Ups and Downs...

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UPDATE BELOW

Wow...yesterday was a ridiculous day. I started to write dumb, but that’s not exactly true. It was just incredibly up and down. My eyes are still bouncing (as in every Looney Toons cartoon you’ve ever seen). I guess that’s what happens when you work with a dozen different guys who are all in different places.

Shall we recap then?

The first situation wasn’t any big surprise. Immigration is my second least favourite place to go in Santa Cruz....right after the post office. We were there to get passports for some of the guys, but were told we got there too late and should come back in the afternoon. Fine, whatever.

I can’t really get into the second situation, except to say that someone in the house’s refusal to own up to a dumb decision is making what should be a fairly simple and straightforward problem into something bigger and dumber. It’s very annoying. That situation morphed into another conversation with one of the guys, that was even more frustrating and annoying. There was some lying and stealing involved...it was messy.

So I left the house grumpy and fairly frustrated (as I think I mentioned), to go have coffee with a kid who doesn’t live with us, but who I’m helping with his classes. He’s a good kid and we get together every few weeks or so to see how things are going. It was kind of funny....he witnessed the grumpy conversation in the house and was trying desperately to console me. It made me smile inside. =)  But I’m fairly good at changing directions emotionally, so I was pretty much already fine as we left the house.

Anyhow, this is a kid who, up until recently, has had some fairly significant issues in his life...drugs, drinking...that sort of thing. I’m never quite sure what the conversation is going to be like with him. He has often expressed a lot of doubts and frustrations about God.. That’s a common enough theme here...I guess when enough bad stuff happens in your life it’s easy to start blaming God. I’ve explained to more than a few of the guys that it’s often other people’s bad decisions (and theirs as well) that have contributed so much to the pain they’ve experienced. God is in the healing.

Yesterday’s conversation ricocheted past a number of different topics before we ended up talking about movies, and from movies to documentaries. He told me about a documentary he’d seen about a church in Mexico called the “Exorcism Church” (can you imagine that church back home? The First Church of Exorcism over on Second Avenue...). Anyhow, it was a place where people brought their demon possessed friends and family to be...exorcised. I know nothing about the church, so I’m not going to get into critiquing it here. I just think the name is funny.

My friend wanted to know what I thought about that, so I shared a few perspectives and then told him a little of what happened a couple of weeks ago. I certainly believe that the demonic is real enough, and told him so. But I don’t think it’s something we need to get all riled up about. It’s just something we need to be aware of and deal with it when we need to. Nothing more. Anyhow, he was quiet for a moment, and then he asked if he could tell me something. I said sure (and prepared myself for some “I think I might be demon possessed” confession).

He told me about how one night last week, his brother (who he shares a bedroom with) started moaning and thrashing and crying. He was trying to speak but could mostly only get out a gurgle. Every once in a while he would say something about how “It” was trying to take him. He was punching the walls and his fists were getting all bloody. My friend wasn’t sure what to do (this had never happened before), but then he remembered “all the stuff you kept trying to tell me before” and he started praying and taking spiritual authority over what was happening. He’d never done anything like that before. He’s a kid who mostly focuses on all the bad things he’s done in his past...more so than on what God has done in him since then. There’s a lot of guilt there I think. He certainly doesn’t see himself as someone who could be used by God.

But to his surprise, almost immediately after taking authority over whatever was happening, his brother calmed down and was fine. His brother didn’t remember anything (and couldn’t figure out why his hands were bleeding). All he remembered was being dragged down into a place that was pitch black but filled with people or beings that he couldn’t see. And then all of a sudden he wasn’t there and everything was fine. My friend said his brother made all kinds of promises and commitments to God after that, so I asked if he’d kept them. My friend just shook his head and said, “Not really. You know, he’s sixteen.”

So then I asked what that experience meant for him. We ended up having a great conversation about who he was in Christ, and what that means for him. He was suddenly confronted with some pretty strong evidence that he is, in fact, a Son of God, and that God does, in fact, want to use him. Because of his past, he’s always struggled with that idea.

This kid’s a thinker, so I have no doubt that this won’t be the end of that conversation. He’ll have more things to say and ask. We’re getting together later today to talk some more. So please pray for him when you have a moment.

So...then I dropped him off and headed home, only to find a guy there who I thought had left us to go work. He hadn’t been back to pick up all of his clothes, but we also hadn’t seen or heard from him in nearly two months. He was working over the Christmas holidays and just didn’t come back. We had no way of communicating with him, so we figured he was just going to keep working. I’d already told another kid that he could move in and take over this guy’s place in the house. Only now...this guy wants back in.

It’s easy to say, “Well, he lost that opportunity when he didn’t call for two months!” and that should probably be true. Except that...if we do that, this guy is pretty much lost. He doesn’t have much for family or options. He’s a really good kid who I don’t want to see get lost along the way. He wasn’t trying to be rebellious by not calling...he was just being...dumb.

So today’s chore is to try and figure out how to squeeze another kid into the house. I have an idea, but it depends on one of the other new guys and how he feels about bunk beds...

I still have to go back and revisit that really grumpy situation as well. That means a few more conversations today that I’m not really looking forward to. If you can pray for wisdom and clarity in my thinking, and that the guys involved with stand up and take responsibility for their actions...that would be great.

Thanks everyone. Just another day in the life of a missionary I guess. I imagine this is making up for the day last week when I hung out by the pool, read a book and got sunburned....

UPDATE:

I thought I should let you know that this morning, just after I wrote this, the fellow who was causing much of the frustration yesterday, came into my room and apologized.  We ended up having a good conversation about what happened.  So...there you go.  God is continuing to work...