Theresa training Alicia on new sewing machine
This blog may be more personal and self-revealing than you wish to read. But I think that sometimes as Christians we like to try to exude the aura of being saintly sages who emit a perpetual halo. This temptation is especially strong for anyone serving in some sort of “ministry” capacity (what ever that means).
Truthfully, I have never liked to read biographies of great Christian men and women because, instead of leaving me feeling encouraged and challenged, I usually end up wondering if I am even playing the same game as they, and knowing with absolute certitude that I am not in the same ball diamond, and certainly not catching the same fly balls as they.
I know that discouragement stems from the feeling of a lack of hope and an inability to see an end, or a solution in sight. I confess to struggling through some very heavy and dark days of late. This is especially true as Theresa and I seek to transition out of our work here in Mexico and hand it over to national leadership. Exacerbated by these changes, there often seem to be so many issues that are screaming in our faces that have no apparent solution.
Let me list some of the crushing issues over the past several weeks that seem to be unsolvable:
– there is a never-ending amount of work that just keeps piling onto Javier and my
Alicia practicing on her new machine while her daughter watches
shoulders in relationship to the Missionary Training Center farm. You may have had a little chuckle, a cluck of the tongue, and a headshake over the fact that we had the sugarcane which we planted destroyed four times in a row this year due to torrential rains, and that we have had to replant the same field each time again. Let me assure you that we have had no chuckling on this end. Each time has been hours and hours of back-breaking toil with hand tools and bent backs to reopen furrows in sheer mud, haul sugarcane on our backs to replant, and then to recover the rows of muck with heavy mattocks. Because of the fact that we could not spray to kill the weeds initially due to the heavy rains, we are now growing more weeds and grasses in some areas than sugarcane, and we now have to clean each furrow by hand with machetes. Over the past week, and yesterday and today we have worked 160 man hours just to hand clear the invasive grasses and weeds from the field so that we can replant once again in the areas where the seed cane did not take the last time due to the heavy rains on that occasion. We still have several more days remaining to cut and clear weeds before the field is finished. Then, we need to hire someone with horses and a hand plow to open the furrows. We then need to cut new seed cane and haul it into the field on our backs in order to replant it. Then we need to hand cover the seed again – this time for the fifth time. We have not been chuckling I can assure you.
– we have hired several men to help us clear the weeds and grass from the field, but if we are not directly there working alongside them they do not work. It is like having to baby sit constantly.
– on Friday of last week I went to the farm as usual to begin working at 7:00 am and found that we had been robbed during the night. Our plow, subsoiler, and boxblade were stolen, along with the three-point extendable connector. Truly, it isn’t even the monitory value of the implements that is the issue; it is the fact that we will probably not be able to replace them. They are not available here in Mexico, and I sweated blood to get them down here in the first place. So now what are we to do? We are reduced to machetes again. Thankfully we still have the tractor, but our implements are gone.
– last month we ended up in the red in our ministry accounts in Canada. Our ministry funds are drying up for the ongoing work.
– no one wants to help Javier and me on the farm, and no one seems to truly grasp the vision of the Training Center. Unfortunately this also includes the Board of Directors to a large extent. Everyone is quick to give a slap on the back and a hearty “great work, may God bless you as you labor”, but no one is willing to lift a finger to help. Also, to date we still have no one who is willing to live in the Casa del Obrero staff house and work on the farm, being the overseeing staff couple there. Well, it isn’t really that they don’t want to live in the house – it is a very nice place – but that they are not able to embrace the vision, and when they hear that it is a place of work and ministry their eyes glaze over. When their first question is what their salary will be, one realizes that they are not the ones with God’s call for ministry on their lives. Still, we desperately need someone living there, and soon.
– there is no apparent, or at least, quick, end in sight. Javier and I struggle daily with primitive hand tools where our machete, gancho (hooked stick), and azadón (heavy field hoe, or mattock) become our tools of choice in much that we need to do.
– when Theresa and I do leave, and when the work is handed over to 100% nation leadership who will help Javier? It is becoming very evident that there is no one who carries the vision with us, and until God specifically provides someone, we do not have any one at all other than Javier. He cannot carry the burden alone.
Curtains packaged and ready for sale. These are the creations of a newly formed cottage industry run out of the Bible Institute
At the end of a particularly stress-filled day like yesterday I echo the deep desperation of David when he cried out in Psalms 42:5:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me”.
But, within this very verse is the answer to the pain as well – “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God”.
Back in May 27, 2010 I wrote a blog that I entitled “What Do These Stones Mean” (http://www.vitwministries.com/wordpress/2010/05/what-do-these-stones-mean/). In it I reflected back over the past years and stated “I feel like the children of Israel when God told them to set up markers and monuments at strategic places where great victories were won in battle, or where God had marvelously moved in some way. The reason was this – so that in the future when their children would ask, “What do these stones mean?” they could clearly give an explanation of God’s mighty acts”.
I think that we often need to do this in our lives, and especially at times when things are not clear, and when the future looks like it is in deep fog. If we lose perspective of the way that God moved in our lives in the past we can become disjointed and unable to find our way in the present, or the future. With this in mind I humbly wish to present several things. However, I do so with hesitance and some trepidation because, first of all, I don’t know what much of it even means, and secondly, it could easily be misconstrued into something “saintly and holy”, or uppity that I have no intention for it to be. So, please do what Mary did in Luke 2:19, and keep all these things, and ponder them in your heart. I am not claiming to know what they mean. However, I do not wish to despise prophecy either.
1) I confirmed what I am about to write yesterday with Alejandra (Janny) to ensure that I had it correct: In 2001 Janny had a dream where she was clearly shown a large building sitting exactly in the area where the ministry farm is presently located. It was explained to her in her dream that this building was a Bible Institute in which she was involved. On the building she saw a sign with the name of the institute, and heard a voice read the sign to her – the name of the building was “Centro de Entrenamiento Misionero” (Missionary Training Center). At the time, in her dream, she questioned the location because it was known for flooding. When we first spoke about the possible purchase of land in this exact area some ten years later during a Board of Directors meeting this dream was brought vividly back to her. Yesterday she told me that she recalls the dream, and the voice telling her the name of the Bible Institute as if it had only just happened.
2) Quite a number of years ago, during a time of extreme poverty in Javier’s life, a pastor spoke a prophetic word over Javier. The gist of the prophetic word was that from Javier’s hands many would be blessed and fed – both in the spiritual sense, but also in the natural – and that he would produce food which would support, and feed many. At the time, Javier and his family had just moved back to Cd. Valles from pastoring a small village church in San Siro. They returned with nothing except a single kitchen chair, and were all sleeping on the floor without any furniture in their little rented house, and barely enough food to feed their two hungry boys. He believes that perhaps God is beginning to fulfill this prophecy over his life now with the vision of the Missionary Training Center – Casa del Obrero.
3) Twice in my own life, and once by someone who didn’t know me from Adam (and the other time by a person who may have had a vague idea that I was working in Mexico, but not much more details than that), prophetic words were spoken over me concerning Mexico. I do not speak of this often, and never in a public way as I am doing now because I don’t understand it; however, the prophecy both times was something to the effect of me being a father to many in the mountains of Mexico. Obviously the meaning was spiritual, and represented spiritually birthing many children in Mexico. I don’t know what that means, but I wonder often if this present ministry isn’t somehow a part of the fulfillment of these prophecies spoken over me during the past fourteen years.
4) In 2005 the vision was formed in the hearts of several brothers and sisters here in Cd. Valles to begin a Bible Institute and training center. Out of this vision, and after much hard work and prayer, Luz de las Naciones Bible Institute was birthed and continues today.
All of the above mentioned things are evidenced, and are bearing fruit today. But we need hope – we need to see a glimmer of light during these intense and trying days that we are in now. But, I am also reminded of the clear words of James and Peter, as well as in Romans where it is stated unequivocally that we should embrace the testing of our faith because it will develop the spiritual muscle of patience, character, endurance, hope and perseverance.
Today as we sat on the ground at the farm sharing tacos for lunch Javier opened his heart to me. He said that last evening he was also struggling with the pressures and feeling weary and discouraged with everything, when God spoke clearly to him that one cannot find fruit on someone else’s tree. Rather, you must grow your fruit from your own trees; from those which you have planted. What this meant to him is that one cannot look to others to fulfill the vision that God has placed in your heart. You must produce your own spiritual children which will continue to bear fruit. In other words, others may never enter into what God has spoken to you to do. It is your responsibility to raise up spiritual children under you which will then carry this vision forward. The masses will probably never do so.
I believe that what this means for us is that many, and maybe even most, will not necessarily embrace the vision of the Missionary Training Center farm. It is too far outside of the religious, church box that most are in. However, what we must do is begin with one or two who will be trained and raised up through the work. They will become the next leaders who will then train others, and the growth of fruit will continue. (Somehow this is not coming across as clearly as I see it in my spirit, but I hope that you understand what I am trying to say).
So, in practical terms, what does this fruit-bearing tree look like? I believe it looks something like this: Theresa teaches sewing to several women – specifically to Cristina and Alicia. These women then develop a cottage industry in Cristina’s home using the training that Theresa has given them. They then take on some other women and train them how to sew so that their little cottage industry can grow. They are now working hard and making a good income from the custom sewing jobs that they can take in. That is a tree producing fruit after its kind – not trying to find someone else’s fruit from someone else’s tree, but rather growing their own – raising up their own children, so to speak.
Or perhaps it looks like this: Theresa teaches women how to sew curtains. These women then begin a small business of making, packaging, and selling curtains in order to raise money to pay for the rent of the Bible School building. This business has become income generating.
That, after all, is the vision of the work – to equip and train nationals, both indigenous and non-indigenous, in the areas of Christian leadership, trades, alternative farming methods, sewing, baking, micro-business, and entrepreneurship in order to empower them, thereby enabling them to break the mentality of poverty and oppression that is so prevalent. The mission is to raise up national men and women who can return to their own people in order to bring the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as freedom from the slavery of alcoholism and other addictions, poverty, and a mentality of inadequacy so that they can become missional Christians, as well as productive citizens within society.
How is this done? One-on-one. One at a time. The farm gives us, and our spiritual children, the right to speak into people’s lives one-on-one; not in a religious way, but by sharing labor, training, and the Gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
“Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God”.
Please pray for us, and with us. We desperately need God to break through some of the impasses that we currently face in the ministry.
We love and appreciate you,
Steven and Theresa
