.
Through Apprenticeship to Jesus we are trusting Jesus words, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father I have made know to you” (john 15:15) God calls us his friend. He wants to talk to us personally and frequently. As Dallas Willard writes, “The ideal for divine guidance is…a conversational relationship with God: the sort of relationship suited to friends who are mature personalities in a shared enterprise.” Asking questions, what are you teaching me here God? What are you asking me to do? Or what do you want me to let go of? What in my heart are you speaking to?
Our time in Nogales was rich as we were able to experience in the weekend full expressions of our rhythm of prayer, study, and service as a way of strengthening this friendship with God. Our time was interwoven with corporate prayer as well as times alone with God, we also received great teaching from Brian Donohue about the kingdom of God. The service projects were diverse and rewarding:
1) We made a pancake breakfast at the kids café for the neighborhood kids and then we had a time for crafts and bible stories.
2) We were able to place steel posts in the ground above Miguel’s house to protect his home from another car sliding off the road and into his house. Now Miguel can sleep peacefully through the night something he hasn’t been able to do since a car fell into his kids bedroom last month
3) Some of us were able to facilitate a tea and craft time for the women in the community at the Cuirim House it was a neat way to shower love upon them.
4) We were able to lay a cement floor down for a family in the neighborhood
Enrich, Lord, heart, Hands, mouth in me with faith,
With hope and charity,
That I may run, rise, rest in Thee
-George Herbert
Amber,Ryan & Ethan, Charlie, Tyler, Jason, Breeze, Madison
Charlie, Amber, Jason and Tyler
eating breakfast with Ethan
Carlos and his family are friends of the Cuirim House and they live in a small 8by8 home. The group was able to lay a cement floor for them. They were very grateful.
Pouring the freshly mixed cement
into Carlos' house
Brian, who runs the Cuirim Ministry and Miguel who directs the Kids Cafe, work on putting one of the steel posts to protect Miguel's house. A month earlier a car slipped while climbing the steep road and landed in Miguel's house, fortunatley it wasnt while his kids were sleeping because the car landed in there room on their beds.
Tyler & Miguel oversee the 'child labor'
as the kids mix cement for the steel posts
Tyler and Jason dig three foot holes for the steel posts to protect Miguel's house
one of the
neighborhood boys
eagerly awaits the
next batch of pancakes
to be ready
Amber loving on the neighborhood girls and helping them with crafts
It was awesome having some one on one time with Ethan, he loves going down to the Cuirim House and he loves participating in the service projects, like his mother he is very handy
Jason and Charlie bask in God's light as they wait for morning prayer to begin
Morning prayer in the chapel
A view of the backside of the chapel, overlooking the stone theatre and to the left the library
The cross of Christ is the still-point in a turning world. Everything before leads up to it, everything that follows flows from it. It is the climax of the story the center-piece of the whole drama
-T.S. Elliot
