Christmas Prayer Letter

Merry Christmas!!

As we prepare to go to Buenos Aires, reflecting on Christ's birth has special meaning for us. Many of you know that the community that we are joining in Argentina is called Word Made Flesh. The name itself celebrates the unfathomable mystery of the incarnation-that the Maker of all things took on the confines of human skin. As Phillip Yancey declares, “The God who roared, who could order armies and empires about like pawns on a chessboard, this God emerged in Palestine as a baby who could not speak or eat solid food or control his bladder, who depended on a teenager for shelter, food, and love” (from The Jesus I Never Knew, pg. 36)

The humility and sacrifice required for Christ to become incarnate is staggering and, though we tend to pretty up the Christmas story, it really is rather cruel: He was born to two adolescents, amidst the scent of scandal, outside of a hotel too crowded for a woman in labor. He lived the first years of his life as a refugee in Egypt. Throughout his ministry, he was scorned by the religious rulers of his day. He had no place to lay his head, but lived among the untouchables-the poor, the sick, the dangerous. And he chose all of this: “…though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (II Corinthian 8:9b). Our compassionate God forsook the resplendence of Heaven that he might identify in the most intense way with our anguish.

As our family looks to our Savior as the example and heeds the particular calling on our lives, we leave the familiar to follow Christ to a corner of Argentina where children sleep under cardboard boxes and inhale glue fumes to stave off hunger pains. We desire to make our home among the “unlovely” and to touch the “untouchable” in Jesus' name.

Again, we extend the opportunity of partnership to any of you who have experienced a stirring of the Holy Spirit. We know that Christ is calling us to this life among the poor, not only to minister in his name, but also for our own liberation. We discern that there are many to whom we are writing that God desires to engage in this ministry of reconciliation and to likewise liberate. Through God's movement and the generosity of many, we have been provided with most of the funds that Word Made Flesh requires for our transition to the field in January. Our needs now extend to monthly commitments that will sustain us there. Our family requires $3,000 monthly which will cover all personal and medical expenses, insurance, international travel costs and language acquisition studies. The enclosed response card and automated deduction form provide more information as to the details of giving. Would you consider joining us in this way?

We leave you to your Christmas celebrations with an exhortation given to us by a dear friend of the streets. During the last moments of our final encounter with Daniel, before leaving Lima in 2004, he mustered up his courage and, his black eyes burning into our own, poignantly thanked us for “not being afraid of us [the street children].” Children of the streets know the fear and loathing of others in a way to which few of us can relate. His utterance stopped us cold in our tracks because, in reality, there were many days where our fears loomed over us-of personal safety, of disease, of financial insecurity (not to mention our fear of discomfort-lice, fleas, and innumerable fungus infections). Fears that threaten us still as we move forward into our calling. But Daniel's words reverberate in our hearts, and we amplify his voice to all of you: May all of us surrender our fears to the Father and follow the example of Christ as we spend our lives on behalf of the broken, the wounded, and the vulnerable wherever He may call us to be in life. May we hold nothing back in Jesus' name.