Sunday, 4 October 2009
The Tuesday clinic was successful! Thanks again to those who have been praying. We have done it twice now. We had a lot of routine stuff, some diabetes, and one lady who was really sick. This lady had a very complicated story both medically and socially. I won't go into all of the details but it may be material for a US talk show. It involved the murder of her husband, the incarceration of her son after murdering his father-in-law to get his land, some other things I didn't really understand, and lots of alcohol. Anyway, she looked pretty bad when I saw her a couple of weeks ago. She had cirrhosis so I started her cautiously started her on a treatment for this. She got worse over the week and Sunday night after church we and a group from the church went to see her. She was doing very poorly--groaning in bed in a dark room with only the light of two small candles. We prayed for her and left. The next day, we got word that she had died a couple of hours after we left. Prior to visiting her, I had just finished preaching on the basic gospel message and some key verses to memorize relating to sin and salvation. We subsequently got a clear application of Romans 6:23 which says: "for the wages of sin is death"--certainly physically and also spiritually if one does not receive "the gift of God [which] is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord ." Her family told us that she had previously been involved in a church but after the death of her husband, she turned to the bottle. I don't know if she had been saved previously, or if she received Christ on her deathbed, or if she died without Christ, but I do know that you who are reading this ought to examine your heart and make sure that you know Christ now instead of waiting until you're on your deathbed. I know I write a lot about death but it's something that we all deal with--it just often happens at a younger age here. Praise God that for the Christian, death has been destroyed:
"...Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Tim 1:10)
On a lighter note, last weekend we went to Mexico. Since we have tourist visas, we have to get out of Guatemala every 90 days and then come back. Plus, it was the week of Areli's Birthday! So we decided to go to Tapachula which is just across the border. It was more beautiful than I expected being a "border town." I guess just the northern border towns are not such good places to hang out in. One interesting thing that we noticed on our drive was the abundance of evangelical churches in Guatemala the lack of them in Mexico. Someone told me recently that 40% of Guatemalans are evangelical Christians. Only God know the truth but the gospel has thrived in Guatemala. On the other hand Mexico is very different but God is moving. Last night, we watched a live broadcast of huge prayer rally in the main square of Mexico City. May God continue to move in Mexico.
Here are the pictures from Tapachula:
