Shelly's Mexico Journal--Post Trip

I became ill when I got home and spent a week in bed, fighting off four different infections. While I was sick, I read some of my Grandpa Culver’s sermons, eager to learn more about him. Grandpa was a missionary statesman. I never knew him though he lived in my mother’s stories about him. Years ago, I learned that although my Grandparents served in China, Grandpa travelled to South America and had visited HCJB before I was born! What a sweet discovery that I wasn’t the first family member to go to Ecuador! I was riveted reading his powerful sermons challenging people to serve Christ in missions. If we weren’t already serving, I would have had to respond, “Here am I Lord, Send me!” Most poignant of all was to read his description of the mission field in Mexico. He said,

“My heart was never more stirred…than it was the Sunday morning I stood in the great Basilica of the Guadalupe Shrine in Mexico. …I choked and choked in an effort to keep back the tears as I watched whole families, some of whom had come hundreds of miles, walking on their knees into the Basilica…the heart-rending thing to me was to see the look of blank despair in every face. No one there to tell them that Jesus lives today with power to lift them up!”

As I read the highlighted words, the hair on my arms stood up and I began to weep. The words of his heart cry were similar to what I said when giving the altar call in Mexico City! Amazing to think that God would allow me, in a small way, to be part of an answer to my Grandpa’s prayer before I was even born!!!