Divine Interruptions

The story of the Triqui family is a neat testimony of how God is leading us to people who are open to Him. Friday the 20th in the morning we prayed that God would really lead us and that we would be open to His plans for the day and not just stick to the plans we had made, if He had something different. That afternoon we made our weekly trip to the market to buy our fresh produce for the week. We were just getting in the van when a man and his wife came up to Nick with their 11 year old son telling him (in Spanish), “Talk to him in English” then telling Nick, “He speaks really good English.” Having been in Mexico for a while now, we have become used to this type of encounter. Parents push their children to us telling them to practice their English and the poor kids are scared to death and don’t want to say a word. However, Nick politely conversed with them for a while and when they asked what we do here, he told them about our clinic. They wanted to see where it was and asked if they could follow us home. We took them to the base and they asked us what we were doing on Sunday and proceeded to invite us to their village so we, as Americans, could experience their village. They also asked if they could invite everyone else at the base.

Sunday morning came and the man, Sefarino, and his son, Carlos, showed up at the base in their truck to take us to the village 1.5 hours away. They asked where everyone else was and we told them they were busy. Sefarino couldn’t seem to understand why no one else wanted to go, when he had clearly told them the day. He asked Nick several times if he should go and get the others, and after Nick assured him they could come, he looked to his son and told him to ask Nick if others were coming because, “Maybe he didn’t understand me.”

They seemed excited to introduce us to others in their village and invited several families over to eat with us. After feeding us two heaping platefuls of food, tortillas, and 20 oz. bottles of Pepsi, they fed the others, to whom the spoke in Triqui. The only words we recognized were “California” and “Sacramento” after which everyone turned to us and smiled. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that we were the topic of conversation!

There were several older women there who seemed to have quite a bit of difficulty walking. Nick really felt like he should pray for them for healing. One of the women was still there in the kitchen (more accurately described as a small wooden building with dirt floors and a fire going) so we went and asked if we could pray for her. She didn’t understand Spanish, so Eugenia (the women who invited us to come) ‘translated’ for us. We quickly discovered that her Spanish is also very poor, but we were able to get the main idea across. The woman agreed to let us pray for her crippled feet, then as we were praying, she pointed to her thigh which was also hurting, then later her stomach as well. As we finished, Eugenia asked if we would pray for her mom who also couldn’t walk well and has difficulty hearing in one ear. We prayed for her as well, then another woman asked for prayer for her back pain. We had a hard time knowing if they were feeling better as a result of the prayer, because when we would ask Eugenia to ask them how they were feeling, she would just repeat what was wrong with them to begin with.

Before we left we invited them to come over to our house the next time they were in town. We set the date for Saturday morning before they went into town for their shopping. They took us home and we invited them in for cafecito.

Saturday we were expecting them to arrive between 9-11. We had the food all prepared, then began to do some work around the house while we waited. Finally at noon we went ahead and ate. Around 2 we heard voices outside then a knock on the door. We invited them in and the first thing they said was that they wanted prayer for their son who supposedly has been losing weight and not eating well. They also wanted prayer for Eugenia who has stomach problems and for Sefarino for blurry vision. They also asked for us to pray for their house as they felt that witchcraft had been performed against them and that there was a demon there. So we fed them, shared some Scriptures with them, then prayed with them. After we prayed, they said they needed to go and got up and left.

We are praying that this family will really open doors for the Kingdom of God to come to the Triqui peoples of southern Mexico.