Sermon on the mount...

We finally got up to Pastor Santos’s church in the mountain. There were too many people to fit in the church building so they all sat on the hill outside. As I was watching the sea of people and children lined alone the bank I thought Jesus must have seen similar scenes 2000 years ago. A mob of people coming to see, hear and to get; and the Devil interjecting trouble wherever possible. It was a day filled with little frustrations nothing big, but each one aimed at weakening the work being done. As we set off I found out one of our children in the house stole a gift, in the village someone stole the toilet paper from the truck(real important on the mountain), a policemen wanting to take a gift ect ect. It became very clear in the mountain who was behind it. The lone bus that ventures daily up the mountain(a feat all by itself) passed by at the beginning of the sermon. He stopped to listen. Amen. His few passengers lined the fence to watch and listen. 40 minutes later as Carlos was starting the invitation, the attention of all was robbed when a second bus began blowing its horn to pass the parked bus. (keep in mind the 2 busses and our truck were the only vehicles up there all day) And the few men in the second bus made cat calls and bad comments to the young ladies in the service…Kinda hard to recover from that with 290 people sitting outside, yet once it calmed one mother trusted Christ as Saviour. Amen! We then began to hand out gifts and the people moved around making it hard to keep track and the crowd swelled to 350-400. Thankfully we had a list of names, but as darkness set in physically and spiritually, control became impossible, many others were trying to steal, all we could do was shut it down, so some true visitors not on the list were left out. I will give Pastor Santos our remaining gifts so he can use them to solve any ruffled feathers.
In all it was a good day just one that required more effort and stress than normal…but what is the price of a soul?