We spent the weekend on mission with a house church in La Piedad, Michoacan. This church began 2 ½ years ago. Martin and Rosa are people of peace who invited us into their home and into their network of relationships to demonstrate and proclaim the Good News of Jesus and the Kingdom. From the beginning of our relationship, they have wanted us to help them grow to be a vibrant spiritual family of Jesus in and to their neighborhood. Experiencing God’s work through their lives has been one of the highlights of the past couple of years.
Martin and Rosa—and virtually everyone around them—live in a world marked by alcohol and drug addiction. Almost everyone they know fall into at least one of these categories: addict, recovering addict, codependent family member of addict.
They believe that God has rescued and graced them so they can participate with God to rescue others. They especially feel fashioned by God to help kids and youth to choose a better path for their lives.
This past weekend, we accompanied them in their 2nd kids/youth weekend. The 1st one was back in November. This time, four leaders from 2 of the house churches in Guadalajara joined my family and me and almost 30 kids and youth from their network of friends and family.
We spent about 28 hours in and around Martin’s house ministering to, playing with, and talking and listening to kids. It was messy. At times it was wild. There were really 2 groups of kids. There were about 20 young kids (5 to 11 years old). There were 8 youth (13-17).
It felt good to be useful in God’s hands—to really feel like God reached in to the lives of desperate and hurting kids.
We told and played three stories from scripture. Early on Saturday, we told the story of Creation—were able to really talk about God’s dream for humans and for the world God made. We listened to each other admit that the world we live in seems a lot different than the perfect one that God called “good.”
Later on that afternoon, we told the story of the 1st humans and their choice to not trust God and to disobey—we were able to really talk about the lies being spoken around us—about consequences—specifically the ones we’ve seen with our own eyes and experienced. We discovered together again that God looks for people even when we’ve messed up.
On Sunday morning we told the story of Adam’s and Eve’s children and how as 2nd generation humans, they had to suffer consequences of their folks’ disobedience—and how they also got a chance to choose for themselves. We challenged one another to not live as victims.
In the hours after each story, there were conversations and games. There were activities and some really powerful skits and object lessons. There was singing and praying…and some crying.
It was a great weekend—great to feel used by God for good in the lives of kids who really need some good. It was especially good to see God work through my friends—to see people very dear to me live more fully into God’s design for their lives–and for them to know it.
March 11, 2008 at 2:21 am
Sounds like an exciting weekend. Glad you were able to be used by Him. I seems like the way you presented the stories really would speak to that crowd. I really liked what you said about sharing who we do not have to live as victims. That’s powerful.