Reynosa, Mexico – In Texas

Posted on January 23, 2024 by Jill English Johnston

I continue to answer the why in “why I wanted to go on a mission trip to Reynosa, Mexico” in my not-so-brief background leading up to the trip.

 

 

After growing up in rural Pennsylvania, where my surroundings were predominantly White, my military career exposed me to diverse cultures and expanded my perspectives. When Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath thrust my family into racial and socio-economic disparities and challenged our preconceptions, I delved into understanding systemic issues. Retiring in Central Texas, my ministry shifted, emphasizing the importance of continuous learning in embracing diversity and addressing societal challenges.

The first in the Reynosa, Mexico blog series can be found HERE

In Texas, as my youngest son finished high school and my husband used his military benefits to attend college, I returned to my lifelong passion of writing. Writing groups, workshops, instructional books on the craft of writing, and conferences filled my hours as much as our church activities and bible studies. Prayer also worked its way into one of my top passions and I discovered I loved teaching about prayer and Scripture as much as I loved learning and writing. Which meant, of course, that I started reading and seeking the mysterious and sometimes elusive concept of prayer.

You can find a list of the books HERE.

As the years flew by, we remained caught up in a whirlwind of the retired, empty-nester life filled with graduations, weddings, grandbabies, travel, and aging parents. I so appreciated time to write, develop new friendships, serve in and with the church, and love my neighbors. But somewhere within the depths of my heart, I missed the other two: loving one’s enemies and caring for the least of these.

Every so often I’d think a door was opening, a connection or relationship was happening that would engage me once again. But often it passed by or dissipated. One of the connections occurred when I was involved with Moms in Prayer, an international organization that prays for our children and their schools. An acquaintance was interested in starting a prayer group for moms in the nearby women’s correctional facility, which piqued my interest because prisoners are one of the-least-of-these mentioned in Scripture. But it was a slow going effort, COVID happened, and we eventually lost touch. (Verses below are taken from the NIV)

  • The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. (Isaiah 61:1)
  • “The Lord looked down from his sanctuary on high, from heaven he viewed the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners and release those condemned to death.”(Psalm 102:19-20)
  • He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. (Psalm 146:7-8)
  • I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.(Matthew 25:36)

During this time I discovered podcasts and they became a huge part of my learning experience. I was introduced to Marty and Brent on Bema Discipleship, Tim and John on the Bible Project, and Phil, Skye, Christian and Kaitlyn on the Holy Post. Other podcasts sprung from links and recommendations: Jen Hatmaker and For the Love and Jordyn Rayner and Mere Christians.

Then the world started going a little more crazy than it already was. Elections and politics began impacting relationships with family, friends, neighbors. The border wall and immigration became a hot topic. I found myself disheartened by the evangelical church’s reaction. There had to be a better way. These (migrants, immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers) were people. People with names and stories, hopes and dreams, needs and desires. People loved by God. I expanded my list of the-least-of-these to include the foreigner that Scripture so often calls us to also care for. (Verses below are taken from the NIV)

  • “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Exodus 22:21)
  • “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt. “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed. (Exodus 23:9.12)
  • Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:10)
  • The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. (Psalm 146:9)
  • This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. (Jeremiah 22:3)

In 2019, Jon had the opportunity to go to Haiti on a mission trip with our church and he went again with our youngest in March of 2020. I loved that he went because it was an amazing experience for him, but I did not feel prompted to go. Instead, my eye was still on the border and the immigration issues, controversy. and quandary. But what could I do? We had moved in 2017 further from San Antonio and further from the hub of immigrants coming into the country. I didn’t know what or who to believe about the matter, what was fact, what was fear, what was truth, what was political distortion. I didn’t come across many people with attitudes, opinions, and beliefs aligned with how Jesus calls us to love like he loves. And I didn’t speak Spanish.

But I knew I wanted to do something.

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Reynosa, Mexico – An Introduction

Posted on January 16, 2024 by Jill English Johnston

  This is us. Our team from Journey Fellowship on mission to Reynosa, Mexico with Strategic Alliance during the week between Christmas and New Year, 2023. Shown are friends I was blessed to get to know better during our six days together, the house we built for the family. Our new family: Oscar, Pilar, and Christian.

 

But to get here, you need to know.

  1. Why did I want to go
  2. How it came about

First. The why.

A not-so-brief background.

  My history. From 1968-1986, I grew up in a blue-collar, working-class family living on a dirt road in rural Pennsylvania. I attended a county school filled with kids from the nearby college town as well as from the surrounding farming community. Most everyone was Anglo, of European descent: German, Czech, Polish, to name a few. Our schools, communities, and churches were predominately White. If I had to guess, my graduating class of about 230 had less than two percent Black, Asian, or mixed race.

  1986 to 2010 encompassed my military career, taking me to places like the Philippines, Japan, Guam, Thailand, and Hong Kong, Singapore. Cultures and languages that were vastly different than mine. With Black and Latino roommates and Black, Filipino, Asian, and Latino co-workers, I now had new friends from all over the States with diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, and various shades of skin, hair, and eye color. After I married and kids came along, we had babysitters from all over the world: Philippines, Mexico, England, New Zealand, and Japan. Our kids went to schools in Corpus Christi, Japan, Guam, Mississippi, California, and Texas, where they were as often the minority as not.

  Up to this point in my life, I had a curiosity about the different cultures, races, and backgrounds I experienced, but only in passing and mostly as they brushed up against my expectations, misconceptions, and prejudices. Raising kids and work demanded most of my attention, although I sought to raise them to treat everyone with dignity and respect.

  In 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of Mississippi where we lived. The aftermath opened the doors for us to work and minister to people who lived on the edges, those in poverty, and people who rarely had a safety net and had to survive by working “the system.” Suddenly our family and church were immersed in new relationships across racial and socio-economic boundaries.

  We saw the ugly truth of racism, broken systems, and the culture of poverty. As we opened our church doors to kids who now lived in a FEMA trailer park nearby, I was filled with compassion towards the families who fell through the cracks, who didn’t own a home that had been damaged or destroyed, but rather in apartments or rentals that had been. People who didn’t have insurance or qualify for loans, grants, or rebuilding assistance. People whose minimum wage jobs were gone, whose cars had been flooded and who no longer had reliable transportation or any transportation for that matter. In an unexpected situation, we opened our home to a young man who had been recently released from prison, and for several years he became one of our family as we helped him find a job, expunge his record, and obtain a driver’s license. 

  In the midst of it all, started reading—because that’s what I do—and asking questions, wanting to hear the stories of those now within my sphere. How did they get to the place they were at? What help was available to them? What were churches doing in response? Did the local, state, and federal government provide adequate support? I consumed books on poverty, race, and homelessness. I felt like I was learning, stretching, doing a tiny bit of what Jesus calls us to do: to love one’s neighbor, love one’s enemies, and care for the least of these: widows, orphans, poor, prisoners. (Verses below are taken from the NIV)

  • Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress (James 1:17)
  • Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. (Isaiah 10:1-2)
  • Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners because you were foreigners in Egypt. (Exodus 23:6,9)
  • Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked. (Psalm 82:3-4)
  • But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. (Luke 14:13-14)
  • But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (Matthew 5:43)
  • Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Matthew 22:37-39)

You can find a list of the books I read HERE.

  After we retired from the military in 2008 and 2010, we moved to Central Texas. Something shifted during the move and as we settled in our new home in the suburbs and military town of Schertz/San Antonio and became involved in our new church, I knew our ministry was shifting also. Thankfully, the Lord placed us in a church that—when I looked around—I knew I wanted to be because many of those I worshipped with didn’t look like me. Even though I had stepped away from working with the least of these, with new friends from all over the States with diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, and various shades of skin, hair, and eye color, I knew I still had much to learn in this new place.

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Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Jill English Johnston

I love to collect the highlights I make in books. The quotes provide a quick overview of the things that resonated with me as I read. Last year, I read Richard Foster’s book, Prayer. As often happens, the book was timely and much needed during a painful time in our family. The chapters in Foster’s book provided the means to cry with God, to cry out to God, and to process and pray for the situation.

Now I’m reading Foster’s book, Celebration of Discipline, and again, it is timely as I begin 2024. Here are highlighted quotes from this book. Maybe they’ll entice you to dive into the path to Spiritual Growth.

Be sure to check back for further quotes from the other chapters

1: The Spiritual Disciplines: Door to Liberation

  • The purpose of the Disciplines is liberation from the stifling slavery to self-interest and fear.
  • The Spiritual Disciplines are an inward and spiritual reality, and the inner attitude of the heart is far more crucial than the mechanics for coming into the reality of the spiritual life.
  • We have only one thing to do, namely, to experience a life of relationship and intimacy with God,
  • The moment we feel we can succeed and attain victory over sin by the strength of our will alone is the moment we are worshiping the will.
  • God has given us the Disciplines of the spiritual life as a means of receiving his grace. The Disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us.
  • We must always remember that the path does not produce the change; it only places us where the change can occur. This is the path of disciplined grace.
  • When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God’s work and not ours, we can put to rest our passion to set others straight.

2: The Discipline of Meditation

  • It is this continual focus upon obedience and faithfulness that most clearly distinguishes Christian meditation from its Eastern and secular counterparts.
  • God spoke to them not because they had special abilities, but because they were willing to listen.
  • Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God’s voice and obey his word.
  • He is alive and among us as our Priest to forgive us, our Prophet to teach us, our King to rule us, our Shepherd to guide us.
  • What happens in meditation is that we create the emotional and spiritual space which allows Christ to construct an inner sanctuary in the heart.
  • …for to be in the presence of God is to change.

3: The Discipline of Prayer

  • For those explorers in the frontiers of faith, prayer was no little habit tacked onto the periphery of their lives; it was their lives.
  • We would do well to read widely and experience deeply if we desire to know the ways of prayer.
  • I determined to learn to pray so that my experience conformed to the words of Jesus rather than try to make his words conform to my impoverished experience.
  • the prayer of relinquishment, we are committed to letting go of our will whenever it conflicts with the will and way of God.
  • We can determine if we are praying correctly if the requests come to pass. If not, we look for the “block”; perhaps we are praying wrongly, perhaps something within us needs changing, perhaps there are new principles of prayer to be learned, perhaps patience and persistence are needed.
  • Attuning ourselves to divine breathings is spiritual work, but without it our praying is vain repetition.
  • “A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening.”
  • We must hear, know, and obey the will of God before we pray it into the lives of others.
  • The inner sense of compassion is one of the clearest indications from the Lord that this is a prayer project for you.
  • Imagination often opens the door to faith.
  • “…coincidences occur much more frequently when I pray.” Archbishop William Temple
  • …invite Jesus to walk…touching people on the shoulder and saying, “I love you. My greatest delight would be to forgive you and give you good things. You have beautiful qualities still in the bud that I would unfold if only you will say yes. I’d love to rule your life if you’ll let me.”
  • “I want a life of greater, deeper, truer prayer.” Archbishop Tait

Quotes taken from Foster, Richard J.. Celebration of Discipline, Special Anniversary Edition (p. 46). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

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Home for Christmas

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Jill English Johnston

“Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” Matthew 18:20 (NIV)

            We often hear the song “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” this time of year. However, what defines home differs from family to family. With six military transfers, a dozen residences, four deployments, two hurricanes, and family in two different states, both home and Christmas varied from year to year.

Every move we spent our first night in the living room together, sharing pizza, then settling down for stories and prayers amidst piles of blankets and pillows. When the moving trucks arrived, we’d establish our new home with our things, but until then, home consisted of being with each other. The same became true of Christmas, whether in Pennsylvania, Texas, Japan, Guam, California, or Mississippi.

            Living in so many places, the joy of Christmas meant being together rather than returning to a specific address. It meant sharing our love for each other. It meant finding peace when we weren’t in the same place as the previous year and when we couldn’t even be together.

            Jesus left His heavenly home for Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth, Capernaum, Gethsemane, and Golgotha. He had no place to lay His head, yet for the joy set before Him, for the love of the ones He came to save, He gives peace that passes understanding, wherever we might celebrate His birth.

Jesus, thank You for every Christmas spent together and the hope for more to come.

         Grace & Peace

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Assurance

Posted on November 2, 2023 by Jill English Johnston

We will have times in our lives when we’re disappointed in the outcome of a situation, when things didn’t happen as we expected, when we thought things would be one way, but they’re another. We make our plans, have our hopes, and set our goals, but our world is unstable, uncertain, unpredictable. In those moments, we need ASSURANCE.

(Image created by bing.com/create)

The writer of Hebrews reminds us: 

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1 (ESV)

In Greek, the word assurance is Hypostasis: something that stands under and supports; foundation, the underlying or essential part of anything as distinguished from attributes; substance, essence, or essential principle. Substance. Certainty, Confidence, Guarantee (Biblehub.com)

And our english definition of assurance is full confidence; freedom from doubt; certainty (Dictionary.com)

When we’re sitting in our disappointment, we realize that our faith needs to be in something or someone stable, certain, and sure. In these moments, we can know Jesus, our Assurance. He is the One who is same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The One unchanging. The One who will not disappoint us.

What disappointments are you facing today?

In these disappointments, how can you find assurance in Jesus? If you’re not sure, contact me and let me know. We can talk about it.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this month, despite any disappointments, what are the things for which we can be grateful?

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