and the story continues

Wow, God is at work in Tom's life!
Yesterday for cleaner time I typed out three passages of Scripture and gave one to each cleaner to read silently and think about. *if you wanna read them, I'm not typing them out so go get a bible or head to biblegateway.com* I picked Romans 8:1-8 for Tom, and I wanted to write out more, but his was already the longest passage and I decided to trust that he would be thirsty enough to read the rest sometime. I gave Ivan Philippians 4:4-9 and Diego got Jeremiah 29:11-14a. I helped him find it in a Spanish Bible, and then everyone began reading. There was actually silence *miracle* and Sara and I were praying and reading also. Anyways, Tom read his passage and then reached for a Bible, found Romans 8 and kept reading! The other guys were ready to share, but I was not going to break that silence until Tom was done. He was reading the footnotes and everything. Then I asked Diego to readhis verses to us in English and we talked about how cool it is that we just need to call on the Lord and he will listen and answer, and he wants good things for us...yadda yadda yadda.
Then Ivan read his passage and we talked about how good it is for us to think about pure, noble, lovely, etc. things. Then he asked what "transcends" means and we talked about this incredible peace that come down on us when our innerds *hehe* are in turmoil and it's beyond comprehension, but it's real. And we also talked about what's the solution to being anxious? Through prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God, and then we get this transcendent peace...
Ok, then Tom read his verses and immediately after he said "What strikes me here is that it's a choice. You can choose the path that leads to death or the one to life. And it's not literal death, like you die right away, because everyone dies at some point." Whoa dang! So we got to talking about how you can choose death, this downward spiral, or you can choose life, which is thinking of those pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy things, and choosing this path God has for us full of hope and future. Then Ivan said, "but if you choose the death path that means that after this life you go to hell." and I said, "yeah, the path you choose on earth doesn't suddenly change to the opposite one after you die. If you're in a pattern of death your whole life, that's not going to change after death. And if you're trying to live life rather than live death, if you're followinig what God has for you, then you're on the path to heaven. You need to accept this gift of forgiveness, of a hope, of a future, of peace that transcends all understanding." and even though Ivan was being sarcastic, it was great that he said that. Then he did the whole "well, I'm going to hell, Jesus doesn't love me anymore cuz I was late this morning" thing, and then Tom joined in with, "You think you were bad, what about me? I quit!" and I got them to stop talking and prayed *quoting the verses about how nothing can separate us from the love of God* and it was so encouraging to have a good cleaner time after the huge spiritual battles of the day before.
And I know Tom (and all of them really) has huge battles to overcome, but seeing that he's started taking those steps...it's exciting. So please keep him in your prayers. In his own words he was "blind, but now I'm beginning to see." Ja.
And please pray for Ivan too...he's teetering on the brink of insanity, and once he lets go of this control over himself, he's either going to fall into the loving arms of God, or into insanity. Pray that it's the former, and that we can be there to help him, or other Christians at least. Pray that he is able to begin to trust people...his past has taught him that no one can be trusted and the only way to deal with the pain is to be in control of himself, and his mind is always churning and working and it's unhealthy...anyways, prayers for the cleaners are always welcome.

Sidenote, does anyone else read Lamentations? In the Bible discussion the other night everyone looked at me like I had 2 heads because I started quoting it and got us to read part of it. A bunch of them said they'd never read it before. Whyever not? It's a good book.