Answers
to Prayer: Travel,
Find a Girl, End Corruption
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"Tim,
they asked me to be the representative for all of Latin
America... can you believe it!"
J.C.
Flores, 1/4/2000 referring to his experience at the Urbana
international leaders conference
that he and his fianceé, Lizzet, had just attended.
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Our valued colleague JC is going to move the Ukraine for two years
and get married …and IT'S YOUR FAULT. You know why if you
chose to support our web team by praying for them, especially
based on the specifics of JC's page on this
web site (click
here for that page). The two specific things he asked
for were "that God would confirm my call as a missionary
by guiding the leaders of my church to give me permission to go
to the Ukraine for at least two years to found an evangelism training
center" and "that God would guide me to the girl that
He has for me to marry."
The 
leadership
of his church has granted him permission and support to lead a
team for two years whose plan is to aid Ukrainian churches, especially
in the area of evangelism through the arts. JC left his heart
in the Ukraine during two previous short-term trips, well not
all of it. There was enough left for him to give to Lizzet Gonzalez,
who was part of the last team to Europe from JC's home church
in Mexico and who loves God, missions and the arts as much as
he does. We couldn't be happier for them and when he called to
tell us the double good news he asked us to thank you for your
prayers.
We know that slow
change and transformation is the kind of work that God does most
often, but who doesn't get encouraged by experiencing a clear-cut
miracle? Here's one God let us be a part of so we thought we'd
pass it on so you can be reminded that with God everything is
possible.
Hit & Run and
Police Corruption:
Last July Liz, a girl
in my (Annette's) bible study, was the victim of a hit and run
car accident. Bystanders got the tag number but as Liz and her
husband Lalo filed the police report they were told there was
no hope of tracing the car because it was from another state.
Case closed.
In October I was
out for a morning jog and, with precise timing only God could
plan, I was at the right place at the right time to get the license
plates of a car towing that very car. After I called with that
tag number, Lalo went immediately to track down the owner but
was told that the license plate was an old model and those records
were now archived and only retrievable with a very large bribe,
which he couldn't pay since they were already in debt because
of the huge car bills. Discouraged, he began visiting body shops
and amazingly found the car only a few blocks from our house.
When he went to the police with this information they sent someone
out to inform the shop that the car could not be moved without
their approval, but here in Mexico police involvement in a situation
doesn't exactly make you feel assured of a positive outcome.
I was confident that
God had worked things out this far for a reason, so we prayed
that God would resolve this for His glory, and show that he is
more powerful than any broken and corrupt system and that he is
the hope and defender of his people.
When Lalo went to check
on the situation, a policeman told him that with a small "tip"
(equiv. $80 US) he would work it out but by the next week nothing
had been done, there wasn't even a report filed on the case. Just
as Lalo was losing hope, a police chief heard overheard him talking
in the office, intervened, and within a week Liz and Lalo received
the full cost of their repairs in cash.
Just a reminder that
your prayers make a difference!
