The mission trip caravan of four vehicles had been on the road for almost eight hours when we finally turned off the paved road onto our final leg of the journey. I was driving the Chinese made Wingle pick-up, in which every bump transfers through the suspension to your backside as nicely as voltage through copper. For a jolting hour we Wingled our way up and down through the hill-country steeps of southern Belize’s Toledo district past patchwork fields of corn and Cacao plantations.
“Hey! Where’s Jeff?” a villager called out to me from his front porch as we at last bounced painfully over the rock-cobbled road into San Jose, a Mayan farming village of about 1500 inhabitants and our final destination.
“He couldn’t make it this time!” I shouted back
“Oh, you left him behind?” The man replied in disappointment, but I wasn’t able to respond as our conversation reached the outer limit of our 10 mph passage.
“I’m afraid that will be the theme of the week,” I told my wife with a grimace. “Everyone is going to be crying for Jeff, including me. Especially me!”
“Hey, stop complaining ahead of time” she rebuked. “You need to trust God!”
Jeff is our mechanics teacher, and when he is not with us our ability to fix machines plummets dismally as our last mechanic’s clinic in Carmelita attested.
After traversing a couple more hills, we reached the Community Center where we unloaded under the gaze of a squad of uniformed soldiers with their semiautomatic rifles, resting briefly in the shade before continuing to field exercises along the Guatemala border.
Oren and his wife Ana, the only active Adventists in the village, were also there to receive us along with some other friends from previous visits. They were also sad that Jeff couldn’t make it this time, but “you are here in the same Spirit,” Oren encouraged me. I’m going to need more than a double portion, I thought like Elijah’s apprentice.
I had hardly finished installing my tent when a red pickup truck pulled up and an exuberant young man jumped out. The first words out of his mouth were, that’s right, you guessed it:
“Hey! I’m looking for Jeff!”
“He’s home trying to recover from a herniated back,” I answered.
“Oh. Who in charge of mechanics then?”
I glanced around for Mikel, our student leader, but didn’t see him.
“What do you need?” I replied.
“Can you weld me something? Right here!” He showed me his truck bed near the tailgate split like an overripe watermelon and held together with a ratchet strap.
“I had a big load and it crack wit dat one,” he explained.
We looked it over and decided it was patchable if he would bring some scrap metal pieces, which he promised to do.
The next morning before sunrise I awoke to the gurgling of a sick generator on the next hill. It started, blubbered along for about 30 seconds, and then fell silent. The cycle repeated five of six times until whoever was trying to power their hut gave up. I wondered if that would be one of the motors I would have to try to diagnose and repair during the week. I was tempted to repeat the previous day’s lament of “Where is Jeff?” when the words of Isaiah 2:22 suddenly sprang to mind: “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?”
Okay Lord, I get it. I choose to trust you today!
I was tested on that pledge immediately, as I spent almost the entire day on one stubborn Shindaiwa weedeater. As I worked I made conversation with David, the 21 year-old who brought it. I found out that he loves mechanics. He had already stripped his machine down to the cylinder at home, trying to discover why it wasn’t running well. Now it wouldn’t even start, so I decided to check the head gasket. Sure enough, it leaked on one corner.
David asked me where I learned mechanics, and when he heard that MOVE has a class, he was ready to sign up right away. When I explained that the school is for young people who want to be missionaries, he asked what church we belong to and if baptism is a prerequisite.
I discovered that he and his siblings attend the Nazarene church, which is the next building down the hill, and his sister is leader of the youth group. I asked him if he likes to read the Bible. He said he does, and I asked him what he’s been reading recently. He hasn’t, so I shared from my study.
“I love learning new things in the Bible! You know, we’re having meetings here every night this week on the prophecies of Daniel, you should come!” I invited.
David hung around almost all day, to see what he could learn, I presume. No pressure or anything! Praise God, the weed eater started at the end of the day, but it bogged down when cutting anything more than the thinnest grass, and seemed to run excessively hot, so he decided to leave the machine with us for another day.
To God be the glory, we had excellent attendance at the Daniel and Revelation evangelistic meetings, including David and his younger brother! Last time we were in San Jose two years ago, we were lucky to have three or four adults show up, and only 15-20 kids. This year the adult attendance was between 20 and 30, and the children as many as 60 or 70, which was a real challenge for the girls in charge of the children’s meetings!
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| Adult meetings on the basketball court behind the community center |
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| Me preaching on Daniel chapter 7 |
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| Children's song service inside the community center |
The Drunkard’s Compression Test
The next day things seemed to click better in the mechanics brigade. We were able to get a few more machines running and I welded a couple of coconut hand-crank shredders and the handle on the school bus door. I was working on an electric drill and another man was waiting on me to check his generator, when one of the many village drunks stumbled up to us, bottle in hand, demanding that we check his blood pressure. He tripped and nearly fell, sloshing booze on Welvis where he sat working on a weed eater. We helped the poor man sit down on a bench, but soon he was up again, pressing for the door into the community center where the education class was having activities with students from the Roman Catholic school across the road. Abel stopped him, which he didn’t like much, and for a moment I thought he was going to fight as he cut loose a stream of profanity.
“Please sit down” Abel pointed him back to the bench. “You can’t go inside, there are women and children in there.” That revelation seemed to calm him some, and for a few minutes he kept to the bench, but continued to mutter and curse under his breath. Soon he raised his voice, complaining that no one was attending to his needs. Again he got up and made for the door, but tripped on a weed eater and fell onto the sidewalk, somehow still managing to save his bottle. I rushed to help him up and back to his seat.
That’s when I remembered our sign posted out by the road: “Free Mechanics Clinic.” Of course! This poor drinking machine thought we were offering free health care! That’s when I had a crazy idea. I went looking for the compression tester, a tool with a pressure gauge attached to a couple of hoses.
What if he thinks I’m mocking him? Then he’ll really be angry! I hesitated for a moment. But Mr. Drunk as a Skunk was trying to get up again, and I had to do something about this terribly uncomfortable situation.
“Here!” I said, “Let me help you. Sit back down here and we’ll check your pressure. Here, take hold of this end!” I handed him the end of one of the hoses. He was drunk enough to misunderstand the sign, hopefully he won’t realize this is not a blood pressure cuff! I thought.
“Noo! I don’t need that!” he pushed it away. “I have pain back here” he indicated the region of his kidneys.
“Of course you do. This stuff you are drinking will give you pains all over the place. It will destroy your kidneys and liver!” I chided, waving my hand at his bottle.
“That’s not it, I’ve been to see the doctor and he gave me pain pills, I need more medicine!” he demanded.
This is not working. I breathed a prayer for help. Suddenly I recalled something I read recently in the book Temperance pg 128:
“In dealing with the victims of intemperance we must remember that we are not dealing with sane men, but with those who for the time being are under the power of a demon. Be patient and forbearing. Think not of the repulsive, forbidding appearance, but of the precious life that Christ died to redeem.”
I felt overwhelmed by a sudden urge to rebuke the foul spirit that held this poor man pressed down in bondage.
“I don’t have any pills for your pain, but there is a better medicine I want to share with you.” I smiled. “My precious Redeemer, Jesus Christ is the Great Doctor who is always on call, and He wants to make you free, not just from your pain, but from everything that causes it! Free from every vice and sin! Let’s pray to Him right now! What’s your name?” I asked. He muttered something that sounded more like a badly pronounced insult, but I decided to go with it. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he fell silent for the first time since his arrival. I could feel the stares of the onlooking village men, and decided I had better pray loud enough for all to hear.
“Dear Lord, we praise your name because you are mighty to save! I present before your throne of grace Mr. Earnast, Lord, you know his need, you know everything about him, and yet you love him and long to restore him. Lord, if there is any desire deep in his heart to be free, I pray that you would cast out the demon of intemperance that plagues him! In the name of Jesus I rebuke the foul spirit of alcohol that binds him. Lord, may he reach out his hand in faith to you and take hold of your strength, may he choose to believe your word and renounce his sin and find pardon in you today, while he is hearing the sound of my voice, right now Lord. We don’t know how much longer we will have this life that you give us, we don’t own our lives, we have not bought and paid for this life we live, but You have Lord, you have bought us with your own precious blood. Lord, I plead that blood on Mr. Earnast’s behalf, Lord, heal him, save him, restore him I pray, in the name of our powerful and merciful Savior, who will one day be our Judge, Jesus Christ, amen.”
There was a hush on all of us, and I could sense the power of God striving with hearts. Mr. Earnast continued to sit quietly for a minute.
“You’re just trying to scare me,” he finally murmured.
“There is no need to be afraid if you go to Jesus now! He turns no one away.” I smiled. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to attend to these other gentlemen.” I stood up and returned to my work.
The drill needed a fresh set of bearings, just like all of us every time we get off track.
The generator was next, and it didn’t want to start for anything.
“We often find it impossible to fix even a man-made machine, so how can we ever hope to fix ourselves? It is impossible!” I commented to the owner, a thin Mayan man with a Mennonite style beard. “We need God’s transforming grace every day.”
I verified the spark, and was about to open up the carburetor when I remembered I should try priming with a squirt of starting fluid. Praise God, the engine fired right up. I let it run for a while, shut it off, and tried again, this time without the starting fluid and it worked like a charm while Mr. Myan Mennonite stood by in awe.
“When’s the last time you changed the oil?” I asked. He never had. I recommended an oil change and gave him a few more tips on maintenance and helped him load the machine back on his truck.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing.”
“Thank you so much!” He grinned.
“Thank God!” I replied
If these guys only knew, there's not a mechanical bone in my body, nor a spiritual one for that matter. Every success in either realm is a miracle of grace as I choose to work by faith.
If these guys only knew, there's not a mechanical bone in my body, nor a spiritual one for that matter. Every success in either realm is a miracle of grace as I choose to work by faith.
