NEWSLETTER: MARCH, 2006

Our big weekly workdays are the most photogenic of our ministries. Our two dozen workers and group of U.S teens interact with three hundred barrio people.

Activity is everywhere: Our doctor working a line of people, Two barbers patiently cutting hair, Efren organizing the food line; Robin, Hortensia and a team of American ladies showering and dressing the little girls in clean clothing. Lice shampoo for many at no extra cost. Up near the boys shower line two teens are making cotton candy as fast as they can. Heather sits in the end of a van in her makeshift store where kids are lined up with the tickets they won from the games to "buy" popcorn, chocolate milk or small candy bars. I'll have to admit it looks pretty impressive. These big workdays, like Spectrum are just vehicles to reach people and point them to Jesus. In these brief letters I try to share the real gold in humanizing the small and more important parts of our ministry.

A sudden and quite unexpected blessing happened Sunday afternoon. In the Bible we read that there is a time for everything and indeed there is. We see Jesus taking time to teach wherever He was and whenever He had opportunity. I have often pictured Him teaching the people in the evening with the beautiful sea of Galilee as His backdrop. Those paintings are so clean and beautiful.

Today, Juan and I found ourselves teaching also but to a quite different people in a very different environment. In the Tijuana children's jail, we often do medical work on the inmates and this was one of our long three-hour afternoons. In one of the buildings we do our medical work in the large bathroom. It would take a paragraph to try to describe this room, and there would be no way to describe the odor. Indeed it takes a strong disciplined stomach. Broken toilets and dirty tile and a whole lot more. Today the room was relatively clean but it didn't smell like a breeze off the Sea of Galilee.

When we finished working on the kids that had athletes foot, sores, scabies and whatever, there were about twenty-five teen age boys just standing around watching us. They were quiet and respectful. No doubt wondering why we would care about them and their dirty feet.

I thought, why not take this opportunity to teach, so we started talking to them and then slowly switched to teaching. To my amazement, no one left the smelly room.

These kids were hungry to learn and they listened well. I have to laugh when I think about it, an old man teaching through an interpreter to teenage inmates among the toilets in a most unlikely classroom. But it worked! Indeed seeds planted in the most unlikely places!

Could the reason be that there are so many of you praying for us and our ministry? Only God knows what has happened to the seeds we have planted these many years.

When Juan and I finished teaching, I was startled by the unexpected applause.

Thanks again for the faithful encouragement you have been to us!

In His love, von