SURPRISED AGAIN BY GOD’S PEOPLE

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus this season God’s people have surprised us in the following ways:

“Make sure foreigners and orphans get their just rights.”   

My (Gary’s) students turned in some great final projects in their biblical interpretation class.   Esther works with abandoned kids and used her academic skills and her personal experience to interpret Deuteronomy 24, laws that protect the widow, the foreigner, and the orphan.  She knocked it out of the park and reminded us of God’s care for the vulnerable.

 “How can we sing the Lord’s song, in a strange land.” 

Another student, Maria, a Nicaraguan immigrant, did an interpretation of Psalm 137, a lament from the Babylonian exile.  She analyzed the poetic structures and the historical context, but then went on to identify personally with the pain of being a foreigner and experiencing loss (her husband died two months ago in his early forties.)   She not only analyzed the psalm, she lived it in a way that moved us all.

“What you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.”

At our holiday open house we celebrated Jesus’ coming with tamales (some scholars think it was the fourth gift the Magi brought) and other goodies.  Our guests brought rice and beans and other food items to donate to the feeding ministry run by one of the Baptist churches.  Mylinda and I got to deliver about two hundred pounds of food to the Leon XIII church.  They told us that the program had been suspended temporarily because the cupboards were bare except for a box of salt.  Not any more; God’s people came through.

“I will enter His courts with praise.”

Pastor Olman was thrilled to see a roof on the new sanctuary at the Baptist Church in Alajuelita.  Thanks to our partners in the Great Rivers Region and Indianapolis, and the sweat of the pastor and the church family, the building is taking shape.  Some of you know that this has been a long process.  But as Mylinda and I were tempted to whine, it dawned on us that the building is paid for. In an era of crippling debt this pay as you go approach is slow, but it’s also good stewardship.

“Being transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

At the “Centro de Transformacion” in La Guacima, kids are being nurtured and educated in freshly cleaned and painted classrooms while their mothers are being taught how to teach, love, and discipline their kids.  People with no church connection are coming to the center for skills training and quality childcare and are being welcomed with the love of Jesus.  Many folks from the church are going back to school to get their high school equivalency and others are taking seminary classes.

 Martin Luther used to say that we’re sometimes bored by the gospel stories because we already know how they end.  I pray that this Christmas season we can hear the stories in fresh ways and that God’s people will keep living out the stories and surprising us.

We want to thank you all again for your prayers and financial support that allow us to be part of what God is doing in Costa Rica.  Thanks also for your recent prayers for Gary’s father and for Jamie’s travel.  Big Dwight is much better and our favorite daughter is on her way here.

 Merry Christmas,

 Gary and Mylinda