C-mail: Unbelievable

Howdy all and Merry Christmas!  

Or as they say down here, south of the border, Feliz Navidad. The nativity scenes (the local equivalent of the Christmas tree, although those feral, plastic pine trees are starting to become the rage) are up in homes, metro stations, government buildings, and malls alike. Everybody is walking around town and standing in line to buy gifts for their kids and families that will soon come from niño Jesús (baby Jesus, who is recognized as the magical Christmas gift giver). But just like the Christmas tree to the nativity scene, Santa is slowly making advances into previously held baby Jesus territory. Some malls in Caracas are now even snapping photos with gift-hopeful children seated on the lap of the bearded, fat man wearing socialist red but who moonlights selling materialism by the sleighloads. However, at least for this year, most kids are awaiting something from baby Jesus. But enough of the ebb and flow of culture, here's a quick run down of the past few months:

1.      Kids projects have been booming. We've kept the tutoring for basic reading and math going while also hosting another English class. We've had pretty steady attendance and the lessons have been helpful to many kids struggling with their letters, verbs, greetings and pronunciation. We were also invited by a local, public school to come and teach the elementary students to pray, read the bible and do some sort of project with them. We've been going through Max Lucado's "You are Special" and have had a great time ministering to the kids in this school. Praise God for the open invitation on the part of the principal and the teachers! Please pray that our collaboration with the school would continue into the next year and years to follow.

2.      We've had quite the outbreak of violence in the past few weeks. In a period of fourteen days our hillside suffered eleven untimely deaths. Please pray for an end to the violence, that God would bring comfort to those morning the loss of loved ones and that we all would learn how to forgive, leave justice to God, and instead seek His peace in the meantime.

3.      In October, we hosted a number of visitors: some prospective team members and others leaders in InnerCHANGE. With the former, we were trained in/discussed the topics of raising up local leaders/volunteers from among those whom we minister with, and also tackled the challenges of communicating well in an oral cultural (as opposed to a literate culture like much of our own). As a team we are still digesting this material and seeing where God would have us focus our efforts.

Things coming up:

1.      I'll be in Texas with my parents for the rest of the month of December. It's been two years since spending Christmas in the states and I'm certainly looking forward to the time back and the much needed rest that comes along with it.

2.      In January, I'll be taking some time in order to discern my future with InnerCHANGE. My three year commitment will be ending in the fall of 2010. However, for continuity purposes on the team I've committed to staying through February of 2011. I'll be prayerfully discerning whether I stay on with InnerCHANGE and in Caracas or if God has something else in mind for me. Please pray that I would clearly hear God's voice in this matter and that I would be open to His leading. Speaking of leading....

3.      Our team leaders will begin to take a sabbatical starting in March. InnerCHANGE tries to ensure the sustainability of all its missionaries and taking a much needed and well earned year off to rest and pursue further avenues of growth is both biblical and smart. While they are gone on sabbatical, I've been designated to take over team leadership. Should I decide to continue on in Caracas after 2010, I'll keep serving in that capacity or as a co-leader. Honestly, there are plenty of other things I'd rather be doing than leading and the related back-end work, but taking that responsibility truly is an act of service that is very important to the health and well being of our team and neighbors. I would greatly appreciate your prayers as we transition leadership in February.  Also please pray that God would give our team and myself the necessary resources, giftings and vision to minister faithfully His love amongst ourselves and our neighbors in the barrios.

4.      I will have some additional expenses to cover as leader plus my existing support is still a little low. If you would like to partner with the ministry here in Caracas through support, prayer or financial, please let me know.

Ok, everybody. I miss you all a ton and would love to hear from you. You all mean the world to me and are a huge source of encouragement and support. Please let me know how I can be praying for you. Have a wonderfully merry Christmas and happy New Year, and as always, stay strong, seek the Lord and

Press on for Joy!

"And that same sensation, that same feeling, that same emotion that is so beautiful and pure, that which is the source of so much of our poetry, art, and music, that same feeling that we call love, that is one of the most sacred things we can experience, has in all of human history, always driven people to do things that are very, very . . . . stupid." The stupid thing I was currently engaged in was preaching at 5:30 in the morning. Not even my foreign accent, my best attempts at humor, and engaging the audience could prevent a large constituent from slipping out the back into the Saturday dawn light.

We had been asked to speak at a "vigilia por las naciones" or a "vigil for the nations" which in our American churches would fall under the category of a missions service. Except that this one started at 10:30PM on a Friday night and ended at 6:30AM the next morning. There was some praise and worship, a lot of prayer, and lots and lots of teaching and testimonies. Normally, I get nervous talking in front of groups, and the nerves were the only thing preventing me from collapsing into a snoring heap in front of a whole bunch of other snoring heaps.

"Let me tell a story. I have a friend named Marcos. About four months ago we celebrated his birthday. Marcos doesn't have a home, but he does have a job in the local market managing a parking lot. We always talk whenever I pass by. I knew his birthday was coming up, and our team had planned a dinner and small party for him at my place. He was excited about the upcoming celebration and mentioned it whenever we ran into each other. . . except, on the actual day of his birthday. When I went to look for him to bring him up the hill to my "apartment", he was beyond mildly intoxicated and somewhere between angry and depressed. Someone had robbed the clothes he was going to wear from where he had hung them on the fence behind him in a plastic bag. 'No worries' I told him, 'you can borrow some clothes up at my place, let's go.' But he didn't want to go. I kept at it. 'It's your birthday, I've got dinner all ready. All you need to do is come on up.' Again a negative response, but I didn't give up and kept persisting that he come with me. He finally acquiesced. We got to the stairs leading up to my place from the street. He stopped...he didn't want to go farther. 'It's close' I assured him and led him by the hand up to the door. But right there at the door, he refused to go in. Thankfully my teammates showed up at this point and sat conversing with him outside the door while I got dinner prepared. An hour later, after much pleading, discussion, pulling and wafting the tempting smell of sizzling pork chops towards him, he finally, finally came in and sat down. We ate together, had a good time, and after dinner, we pulled out a cake of sorts with a candle and sang him the Venezuelan happy birthday song. And as we sang, he cried, and cried, and cried. When the song was finished, and after his tears were more or less finished, he choked out a thank you and explained that today, he was turning 42, and that no one had sang him happy birthday in the past 22 years of his life."

The early morning missions talk continued, when something came out of my mouth which I hadn't planned on saying nor had previously thought about: "Because the most difficult thing for us as human beings is to truly believe that we really are loved." The words impacted me as I realized just how true they were, even at a sleepless 5:30 in the morning. Even later, after more thought and sufficient sleep, I realized that there is something rather deep there. I doubt that idea is original. I'm sure Brennan Manning has said something of the sort. But regardless of who said it, the idea has gotten me thinking:

Perhaps the good news is just too good. It frankly just isn't believable. It paints an extremely different picture that crashes with our very real experience of life. We have all loved and been burned in the process. Conversely, we have all been loved and spurned it's outpouring. We know well the reality that everyone is in this for themselves. We know depression, we know suffering of one sort or another. We know rejection, deception, and unfulfilled expectations. This is our daily experience that doesn't turn off nor takes a break. Even here in Venezuela, many say the world is going down the proverbial tubes; that things are worse than they ever used to be. Even if that isn't true speaking for the whole world, for all the western cultured, post-modern, individualistically formed people out there, I'd be willing to bet that your own world is coming to an end as well. And even if we have hope in God and the future, for right now, for today, our senses tell us very clearly: you're in trouble, and worst of all, you're on your own.

So the idea that God loved the world, that he loved me, that he loved you, that at the most basic root of everything, that we are loved (and by implication, that everyone else is also so lasciviously loved), period, end of story, just does not match with our experience of reality. The idea that anybody, even God, would actually act out of a motivation of love instead of their own selfish interests, is far fetched to say the least. The idea that God is at work today showing us His love, that His Kingdom is near, in terms of reach and not just time, is nothing more than a pipe dream.  So like Marcos, we refuse to believe it and resist it at every step.

In my last update, I made reference to Ramon's older brother, Elvis. About a month ago, he was shot. The same people from up the way that apparently were trying to kill him were making a midnight motorcycle ride and took a pot shot at his head, which he luckily (or providentially) deflected with his arm. The bone in his forearm just above the wrist was completely shattered. After spending the night vainly yelling for help in the street, he somehow managed to survive the blood loss and got to the hospital by early morning. That same morning, I heard from the neighbors that he had been shot and I went to visit him the day after that. He was a bit surprised to see me. Our initial interactions were sketchy at best. Even so, no one had yet come to visit him and he literally had nothing with him in his bed, not even a pillow or sheets. I decided to keep visiting and help him out with what I could. The next day and next visit brought a request from the doctors to help him out with the process of procuring the materials he would need for his surgery: a plate, a few pins and a screw. Being in Venezuela for over two years, I've seen the good side of socialized medicine, and I've seen the dark side. Helping out Elvis has been the darkest. You can't pay me to recount the process and paperwork I fought to get him that hardware which now finally, a month after his entrance to the hospital, has shown up. But, if nothing else, the materials were free, as long as you ignore the saying that time is money.  Still, the process brought me to visit him multiple times every week. I gave him my bible when he said he would read it, and he actually has been.

After a week, we did a study on the prodigal son. He picked up immediately on how the older brother didn't respond well to the return of the younger brother. We talked about it and how the older brother really didn't seem to know his dad all that well. His dad, from all accounts, looks to be the one of the most loving, generous people out there and yet, the older brother seemed to have a completely different construct of his father as some sort of spendthrift slave-master. One has to ask the question if the older brother ever even asked his dad for anything at all. Instead, he rejected and resisted his father's love, and not only that for himself, but also that for his younger brother. The father's waiting and generous love was not only unbelievable, but also offensive to the eldest. Our conversation opened up to include the patient in the next bed over and his mom. It drifted to the story of how Elvis was shot. In the telling, he quickly became fuming mad and began to tell how the minute he got out he was going to get his .38 and shoot each of those kids right in the forehead. I challenged him right away. "I don't think so, that's the fastest way to get yourself killed out there. There are way more of them than there are of you. Plus you're being just like the older son, rejecting that God loves them too and is welcoming them back home if they would wake up and come back to Him." A shrug was the only response.

I was surprised to see this same disbelief in the goodness of God in a very unexpected place.  I have a friend named Rick that sells fruit at the "farmers" (read "resellers") market on Saturdays. He invited me to go surfing with him on my day off and I've gone out with him twice now. I don't know the first thing about surfing, but I do enjoy getting out and paddling around if nothing else. Rick is both a former extreme skateboarder and a former Jehovah's Witness that still clings to their theology with out congregating or abiding by their rules. He's rather outspoken about any topic under the sun and we often talk politics, theology, and in general about God. But after explaining his/the JW's perspective of the good news, (which honestly doesn't bear repeating) I was shocked to see the same resistance to any real expression of God's love. They essentially hold no hope for the present. They hold no recognition of the tactile and concrete love of God in the here and now. It has everything to do with some supposed upcoming intervention of God and nothing to do with the ever present, ever loving God who is an active character and author of the story being written that we call today.  

As we draw close to Christmas and pass through advent, the familiar pages in Luke begin to be reread and reflected on. One of the things that is standing out to me the most is the contrast drawn between Zacharias and Mary. Both received tidings of good news, of joy, of big things that God was doing with and through them. They both even questioned Gabriel. But the difference is in the attitude behind the question. Zacharias was apparently praying that he and Elizabeth would have a child when the angel showed up and told him that his prayers had been answered. The first thing Zacharias does is doubt it. He knows they are old, he knows how many years they have been trying to have children to no avail. And so when the joyous tidings come, he doubts and resists them in light of his reality, even though his prayer was being answered in front of his face. The news is too good, and too unbelievable. Yet Mary, in the face of a similar startling announcement, asks concerning the technical means of how this good news was about to take shape. She accepted and believed what God was doing, as off the wall and unlikely as it was. In believing, she put herself in the service of God

The results of the responses of these two to the good news couldn't be more different.  Zacharias' doubt provoked the angel to strike him mute for the whole time that God's work was growing inside of Elizabeth. However in the case of Mary, when she came to Elizabeth's house, she was able to proclaim her obedience to the Lord and sing His praises. I don't find it coincidence that doubt led to silence and belief to proclamation and song.

God's love was doing a beautiful, yet slooow, thirty year in the making without much to show for it, work in both of their lives. The question was not whether or not God cared about them and the people of Israel. The question was whether or not they could, or would, believe that He really did love them and was already taking concrete steps to show them as much. I think we need to ask ourselves the same question.

I posed that very idea to Marcos two weeks ago. We had read through the story where Jesus called Peter through the miraculous catch of fish. But Marcos had a different concern than just about fish. "And who is God, what is God?" he asked. I've heard him ask that question a million times, but this time something different came out of my mouth in reply: "God is love." It took awhile to expound on that, to clarify it, but it was something he could finally grasp. As we kept talking, the same thought from the missions talk came out: The most difficult thing for us as humans is to believe is that we truly are loved: that God does really love us, that He has done, is doing and will keep doing good for us. To believe then, means to hold the truth of God's love above all reality, to believe in something so good despite all of our previous experiences, failures, and doubts that scream to the contrary, to risk falling in love and doing something stupid in the process, to hope against hope that God already has something in the works brewing right under our noses even when we're too stuffed up to smell it.

The conversation drifted to creation, to the apostle Paul, and then to who knows where. In the middle of a tangent in our discussion, Marcos stopped a middle aged man passing by: "Hey! You know something?" Marcos called to him, getting his attention, "I'm a child of God." The man started, and after taking a suspicious look at Marcos and his disfigured face, he continued on in silence.

And so, even if so much of what I've seen and known tells me the contrary, I'm going to follow the lesson in faith that Marcos gave me: Hey you, reading this letter. You know something? I'm a child of God! And you are too!

Press on for Joy!