NEWSLETTER: MAY, 2006

I snapped this photo of one of our vans after a muddy day working in Barrio Fausto. In summer, it’s windy, hot and dusty; at this time of year the dust turns to mud. Vehicles are one of our most expensive tools and we use them daily. Vehicles, gas and maintenance combine to make quite a dent in our budget. We will be starting to switch to Mexican gas as the prices here in the US increase. Woops! Just heard that Tijuana just raised their gas prices. Can’t win!

Mud is a visible sign of our philosophy. Our philosophy has always been to go to the need rather than designing ways to get the need to us. Christianity is going to the needy not asking the needy to come to us. Shoes or tires translate the same. . . travel. I’m proud of our dusty muddy trucks and vans, we work in their world. As some of us drive around San Diego with this mud, people look at us and wonder “where did you find the mud?”

This month is camp! Scores of kids are getting excited about camp. Between our vans and bus we will haul these kids from their barrios and their orphanages to Camp Agua Viva. As you can imagine, designing and running a camp like this with this explosive combination of street kids takes a lot of preparation, organization and prayer. Lots of prayer! We pray that our time with them and our speaking to them will translate into changed lives.

In one way, reaching people in the mud extends from the Tijuana dump to the kid’s jail spanning a dirty, harsh environment. Every now and then God provides a bright spot. Juan called me on the radio last week. “Hey, von. Thought you might like to know this. I was going with our family to the movies. As we were going in, others were coming out. I heard someone calling to me from the crowd. “Spectruum! Spectruum! Hey Juan, where are Aaron and von?” It was a Mexican teenager excited and all smiles. The boy had met us while he was in the jail and was excited to see Juan again. “We really appreciated you guys coming to the CMI (jail) and teaching us.” They talked for a few moments and went their separate ways. We appreciate those bright spots.

"If a man shuts his ears to the cry of the poor, he too will cry out and not be answered." — Proverbs 21:13

Some kids like this cute little girl are so easy to love. Then there are the hard to love kind of kid like “Lemon”! We’ve known “Lemon” since he was about ten. He has spent most of his life in jail. He is greedy and loud and belligerent. “Lemon” is now sixteen and on his way to a life in the penitentiary. He reached his hand and arm out of his cell bars yesterday to say hi and shake my hand. I gave him a smile and shook his hand noting about eight scars along his wrist. Why is it so hard to express God’s love to a kid who doesn’t even love himself? That’s one reason we work at the CMI.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support! Continue to pray for our safety and the safety of the kids we bring down with us; Tijuana is getting more dangerous every day. Drugs, desperation and kidnappings! Not good!

Thanks for standing behind us.

For all of us, von