Have you ever considered what a privilege it is to have access to an English-speaking church? Think about it: God, who made you and sent His Son to pay your sin debt, made certain that knowledge of Himself is available to mankind. You are one of the roughly 2/3 of the world’s population with access to that message in your native tongue… and you personally have access to a community of believers where that message is proclaimed weekly.
When our family has safely arrived in El Paso on Friday night, we confronted a very interesting reality: this past Sunday (August 3rd) was our last chance to attend an English-speaking church for the foreseeable future. Our travel had drained us, and the thought of sleeping in Sunday morning was more tempting than you might imagine! But knowing the opportunity getting up presented, we dragged ourselves out of bed and visited a local church.
Little did we know the surprise God had in store!
As we walked through the door of El Paso Bible Church, we looked ahead of us… directly into the eyes of Jeff and Joy Ryder! When Amy and I attended New Tribes’ Bible School in Wisconsin, the Ryders were the deans of married students and became dear friends to us both. We’d known that Jeff had entered the pastorate some time ago, but had no idea to what place God had led their family. Well… not only were they in El Paso, but it seemed Jeff was the head pastor of the very church we’d ‘randomly’ attended that morning!
God has extended grace to us multiple times on this trip, including at least one story you’ve already seen in a previous post. And now, we got to sit under Jeff’s excellent teaching for our last Sunday in the US… and on a topic that directly addressed my (Jordan’s) previous night’s anxiety and stress! Jeff and Joy were kind enough to join us for lunch that afternoon, where we caught up on the last several years, and rejoiced to know that we’d see one another again (Lord willing!) repeatedly in the years to come.
In other news since our arrival:
- Our visas have been approved! We ran into some difficulties with the application process, and went to the Mexican consulate expecting to learn all the areas we needed to fix before we could be ready to head south. Instead, we found ourselves issued visas with record speed (so it seemed!), and are moving on to final crossing-day preparations!
- Our car is a little bit crazy! No, seriously: three times in 24 hours, it shut off at random while we were driving. A/C, brakes, and music were fine… but we said ‘adios’ to power steering and the accelerator! Now, each time it was easily enough fixed by shifting to neutral and cranking the key… but clearly, something is off here and we need to fix it!
So as you can see, much to praise God for… and yet much to still trust to His sovereign hand as we place our travel timing before Him once more. Won’t you please join us in thanking Him for all He has done to this point, and praying His will continues to be done in and around us?
For today, our plan is still a Wednesday departure. We’ll take the minivan to a specific mechanic Tuesday morning, and if necessary to the local dealership. Our preference would be a quick, easy (and cheap!) fix… and most importantly a conclusive one. But if God is using this to delay our schedule to match His own… then that is fine with us, as we prefer His timing to our own.
We can’t wait to see what He does next!