Today was our first full day down on the border. The bunk bed sleeping arrangements were great, except a group of our guys had been delayed on their flights, and came stumbling in at around 2 am. At first I thought someone was getting up early to go to breakfast. I fell back asleep, then woke up later and thought that I was going to be late, so jumped out of bed, raced to start getting dressed, then thought to check the time on my phone. It was still only 4 am, so I crawled back in bed, remembering that someone had set his alarm for 6 am. The Valley Baptist Retreat Center staff prepared a delicious, complete breakfast in the cafeteria for us.
Afterwards, we piled into the vans and drove to the Border Missions facility, located in Hildago, Texas for worship and devotions. This is ground zero for POWER, as we have been partnering there since our beginning over 20 years ago. We still use storage space there for the supplies of rice & beans which we distribute across the border. Our group of 51 men, with 11 first timers, was led in several songs by Cody, then Pat shared from Hebrews 11 & 12, along with John 15. His topic is fearless faith, and he exhorted us to abide in Christ as He abides in us, and run with endurance the race set before us. After several men said prayers for our families back home, God’s grace on our efforts for the day, and safe travels, we got new van seating assignments, and headed to Magdiel Bible College in Matamoros, Mexico.
Magdiel is a three year college which prepares both young men & women for Christian ministry. They were excited to see us, as we had not visited them since before the pandemic. It is always a fun day when we get together with them, and today was no different. First our language skills were challenged as each of us sat with one or two of the students, attempting to answer a prepared sheet of questions to get to know each other better. Then we were all given a paper plate to hold on top of our heads, and told to draw a sequence of items of a ‘landscape’ on the plate. When I brought my picture down to look at it, my 3 year old grandchild could have drawn better than I did. The students did much better. We all had a good laugh together. Finally, we broke up into mixed teams of students & men, and had some silly relay races.
Filing from the cafeteria into their worship building, we were led in worship by a very good group of student musicians and singers. During the singing, numerous students came forward to pray on their knees, along with men who prayed with them. We all felt the Holy Spirit moving in the room!
POWER men then prepared a great lunch of burgers, hot dogs, and all the fixings for the whole group. We intentionally spread ourselves out amongst the students to ‘break bread’ with them, and continue to fellowship with them. We then brought in very nice study Bibles and gave them to all 50 students, which several of us who were proficient in Spanish wrote short notes of encouragement to them on the inside covers. I am sure that they will treasure these Bibles for a long time!
After more fellowship, it was back into the vans for the 1 1/2 hour drive back to McAllen, Texas. We had an awesome dinner at Olive Garden, then ended the day back at the Valley Baptist Retreat Center. Marty & Doug gathered us for a short meeting to outline our activities for tomorrow, then we split up- some to get the vans ready for tomorrow, some for prayer, and some of us to write and produce pictures of the day’s events.
Doug