The Zoo
I awoke rather late, but I was
cold. A surazo had blown in the previous
morning and had drenched the city. Now
the sky was blue, with not a cloud in sight.
I could not stay inside.
Quickly I was dressed and
crossing the Plaza Blacut to get a coffee and cuñapé, and decided to finish it in the
taxi. Sometimes God just sends you the
right person. I was getting a little
frustrated because four empty taxis passed me by. That is when I found myself in the taxi of a
young man of maybe 30 years. What first
struck me was that he was polite in traffic; that is something alien to most
here in Santa Cruz.
The second thing was that he was
listening to a sermon on the radio. The
man on the radio was praying for various people that had called in. I waited until it was almost over before I
asked, “Is he a Catholic preacher or Evangelical.”
“Evangelico, Señor,” he answered.
“Are you a Christian?” I asked.
“I am from the Assemblies of
God.”
“I was a missionary with the
Assemblies of God when I first came here in the 80s.” I really was, but changed to South America
Mission because the Assemblies considered me a temporary missionary and wanted
me there for just two years.
That led me to finding out that
there is not an Assembly missionary in Santa Cruz, but that he and his family
were starting a mission church 30 Km outside of the city. We talked about me living here as a retired
teacher and that I attend Berea Church.
He knows exactly where that is.
He did not ask much for the taxi ride, so I doubled it and asked the
other part to be a gift for his church.
One of the reasons I love Santa
Cruz!
The Zoo was gorgeous. The sun was shining and a breeze was
blowing. Flowers were blooming. Monkeys were playing. The birds were inches away in the aviary. The pigs stank to high heaven. There were no people.
I’m not sure if I ever shared this
about the Santa Cruz Zoo, but it has a collection of animals endemic to Santa
Cruz. Here you will see the animals that
you would see in the wild in this area.
They need to work on how they house their wild cat species. I think I counted 6 different types. There are many animals still behind
chain-link fences, but for a city in a third world country, this is very
nice. It also looked like the place had
been scrubbed down for the weekend crowd.
There was no trash anywhere!
Nothing really special
happened. It was just a nice place to be
on this gorgeous day.
I wish they had t-shirts and
souvenir cups here like they do in the Texas zoos. I guess that is for the future. I have to come back more often.
What more impressed me today is what I have heard about the church and world missions. In the past, the church was white, European or North American. Missionaries were the same. But in recent years, as Europe and North America became less and less Christian, the church has shifted to Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This man is proof. No Assembly of God missionary is serving this huge city, so a local man is doing the work of a missionary. I applaud his work and pray his church grows.
No comments:
Post a Comment