Dalmeny Community Church - Day 2

Today we had a fun morning learning about the Mayan people and their culture at the Dzibilchatun Ruins and Cenote. We managed to see a few iguanas lurking about amongst the ruins watching a bunch of Canadians with suspicion. The ruins were fantastic and truly a testament to the ancient Mayan people’s advanced way of life and understanding of astrology, building techniques and mathematics for that time. We learned about their temple called “Seven Dolls” and the fact that they have the windows precisely lined up to be able to have the sun from the solstice line up through one set of the three windows for each of the different solstice periods and the sun would shine directly through their temple and illuminate into the town down the road. The long road between the temple and the city was full of stones, bumps, vegetation, a few little turns and a big turn that lead to the temple at the end. This road reminded us of our Christian walk as we make our way along our journey of faith in God and finally up to heaven that it is not straight It might have bumps in it, and there are things that might make us want to turn back, but really, we need to press on to reach the goal of the high calling of Christ and make it to heaven. Also, the fact that the sun shone through the temple at only three times of year was also interesting and a reminder that Jesus' light shines through us. Fortunately for us his light doesn’t just have to shine through us three times a year, but every day of the year!

The refreshing Cenote is a a body of fresh water that is fed from an underground river system. These Cenote’s were places of gathering and refreshing, of cleaning and washing. It is very interesting that the Mayans built their cities around these Cenotes as they required fresh water for their people and their communities. It is truly remarkable that God designed these places of refreshing and life and he longs to draw you to the Cenote of his Holy Spirit as he says in Psalm 23 that he leads us beside still waters and restores our soul. This truly was a place of restoration, rest and refreshing.

We ate lunch while at the Ruins, drove back to base and had a siesta. That night we prepared to head out to the government funded hospital. The reason we were heading there is because the people that can’t afford to pay for health care come to this hospital from all over the state. They are required to have at least one family member stay with them at the hospital during their stay, but the family member cannot stay in the hospital. They are required to stay outside the hospital so many of these people live as homeless people during this time. Some of them cannot afford food and the meal that we provide may be their only meal for a long time. We ran into some serious spiritual opposition both in preparation for this event and when we actually were going to leave. We didn’t fully realize it at the time, but in preparation to go Joanne was assigning tasks to the team. She kept mixing up the words batter and battle, as she talked about who was going to prepare battle instead of who was going to prepare batter for the pancakes. She kept apologizing for mixing up the words. It had been raining for an extended period of time while we were loading up all the equipment in preparation to go. We decided it was a go, but as we got in the vehicle to head out we realized we didn’t have any running lights on the van or trailer. It began to rain quite steadily again. After some team investigation as to what could be causing the problem we found that it was a fuse under the seat that had blown. We swapped in a new fuse and we had lights! The team headed out, but we decided that we needed to stop and pray before leaving the compound with all the issues going on. We prayed and began to drive. It was pouring rain so hard that the streets were flooding and we were driving through standing water everywhere. As we drove the visibility was not very good. We prayed for God to hold the rain back so that we could feed these people that needed the food. We also declared and recognized that the battle belongs to the Lord and we turned it over to Him! Gary had been in contact with Miguel and Miguel had been advising that it stopped raining as soon as Gary had phoned and was thinking of not coming because of the van issues. Then when Gary phoned back to tell him we had the van fixed, it immediately began to downpour again and Miguel was unsure whether we should go ahead with it. We went anyway. We called those things that were not as if they were and had faith to believe and God stopped the rain! When we got to the hospital it had stopped raining there. Water was still everywhere, but it was not raining when we set up.

We began to cook and serve pancakes, fruit and juice to the people there. The rain had stopped in time for us to set up and then began to start again after we set up, but was very short lived and not very hard. We served about 250 people with 3 huge bags of Costco pancake mix! They were very appreciative! One lady had been at the hospital for 5 months with her son living like this and received prayer from Pastor Miguel and his family! Seven people gave their lives to the Lord tonight and for that we celebrate with all of heaven and shout, “Fiesta!” Dios te bendiga. (God Bless). Cyler & Pam Wiens & Family