Thus are recorded some of our Savior’s final words before His physical body left this earth. Many of you, in leaving your homes in the states to travel here to Matamoros, Mexico, likely feel as though you are acting out the last part of Jesus’ proclamation and becoming His witness at the ends of the earth. And so you are. But for those of us who live here, and for those who have been familiar with Adventures in Missions’ work in Matamoros for some time, we see things a bit differently. The Gateway has existed here, 19.5 km outside the city limits of Matamoros, for over a decade. During that time we have excelled in sending forth multitudes of witnesses from this base into our Judea and Samaria—the city of Matamoros, nearby Reynosa, and beyond that even into the mountains of Saltillo. What we have long neglected, however, has been our Jerusalem—Ejido Buenos Aires, the tiny community where we live. Summer after summer, bus load after bus load of gringos have driven past the homes of our closest neighbors to go out and do “the Lord’s work.” And our neighbors have gotten the message:
Because our physical needs are not “desperate”, because our sins are not “great,” God is not concerned with us. He does not pay attention to us, we are not significant to Him, and maybe even at the end of the day we don’t really even need Him. Obviously the gringos don’t think we need Him. Not really. He sends His witnesses to other people, but we are not on His radar. The gringos overlook us and therefore so must God. And most of us are pretty content with the status quo anyway. Maybe we don’t even want God’s attention. Not really. What will it mean if His eye comes to rest upon us? What if He requires something of us…
But this summer things are changing. This summer we have chosen to devote all of our Wednesdays to Ejido Buenos Aires and its neighboring communities. What that looks like is constantly evolving. We do service projects, we water trees, we prayer walk, we play soccer, we serve cold, clean water, we host carnival games, we grill out, we fellowship, we worship. We share life here and we take notice of life here.
The Stories:
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A lesson learned for the Chambersburgians |
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6/26/2008 By: Sean Nestor, Project Leader |
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First UMC Chambersburg- Chambersburg, PA |
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All of the ministry we’ve done up to this point has been about a 20 minute trip from where we’re staying into the city. Today, we spent the entire day here in our ejido (neighborhood) doing our mission. We began the day working on a couple of different things. First, there is a school house located just outside our dorms that hasn’t been used because of its run-down state. We scraped the walls so that they could be prepped to be painted. Outside, Jeff was so into pulling dead branches off a palm tree that we had to drag him to lunch. Aaron and Dean, along with some other participants, helped pull down an abandoned house down the street—which they then piled up and burned. That land will be used for a play space for the kids in the community. We had a “carnival” this afternoon where Jen, Jess, Erin, and the other girls painted the nails and faces of local children and their moms. David, Brendon, and some of the guys grabbed a piece of soccer action with some local boys. |
