“Indeed if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with the drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who want to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” -CS Lewis
These past two weeks have continued to be full of year ending parties and camps. I went last week for a Christmas party for the street kids we work with. I arrived at the church in the center that runs a lot of the programs for various marginalized people groups in the center and began the preparations. We brought a big grill and like 100 pounds of meat, about 10 gallons of ice cream and about a 100 liters of soda. We decorated the church and prepared presents for each of the kids before we hit the streets to find the kids. We woke up every kid we found sleeping in the park, with many people passing by stopping to wonder what we were doing. Now I am starting to recognize and know many of the kids. We rounded up the kids and started the journey across the city center to carry the kids to the party. Several kids didn’t want to come with us and stayed where they were sleeping or sniffing glue, one kid named Sandro I immediately took a liking too, I chatted with him for a while about the streets, about his family and life. I soon found out that he had recently been at a Christian orphanage that I know well and had run away (he has since returned there). Many of the kids (aged maybe 6-18) carried there coke bottles filled with glue or paint thinner with them, hiding it somewhere in the city on their way over, knowing that we wouldn’t let them in with glue. When we arrived at the gate, ready to enter the party, full of steak, ice cream, games, music and presents two kids stood at the gate and plainly refused to give up their glue. One of the kids I knew fairly well, his name is Wesley, he’s about 10 years old and just a year ago lost one of his legs. He was riding the cargo train to Santos, which is a beach town not too far from here, I’m not sure of what exactly happened, but he lost his leg in the accident. He now walks around on crutches and reminds me of Tiny Tim. As I watched him sit outside the gate sniffing glue, with various Tios (literally uncles, but meaning like leaders) urging him to give up the glue and come into the party I couldn’t help but have a broken heart. The party went on without him and he eventually hobbled back to the park he normally hangs out in. As the party ended, the kids gorging on as much steak, ice cream and soda as they could have we encouraged them to leave the streets and shared a gospel message with them. None of them want to leave the streets, that is all they know and all they want, they have opportunities to be placed in homes or maybe even families but they prefer the streets. As that party moves into the past I can’t help but continue to reflect on Wesley and how he refused to enter the party.
At my soccer camp which was this past week I had the opportunity to get to know the guys better, they all tried to “baptize” me in the pool, but with no luck, we played lots of “bola” (ball, as they call soccer), had lots of pillow fights and ate some good food. We had a devotional time once during the day and I shared with my group from John 3, I shared about Moses lifting up the snake in the wilderness and how Jesus can be that salvation for us, but how we have to choose to look, we have to choose repentance and humility. It was just then that Wesley came to my mind, I shared with them about the street kids and about the two kids that chose to sniff glue instead of enter the party. I noticed in their faces that their attentions peaked; I asked them what their “glue” was, what it was that was keeping them from entering God’s party. We talked about the reality and temptations of the easy money and power of being a drug dealer, about using drugs and using woman, we talked about the struggles of giving up our “glue”, but about the joy of the party if we will only trust the Father that his party is infinitely better than our “glue”. I shared with them some of my own struggles and asked them to pray with me, to pray that God might free us from “sniffing glue” from whatever it was that was keeping them from the party. I invited them to look to Jesus and be saved, to stop “sniffing glue” and to enter into the eternal party of the creator of the universe. Several of them I knew had already prayed that prayer and several said that wanted to enter the party, I prayed with them and felt sad that I wouldn’t have more time to be here to see them grow up, to disciple them and see God work in their lives. I would ask prayer for these guys, for Daniel, Maurilio, Danilo, Erick, Kile, Miquael, Elias. Pray that their hearts might continue to be touched by the Father and that in the few months left I might be able to share God’s love with them. I praise God for the futsal ministry and how I can now see that it really is changing and shaping boys to become men of God.
My friend Wesley
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