Men with Guns, Soldiers with Fire

This is a post-post. One of those I didn't talk much about beforehand so as not to frighten my mother to death. I made it out of Mexico City alive and unsequestered. Indeed I love that city with an unhealthy sort of admiration for it's bigness, diversity, and deep social and psychological scars. I somehow grow used to seeing men with big guns, though the reason that they have them is a little unnerving. I'm talking about your run-of-the-mill donut-dunking police man, he carries a gun that looks like it belongs in the Russion Revolution.
I signed up for a conference because Aurora asked me to. Basically this dude from the U.S., Jacob Bock, decided to be a missionary in Spain and started something he calls "On the Red Box." It's a very literal name, the participants in this ministry stand on a red box. Not too poetic, but I can say that there is a huge difference between the street preachers I've encountered in my life, and even on this particular trip, for we are not the only ones concerned with the condition of the Federal District of Mexico.

I'll give a little back-story. I'm not sure how some of my long-time friends will take this because our street ministry methods were EXTREMELY different in the States. No matter. My experience is my own, and the point of this blog is to share it.

Three weeks previous I was taking my leisurely day off. I usually go to a Starbucks (see my Starbucks to the right) or a KrispyKreme since I can.  On one of these days, I had a hankering for pizza so I went to a kind of mall where I knew they had fab pizza-by-the-slice and sat down. I had the distinct feeling, sitting there in the food court, that I should stand up and warn everyone there of our coming Savior, offer hope.  The next day off, I was on the bus on my way to the young-adults group and the same overwhelming sense that I should stand up and preach came flooding into my being. Neither of those times did I do anything, and both times I sat and wondered afterward, very harshly asking myself, "Why don't I love?"

The reality is that I must love to some degree or this wouldn't concern me so much, and the girls in my dorm would testify to too many hugs sometimes. Indeed, one of the incidents was followed by the verse screaming in my brain, "If you love Me, feed my sheep!" And I thought of my girls at home.

So when Aurora invited me to this conference I said yes not really knowing what it was about. When I realized what the ministry was I sort of laughed to myself and enjoyed God's joke.  And I went, and I learned a lot, and we discovered the difference between some street preachers, and these street preachers.

It is pretty well-known that street preachers in the U.S. can be jerks. I've seen it and it fills me with sorrow.

I just want you to take a look at this photo, although I plagerized and downloaded this arial view of the Zocalo in Mexico City, I want you to observe the difference between the two circled areas:

I chose to use this photo as the example because it shows almost exactly what it looked like while we were sharing Jesus, and offering hope through one of the hardest decisions a sinner has to make.  The other group was cold, formal, using run-on sentences with words even I don't know exactly what they meant. No one paid them any attention.

We didn't do anything spectacular, we didn't trick people into coming over to us with clowns or gimmicks. 10 people, one after another stood up on this red box and told them what Christ had done for them. Then just one person stood up on the red box to tell them what the heck: Heaven and Hell/The Law/The Cross. Period. Less than 8 minutes, to the point, and I could see the people with hunger in their faces, wanting to know more. The other part of this strategy is to START A CONVERSATION. One on one.

People are never too busy to tell you what they think. That's where we begin. "I have a question, do you think a lot of people go to Heaven or just a few? And why?" Not "What is your philosophical position on Heaven and Hell?" Not "Do you know your a sinner?" Rather an open ended question that allows them to express what they admit soon enough that they never really think about.

I admit I get a little zealous about doing this sort of thing. It seems very John-the-Baptist who preached in a wilderness. This world is a dry barren wilderness of souls, and I like to bring fresh rain. We prayed with well over a hundred people and provided them with solid churches to attend.

I admit it made me yearn to start afresh in the States. I know that people are agressive and that God isn't really received with much grace among my own people, but that only makes it more tempting to try and break the ice that covers their hearts.

What I Love Best

Move it

Motivation > The condition of being motivated.

Motivate > Something, as a need or desire, that causes a person to act.

Origin > From Latin motus, past participle of movēre to move.

 

I've been inspired recently, the motivation part is making it's snug way into my heart, but for now inspiration is dominant. This is dangerous because although I have been known to be an action-taker, these days my resolution is rooted just a bit deeper in habit, routine....

 

Which reminds me of Screwtape's observations:

 

Man can be thought of as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. It feels as if something is shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the unvirtuous qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the Will and are there embodied in habits that his virtues are really of value to man or to God. This not being what we mistake for our will - the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth - but the real center, what the Bible calls the Heart. [Paraphrased]

My greatest fear has always been the same thing: comfort and complacency, which would innvitably lead to apathy.

I am still inspired, and I work daily to work to bring this inspiration under dominance and reel it in to the intellect, and finally to the will, which is who you know me to be.

I suppose you may want to know what I'm inspired about. It's hard to explain, but let's just say I'm feeling my innards start to revolve around in my soul and soon they may explode into something useful. In the meantime, my goal is to be present where I am.

What a Missionary does: the inside story

I know that my information gets existential and that I can ramble on about whatever book I'm reading or whatever spiritual battle I've won or lost, but I think it's time you know the nitty-gritty.  What is it that I deal with on a daily basis?  Adolesence at it's height, magnified and multiplied by a hundred, and demands that I exaggerate in my head, but nontheless are quite demanding.

I live in a dorm room with nine girls ages 11-15.  This is not the ideal living situation for ANY young single woman trying to make herself known, write a book or two, get at least one measly story published anywhere, work on her skills as a photographer, find herself a man, AND never really quite getting around to doing those things because she has to figure out why a girl's period is awry, or someone's sick or needs to study.

Aside from all that I work in multimedia and audio/visual departments for Living Hope International, a non- profit in Puebla, Mexico that is really the big-wig name they put to gosh-darn successful orphanage that runs like an oiled machine, thanks to the fine folks who give their lives to such an endeavor.

My role seems to be diminishing in importance, though others around here would insist otherwise. Let's talk about what the heck "multimedia" is anyway. I'll tell you, I still haven't figured it out, but there is such a thing as social networking - not the kind we used to do at the chairman's cocktail parties, but the same breed of networking that our high schoolers are doing to scare up a date for Friday nights' bowling bonanza.

On top of that I write, and then re-write, and have other people step in and re-write it again just in case I might have mis-spelled "organisation." As if that would happen.

Then I am a photographer.  The greatest trial of a missionary, or anyone who serves the Lord, or just breathes air for that matter, is the mundane.  I am the toilet-scrubber of all photographers, and creativity, art, and expression is substituted for a word that I have grown to both embrace and develop a certain distaste for: "concept." Oh, this is the first word you'd hear in a marketing meeting, so it's logical it would come up in the same discussions for a bi-monthly newsletter, but that's not the point.

I can deliver!  I don't disenjoy the execution of such duties, and thank God that I have this opportunity to try to squeeze in some of that creativity and expression in these works of missional art.  I admit my pride likes to squeak in and I get a little huffy on the inside because sometimes the concept wasn't "my" idea.  A lot like being in an assembly line, painting the toy airplane a beautiful red even though you wanted it to be electric blue because it's "more to your taste."

In this same vein I also edit video content, though I will say in this I'm a general novice, though I have great potential.  I realize I'm tooting my own horn, but in a way not really - I only repeat what I've heard on the street.

Then, and this is the great majority of who I am on this field, I am a mother. Not the lucky biological kind who got to have a little fun on the way before she earned the right to the title "Mom." Rather I'm the kind that decided out of the kindness of her heart, or out of selflessness (later to be dubbed "insanity"), or some-such thing to take care of some girls who would otherwise be sifting trash or worse. 

Pretty sure I have those same momma bear instincts, and goodness knows that a 13 year-old is going to get picked on just for the sole unvirtuous fact that she is loud, flirts, slams doors, and generally defies authority.  Poor things. 

But in fact this internal "stereotype" they've been labeled with is strikingly accurate, and my above sentiment quite sincere.  Daily they help me remember what a confusing time adolescence was, and how emotions are all over the place, and how much make-up or a braid could cheer me up.

This is my life, this is an outline, a very sterile outline of what I do with my time, with my life, and with my heart.