Norris Family News

Medical Follow-Up in the Colonias

This week there were two opportunities for different combinations of staff to go on medical followup errands. These are very fun because there is already a relationship between IFM and the family, the story and the need is at least roughly known, and we have the satisfaction of offering physical help as well as heartfelt prayer. We get to sit with people in their homes. I find this very fruitful, even though the surroundings are sometimes grim. I appreciate the chance to see the reality. These are the contexts in which these bodies actually live, and it can shed light on what is or is not possible for them. Everyone is always extremely gracious, althought sometimes there is thinly veiled depression just beneath. Once again, it is impressive to see how clean and neat the residents are when the opportunity for bathing and laundering is severely hindered. Little girls generally have impeccably artful hair. The smell of meals drifting through the makeshift walls is often quite tantalizing. The neighborhoods, however, are liberally strewn with rubbish. The scrawny, unhealthy looking dogs on every street are very uninspiring. When your resources are limited, you have to pick and choose where to sink all your energy!

Sometimes we find that the physical concerns are not at all what we expected. It's hard to say if the information changed hands a few times or if a substandard translator (such as I) was the only one available. We were pleased to find that the "unemployed" father with the purported tumor on his leg actually had a sprained ankle a year ago, and really only has pain after his 11 hour shifts at the restaurant! Other situations were just as reported; a lovely, hardworking and resourceful lady with awful dental disease (also pregnant, with 4-5 of her own children and 4 of her deceased sister's!), two lovely girls aged 9 and 11 with developmental/physical problems who operate at about the level of a 5-6 month old. The good news about these girls is that they appear to be very well cared for, and they just beam when they have visitors. There is an inordinate number of children with developmental issues. It is impossible to sort out how much of it is prenatal issues/during delivery/toxin exposures/nutritional/genetic. It is remarkable.

We cannot completely remove very many physical problems, but we do what we can on the spot, and I understand that in the past God has moved people to tackle some very big needs at times through IFM. We try to be discerning about what to tackle, what we can actually follow through on. There is plenty of material to move the viewer to depression, but when you sit to pray with a severely handicapped little girl who is surrounded by photos of herself dressed in white and lace at intervals over the years, with a cool fan blowing on her and a pretty scarf as a canopy over the single bed in the single room, you have to think, "If this family trusts God and has hope for the future, I shouldn't rush to think otherwise!"

--Erika

Scouting

Today was a wonderful 11 hour day at the “office.” For so many years I have been sitting in front of a computer, it was a lovely contrast to be doing something completely different, completely relational, completely adventurous, and completely Kingdom business. Not that we haven't done (and written about) many things that would fit that discription in the very recent past, but today I had a “job” to do and so I felt more business-like and less spiritual when the day started out. But in retrospect, it was another great privilege of being involved in tiny aspects of the huge and mighty works that God is doing.

I took Daniel with me today. We prayed together as we left and then drove to the house of IFM-Mexico's director, Jose Luiz Torres, whom we were mostly shadowing. I had never been to his house but was able to navigate with his hand-drawn map through some really twisty and non-labeled streets. After some review of our plans around the kitchen table, we set out to go “scouting” as IFM calls it. Our job was to connect upcoming outreach teams with various ministries and opportunities.

Our first task was to explore a new colonia on the extreme outskirts of Juarez. A colonia, or neighborhood, starts out very humble with palette and cardboard homes and eventually grows into something more substantial as families replace their humble materials with more durable materials. It is an amazing evolution. There are colonias in all stages of this process all over the city. This colonia was in a pretty early stage with lots of cardboard. Each colonia has a name such as “Granjas del Desierto” (Farmers of the Desert) that Erika and I mentioned earlier. We do not know this new colonia's name yet.

Jose Luiz pleasantly surprised me as we were pulled over for a moment. He said, “We must ask the Lord for His leading to find the right place. If He has a place for this team He will take us there.” So we prayed together for this in turn, me in English and him in Spanish. Then we drove for a minute or two and came across a little church. We went in and talked with a few ladies who went and got the pastor. We talked with him for a bit and then he went to get another pastor. It turned out that the first pastor is from downtown Juarez and that this church is a mission. The other pastor, a younger and gregarious guy, leads the church in the colonia. So we talked for quite a while and they both seemed pretty excited about the whole idea. We saw eye to eye on the evangelistic nature of the outreach and generally had a really encouraging talk. Both Jose Luiz and I felt that this was His immediate answer to our prayer. Also, it became clear after we left that the timing was His, because after we left everyone else closed up, got in cars and drove away!

My Spanish is mostly dead (remember A Princess Bride?), but I am finding that I can understand more and more as I listen to it. Jose Luiz did most of the talking today and translated for me when I had something to say. I found that I could understand about 10% of what the pastors in the colonia said, which was pretty good! But I did not fare so well with others.

We visited four other places, two of them twice to get the right person. In the last place we met pastor Martin. What a guy Pastor Martin is! He was a pleasure to meet. However, he speaks incredibly fast and so I only understood 0.001% of what he said. Jose Luiz translated general concepts after outpourings of talk from Pastor Martin. But I didn’t need to understand anything except his demeanor and smile and spontaneous, fervent prayer for my family, which was a wonderful reflection of our Lord Jesus.

One final note. I find one of the most difficult things about going into the outdoor market in Juarez for street evangelism (described in an earlier post), is the food. I want to eat everything! Well today we ate at a roadside taco stand. It's not as bad as it might sound. Everything is thoroughly cooked and oh so yummy! We had chicken mole burritos and Manzana Lift, which is a Coca Cola apple soda only found in Mexico. Bryan Albert would be drooling!

--Thaine