I recently purchased a Keurig coffee maker from a second hand store and it worked great until right after my second cup of coffee.
I would not have purchased it except one of the store gals overheard me saying to one of my Hopi friends that my old coffee maker had finally died. Two other store ladies chimed in to tell me how expensive this Keurig coffee maker was new and a lady had brought it in only the day before etc. So, I purchased it for $8.99 as I figured it was for a good cause (a home for the domestic violence ladies with kids). So now I’m at home and it doesn’t work after the second cup. I looked up on-line to try to read the manual and went to trouble-shooting you-tube videos. After taking it apart, with Will, to unclog any possible coffee grind which might have gotten stuck, I had resolved to take it back to the store when it still did not work. But, then I decided to turn it off all together for awhile and all its programming and then, turn it back on and presto!- now, it works great! I feel like that with human beings. They all come to us second hand. I often don’t know all their programming and cannot figure out how they are wired as a human being. I try to fix them with tender loving care only to find that I cannot fix any of them at all. I just need to turn off my own efforts and give them up to the Lord and wait and somehow they come back to the Lord.
But, I find that life is just tough sometimes and I can’t do anything about it. I had been informed by a good friend that her granddaughters had been molested. It was one of those incidents where I would not have believed it if I had heard it from someone else. The perpetrator, who had already moved out of the minor’s house, was one of our good friends also. We asked him to come to our home in Flagstaff to speak with us as we felt it was better for him to turn himself in rather than us having to report him. (Arizona law gives us some flexibility.) He came and stayed up to talk with to us until 11 PM. He shared of being sexually abused when he was in an Indian boarding school by a teacher and also by a man who used to visit his mother and family, bringing gifts out to Hopiland. He was not using these incidents as an excuse for what he had done. The next day, he texted to say that he was turning himself in. What we find so beautiful is that there is still hope as he is bringing himself into the light. He wants to be made clean by our Lord Jesus again! He went to his family, co-workers and friends and confessed so that they would not feel betrayed hearing from someone else. He is being an example to his Hopi people that it is not okay to hide things in darkness. We know that our Father can do amazing things in prison to train our friend and brother to be more like Him as He did with Joseph. Nevertheless, this had made me so greatly sad at the beginning of the discovery of this sin that I thought I was in a bit of depression. And again, yesterday, when we heard from our brother Mayo. He called to say that the woman he had brought here a couple of months ago (and whom we had ministered to about twelve years ago in the Hopi Jail) had most likely died of suicide and that he and the others buried her yesterday.
But, life is also like a wedding of Bailey to Sean (Bailey had done her DTS with us here in 2012). Once there was enmity between the Hopis and Navajos but these two were brought together in love by our Lord and Savior. We had a beautiful wedding here at YWAM Tribal Winds. It was beyond what they had dreamed. Families from both sides came to support them. They had flower girls, a ring boy, music and songs and a wedding reception with food prepared by our Brazilian staff chefs, Cleber and Haissa Santos and fruit floral carving done by Edson Suzuki. It is amazing how one person’s life of marrying another can touch so many people’s lives! There was such honor and respect from all family members for this bride and groom and many commented how there was something in this place which was so different than all the other weddings they’ve gone to and that they were touched by that Spirit- yes, His holy Holy Spirit! We did not know that there would be wedding at this place when our beautiful Father helped us purchase this place 11 years ago! There was much rejoicing!
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