Lots of shoes

I have a lot more shoes now than I did a week ago! Why? Because I went to León, Guanajuato!

León, Guanajuato, the fifth largest city in Mexico, is also known as the Shoe Capital, and not without reason! The city features large factories that not only produce shoes, but also boots, belts, jackets, and other leather accessories, serving both national and international markets. People go to León from all over Mexico to buy shoes and other leather goods, and there is even a large indoor shopping mall that is ALL shoe stores! For anyone obsessed with shopping for shoes, León would probably be their idea of heaven. Imelda Marcos, for example, would probably become a Christian if she thought it might get her to Leon.

Of course, I wasn't there just for the shoes. I was there to preach at the First Church of the Nazarene in León. My friend, Daniel Cordoba had been the pastor there previously until his death last year, and interestingly enough another friend of mine, Leonardo Peralta, is now pastoring that church. We had a great week, as a number of people came to faith in Christ, and lots of amazing things happened in people's lives.

The most amazing thing, however, was the opportunity this visit gave me to see the continuing fruit of previous visits. I got to meet with people who had really been impacted by what God had done in their lives in previous visits, and it was amazing to hear their stories about how those visits had lasting impacts on their lives. One woman remembered in detail a sermon I preached a few years ago that impacted her life amazingly. As she told me about the sermon, I didn't at first even remember ever having said the things she repeated to me, but once she finished I not only remembered that I had said them, I even remembered the occasion. After that particular sermon, I had felt like I had done a terrible job and accomplished nothing. Hearing her tell me how the things that I only said that once had changed her life reminded me that we never really know what kind of impact our words might have upon the people we meet.

Also while I was there, however, I got showered with gifts. Among them were 4 pairs of really nice leather shoes and a really nice leather jacket. I actually had to get an extra bag to put the gifts in! It was great! The people in León are so kind and generous. I look forward to going back again one of these days...but of course not just for the shoes. :-)

The cross-dressing drunk

One thing that I really love about the work that I do is that I get to meet many different kinds of colourful characters. Recently, in Africa I met a very interesting cross-dressing drunk.

Now, of course, in some parts of the world such a sight might seem a bit more common, but in the rural villages of Africa it seemed very surreal. A crowd had gathered to hear us share the message of God's love for the village, and while I waited to go up and speak a series of local choirs were singing. As they were singing, at one point a very exuberant drunk man joined one of the choirs and started dancing. The people obviously knew him and simply laughed good-naturedly.

After doing a bit of a dance, he came up to all of the team members and shook our hands with a great big smile on his face. Then he dance a bit more and left. "Where'd he go?" somebody asked. We guessed that he must have gone away and that we probably would see no more of him that day.

However, 15 minutes later he showed up again. Only now, he had changed into an elaborate African dress. He had a handbag under his arm and was holding a large parasol over his head. He walked right through the crowd, came to us and shook our hands. As he shook our hands this time, he curtsied in exactly the way Tanzanian women always curtsy. Then he sat down with the women and listened quietly throughout the sermon.

I would have loved to have found out his story. He was very different from anybody else I'd ever met in the heart of Africa.

The witch doctor in Tanzania

Right...I promised ages ago that I would tell more stories of Africa. I now ALSO have stories to tell of India, as well as lots of other interesting things that have happened lately, but I've managed to get myself so busy that I haven't kept up on my journal. That has become a habit lately...but once again I have decided to try to write more often. I will begin with the story of the witch doctor in Tanzania...

At one location where we were sharing the message of Christ's love with a community in Tanzania in August, there was a large crowd gathered to listen. As the local African choirs sang and danced, suddenly a man in a long robe walked into the middle of the crowd. Many of the people started to get very nervous, and they moved away from him. For a moment, we thought we were going to lose the crowd.

Who was this man? We found out that he was the local witch doctor. He didn't like what we were doing, so he had come to try to intimidate the crowd and keep anybody from responding to our message. According to what I was told, he was a very powerful magician and a very dangerous man to anyone who called themselves his enemy.

A strange thing started to happen as the man stood there. Not only did the attitude of the whole crowd start to change, all of us on the team started getting overwhelmingly sleepy as the man stood there and stared. Was this some kind of curse? Some kind of magic? I wasn't sure, but I knew I had to take action just in case (and before we all fell asleep!).

I went up on the platform to preach and started praying out loud. I said, "I am a child of God, and I claim the authority of Jesus Christ who lives in me as I bind any evil spirits in this place and command them to leave in Jesus' name." Then I continued to pray for the people before I preached, but as soon as I had said this the witch doctor walked away. We never saw him again, and a lot of people came to Christ. The new church planted in that village is moving along well.