Norris Family News

A Day at Agua Viva

(This was mostly written July 31, 2006)

Over the last year IFM has taken probably a dozen outreach teams to the Agua Viva men's drug rehab facility. We have also visited as a family many times; to visit the animals on the ranch and to deliver gifts from various teams. Agua Viva "El Rancho" is an awesome place. It's an oasis in the desert with trees and shade, animals, and spacious grounds for outdoor games. But the greatest thing about it is that it is filled with men who are eager to talk about the Lord Jesus. Of course the interest varies from man to man according to their circumstances. There are always some new men who have just detoxed or are in the process. Generally they don't know the Master, but they know that He is all about the place and so they are willing to talk about Him anyway. But at the core, there are dozens of men who have met Jesus, or are close to doing so. So what more blessed place is there than one in which people have a palpable hunger for the Words of Life?

For many months I had wanted to spend some focused time at the place, not bounded by the time and activity constraints of the larger groups. Also over the months, many of us have been impressed with the zeal of the men, but also struck with some gaps in their understanding. I hesitate to say that because it is certainly not my intention to come in as the Big White Educated Know It All, but rather God showed me several men who had basic questions about the bible such as, "Is it trustworthy?" "Why should I spend time reading it?" and "Is it relevant?" There are a few brothers there who have discovered the wealth of the Scriptures and have developed a hunger for it, spending their spare moments getting to know His Word like a good friend. A typical day at Agua Viva has five chapel services, chores, meals, and a small amount of free time in which some read, some play soccer or handball, and others visit. After an awesome conversation in which a skeptical man was asking those questions about the bible, I became burdened with the desire to spend some time teaching them about the bible itself and the privilege they have of being able to devote large amounts of time studying it.

So in late July I spent the entire day with my brothers at Agua Viva. Their first chapel service, the first of five, is at 7am so I had to leave our house at 5:30am to get there in time! I had prepared three "lessons" about the bible which I was able to share in three of their chapel services. The first was a study of the bible itself through a series of statements all starting with "If God wrote a book, it would..." For example, if God wrote a book, we would expect it to be supernatural, and so we looked at the gloriously fulfilled prophecies about history and the Messiah. We covered many topics such as the authorship of the various bible books, their transmission and preservation through the centuries, archaeology, history, science, and the timeless and culture-neutral nature of the message. The lesson was long but I only noticed one man in his late 50's who seemed to doze once. The rest were attentive and focused. At the end of the time, we had established that the Scriptures are the awesome Word of God. Praise God!

The next lesson was entitled, "Every Christian Must Study the Bible." This lesson was the sweetest since it was mostly reading from the Word itself. I was working through a translator so I asked the men to read the portions of scripture out loud in Spanish. It was so refreshing to feed together on Words of Life. There was a new believer there named Antonio (please pray for Antonio!) who was clearly struggling. During the worship time God impressed upon me the parable of the sower in relation to the delicate position of this particular new believer. So we started the lesson by reading the entire passage from Matthew 13. From there we went to Psalm 1 which says that we will be firmly planted if we meditate on His law day and night. Clearly the man who devotes himself seriously to the Scripture will be good soil in which an unshakable tree will grow. Antonio was greatly affected by the message, so I know it was God who prompted me to add that at the last minute.

The last lesson was very short and was about forms of literature. It is based on some ideas from some dear friends of ours who are bible translators. I had examples of many different things such as a hand-written letter, a history book, a song book, an auto repair manual, etc. Many of the men looked at me funny at first, but they got the point quickly as I explained how differently we would read each of those kinds of literature, and how each piece of literature presents immediate clues to us about audience, intent, etc. We then went through the various books of the bible to see how they are distinct works that are grouped into various forms of literature. Simple examples would be to contrast the gospels with the psalms, or the letters to Timothy with Leviticus. By the end of the time, I think the men had a much clearer picture of the bible and how to read it.

We had hours of great discussion and fellowship afterwards. It was an incredible privilege to talk with them. For example, one young man came to me and asked, "Sometimes I don't feel like praying. What's wrong with me?" The Lord gave me a cool analogy on the spur of the moment. I asked him what 2 + 2 is. He said, "Four." I asked him if the answer was the same when he was happy and sad. He said, "Of course it is." I said, "That's right, because it's true. Truth is not affected by our emotions or our circumstances." (As an aside, I love the discussion between Aragorn and Eomer in Tolkein's The Two Towers where Eomer asks Aragorn how he should make decisions in such a perilous time with so many strange things going on. Aragorn answers that Eomer should choose as he always would because right and wrong are the same for men, dwarves, elves, etc. and peril does not change truth.) I went on to encourage him that our need to pray and read the scriptures is true no matter how we may feel at the moment. Our emotions will often follow if we will simply obey.

At the end of the evening one brother asked me, "Why do you come here? Why would you want to spend time with guys (i.e. losers) like us?" Wow, what an opportunity that was to express the love of God! Blinking back my own tears I explained how he (and I by implication) is precious in God's sight, created on purpose and for eternity. I explained how great God's love is for him and for me and how that love motivates me to do anything. It was a perfect opportunity to explain the essence of the gospel. Praise God! Praise Him!

--Thaine

Evolution of a Diagnosis

Recently I saw a 39 year old man as my last patient of the day. It had been a busy morning and my thoughts were drifting toward wrapping up. His complaint was swollen ankles. In the back of my head a bell was ringing very quietly....swollen ankles is not a complaint of relatively young men. But, I was ready to go home, so I ignored the bell for the moment.

He was a good looking guy, neatly dressed and groomed with a decorative big belt buckle and some discreet gold jewelry. He wore no expression in particular. He was very muscular with bulging veins showing over his tidy collar. He wedged off his pointed boots (alligator skin? I see them often) and showed me swollen ankles...the real thing. They had been that way several weeks. He thought in his manual labor he had been working in a field and maybe a spider bit him. This didn’t fit with what I was seeing, so I was curious to consider other possibilities. His head and neck exam were unremarkable; normal thyroid, lots of lean muscle, those bulging veins, remarkable dark skin and even darker lips. His heart exam was very remarkable with a fairly loud murmur. I have seen this fairly often also, in healthy active people without complaints, probably the remains of an untreated strep throat in childhood....rheumatic heart disease. That is a non-urgent finding that needs to be studied eventually, but a young man with his complaints (oh, yes, now he was mentioning some shortness of breath if he worked hard...) and a murmur raises red flags.

Since he now had an abnormal heart exam, I did an EKG for further clues as to what was going on with his heart. If he had a problem since childhood I would expect a reasonably normal EKG maybe with part of the heart enlarged from pumping with an abnormal valve for years. However, it was really worrisome, with signs that his heart may have had damage as from a heart attack, possibly still going on. Suddenly those bulging veins and dark lips didn’t seem so handsome and healthy anymore. This man was in trouble.

I suspect he knew something serious was going on. When I returned to the room to begin to negotiate the bad news and what needs to be done about it (with no insurance and no money), he eyed me gravely. I broached the subject as I usually do with sensitive topics..."I need to ask you some personal questions to help me understand what is going on with your body, and I need you to tell me everything. Have you used cocaine?" Yes, he had a history of cocaine and relapsed into it a few weeks ago. He even had some chest pain three weeks ago but he had a "cold" at the same time, and the pain went away with the cold. Still the same flat expression and cool reaction.

He probably had a heart attack 3 weeks ago when he returned to his cocaine habit, and has been experiencing right sided heart failure over these weeks, where the part of the heart that pushes blood forward into the lungs for more oxygen can’t keep up with its job. Blood backs up into the legs more than anywhere because of gravity, and the jugular veins because they are easy to fill up, low resistance. The murmur is probably because heart muscle attached to a valve is dead and so the valve is ineffective and leaking. The EKG shows that a lot of muscle is injured, dead or dying.

We sent him to the emergency room to start down a long road of getting his heart studied and his situation under control as best as possible. With no insurance and no money, this is doubly unpleasant, altho’ because in this country we have support and solutions for his situation I suspect he’ll get what he needs urgently. However, long term follow-up and medical care might be tricky, especially if he isn’t here legally. I’m sure the pressures of poverty and the unpleasant idea that he has already ruined his body and shortened his life will make drugs tempting in the future. Of course, he didn’t come to his follow-up appointment, but we hope to track him down and make sure he is OK. They don’t answer the phone.

People abuse cocaine and other drugs in high- as well as low-income situations. This is not a judgmental look at how hardened young men on the border deal with their poverty. All kinds of people do all kinds of crazy damaging things to their bodies, families, and marriages trying to make themselves feel better, with no regard for others and for what is right. There is a body of literature written by those who knew the Lord personally which tells us how to resist these awful temptations and cruel solutions, and how to live the way we were intended. Our family is praying this man can know what his Creator wants for him, and you can too.

--Erika

Balancing on the Border

Life seems to always be a balancing act no matter who and where you are. Living here at the House of Cornelius for 1.5 years I have wrestled particularly with how to keep poverty in perspective. It is so gripping and shocking to see how many people live, and heart-wrenching to have a glimpse of the simple needs that they have. I ask myself, what do I do about this? How do I come to terms with it? The letter written by James makes it clear that we are not to say "Go! I wish you well; be warmed and be filled..." to someone without clothes and daily food. Jesus also said the poor would always be with us. Obviously there is a delicate balance here of doing what you can for whatever situation is under your nose and not going crazy trying to solve the problems of the world in one day.

Should I feel guilty about my comfortable daily life and functioning cars? Do I sell everything I have and spread the small sum around the Juarez area? Do we live on rice and beans forever so a few more can eat? I've tried pontificating to the family if we lacked or craved some relative indulgence..."think of our friends and neighbors across the border who live in homes made of scraps and the wind blows dust through the cracks..." but somehow the words ring hollow after a while. Rightly or not, no one seems too excited to eat oatmeal three times a day for the benefit of some nebulous concept Mom is flapping about. It's just hard to reconcile the two worlds. They just don't even overlap.

For  a while I felt guilty. Then I tried being sacrificial and didn't appreciate anyone else who wasn't doing the same. Then I just was hard-hearted for a while because it was too much to sort out. Suddenly, recently, I see a glimmer of perspective. I don't need to feel guilty unless I'm guilty of something! If God gave me something to share, I'd better share it. If my family needs something, that's OK. It isn't shameful that we tend to our daily needs comfortably; it's what we need to wish and hope for everyone, and be a part of that when we are able.

That's part of why I love my new job so much. I can't buy everyone's medicines, and I can't solve all the problems that come up for these dear indigent people that come to the clinic. I can tend to their organ systems and laboratory data and help them access medications through special programs. I can genuinely be concerned for their welfare and make a little dent in their distress. Guilt free, I am able to do this because of my own good health, functioning car, marriage and family, by the grace of God. There is a lot that has to be in place for us to pour out for the sake of others, and I'm thankful for it now, instead of conflicted.

--Erika