Mexico Day 8/Recap- Parting is such sweet sorrow

I’m sitting in the DOL right now, and somehow it seems like the perfect way to contrast coming home to spending my last week gallivanting through the streets of Tijuana. So now I’m surrounded by a stupid amount of American’s wanting to renew licenses and stuff like that. However yesterday morning I was standing on a dirt road in Mexico starting the day like I had ended the last one. God had me wake up pretty freaking early cause he wanted me to start out the beginning of my 21^st year with him and I’m not one to say God did this or that very easily, but I do feel he wanted me to start this year resting in him. It was so cool as God just challenged me to thank him for all he had been doing in my life and all that I still need to hand over to him. Have you ever had that opportunity? It was pretty cool just to re-cap my life with God and see where he has taken me and what he has allowed me to see and do. The rest of that conversation was pretty personal so I’m obviously not going to go into detail, but let’s just say it was a cool way to start the year.

Right after I got done writing my last blog, I came downstairs and snuck into a room full of the younger boys and one boy Ricardo was up laying in his bed and I sat down next to him. In his hands he was clutching an envelope and inside it were pictures he had drawn for Mackenzie, Carly and myself and little trinkets he was going to give us. (He had no idea I would be coming down, which is why it was so surprising and sweet that he would be clutching this envelope while lying in his bed.) It was one of the sweetest things I had ever seen. Here is a picture of Ricardo.

The next morning I went into the room and all the boys had pictures or letters for me. The littlest boy, Oscar, that wasn’t in the baby house gave me a Dish Network add that had superman on the front and told me I was superman. Than moments later he tried to give me his Spongebob stuffed animal that was bigger than him (although it may have been the boys whose bunk was above him), and than he tried to give me a toy truck, and than he tried to give me more and more toys (all of which I would not let him give me, he was three…and seriously he had already given me the dish network card so I felt super special. Check out how cute Oscar is.

When I went to visit the baby house I got to see my favorite kid in their, Lucy. Lucy is a toddler and kinda waddles around and she is freaking adorable. For 5 or 6 of the days I was there I would go in and pick her up, through her around, dance with her, sit in the rocking chair with her, get besos (kisses) on the cheek from her, and just show her love that she doesn’t get consistently from parents (but she does get love from the orphanage worker, but they have 16 other babies to share love with so its not what it would be). I was getting ready to leave the baby house for my last time and Lucy followed me through an open door into one of the crib filled rooms and grabbed my shirt tail and reached up to me and said “Papa.” WHAT! Papa….that melted my heart and I picked her up and never wanted to let her down.

I bonded most with a boy named Moises. He is a fourteen year old kid who has had to grow up way too early. Two of his brothers ran away from the orphanage and I’m not sure if his parents are alive, but if they are they are completely abandoned from his life. He’s one of those guys who is craving for a positive male influence in his life and I pray that I began to play that role. Every morning this trip he would come to my window and whistle to wake me up. We spent hours playing card games, trying to teach him how to jump high enough to touch their 9 foot basketball hoop, fighting, cleaning up after meals, and struggling through conversations. I guess I see more and more why my heart is youth ministry and the potential that teenagers have to influence others. He lived in the shadow of his Jesus-junior brother, and was just trying to find his place in this world. I will always be thinking of Moises.

Well this is the end of my Mexico blogging. I pray that it made a difference in your thought process somewhere along the way. I pray that you think differently about the needs in the world, about the way God cares for you, in who God is, and in the call for the church. I will be blogging sporadically but Thanks so much for your prayers for our trip to Mexico