Fe y Duda: Monday - Seeing the Struggle between Faith and Doubt

[Note: Plenty of Pics Posted Below]

With Monday, the week begins full force. All kinds of activities and service explode across the City of Children and nearby Maneadero – puppet shows, games, crafts, Bible classes for teens and the staff, playing with the children, food delivery to the community and the construction of a house. There’s also one new activity – creating a water collection system and a neighborhood garden at the Church of Christ in Maneadero. Under the leadership of Tommy Whitehead (a friend of Skid’s from his days as youth minister in Knoxville), this team is developing a resource that will bless the community and, hopefully, draw them to the living water offered through Christ for years to come.

While for many of us coming to the City of Children is a missions Disneyland, a spiritual battery recharge, one week of 52 when we feel closer to each other and to God because we’ve left behind so many distractions that consume our attention at home, there is more to life here than the romantic picture we’ve conjured up. Seeing the children who live in poverty, we feel uplifted that the children of the City are blessed with opportunity and resources and dorm parents and a staff and summertime mission teams who love them. But no place on this earth is free from the struggles that are common to us all. Satan doesn’t cut anyone slack…even orphans.

The children here long for their parents. The teens struggle with doubt and wanting to set out on their own. From time to time, even the staff questions the value of their work when they see a child they love rebel. What parent hasn’t had these thoughts, doubts and fears?

Today we ask everyone who reads this post to join our mission team in prayer for the City of Children. To ask God to bless the work of this staff, to encourage them, to comfort them, to show to those who doubt here God’s hand, to give faith to those who wonder and wander, to let the children know the love that is all around them and literally stretches from California to Tennessee, to keep every soul here safe today and for eternity.

Please pray especially for the teens here. The teen years are a time of questioning and testing authority and yearning to be free. Teens here are no different than teens in Tennessee. But here, they lack the daily encouragement of a parent. The staff does what they can but there are so many children, so many needs. Can you imagine being a parent to 200 children? I don’t think any of us again. But that’s the daily challenge for Patty and Ricardo, Tom Begin and the rest of the staff. Please pray.

To encourage the teen girls, Cindy Patton, Ann Horton and Mariana Eddy prepared a class that, in part, had them focus on the things around them that strengthen their faith. Working with the teen boys, Daniel Neely and Luke McConnell shared their life struggles and the teen boys responded, talking about struggles of their own. It’s encouraging to those of us who are older to see teens working through these struggles, looking to God for His help and guidance.

After a day filled with hard work and heady issues, it’s nice to pause for a bit of entertainment. This evening we were introduced to Dora the Explorer’s sister Dora the Matadora. Who knew? In the skit, we finally meet the three heroes that have been called upon by the children of the City to save them from the evil plot of the Dinero family to destroy the home and build the world’s largest taco stand. Our three movie heroes – the Masked Zero, Credible Hulk and Aguaman – mistakenly think they’ve been invited to the City of Children to put on a show for a wealthy man instead of save the City from the clutches of Senor Dinero. What will happen when they arrive and the children discover their heroes are only actors? Stay tuned.

You can imagine the larger story that all of this represents. And, if you can’t, quiz your child when they return home. Let them tell you the story and relive it.

Thanks in advance for your prayers. God is good. All the time.