Don't bite the hand that feeds ya

Friday Jan. 18 was a WTM day: Welcome To Mexico. Jessica and I had gotten home from Language school and we were all getting ready to eat lunch. A guy about 20 years old was knocking on the gate. He wanted to wash the car for $3 . I was in a great Friday afternoon mood so I decided to say OK. I talked with him a bit while he worked, wanting to practice my Spanish. He told me he was married and his wife was in Chicago, and that he had a 4 month old girl. While we were talking, Morgan came home on her bike. She said "Dad, I can't get my bike through the gate." I had opened half of the gate and pulled the car forward so he could get around it to wash it. I told her to just leave it on the sidewalk. When he finished I paid him and gave him a Gospel of John booklet. He left and went up the street knocking on the neighbors gate looking for another job. As I was in the kitchen I saw him on the other side of the street looking over towards our house but didn't think much of it. A minute later Brent suddenly yelled "Hey, that guy just took Morgan's bike!" Brent and I went tearing out of the house after him. He was at the end of the street just about to round the corner. I yelled at him( my mistake) , thinking he would drop the bike and run. Instead he jumped on the bike and pedaled away! Brent and I tried to catch him but to know avail. Later when my neighbor Hector got home he helped me report it to the Police.

I guess another lesson learned. It is not the first thing we have had taken since we were here. I am not used to being so "on-gaurd" all the time. I was in total shock and mad as a hornet that this guy would do that to me right after I went out of my way to try to help him. And to do it right under our nose like that was truly amazing to me. Vince Lombardi once said "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." I have been thinking of a modification to that along the lines of "Poverty can make theives out of some people." Solomon warned of the dangers of both prosperity and poverty in Proverbs 30:8,9 : "Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me niether poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain."

I believe in the total depravity of man and I guess I just got a rude awakening to it's real life impact! Jeremiah warned that " the heart of man is decietful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it? " Just another reminder that their are many lost people here and those are the ones Jesus came to reach. Pray for Arnulfo ( at least that is the name he gave me) that he will be under conviction and that he will read the tract I gave him.