A Grace-Filled Weekend: On Mission to Kids with A House Church in La Piedad

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 2^nd kids/youth weekend.  The 1^st 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 1^st 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 2^nd 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. 

Playing Together With God

Last weekend was a lot of fun!  About 30 of us spent Saturday and Sunday playing together with God in and around Martin and Rosa’s house.  Since they and their family began following Jesus a couple of years ago, they’ve wondered what God wanted them and their house church to do to make a difference in the lives of the children who live around them.  Though they are always ministering to and providing surrogate “parenting” for the kids around them, the idea of a “kid’s weekend” began to emerge…  They asked Nancy and me to help them.  It needed to be simple.  It needed to be reproducible for normal Mexican Christians.  It needed to be cheap.  So, after praying and describing to one another what we believed God was leading us to do, we decided to dive in.   

Beginning about noon on Saturday, we began the party.  There were seven adults and 25 kids (ages ranged from 3 to 16 with the average being about 9).  As we described what we were doing, two images were used over and again.  One image was that of caldo (Mexican soup).  Although Nancy provided a basic framework of organization, we talked about the weekend being like a soup that we make together, each one adding their ingredient and trusting that in the end it will taste good.  The other image was “playing.”  We reminded each other that we were just “playing together with God.”  And play we did!  We “played” three stories from the life of Jesus.  We “played” each one at least three times with different kids playing the parts in each telling—afterwards we talked about what we liked about the story—we wondered and discussed together what the stories mean to kids like us.  We played games.  We played soccer.  We played musical chairs.  We played with clay.  We had a campfire and roasted marsh mellows.  We sang songs to the Lord and to each other.  We sang silly songs.  We prayed together.  Everyone brought bedrolls and we “camped out” there in the house.  We ate simple meals that we prepared and cleaned up after together.  We talked and listened to one another talk about real life in a place where poverty, addictions and abuse are the norm.  There were tears.  And did I mention that there was playing?   

I wonder what God will do with the seeds planted in all of us last weekend?  I’m not sure, but I think something significant happened in the hearts of the adults.  Martin and Rosa want to do this again in January or February—maybe plan to have a kid’s weekend every month or two.  They see it as their way to incarnate Christ and his missional presence among children in their little corner of the world.  I wonder about some of the other small Christ communities around us and how they might choose to incarnate Christ among the children in their neighborhoods.