I have mentioned my favorite quote from the Chronicles of Narnia in earlier posts which is “My joy is so great that it weakens me like a wound, and my greatest joy is that He would call me 'Beloved.'” Last week we met a young man who embodies this quote. We met Ricardo and his wife Dianna and their four children last week at the Casa de la Nueva Vida orphanage where they work doing maintenance and other helps. While the children were playing, Erika and I sat down to get to know this young man whose face positively shines with joy and laughter. His countenance is such that the moment you see him, you want to know what makes him tick.
Ricardo began to live in the streets as a boy. He said his parents did not love him in the sense that they didn't seem to care if he was around or not. He became involved in the “Cholo” (gangster) lifestyle, slept under bridges and in parks, and quenched his pain with drugs and alcohol. As far as he was concerned, nobody loved him and he hardly even knew the concept of love. Then, when he was 16, he met the Lord Jesus through the ministry of a Juarez church that reaches out to street people and gangsters. Ricardo told us his story with great emotion. We could almost feel the total lostness of his life on the streets. Then he said, “When I understood that the Lord Jesus loves me in spite of all my sin, and when I understood how much he loves me, I wept and wept and wept.” He drew his fingers down from his eyes to show the tears. Then the joyous memory overtook him and he wept again in front of us. From that day forward he was a new young man who forsook the drugs and alcohol, earrings and other gang markings, and began to walk whole-heartedly after the Lord Jesus.
Yesterday we went as a family to Ricardo and Dianna's house to visit. As Erika put it, “I had no idea so much joy and fun could be had in an 8x12 room!” We visited for almost three hours, sharing stories and singing songs about the Lord in Spanish and in English. We also heard Dianna's story. She was also rejected by her parents and was on her own at age 10. She is from a city further south and made her way to Juarez. She used makeup and fake papers to pretend to be much older and secure a job in a factory! She certainly doesn't lack any ambition! She lived with various people for short periods of time not really getting to know anyone. She acknowledged that it was very dangerous, but felt that she had no choice. She pulled this off for nearly two years before she contracted tuberculosis. She got very sick, was coughing up blood, and had a tiny fraction of functioning lung capacity. The doctor told her she was very sick and that she shouldn't expect to live more than three months. But then, at the same street mission where Ricardo met his Lord (a few years later than Dianna), Dianna received complete healing! She was delivered from her sins and her health was completely restored. That was ten years ago, and now we sat in her living room with her husband and four lovely children; all of whom are bursting with health and the joy of salvation as though they had just met Him yesterday.
Wow. Praise God!
--Thaine