Rivers in the Desert

Estrella de Poniente - Part I

The Beginning

Two years ago, God transported us from our normal and ordinary (never been that ordinary) lives into Colonia Estrella De Poniente.  We didn't even know what a "Colonia" was really.  It was at the end of January.  The first thing that struck me driving in was this amazing tangle of hand run wires and cables.  Wires and cables shot every  which way in the air and on the ground.  This all hung, maybe 8-10 feet off of the ground.  As far as the eye could see, there were make-shift telephone poles.  They used anything that they could find.  NONE of these was a sturdy and tall board.  The tangle led from a power station where the power was pirated for those living within Estrella de Poniente. 

The second thing that immediately struck me as we drove up the hill, was the number of little children playing in the dirt road.  City buses, cars and motorcyles were speeding past around these kids and that the kids were just playing around the wires.  It was a different world from our suburban neighborhood of cross-walks, safety zones and neighborhood watch programs.

The final thing that struck me were the pallet houses.  These were constructed out of pallets. Now we had been told about these.  However, nothing can prepare you for the realization that in the midst of 25 degree nights (winter) and 108-110 days (summer); that in the midst of blistering Chihuahua desert sand storms; that in the midst of the constant sewage and trash that covers the ground in tiny houses made out of other peoples trash, people live out their lives.

I'll admit it, I cried.  I wept like a baby.  It broke my heart to see these beautiful little children perched so precariously on the edge of this broken and barron waste land.  It wiped me out and left me senseless.  I believe this was God's heart.

We react to human suffering in one of three ways (all of which I've done).  First, we can harden ourselves to it.  Just ignore it, it will go away.  Steel ourselves and resign ourselves to the weight and magnitude of our own circumstance.  If we see it then we have to deal with it, so rather than that, we quiet our consciences and look elsewhere or throw up our hands and say "what can I do?"  Second, we might entrench ourselves in the unfairness of it and in either the meeting of physical needs or in the combatting of injustice try to assuage the cries of our heart.  Finally, we can seek God's heart and find that though each one of these hurting people makes their way through that which we would find unacceptable, God's heart is far greater.  He wants us to feed the poor, but far deeper then that, He is drawing to Himself a people for His namesake.  This, of course, He is accomplishing through the blood of His Son Jesus!  "I am not afraid of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for SALVATION, to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith; as it is written: 'but the righteous man shall live by faith'" - Romans 1:16-17

It was THIS that Jesus has us here to pull these from the fire (Jude 1:23) that our gracious and merciful Savior made abundantly clear to us during this first visit to the Colonia.  For those who know this testimony, you know that in our hearts, even then we knew that we would return.