Sunday -- Reflections at the Close of a Very Good Lord's Day

Wow! Never have we done so much on the very first full day of our stay in Mexico. From morning until night we all about the City, doing whatever needed to be done to bring joy to the children we are serving. Planning for both the week and performing the day’s tasks, all at once. It was an amazing effort and family and friends and fellow North Boulevard members, your teens jumped in without question or complaint. Their attitude not only got the job done and made every difficult task far easier but it also gives those of adults who work beside them hope for the future of our country, our church and families.

And at the end of the day, we huddled back up on the plaza to share moments when we saw God’s love in the upturned face of a baby at peace in our arms, the expectant gaze of a child looking for someone to play with him or someone that just need us to help. There are no language barriers. No cultural walls. Nothing that can separate us when God and love, joy and laughter, salvation and the knowledge of an eternal life that begins now and brings us together.

Skid shared again as he does most every year a story he never tires of telling or we of hearing. He told the story of a young man in the youth group many years ago, who Skid had serious doubts about whether or not this teen should go on the Mexico trip. But who, in the end, Skid said could go. As it turned out, ironically, Skid wasn’t able to go because of the impending birth of one of his daughters.

Then late one night, Skid got a call from the city. And it was this teen, who’d found the Nextel walkie/talkie phone and messaged Skid. Skid, naturally, was worried that something was seriously wrong. It turned out that everything was seriously right. The teen thanked Skid for being allowed to go on the trip and then said the words that have continued to capture Skid’s heart and have come to express the spirit of this trip for so many years since. The teen simply said to Skid – “I like who I am here.”

And so do all of we.

Free from the thousand and one distractions of our lives and social media and cell phones, television and movies, popular song lyrics, the expectations of society and friends, the things advertisements and peers convince us are essential to a happy life, we are free and open to hear and see God and be the person he would like us to be and who, we discover, we actually like being. We like who we are here. And seek to be that person when we come home.

We are so, so tired at the end of day one with three more action-packed days to go. We covet your prayers for continued strength and safety and the ability to make this a week for the children here that they, nor we or you, won’t forget for the next 51 weeks. A week to inspire us to leave better and truer and closer to God, to be the people we are here for the next 51 weeks.

Because. Lord knows. We like who we are here.

[Editors Note: Please do not post any of the pictures of the Mexican children here on your social media. Because of the age of the children, the views of the government here and privacy concerns, we are not allowed to share on social media and can only share here because this is a relatively private space.]

 

 

 

For those of you who have been to the City of Children in the past, you will remember at the end of each day the interns awarded the Festival of Sharing hat to the person who best exemplified a servants heart and the mission of the trip that day. Well, the Festival of Sharing hat has disappeared and there's just no replacing it. So, instead, Skid has come up with something new -- the Joe Hat, the hat Papa Joe Mayes wore the year he played inspector gadget. It is given each night by the interns to the person who best exemplifies the spirit of Joe Mayes and his deep for the love of the children here and this place. So, for the the first tie ever, the inaugural Joe Hat recipient goes to newcomer, Ellie Stephens.