The Heartbeat of Worship

Tuesday, June 12th around 12 noon,

I´m just trying to catch my breath from hiking to my favorite spot at the top of the hill (we are at 10,000 feet, which is about two miles up.) I am sitting here looking out over the mountains, with the white clouds just skimming over the top of them, listening to the breeze sighing through the pine trees, and breathing in their delicious scent.

The sun has come out in full for the first time today, and it is absolutely beautiful. The birds are singing, and the breeze is nice and cool, which makes the temperature just perfect. When the sun is shining here you feel that you are only about two miles away from heaven, but when one of those big clouds roll in and you can only see for a few feet in front of you, you think that maybe you´ve been forgotten at the end of the earth.

I am just watching a little lizard that is about an inch and a half long sun himself on a rock. (I am hoping quite fervently that I don´t run into any snakes!) There is a big pile of rock not far from where I am sitting that Lorenzo says is a border marker between here and the next state. He also says the witch doctors have gathered around these rocks before and tried to put curses on the church and the bible school that he was starting. Lorenzo says that when they first started to clear the land for the church, that there were snakes and scorpions everywhere, but that there are hardly any now. Thank God!

I have to say that one of the things that touches me the most is the little prayer meeting that they have here at seven o´clock every morning. They ring a big bell and the people walk from all around the area to this little building with a tin roof and no heat, and they will sing worship songs in Spanish, with no music, maybe sometimes a guitar, and then they will break off into the song of the Lord, which sometimes may be in several different keys, but to me, I think it must be the most beautiful sound that heaven has ever heard. I just keep thinking, Lord, you hear these people, way up in these mountains that most of the world doesn´t even know about, bringing, to me, what a true sacrifice of praise is. I am sure that all of heaven goes silent just to hear it. It absolutely breaks me, and all I can do is weep when I hear it. I would fly for 12 hours and drive for 7 more just to hear that worship again.

Four of the guys from our team left this morning (including Tim, and he´d better make it back so he can drive us home!) to hike 9 hours through the mountains to a small Huichol Indian village that Lorenzo has made contact with. They will have to stay overnight, and hike for 12 hours tomorrow to get back. I knew that it was going to be a hard trip, but I did not fully understand the danger until Lorenzo had us pray for them this morning, and he warned them that they had to be very careful how they conducted themselves around these people. He said that a reporter had gone out there one time and taken some pictures of one of the little children. The men from the Huichol tribe chased him down and killed him. I thought to myself, this is the real deal. There are people right here in North America that have never been reached, that these men may be risking their lives to reach out to. My prayers for them and this trip have taken on a whole new dimension.

It is now 12:45 and I am supposed to go in and start preparing lunch, but I don´t want to! I could sit out here on this mountain the whole day.