From El Salvador with Love

I am writing from beautiful, sunny, warm, El Salvador. As we have traveled from the El Alamo International Hotel (to call our accommodations a “resort” would be a stretch… think of it not as a Motel Six, it is more like a Motel One and a half), I have seen the following reminders of home: a McDonald’s, Burger King, Little Caesars, lots of Pizza Huts, Subway, Mister Donut, KFC, Wendy’s and Bennigan’s. In other words, you could get high cholesterol just as quick in Central America as you can in the Center of America. Fast food joints notwithstanding, there are plenty of differences between El Salvador and Lenexa Kansas. Dorothy was right; we are not in Kansas anymore.

Still, this past week the 52 folks from Central have involved ourselves in construction, VBS kid’s clubs, painting a school, visiting an AIDS orphanage, holding medical clinics and showing the Jesus film. We usually leave the hotel by 8:30 AM and don’t return until 8:30 PM. They’ve been long, fun, tiring, exciting days.

On Sunday night, before any of our “real” work began, we had a time together with the whole team and I challenged the group. I told the team that we could come down here and buy a few trinkets in a souvenir shop like any other tourist, take a few pictures of palm trees and smiling children and go home unchanged. Or we could allow God to move us. Change us. Transform us.

I think he has been doing that.

Today, I spent the morning on the construction site and then went up an active volcano to the sight of our VBS and Medical clinic. I hadn’t been out of the van for a minute when my son Ben—who had been at the site all morning-- came running up to me. It was obvious he was excited.
“Dad, dad… guess what happened this morning?”
“I don’t know, Ben what happened?”
Usually when Ben displays this kind of excitement something goofy has happened like a bird dropping its, well droppings on his mother (that hadn’t happened…. yet. A little later in the day, a bird with the precision of a Patriot Missile would zoom in on my dear sweet wife’s head. An event, by the way, that would cause a couple of El Salvador boys to laugh hysterically for a long, long time.)

Ben proceeded to tell me that while he was out that morning inviting children to the VBS, he had an opportunity to present the “evangicube” to a man and lead him to Christ. I know the Bible says that all of heaven rejoices when one lost sheep comes home. But, I have to tell you if heaven was half as excited as Ben then they had quite a party over Javier coming to know Jesus! I hope it’s the first of many such opportunities in his life.

It’s been a great week… we have just a couple more days and then we’ll be heading for home.