On the first full day of our first ever week-long vacation without kids, we went to church.
While there, we learned that the church, run by missionaries, invites community members to prepare and distribute a small meal to the precious people who work and live at the city dump. The church does this two mornings a week, every week, all year round.
Matt and I decided to join this mix of missionaries, snowbirds, tourists and Mexican locals, and yesterday we assembled sandwiches, packed coolers and traveled by bus to feed Mazatlán’s poorest of the poor.
After decades of serving this community, La Viña is at the center of redemption for this beautiful city. Whereas many are Americans and Canadians, a significant number of those on the front lines of this ministry are local to Mazatlán. Our Mexican bus driver, a former drunk, turned his life completely around because of the love served by the sacrifice of these people. The Latin woman at the center of year-round sandwich distribution was previously crashing down a hill of drugs and recklessness until she was rescued by God’s grace by way of this church.
I realize that tourism and mission work are complex issues. Tourism is the food on the table, clothes on the back and roof over the heads of so many in Mazatlán. It also reeks with exploitation of all kinds, from sexual slavery to the forced labor of young children hustling braided bracelets and woven coin purses up and down the sandy city streets. The mission field is equally complicated. The power, privilege and pocketbooks of kind-hearted missionaries and their supporters can be the detriment of a culture’s self-sufficiency and also its literal salvation. The pandemic has added a layer of difficulty on both fronts. Once visited by several cruise ships a week, this ocean-front town is becoming more desperate and broken in the absence of a thriving tourism economy. The ministry support and respite provided by visiting missionary teams has ceased, and numerous in-person food and children’s programs have closed as a result of COVID fears.
I don’t claim to fully understand the complexities of all this nor do I know where to begin in reconciling them. I simply acknowledge that they exist, and hope/wish/pray that with a humble heart, I might live, learn and give according to the grace of God, allowing its lessons to transform me along the way.
I mention all of this because I have an ask of YOU.
Sunday is my 41st birthday. I want for nothing. I am spending a week in paradise with my person, a gift from our families. If I could ask for anything in the world it would be to invite others to help fund the provision of high-protein sandwiches and a liter of water to the beautiful people who work and live at the Mazatlán city dump.
When the old, rickety bus climbed precariously up the treacherous hill and into the steamy mountains of garbage, we were immediately met by droves of people, filthy and sweaty under the Mexican sun, ravenous and thirsty for food, water and God’s love. The experience will stay with me forever, and the faces of the bronze and barefoot babies among the lines of people changed my life for good.
I want nothing more than to keep feeding these gorgeous people so that they might know God’s generous love, grace and compassion. The food and water will never be enough. But maybe, just maybe, it will be the conduit of survival by the grace of God for one, and the worth of that is priceless.
Even if you cannot or choose not to give, thank you for reading. I ask that you take a moment to sit in the grace of knowing that you are loved. You are wildly, beautifully and immensely loved. That love abounds and never ever ever runs dry. God is always climbing precariously into our treacherous lives so that we might be fed. Bask in the warmth of that, and let it nourish you alive.
To give, visit here. Choose the Dump Ministry from the pull-down menu. Your gift is tax-deductible and is guaranteed to provide for the lost, least and lonely.
Muchas gracias, desde el fondo de mi corazón. (Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.)
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.
Matthew 25:35
