hey… prayer works

I wanted to kind of give an update on last week. I really
enjoyed getting to know some of the students, seeing their hearts grow and
their perspectives broadening. One thing
I came face to face with last week was simply how much our different
backgrounds give us different lenses through which to view the world. I simply want to have God’s perspective,
unbiased to see people as they are, as our Creator made them. My favorite part
about being one of the project leaders was getting to know the family. This was such a privilege, and an open door
since after the first day, I was mainly there as a resource in case the group
needed anything while they were doing construction. So I just spent a lot of time with Carmen (yellow shirt in above picture),
the mother of the Agustin, the man we were building the house for (his wife is Jessica, in the red stripes). She has such a heart for knowing God, but she
has only been a Christian for a couple years, so there’s a lot in the Bible
that she doesn’t understand (well, there’s a lot in the Bible that none of us
really understand) but she hasn’t heard or read much of the Old Testament
history, which makes it difficult to understand a lot of the New Testament as
well, so I just had the opportunity to teach some about the Israelites as God’s
chosen people, and then how we are grafted in through the New Covenant, which
was about the last thing I had expected to do.
But God was so in the time, because then this lady came over to visit
Carmen and she wanted to listen too, and then two of Carmen’s daughters came
in, so it was really neat to share with all of them. Before we went to lunch on the first day, she
asked me if I thought the group could maybe build a house for her daughter and
son-in-law next year. I told her I would
let the AIM staffers know about the need, but our group (the 8 of us left, plus
our 3 leaders!) have decided to build the house (we have the money, because we
had planned on building a house for a lady in Granjas, but it turns out the
Lord provided for her in abundance, because another church got to her first and
asked if they could build her a house!) So its just really cool that God has connected
us with this family now, I just really love them already, and I’m so thankful
we’ll have this opportunity to show how quickly and creatively God answers
prayers.

Again, thanks for praying for me and my team. I can see how it changes things!

Here’s some of the team with Carmen, Agustin, Jessica, and Antonia (the one we’re building the next house for) after Carmen made tamales for all of us!

Left: Carmen and her
grandson, Samuel

                  Right: Octavio

Blessing the new house