The Lord Has Delivered Us!

The Lord Has Delivered Us!   (by Chris)

We arrived at our San Vicente Ministry Center (yes, a rented house, but hey!) a few weeks ago, and after opening it up and settling in, we realize... “WOW! We haven’t been robbed here in over a year! Guess the security bars and doors made a big difference! Way to go, Lord!”

A year ago, we were at a difficult point... what to do? Installing security was going to be expensive... would the owner go along? Adjust the rent if we pay? What about the enormous amount of time to do this installation?

For us, the words in Obadiah 1:5 were not IF but WHEN... “If (when!) thieves came to you, if (when!) robbers in the night— oh, what a disaster awaits you!— would they not steal only as much as they wanted?” We felt like the Israelites in Joel 1:4, “What the locust swarm has left, the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left, the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left, other locusts^[a] have eaten.” Getting robbed, and robbed, and robbed again was not do-able for us long-range.

The LORD worked it out. Julio and crew did a fantastic job, designing security measures adapted to the styles of robbery in the Village (no kidding!) and installing them in a brilliant way. The rental Owner worked out the issues of rent-credit. It took two months of hard work back in 2016-17, but we secured the Ministry Center from most forms of robbery. Thanks to SO many of you, our Partner-Team, who re-supplied us after the robberies, did fund-raising to pay for the security measures, and SO much ‘stay strong!’ encouragement... thanks, team!

Now, January 2018, we feel like the Joel Chapter TWO bit: ““I (the LORD am) repay(ing) you for the years the locusts have eaten— the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm” (verse 25).

When we recognized that it had been a YEAR without robbery... we stopped and gave HONOR to the AWESOME GOD we serve, for His Mercies are new every morning!!