Neighbors Not Top 10

Thankfully, none of our current neighbors are NOT "not top 10" quality, but, such was not the case in 2008- 2010...


The house that JP and I lived in when we first got married was pretty much perfect!  (How many newlyweds can say that?!)  Perfect size, brand new kitchen, centrally located...  "pretty much" perfect.  Our house shared a wall with Kevin's family's house.  Kevin turned 15 when we moved in.  It was at his 15th birthday party (part of which was being held on our front porch when we came home at 11pm one night) that his dad gave him the car keys, and told him exactly which store to go to where they wouldn't ask for ID to buy more beer for everyone.   Not surprisingly, Kevin quit school after 9th grade.  Since he didn't have to go to school anymore, he stayed up late, but also got up early - we could tell because he had really really great sub-woofers on his stereo system.  You could feel those things from 6 am some days, and lots of time until well into the wee hours of the morning the next day.  After a particularly bad fight between Kevin and his dad in our back parking area, JP and I began to look for another house.  Then one day, they moved out.  And that was that.

Until today.

JP and I were walking home this evening, and who did we run into?  Kevin.  Apparently, he goes to the high school down the street from where currently live.  He is also working at a department store, and has plans to get an engineering degree from the state tech school.  The 10 minutes that we spent talking to Kevin was like talking to a different person.  Sure, he's 20 and just finishing high school, but he's going to get a high school diploma.  He has constructive plans for the future that don't include getting high and upgrading the sub-woofers.  (Well, maybe he still wants to upgrade those...)  JP and Kevin are going out to lunch soon.  We really hope that we can share more about Christ's love with him.  We really do care about him, even though it's so easy to list all the "not top 10" stunts he's pulled in the past.  And we know that God wants Kevin to be His child.  That's something we might just be able to help with! 

A "Chance" Encounter

The other day, JP and I were walking near our house, and passed a small café that we had passed many times in the past few months.  JP stopped and said that we should go in and see what kind of stuff they have on their menu.  We had just eaten, so I didn't particularly want to stop, but we did.  The café owner was there, and he let us see a menu.  He also mentioned that this was the last day the café would be open - business hadn't been good, so he was closing down that evening.  We lamented that the café would  no longer be around to try the food.  The owner asked us what we did for a living, and we said we were missionaries.  Instantly, his face lit up, and he asked us to please sit down because he wanted to talk with us for a while.  The owner told us that he had heard a few times recently about Christ, in a different way than many people in Mexico will talk about Him (usually it's all about doing good things and saying the right prayers to be able to hopefully go to heaven).  He had heard from somewhere else that "religion" didn't necessarily mean saying rote prayers and following the same ritual in hopes of being good enough to go to heaven.  We assured him that NO ONE can ever be good enough to go to heaven by their own actions - it's only  because of Christ's sacrifice and a relationship with Him that we can spend eternity with God!  We were in the café for quite a while, enjoying Italian sodas, and talking about the owner's spiritual questions.  He mentioned more than once that "fate" had brought us to his café that day.  We prayed for his new business venture in construction, and gave him our contact info, and times/place of our church service at Horizonte.  When we left, he hadn't made a decision to follow Christ, but we could almost see the wheels turning in his head, thinking about all we had talked about. 

It's amazing how God directs our paths to those who are open to hearing about Him!  Nothing is just by chance! 

Cafes are VERY popular in Queretaro!  So much so, that many open and never get off to a good start because the café market is so saturated.  So, like the owner that we talked to, some new cafes barely get off the ground before they are forced to close their doors.