As I arrived at Ciudad in the bus tonight, a now very common scene unfolded before me; another guy being chased by thieves on the sidewalk except that this guy got away and the thieves, in frustration jumped onto a big city bus through the open back door, ran through it targeting cell phones easy for the picking. I really can't believe the audacity of these guys because as they were about to leave without getting anything, one of them saw a guy sending a text message on his cell phone in the seat just ahead of the back door and he leaned so far in, I couldn't believe the victim didn't feel his breath on his ear, and in one swift movement, the thief grabbed the cell phone out of the victim's hands and voila! just another regular robbery on the streets of Ciudad. This is truly becoming the norm of my opening paragraph every week. I guess I should write when there is no robbery instead.
Tonight, we were told the guys no longer hang out at the same corner so we prayed to find them and went searching. We found them 2 blocks away, most of them in full work mode. Luis Enrique was there and he pretended that we did not exist. I don't get offended anymore because this is the way they are. However, later I realized why he ignored us. He was in work mode and every time he is with us, the Holy Spirit gobsmacks his conscience and he can't rob anyone after that and him being "at work" looking for pickings at that moment meant that he could not associate with us because he wouldn't be able to do what he thought he needed to do. God is working.
We met new guys. Ronnie, Anibal, Jonathan, William. And they treated us with the same respect as the others normally do. God answered a prayer tonight in having us meet this group of newbies. The cops moved us away from the main drag and where we ended up being at was a great spot for being able to converse with them without distractions. Words of life got sown a lot tonight. I'm thankful for that. We found out that on last Thursday, one of them got killed with a knife to his chest by some other guys over a girl. He was around 18 and had a child by the said girl. His name was Jose Carlos Mata Gutierrez. I don't know if I know him but I name him here because he is not a nobody, not an invisible person. He mattered to many people who knew him even though he was involved in vices that hurt him and others. He was a living breathing person whose life was taken prematurely and violently.
God actually protected Milagros and I lastThursday afternoon from being witnesses to this murder. We actually had made arrangements to meet up with our Carlos for lunch and we were there at 1pm and he did not show up. We looked for him for about a half hour and when we couldn't find him we decided to leave Ciudad to hang out together and have lunch elsewhere. If we had met Carlos, we would have still been there at Ciudad when the murder happened at 3:15pm close to where we had normally hung out with the guys. I know the time of it as one of the guys has the police report/certificate of the homicide and he showed me it. I have no idea how it got in his possession and I didn't ask. At first I was worried that the youth who passed away was our Carlos as we didn't see him tonight either. But our Carlos does not have a child and one of his names is Lucero and the other is Flores so I can seriously breathe a sigh of relief knowing it was not him.
Milagros the girl who works selling cell phone calls was friendlier tonight and we set up a time to meet next week to have lunch and hang out. She doesn't belong on the streets nor is she involved in any of the vices. She is a single mom who lives there and works there and she's actually a sweet person. On the way home, in the combi/micro (van used as a bus), the fare collector fell out of the combi and almost got run over by the same combi. As we pulled into a bus stop, he opened the sliding door, lost control of the door and fell out but he managed to keep his balance and grabbed onto something and I'm assuming it's the outside door handle which allowed him to run alongside the combi until it stopped instead of being dragged under it. That was freaky. Nothing is normal on Saturday nights apparently.
Please pray for more labourers as there is only the three of us and we're all women. We need men in the field too, especially Godly men who can counsel and are able to love them with the Word of God.
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