Return to the Mission Field

8/22/13     Felipe, Daniel         Father ?, son about 17

Just returned last night from Nueva Vida Queretaro, Mexico, and the privilege of serving with an awesome outreach team from New Life Chicago and the church planting team in Queretaro!  I wouldn’t know where to begin to tell about how blessed our ten days there were, but I do know somebody has been praying for us!  Thank you!  As we prepared to return to Chicago we all had the sense that we were not returning from the mission field; rather, as William Dyckman said while looking out the window of our plane as we banked a turn before our landing in Chicago – “There’s our mission field!”   After returning to work today I was reminded of Jesus’ parable of the unworthy servant in Luke 17: ““Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’?  Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”  With that in mind I stopped at a park on my way home from work today to reach out with the Gospel.  I met Felipe and his son Daniel, about 17.  Thanks to ten days of practice in Queretaro, I could hold the conversation in Spanish and avoid the need for Felipe to have his son interpret for him.  Felipe told me he is an atheist but his wife is an evangelical Christian.  I asked if there was ever a time when he did believe in God.  He told me how his daughter was born with Down’s Syndrome, and at four months was rushed to the hospital where it was discovered she had two holes in her heart and little chance to live.  His wife and her church prayed hard, and now his daughter is entering her senior year of high school!  I asked Felipe why he no longer believed in God after this miracle.  “Because not every innocent child is as lucky as my daughter.  How could a loving God allow so many children to suffer and die in this world?”  he said. Is the glass half full or half empty?  Through a long conversation, beginning with teaching about suffering from the book of Job, I helped Felipe begin to see things from God’s point of view according to the Bible.  He began as an atheist but is now considering the possibility of knowing a God who is both loving and just.  The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Let’s be part of the answer to our prayers for workers for the harvest!