us “as far as the east is from the west”. How many sins do you hold onto? Those “dirty little secrets” that we try to hold onto and fix on our own. Can we really…I mean REALLY surrender those to Jesus? Are we willing to give those up for the joy of the Lord, as is promised to us? I’ll be the first to admit that I am not. Tonight we really struggled together, with tears and hugs, to find out how to let go of those sins. Let go of the doubts. Let go of the pain. It was a truly Spirit-filled evening. We wrestled…and we grew.

 

We have all been working hard on the houses that we have been building and have been getting to know the people in “la colonia” where we are working. They all have such amazing stories to tell, but there is one particular family whose story is almost unbearable. It is the story of a mother with 5 children and a drunken, estranged husband. One night 2 weeks ago, her husband came back, drunk. He got angry and started pouring gasoline around the house. His wife didn’t know what to do. He was stronger and couldn’t be reasoned with. He was on a mission…to burn down his wife’s and his children’s home. Well, when the smoke settled, her house was gone, and head count of her children came up one short. Her ten year old son, the older of the 2 boys, had been trapped inside the house and perished in the flames. This happened two weeks ago. All this week we have been hearing about the poor and the lessons that we can learn from them and how we can be blessed by them just as much as we can bless them. This family has definitely blessed the team that has been working on their house. People from this team have told me that everyday they show up to work, the family can’t wait to greet them. They are so excited to have a home again, that they almost forget, for a few blissful minutes, that their son and their brother wont be able to enjoy the new home with them. This team is doing more than providing a house. They are providing hope, which could possibly be the one thing that this family needs most of all.

I’ve been thinking a lot about divine appointments over the past week. I had sort of considered this trip to be a divine appointment for me to bless the people of Tecate. But what if this trip is a divine appointment for the people of Tecate to bless me? What if I was meant to be here, not for the sake of the Mexican people, but for the sake of myself? Can that be possible? What if it is? Will I be receptive? Will you be receptive? Will we see it? I sure hope so.