Fiesta de Navidad

Every year, like many organizations or companies, the staff at Casas Por Cristo has a Christmas party. The staff of Casas Por Cristo would have dinner at a restaurant in El Paso. Usually a nice dinner to celebrate the ministry over the last year and to give thanks to God for all that he has done. This year, we decided that a better way of expressing our appreciation for what Christ has done in us and through us was to hold a Christmas party for a Mexican community that we build in.
In the southern part of Juarez, MX., our ministry owns a facility that is capable of hosting 500 hundred people. We call the facility the "SHOC" which stands for "The Shane Harris Outreach Center". We usually use this building for volunteer groups to sleep in during a build week. As you noticed, the word "Outreach" is in the name of the facility. One of our dreams for the facility was to use the building for outreach. The ministry strategically bought property and built the SHOC in the particular community that it is in. The people who live in the community are some of the poorest people that we build for. It is a community of great need. The picture at the bottom is a picture of the main room setup before our guests arrived.
Three days before the Christmas party event, three men from the ministry and I passed out a flyer to every family that we had built for in the community. This is what the flyer looked like:
Can you read it? Its ok if you can't:) This tests my limits as well. (In fact, the ministry actually let me make it!)
It took about two and a half hours to pass all the invitations out. It was pretty surreal seeing all these families that our ministry has built for. I wonder how they felt when a crazy white boy rolled up and invited them to a Christmas party.
When we were finished handing all the invitations, we realized that we definitely needed to buy more food. Our original estimation was about 200 people coming but we soon changed our estimation to about 400 to 600 people. 400 to 600 people! Can you imagine!? We had a lot of grocery shopping to do. We bought 400 chicken breasts, 400 hot dogs, a giant bag of rice, and the necessary ingredients to cook a Mexican soup called "Menudo". For those who don't know what menudo is...well...just look it up.

So on December 4th, we arrived at the SHOC about 11 am and started grilling like crazy. It took about 3 and a half hours of grilling! People started to pour in the door around 2pm and the place filled up fast.

 

The line was out the door, in fact... One more chance to serve these families. One more chance for them to hear the gospel message. We could have celebrated the normal way; 30 of us heading to a steak restaurant. But with the leading of the Holy Spirit, we were directed to use this opportunity to celebrate what Christ has done in a more Christ-like manner.


The serving was on as the room filled up with people. One of the pastors from our pastors committee brought a couple of his guys to do praise and worship music. They played for a bit until everyone was seated. Then pastor Gedeon Solis, president of the Casas Por Cristo pastors committee, got up to the front to speak about the hope that is found in Jesus Christ.

At the end, Pastor Gedeon asked if there were some who wanted to receive the hope found in Jesus Christ. Fifteen or so raised their hands. We are thankful for what Christ is doing in the lives of the families that we build for. The amazing thing about working in the mission field is that we receive way more than what it seems that we give up. God has blessed our ministry with the ability and opportunity to do these kinds of things for families who desperately need not just physical but spiritual relief. Thank you to everyone this Christmas season that continues to pray for my wife and I as we work in this ministry. Merry Christmas and remember the miracle of the son of God coming to this world to save us.

                                                                                        Justin