I'm Not Done With You Yet

Today has been a day full of emotions for me as it's the second to last day of our time here in Sonora. Melina and I decided to stay longer by request of our church and it's been a blessing. However, this week has also been bittersweet. It's getting to the point where it's time to say goodbye to the people that I've been studying with and have grown to love as well as our church family.

The hardest family to say goodbye to definitely has to be our wonderful house parents, Uncle Pops and Aunty Gogo. They've been such a blessing to us. They have to be by far the sweetest couple I've ever met. They would always pray for us and our studies. They paid for Melina to go home when her family lost a loved one. They bought Mike and Emily a Blue Bible Stories set, and just today Uncle Pops paid to get my car fixed. That's literally just scratching the surface of how wonderful this family is. Words can't describe how incredible and truly inspiring they are to Melina and myself.

I was blessed with the opportunity to spend some extra time with Uncle Pops because he has been coming with me to my study with Alan (the guy I met at Starbucks). They hit it off from the moment they met each other and have become very good friends. There is one particular story that really bonded them. You see, both Alan and Uncle Pops have had near death experiences yet their lives were spared for some reason.

A few months ago, there was a horrific lightning storm in Sonora. Alan lives up in the mountain in a old style wooden house with a tin roof. He was terrified of the lightning hitting the roof and burning down the house so he decided to go and take shelter elsewhere. However, when he ran outside, little did he know a lightning strike was going to hit just the ground a few feet in front of him. The moment the lightning hit the ground, it shot Alan back onto a pile of wood. From that day on Alan knew that God had spared his life for some reason and he began praying that someone would study the Bible with him. Little did he know a few months later, I would show up asking him if he would like to do the very thing he had prayed for.

Uncle Pop's story is also quite miraculous. Before Uncle Pops retired he was a dentist and worked at Twain Harte Dentistry. It was an ordinary day at the office. He was working on of his patients as he sat in the chair he always did. He was in the process of making a mouth piece for his patient and needed to cure the mouth piece in a solution in the back room. It doesn't take long to cure. Once it finished he grabbed the mouth piece and proceeded to head back to his hair. Suddenly a thought  came into his mind, "you know, I don't have a lot of patients today, I could let this mouth piece cure a little bit longer." Uncle Pops stopped in his tracts, turned around, put the piece back in the solution and sat down to wait a few more minutes.

All of the sudden there was a huge crash. A tree suddenly crashed through the building, splitting the dentist office in two. Interestingly enough the tree landed in the same exact spot that Uncle Pops would've been in if he hadn't turned around to cure the mouth piece. Uncle Pops also realized that God had spared his life for some reason was well.

Uncle Pops has been coming with me to study with Alan consistently. Alan has expressed how he doesn't want to stop studying the Bible and asked Uncle Pops if he would continue to study with him after I leave. Uncle Pops was more then thrilled to say yes. They've become very close friends since we started studying together. Next week Uncle Pops and Aunty Gogo will be going to study with Alan and plan on continuing to study to learn more about God.

As we drove home after a study Uncle Pops and I talked about their near death experiences and Uncle Pops expressed, "you know, after that happened I realized that God wasn't done with me yet."

I then responded, "what if God saved your life, so He could use you, to help save Alan's."