NEWSLETTER: SEPTEMBER, 2006

While seated in my car, waiting in line to cross the border into the USA, I noticed a father with his arm on the shoulder of his eleven year old son as they walked down the sidewalk together. In a short time the boy reached high and placed his arm up on his father's shoulder. Finding that quite a stretch the boy let go and dropped behind and started following his father, grabbing his waist and lock-stepping with him. Here was simply a father just being a father and a boy being a boy, following his father. Something good, healthy and normal was happening between father and son.

Some time ago jogging along the bay here in San Diego I noticed something quite similar - a father and his little son laying on a grassy knoll looking up at the sky. The boy lay in the exact position of his father with his arms in back of his head and his legs crossed. Indeed, like father like son.

Yesterday in Mexico, I talked with a young inmate that was sitting in the office waiting to see a counselor. His left wrist had five nasty scars on it. On Mondays, we're at the children's jail. This time while doing a little political work, I saw Felix and had a chance to ask him a few personal questions. I found that Felix was in for violent robbery and that he was on drugs at the time. When I asked him about his father he looked up at me and said. . .”I have no father.” These are the four words I hate to hear. Unfortunately Felix isn't the exception but more the rule in the barrios in which we work.

Our mandate here is to share God's love. To share the fact that God our father loves His children. Yet, in my world I rarely use the term father because "Father" is the non-existent one, the one who abandoned them or became angry while drunk and beat up "Mother". In fact, even the term “love” seems perverted and out of place. In many cases we find demonstrating our love to be more effective than preaching God's love.

Unfortunately a good percentage of the kids we work with are bastards. Such an ugly word! When a boy realizes he is a bastard, it cuts the heart right out of him and he starts to hate the very thing he is going to be. Indeed we have a critical place in many of these boys lives.

I don't know if you ever thought of it that way. Please pray with us that we might be the right examples and find the right words and methods to connect God the Father's love with these hurting and unloved kids.

Here, across the border, chicken-pox can be a serious thing. We have lots of it along with the scars that go with it. This little girl came on our shower day to get cleaned up, Here hygiene is simply a word that has slipped through the cracks of poverty allowing sickness to conquer the innocent. Little by little we teach hygiene. We're grateful for our doctor.

Thanks once again for your love, prayers and support.

For all of us, pastor von