Gangs

Road Trip!

Crossing Cultures, Family, Gangs, Immigration, Nicaragua, Prayer, Third Culture Kids, YWAM -

  Preparations are underway for Operation Roadtrip 2012. We are heading to Nicaragua for the YWAM Regional Conference for all the missionaries working in Mexico and Central America. This will definitely be the longest car trip our kids have taken in awhile. Back in 2009 we travelled across a big chunk of the U.S. , but we all seemed to have blocked that out. Any major trips since that time have involved airplanes. As you can imagine, this trip is causing quite a bit of dread excitement around our house The trip will take us from San Salvador, El Salvador to Diriamba, Nicaragua. Diriamba is located past Managua, somewhere around Granada. Mileage wise, it’s about the distance of driving across Pennsylvania. We’re not sure how many hours it will take us as we […]

One Lost

Gangs, Immigration, Kids at Risk, Thinking About God, Urban Ministry -

Jon wanted to share some thoughts on an experience he had last week. In his words… Mid-morning on Friday, I was on my way to the immigration office for our yearly residency renewal, when I received a phone call asking for my help. It was someone from one of our ministry sites calling to tell me that four boys had run away. Three of them had lived on the street before, but one was pressured into going along. It is a bad situation for any boy to be on the street, but the fourth boy caused particular concern. The streets of San Salvador are rough, and this boy had no experience being out there alone. “Jon, please look out for Pedro *”, they asked.  Because of our work on the streets, and the familiarity […]

Broken

Gangs, Justice, Prayer, Uncategorized, Urban Ministry, YWAM -

I’m not good at going to the broken places, and spending time with the broken people. I still squirm sometimes, and feel uncomfortable. I still struggle to connect, to find common ground. I wonder why I’m going in the first place. I’m going because I’m broken too. But I forget it, I ignore it, I feel like it can’t possibly be true. I forget that my own soul is messed up, and twisted, and in need to grace. I lose sight of that far too easily. Last night some of our staff spent time talking to a few young men and women who trade sex for money and drugs. Around the world, millions of women, men, and children are trapped in the sex trade whether because they feel they have no options, or because they […]

More Than Fishing Lessons

Crossing Cultures, Gangs, Justice, Kids at Risk, Life in El Salvador, Prayer, Thinking About God, Uncategorized, Urban Ministry -

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” We have all heard this proverb. The concepts are simple. If you do for someone what they can do for themselves, you are ultimately hurting them. If you take the time to walk through the process with them, you can change their  life. Us Americans are guilty of handing out a lot of fish around the world. It’s done some damage. Americans enter a situation with money, and power, and influence. We see people who are poor and we respond by giving them stuff. This isn’t always bad, and Americans have helped many people around the world. When it becomes bad is when we don’t […]

Weaving Shalom

Gangs, Justice, Stuff We're Reading, Thinking About God, Urban Ministry -

A man who is involved in The Lighthouse homeless ministry showed up drunk on the doorstep yesterday morning.  He was devastated and frustrated. And so were we. This man has been in and out of rehab. Recently, he has seemed to have a lot of success, but he’s spent the last five days on the street. Our hearts break for him because of his struggle. He struggles with the pain from his past, and he struggles to overcome the addictions in his life. He made a committment to follow Christ just over a year ago, but it’s been a long process with him…many ups and downs. We’ve been there with him through the process. Something that I have learned since moving to San Salvador is that here in the city […]

2012

Family, Gangs, Kids at Risk, Thinking About God -

    According to the Mayan calendar, the world will end this year. Now, I’m no expert in Mayan culture, but I’m not too concerned. We live close to the heart of the Mayan lands, and there are lots of Mayan descendants in parts of Central America. None of them seem too concerned. There are no volcanoes erupting (that happened a few years ago), and there haven’t been too many earthquakes (other than the usual weekly ones) so I’d say it’s looking pretty good that the world will make it to 2013. The whole thing is kind of silly, but it got me thinking. What if the world was going to end this year? What if we knew for sure that we only had until December of this year to restore […]

Christmas in the Slum

Family, Gangs, Holidays, Justice, Kids at Risk, Third Culture Kids, Uncategorized, Urban Ministry, YWAM -

  “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned…For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,  Prince of Peace.”     ISAIAH 9:2, 6 Imagine if you lived in poverty. Imagine that you lost your home in an earthquake, or a mudslide, or because you couldn’t pay the rent. Imagine that gangs were trying to recruit your ten year old son to join their ranks. Imagine that your home was made of carboard and scap metal that made it horribly hot, or let cool wind blow right through. Imagine that you went […]

Gerardo Barrios Kids Camp

Discovery, Gangs, Kids at Risk, Urban Ministry, YWAM -

Last week was an exhausting, but really encouraging week. We spent a week doing a kids camp in the Gerardo Barrios slum community. In El Salvador, the public schools take their summer vacation from the end of November until mid-January, so this was our opportunity to do a camp with these kids while they are out of school. We had around 50 kids ages 5-12 come each day last week to participate. I’ve done kids events like these back in the States, but this was a little different. For starters, it was right in the kids’ backyards so there were a lot of adults around observing what was going on. It also was right in the middle of a slum, alongside a major highway in San Salvador. The houses around […]

A Great Day in the City

Family, Gangs, Kids at Risk, Short-Term Missions, Third Culture Kids, Urban Ministry -

Saturday was a great day doing ministry in the city as a family. On Saturday morning, the kids and I headed with our team into Gerardo Barrios. This is a squatter’s community where we have recently begun a regular Saturday morning kids program. It includes songs, games, a craft, snacks, a Bible story and a memory verse. The kids earn points each week and at the end of the six week session they can win prizes. Tori and Ian have been participating each week along with the kids in the community. I love watching them interact with the other kids. These kids live in houses made of sticks and garbage bags, with no running water, and poverty conditions. But my kids don’t see that…they just see new friends.  While we […]

Love Your Neighbor

Gangs, History of El Salvador, Justice, Short-Term Missions, Thinking About God, Urban Ministry -

 “Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself’.”  (Matthew 22:37-39) Yesterday we attended a church service in a little church that meets in the garage of the pastor’s house. The church exists to make a difference in their neighborhood. It is situationed in an area that has a lot of things working against it. Part of the community is home to those who lost everything back during the civil war from 1980-1992. They were given this stretch of land to build new homes. The homes are made of of pieces of wood, sheet metal, and any other materials that people can find to make […]

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