Ford 8N Tractor (Not Ours - But Same Basic Tractor)
Time for another blog, and so very much to be thankful for…
On top of the list of thanksgiving for me personally is the fact that Theresa will finally be joining me in several days. I will be leaving Cd. Valles early on Thursday morning and heading north to the border. Then, early Friday morning I will leave Donna, Texas for Houston where her plane will land at around 8:00 o’clock pm on Friday. It has been a very, very long haul for us this summer with so many months apart – more than we had ever planned. However, it is job well done, and we will finally be reunited. I am married to a wonderfully giving woman, and God will most certainly bless her for her love and giving service to the family over these months.
Then, we are extremely thankful to both Floyd Dowell and Tractors for Our Daily Bread, as well as to Dan and Marlys Slaubaugh for making it possible for us to soon have a tractor and farm implements for our work here at the Bible Institute land site – Floyd and Tractors for Our Daily Bread for donating the tractor and implements, and Dan for volunteering to deliver them from Kansas to Texas for us. Theresa and I will be meeting Dan in southern Texas where he will be delivering the machinery for us a couple of days after Thanksgiving. This is appropriate timing for this delivery, and it will certainly be a day for great thanksgiving for us.
At present Javier and I are hacking weeds and field grasses out of the sugarcane by hand. Twelve and a half acres of field doesn’t sound like very much to take care of when one climbs up into the air conditioned cab of a tractor. However, try doing field work with a bent back and a machete. Suddenly the rows seem very long indeed. Also, add to that near 100° weather, and you have a combination which can make a grown man cry.
So, needless to say, we are extremely grateful for the soon-to-be arrival of our latest addition to the farm. We anticipate that much back pain will suddenly be alleviated, and work can soon be accomplished that at present looks like merely a dream – stumps removed, land cleared, fields tended, etc., etc. After all, I am not a spring chicken any more, and hours spent bent over and hacking with a machete are, well, just plain hard work for my old back. I am realizing that I am not twenty one any more.
And finally, we have had RAIN! Don’t stop praying as we do need much more, but do rejoice with us. The cane is looking so much better, and the soil is actually moist now. Praise the Lord for answered prayer.
We do have some ongoing prayer needs for you as well concerning the Bible Institute/Training Center/Farm Site.
First of all, concerning the arrival of the tractor: As I have already indicated, we are thrilled to be receiving this gift. However, we now have a new problem on our hands – not a problem really – just a new way for God to show his power.
As you are probably well aware (unless you have really had your head in the sand for the past several years), Mexico is not in good shape as far as national security. It is going to be a very difficult mater bringing the tractor from the border to Cd. Valles. We have been told by the Mexican customs agency that unless one pays off the Mafia cartels it will not be possible to pass, and one may find the equipment burnt beside the road. We don’t have the money to pay for transport from the border to Cd. Valles, and I certainly don’t see why God should have to pay off the drug cartels to get his equipment to the place where it is needed.
We have some potentially helpful contacts on the Mexican side of the border that I will be looking up when I get to Reynosa in several days. In the mean time, I am seriously considering driving the tractor from the border to Cd. Valles on its own steam. If the tractor is being driven here by road, the Mafia-types will just suspect that it is being driven from one field to another, and there should be no problem (at least that is my theory). I will need to do some serious checking into all possibilities before anything is done. However, step one will be to at least have the tractor at the Mexican/Texas border and not in Kansas.
If I do indeed drive the tractor from the border to Cd. Valles, any of you who know my father, Alvin Frey, will see a certain bit of déjà vu in the whole incident.
Secondly, we really need to find some way at the land site to access water to irrigate crops. We have explored the possibility of drilling for a deep well. But unless God does something spectacular for us, hydrology maps show that the land is located in an area where it doesn’t look like a reasonable probability of locating ground water. We can dig a surface well, which is certainly an option, but this is limited to rainfall and surface water and as such has limited use for us as an irrigation source – especially since it is precisely at the times of draught and low rainfall that one needs irrigation.
Secondly, we could perhaps pump water from a stream not too far down the road from us. However, this has the exact limitations that the surface well does – it is full of water in the rainy season, but runs dry in the times of low rainfall – exactly when we need the water. I don’t have any answers at present, but ask you to keep this mater in your prayers. Irrigation would make a huge difference in our potential production.
I continue to pray for a person, or a couple knowledgeable in agriculture that can join us in the work. We would be so blessed to have someone come who knows how to run a small farm and who can join us in the vision, and train us in agriculture. I believe that the Lord will provide that person(s).
Then, finally, there is potentially a more complicated mater which I want to present to you for your prayer. I will preface the next bit by saying that when one is hacking away at weeds with a machete for hours and lugging them to the edge of the field, he has plenty of time to think. Please forgive the following allegory if it becomes too graphic, but it does get my point across I believe:
The status quo is always the easiest thing to strive for and to maintain, and it is never easy being the harbinger of change. Indeed, by definition, change implies that things are done differently than the way that we have always done them, and this change can cause stress – especially when one places religion and tradition into the mix. Sometimes pet objects and belief systems must be looked at and questioned, and perhaps, God forbid, changed.
That is to say, the status quo is always easier to strive for unless one begins to get the uncomfortable sense that the stench that has slowly been working into his consciousness may perhaps come from the very body that he is laying beside within the confines of the coffin into which he has so willingly and gladly became entombed. As one searches the beloved and accustomed face beside him which he has so lovingly caressed for years, he cannot help but begin to wonder if indeed the sunken features and hollow eyes are lifeless instead of emanating the breath of life – of God. Is it possible that true life is not evident within the confines of the coffin, but without? Is it possible that for true life to be realized we must burst free from tradition and the way that we have always “done” religion? Not from God – that is self evident – but from the encased God that we have enshrined within religion for so many years. How can we become free from the self-inflicted confines, and be truly free to be the men and women that our Jesus wants us to be? To be the men and women of the cross – of the “stuff” which is becoming transformed into to very image of Christ?
Please pray with me that we as a ministry and as a Bible Institute/Training Center can be freed from the confining box of tradition and be free to find our wings in Jesus.
We love you and ask for your continued prayers.
Blessings,
Steven and Theresa
