It's been a great summer. Still is a great summer. Thank God. Really warm, no rain (but then we are in Lima and it never rains), absolute beach weather. Jose Luis called today to ask for "help" for a friend of his who was supposedly stuck at a beach town somewhere and needed bus fare back into Lima. I told him to tell his friend to work and save his money to return, we don't help out with straight cash. I heard laughter in the background when he asked for bus fare. They think I am easy pickings. As we talked on, it turned out the "friend" was Jose Luis himself as he got caught in his own lie. Asked him how his hand was. He said it wasn't half bad. Which means he has probably taken off the cast and all. At times like this, I want to smack him upside the head really really bad. But then, I have to just keep praying for him and trust God to knock some sense into him. And keep loving him. And pray that his hand will heal well despite.....
Despite all.......God really loves us a lot, doesn't He? I can't believe how much baloney He has to put up with in us as human beings. I have a hard time with the people I deal with, how does God do it with the whole world and love them all unconditionally? I struggle to love people and I really, really want to hit them hard sometimes. Really hard, like punch them out. Honestly, most of the time it's not love that stops me from hitting them, it's the law. I am not about to go to jail just because someone is being an idiot and I have to hit them. Yup, that's me. I struggle to love and so I am in constant awe that God loves us the way He does, despite ourselves and our idiotic ways.
I do have to say that it is not because I am a martyr that I do what I do with the team out on the streets. It has to do with the calling the Lord put in me to work with them and some supernatural love for them. Because I truly love doing what I do despite everything. I love being out there. I love talking to them. I love that they are ok when I see them. I wonder about them when I don't see them. I do love them in my small, human way only because He put His love for them in me.
Herman really tugged at my heart tonight. A forlorn, humpback figure, he walked right into the middle of traffic without a care for his own life to cross the street. He was drunk. It was a miracle he didn't get hit but to me, his physical state reflected his inner state. He's 37. He didn't care at that point if he lived or died. He has a mom and siblings who do care for him but had lost his spouse and son because of his drinking. His dad had died a drunk. He had called me last week but I had no idea it was him and couldn't understand him on the phone but he had called to see if we could go to his family home to speak to him the way we did on the street. I asked him to call me again when he wasn't drunk so we could meet up with him to talk more. He agreed. We asked to pray for him, he allowed us to and as we prayed I really felt that he truly knew he was trapped in a prison of his own making and didn't know how to get out. There was a lot of pain in him, not just in his heart but probably from his back that is disfigured. I was just glad we got a chance to talk to him tonight and I hope that he will call because I forgot to pray for healing for his back.
The women of the streets have loosened up more with us now. They might not trust us with everything and they might lie but they are less guarded with us now. While we were talking with two of the women, the police came by in a truck and it was a good thing we have our Siembra S.O.W. T-shirts now so they believed us for who we are but the cops still didn't want the women there, so they left. Jorge and I kept going to look for the other women and found two others whom we got to talk to. One talked about her past church experience and then started mocking it but the other said she wanted to go with us to church. I told her to call to let me know.
There wasn't a whole lot of them out there tonight. Perhaps the guys had gone to the beach towns to look for easy pickings and that was why Jose Luis was there with friends. Perhaps the women weren't all there tonight because the cops were patrolling the area or perhaps they knew we would be there and would be bad for business. Who knows. But God led us to the ones He wanted us to speak to. And so we keep sowing, hence our name "Siembra" and God has to do the rest and someday Mark 4:31-32 will become a reality. The least of the least will become a shelter for many. It could be one of the many Luis', it could be Herman, it could be Oscar, Anderson, Henry, Gisela, Flor, Carolina, Vicky, Paola, Karina......it could be any one of them or all of them.
Because God loves us despite ourselves, despite what we have done. He receives us as we are, makes us clean and then raises us up. Despite ourselves. Thankfully He doesn't punch us out. This is Grace.
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