If you want excitement, just move to or attend a city mission church!
After reconnecting with Maria Hunt at the ladies retreat in Denver yesterday, I asked Jonathan if we could go give her Sunday morning Sunday School in Pueblo a boost today. Maria is the sister of our former pastor, Derald Hunt, and had been caring for her parents on their pastorate in Pueblo for many years until both parents went to be with the Lord.
Maria has continued to have Sunday School at church and Bible studies in homes after the death of her father.
We had invited her for our Thanksgiving dinner in November, but that morning she was sick.
Then our family was planning to try to help her with Christmas caroling, but then we got sick.
So finally we were able to get together.
I will always remember how Maria came to our home about ten years ago for the measurements of our girls and me so she could sew us matching peach jumpers which we wore just after the birth of Hannah.
Our family took along our meal as usual, and enjoyed sharing it with Maria in her delightful home.
Her contribution of homemade ice cream went over extremely well, along with the chocolate cake Hannah made.
Cities in America are at least as dangerous a mission field as missions in foreign lands.
Maria regaled us with stories about how God has helped her and protected her in dangerous situations right in her own yard! God helped her to intervene in at least one situation where a woman was being attacked by a man right outside her window, and in another situation where a young man was about to be attacked by a Rottweiler. Maria simply commanded that Rottweiler to stop the barking.
"You are not in control of this alley way!" she told the vicious dog.
As the young man took a few more steps, the dog was about to bite him, and again Maria simply spoke with authority to the dog and the dog hung its head. When the man finally reached the street corner safely away, he waved a big thanks to Maria, who was amazed at how that dog sensed that she had no fear, and had obeyed her!
She gives God all the glory.
However, that was not the end of the stories. Maria is good at decorating the church tastefully,
but she also faces spiritual opposition often in that drug-infested neighborhood.
Only a couple months ago, Maria was arriving at the home where she conducts Bible studies on Sunday afternoon. As she arrived, she felt a very heavy sense of evil hanging around her.
Two young men were hanging around and staring at her, and she refused to look at them as she parked her car. When she got out, they had disappeared, but five minutes after starting Bible study,
a knock came on the door.
Just outside the home, a young man had just been shot and murdered!
The Bible study was, needless to say, shot to pieces for a while as different ones in the family took it very hard, and Maria had to try to comfort children and help to keep people in one piece.
Police were swarming in a very short time.
Yes, Maria lives in a dangerous place, but God is greater, and He gives her safety and a sense of peace and boldness at just the right times.
On our way home, we stopped at a park near the interstate where Danny and Hannah enjoyed the geese and ducks.
There were a couple old army cannons there at the park, reminding me of the spiritual warfare
missionaries face both at home and abroad,
for, as Maria said, we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and the prince of the power of the air.
"Do you feel safe there?" Maria keeps being asked.
"But where is safety?" Maria replies.
"Is it not in the center of God's will?"
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