I posted this picture a couple of days ago. How very prophetic it turned out to be!
The last 15 months have been the most difficult months we’ve
ever faced on the field.
One reason is what is happening (or NOT happening) out at the Loving
InDeed land. For 15 months my neighbors
have had a fence up the middle of my 235 ft. entrance, essentially stopping me
from bringing in the machine I need to level the rocky land down below where
the ministry center will go. Not to be deterred,
I came up with plan B: starting with the
construction of a boy’s workshop instead which I could temporarily use for the
widows until the main building can be built.
That land could be leveled by hand, so I wouldn’t need my driveway to
bring in a machine, and we could still use "our half" of the driveway to walk in materials. So we started building. We got all the walls just up over waist high
then stopped because a building of this size needs another horizontal layer of
rebar and cement for support before finishing off the adobe walls. It just so happened that I was leaving for
the US when we hit that point, so I gave the men some time off and went home
for 2 weeks. While I was gone, my
neighbors changed their fence. Now they have
barbed wired over the entrance to the driveway, over my front door, all alongside
my fence and over my big main gate. Due
to a rock wall and drainage ditch, it’d be nearly impossible to bring materials
through the remaining door down at the bottom of the property, so work has been
stopped for the past several weeks. I did everything in my power to solve this
fence issue amicably, and when that failed, I began the process of solving it
legally a few months ago. Unfortunately,
that process is a very, very long one filled with red tape and third world
senselessness. In the meantime, I have
been agonizing over what to do. I have
begged God many times to give me some direction, promising Him I would obey no
matter what He said if only He’d say something...anything!
But all I got was silence.
On my own, I had come up with three options: take the fence down myself and get back to
work, do nothing on the land and continue to just feed the widows and carry on
with the Bible study, or temporarily walk away from Santa Barbara entirely and
take some time apart to think and pray more.
Each one of those options has
distinct advantages and disadvantages, and I truly did not know which one God
wanted. This past Saturday, I decided to
go up the mountain alone for a while and have a serious conversation with Him about it. To be totally honest, I was
getting pretty frustrated with His silence.
So up I went, begging God the whole way to tell me which option would bring
Him the most glory…which would be the most Christ-like…which was right for the
widows, my workers, and all the others out there who are so carefully watching
my reaction to this whole mess. I was so
tired of analyzing it from every possible angle! This whole situation is so unjust that it’s
infuriating. A wise friend told me the other day that maybe
this isn’t my injustice to fight. In the
moment, I scoffed at his suggestion. Of
course it is! That’s one of the things
every Guatemalan missionary I know does--we fight injustice! And then he said that just maybe this one battle was not mine. I still disagreed. As it turns out, he was right. On the mountain, God told me what to do. He reminded me that He did not send me to
Santa Barbara to fight injustice, or to stand up to bullies and teach them a
lesson, or to try to force people to obey the law. God sent me to Santa Barbara to love. Sometimes taking a stand IS the most loving
thing a person can do, but sometimes it’s better to keep the peace than to be
right. That is INFINITELY easier to say
than to do, especially for this hard-headed, type A personality! But God showed
me that the most loving thing I can do is to stay in Santa Barbara despite the
hardship and to continue to feed the most vulnerable among them and to teach
God’s Word to the best of my ability to those who will listen.
Honestly, I was okay with that part of God’s
plan. But then He laid this doozy on
me. He said he wanted me to ask my other
neighbor, Checha (a very nice, laid back man), for permission to use his narrow,
stinky drainage alleyway where he burns
his trash to bring in materials, then cut my fence to deliver them onto my side. I was not a fan of the idea for lots of
reasons, so I ranted. “God, this will
make me look like a fool! My neighbors will laugh at me. They’ll
think they’ve won! Someone has to stand up to them! They’ll assume I’m afraid
of them and that I’m weak, and they’ll have some pretty good evidence to back
that up. But I’m NOT afraid of
them! And I don't have to be powerless here. I could rip up their illegal fence if You'd just let me..." And
on and on I went, giving God all the reasons why I thought His plan stunk. He listened patiently. When I was done fuming, He filled my head
with scripture:
“Fret not yourself because of evildoers.”
“My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness.”
“I choose the foolish things of the world to
confound the wise.”
My arguments were crumbling. Then He brought to
mind what I tell myself when life gets hard here: “I will not offer to God that
which cost me nothing.” (originally
spoken by King David) Slowly my revulsion
to His idea was fading, but it sealed the deal when He said, “Remember a few weeks ago when you
were praying and you asked Me to take all the pride out of you? Well…”
Case closed.
So today I had a long talk with Rogelio, my foreman, and told
him this story to see if he was in agreement.
It’s not just me who will be humbled in all this, walking through
someone else’s trash while being laughed at and cutting a hole in our fence
when we have three perfectly good doors.
They’ll mock him too. In fact, he
told me that they already had been. He went
onto the property through the bottom door to harvest some fruit the other day,
and the neighbors came out to point and laugh at him. He just ignored them. I am constantly reminded what an enormous
blessing God gave me in the men who work for me. I learn from them—not just how to make and
lay adobe or how to wield a machete or how to tell the difference between lime
trees and orange trees only by their leaves, but how to be a better person and
a better follower of Christ. Rogelio and
Francisco, his father, are some of the best men I know. Tomorrow will be hard for all of us on some
level—mostly on our egos—but I finally have peace. Now the building can continue, and we will
get the roof on before rainy season, Lord willing. In the meantime, the neighbor’s fence is God’s
problem to solve.
Psalm 86:17 “ Show me
a sign of your favor, that those who hate me may see and be put to shame because you, Lord, have
helped me and comforted me.”
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While some of our littler plants have died from a hail storm we had in January and lack of water since, the fruit trees are growing like crazy and starting to flower! My little mango tree that is barely as tall as my knee is doubled over with the weight of at least a dozen baby mangos the size of my thumb nail. I have really missed being out here!
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