Serving Christ in México
When learning language it often happens that you go months, perhaps years, being oblivious to certain words or phrases. You can be so focused on understanding what a person is saying that your brain just skips over a word you don’t know and it never registers in your mind. Or maybe it is a phrase you learned but you haven’t yet heard it used in a real-life context, and so the phrase is merely theoretical.
Continue reading “Bread for the Scare”
Time and again the Scriptures call us to remember, to call to mind what God has done in the past. Just yesterday we crossed over the five-year threshold of our time here in Mexico, and I thought it would be good to take time to remember what God has done in those five years – good for ourselves and, I pray, good for you dear reader.
Continue reading “Five Years and A Day”
As I stood in the doorway, ready to leave, my wife asked me: “Are you bringing Jonatan to the rehab place today?” “That’s the plan,” I replied “but we’ll see what happens.”
My wife smiled a knowing grin.
Continue reading “A Friday in March”
Any reader of the Bible knows the experience of reading through the book of Leviticus. Compared with the flowing narratives and fascinating character studies of Genesis and the first half of Exodus, Leviticus reads slow and sluggish.
Continue reading “How to Be Clean”
She was always smiling. That’s what I’ll remember about her.
She lived just down the street from our ministry centre so it didn’t take me long to meet her and strike up a conversation. After that, I would see every week, usually several times a week. I’d smile back at her and wave, or stop by her doorway to talk a bit.
Continue reading “Ode to Ofelia”
Life in this sin-broken world is not always pretty. Dirt gets in our eyes, under our fingernails and behind our ears. Dust settles on every surface and collects in our lungs. Germs and bugs and viruses attack our immune system. Our muscles ache and stomachs vomit. Bread moulds and meat rots. Mice live in our walls and cockroaches in our cupboards.
Continue reading “Dust and Dirt and Dung”
Into the Field
Mission in Mexico is a relatively new missions endeavour. My family and I have been on the field for a mere four years and our current ministry in the Santa Barbara neighbourhood was started less than two years ago. Much of our work is focused on sowing the seed – outreach and evangelism. If a metaphor is useful, we’ve just stepped into a field of dry, crumbly dirt, dotted by weeds and rocks (kind of like the actual fields we see around here). Taking a handful of seed, we scatter it about, not knowing what will happen to it.
Continue reading “Sowing the Seed”
I’m not sure where I got this book, but I’m always interested in books about life in Bible times, so after sitting on my shelf for years, I finally freed it from collecting dust and gave it a read. It is a long, detailed, well-written book about Jewish life in the time of Jesus. I really enjoyed it, although it took time and discipline to get through because of its length. There are probably better, more accessible books out there on this particular subject, but this was a book I already had in my library, and all in all, it was a worthwhile read.
Continue reading “10 Books I Read This Year – 2023”
It’s quite the crazy trip
how my life has changed so quick
With just a little flick
he rearranged my script
He mixed in Divine
then fixed all my lines,
made it fit with His rhyme
and I‘m just a blip on this line
but here I sit in His shine
with a child Divine
in these arms of mine
Sends chills flyin’
up and down my spine
Continue reading “For Joseph”
I’d seen him walk by a few times in the past weeks. Apparently we was living up the street with Manuel. Today, he stopped, took a hesitant step forward and then asked if he could come in. I closed my laptop and rose to greet him. His name was Francisco.
“Would you like to sit down?” I asked.
“Sure.” He took a seat opposite me at the plastic folding table where I had been working. His tired eyes took a quick survey of the room. He looked like a man with a burden.
Continue reading “The Man Up The Street”
The Rabbi's Burrito 