David:      Cerillo Leon has been an extended family friend for many years. We first met him at my older brother Doug’s home. Doug was an orthopedic surgeon.

Karen:      Doug had bought a home with some land in it, and he needed help. So, Cerillo became his yard person. He was from Oaxaca, Mexico, and back then he came up for about half the year during the growing season and did this sort of lawn care mostly for Doug. And then when Doug sold his home, then we helped him find other clients.

David:      Well, Doug had this, I would call it a biggest garden.

Karen:      Yeah.

David:      That took a lot to tend to.

Karen:      Lot.

David:      And he was not only hiring Cerillo, but he was also teaching Cerillo a trade.

Karen:      Yeah.

David:      And it worked because in times Cerillo had become a master gardener.

Karen:      It really is.

When Doug died, this is about nine years back, we invited Cerillo to live with us for a couple of summers until he could build up his own clientele. And at the same time, our youngest son Jeremy was helping Cerillo get his green card. So, on Jeremy worked in immigration, he had his own immigration outreach and a close friendship formed that we would like to tell you more about.

Intro:       Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:      I guess the beautiful part of that story, Karen, is that in God’s time Cerillo became a Christ follower. He grew in the Lord, and we’ve maintained that friendship even up to this time in our lives. And he’s very close to us. We’re very close to him.

Karen:      So he wanted us to come visit him in Oaxaca, Mexico.

David:      Yeah. Oaxaca is way south in Mexico. And it’s an area where there’s probably more Mexican people who are Indian as opposed to the Hispanic.

Karen:      So, we did go to Mexico and Cerillo picked us up in the old pickup truck that Doug had given to him.

David:      That was almost as soon as we got there, they had flowers for us.

Karen:      And he said we go fiesta. And before this, Cerillo had made the comment. Sometime in our relationship, we’re American. I would say numerous times. He was making a point, “Americans know no how to fiesta.”

David:      We didn’t know how to celebrate or throw parties or whatever. That’s probably maybe we didn’t. I didn’t think about it that much, but he was going to show us.

Karen:      What a fiesta was all about.

David:      Yeah. It was actually the first full day that we were there. Let’s just talk about that a little while because it was overwhelming.

Karen:      So, this was basically Cerillo’s extended family. So, as we were chatting with people and many of them could speak a modicum of English, and then they had some people who could translate for us. I began to pick up the sense that the party was this full family of Cerillos. And I finally got to the point where “This is my uncle” or ”This is my cousin” or this is, you know.

David:      We’re talking how many?

Karen:      There were 80 people there, at least 80 people. They had a Mariachi band and then they had another kind of band.

David:      I don’t know. I think it was whatever instrument you play bring it.

Karen:      Yeah.

David:      Because there were no violins, but there were trumpets and I know there were clarinets. I remember that and… guitar…

Karen:      Tambourines and drums.

David:      Yeah.

Karen:      It was just wonderful.

David:      And everyone’s happy as all get up.

Karen:      So, it came time for them to bring in the bull. And I mean the bull.

David:      Oh yeah. Two bulls.

Karen:      Two bowls. Oh sorry, I mean there were two bulls.

David:      There were two bulls.

Karen:      They were cooked. They had been cooked, but they’d been put over a spit and you know rotated the way they’d ensuing. Imagine how large those spits were. And they were carried and the only thing I can think of would be like a…

David:      Sort of like a cot in my mind.

Karen:      Yeah, sort of like a cot. Six men carried the one bull in and this…

David:      Three on each side.

Karen:      Cot.

David:      And they were struggling because that was a big…

Karen:      It was a big animal…

David:      Bowl. And then I thought, you know, they were like, wow, that’s a big bull. And then here comes the second one. And they walked with those over close to where we were.

Karen:      Because the women were cooking beside us. They were cooking the barbecues and…

David:      And the women took those bulls and…

Karen:      They started tearing out that meat. I’ve never seen anything like it. They didn’t use a knife. They just, I mean they opened it up. But tearing out the meat and then the meat would go on platters and then it would be distributed among the 80 who were mostly cousins.

David:      A lot more than just meat too. It was a full meal.

Karen:      Oh yeah, it was a full meal. It was full meal. Absolutely extraordinary.

David:      And then there was dancing and just… I thought, how in the world do you pull this off? I remember asking one of the guys, how do you organize? No organized, we each bring something.

Karen:      And he had been charged with bringing all the beverages. I thought that was what he did. Oh, it was a wonderful plunge.

David:      People were happy. And I think that both of us came to the conclusion in our minds that “You’re right, Cerillo, Americans don’t know how to celebrate or fiesta or whatever.”

Karen:      Not like this.

David:      Yeah. I’m reminded, Karen, of a passage in Scripture. There’s a connection that may not seem like it as people listen to us, but let me read this from Luke. It’s a story that’s so well written. It’s a little bit longer of a parable of Jesus. Okay.

Jesus continued, there was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, “Father, give me my share of the estate.” So, he divided the property between them.

Not long after that, the youngest son got together, all he had set off for a distant country. And there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in the whole country, and he began to be in need.

So, he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

When he came to his senses, he said, “How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare? And here I am starving to death. I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.’”

So, he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. The son said to him, “Father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you. I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.”

But the father said to his servants, “Quick. Bring the best robe and put it on him, put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost in his found.” So, they began to celebrate.

Meanwhile, the older son was in the field, and when he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So, he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. “Your brother has come,” he replied, “and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound.”

The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So, his father went and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, “Look all these years, I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home, you kill the fatted calf.” “My son,” the father said, “you’re always with me and everything I have is yours, but we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.”

This is an occasion to celebrate. It’s beautiful.

Karen:      Yeah, I think we can all relate as humans to the father whose son comes back to the son who has repentance experience and turns around and is sorry and repents for his sin and begs for mercy. And the older brother who has been faithful all those years, you know. Such extraordinary tale, isn’t it?

David:      Yeah, it is very beautifully done. It says to me that celebration is not a bad thing. There are times when I think I’m not very good at celebrating. I think Cerillo is right. I’m wanting to say, “Yeah, I need to enter that joy when things happen. I don’t want them to become ho-hum.” There are occasions when it just really needs to…

Karen:      Fiesta.

David:      Fiesta, yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

There’s a neat passage that comes right, Karen, prior to that. Luke 15, where it’s about the prodigal son.

Jesus told in this parable, suppose one of you had a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the 99 in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me. I found my lost sheep.”

I tell you that in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent. So, it’s saying, “Yeah, there are occasions when even the proper thing here is to just celebrate and say, how wonderful.”

Karen:      I think it poses a question to me. Do you celebrate the things that God is celebrating? Is God’s work in the world part of your fiesta response?

And we’ve talked about going on The God Hunt. We sort of inserted a lot in our teaching and on the podcast as well. But we’re going to head into it again because we want to begin to challenge you to renew this practice in your life if you had it one time and sort of gone by the wayside.

And I’m saying that only because I picked up The God Hunt book, which I’d written 20 years ago, maybe even more than that. And went through it again. I was so deeply moved by the fact that I’ve let some of those practices of finding God in my everyday world kind of go to the backside of my mind or my spirit. And I will admit that as I was reading it, I thought to myself, the author, “My, this is really good.” I wasn’t really panting myself on the back as much as it was just being surprised. Even though I had written it, I was deeply, deeply moved by the concepts and in fact even convicted that I was not practicing the God hunt in my life with the same sort of attention, the same sort of joyful response, the same sort of, okay, let’s say having a fiesta over what God has done in our lives and is still doing in our lives.

David:      We talked about The God Hunt recently and I have one of those little notebooks that I told everybody that they should have. And I write down when the things take place. And it’s just a very good practice and I thought to myself, how did I get out of this practice?

Karen:      Yeah, how did that work? Where did this go? I mean, it’s kind of gone by the wayside. This is so important and created so much growth in our lives in the past and in our children’s lives.

There are four categories in The God Hunt. And so, we’re going to particularly talk about one of them on this podcast today and that category is any obvious answer to prayer.

David:      Yeah, we should probably say there is something that you hadn’t even prayed about but it’s kind of in the milieu of what is happening. I mean, family was, I had this wonderful experience. This was two days ago because we had the birthday of one of our grandchildren. He turned 13 so he’s just become a teenager. And his mother said, “Yeah, he says to me that he thinks he wants to be a minister.” And that was, it’s just like, “Oh my golly, I’ve never thought in those terms.”

Karen:      We don’t. Your sister and grandchildren should be going into ministry, and he went, of course he’s so young. I mean, you’re not even thinking about that.

David:      Yeah, but to hear that and her say, he’s very serious about that. I thought to myself, that is so beautiful, unexpected.

Yeah, those are the kind of words that she used. But let’s talk, Karen, about our search for a church. You and I attended church in the city because we spent so many years early in our ministry there. And so, we would drive into Chicago and that went on for quite a while. But then you had medical problems and we said, “This is not going to work. It’s just too long a drive and we can’t stay there and meet with friends, socialize, go out, lunch, whatever.” We’re going to have to make some type of a change and we probably, because we’ve been in West Chicago, which is where we live, it’s probably an hour from the center of Chicago, the loop. It takes an hour to get from where we are right into the center of the city. We said we’ve not really had time in our lives to explore the churches.

Karen:      In our little community, you’re 27,000 people here.

David:      Yeah, see what God is doing in our community. So, we began all the time we’re saying, is this maybe where God would like us to spend part of our later years here in this congregation?

Karen:      Or this congregation or this kind of thing.

David:      Well, that’s a good way to put it because this Sunday we visited the 18th church on our list of those we wanted to visit and see what God was doing. We actually got there at 10 o’clock in the morning when it was to begin, and we walked in the church. We were the only ones there. There was a worship man practicing up in front, but they had decided to move the service back an hour because they also have a Hispanic church there that uses the same building at noon, so they kind of put things back so the two congregations could meet together.

Karen:      Well, they were having worship service out in the lawn. Everyone was out there. There was those 10-set people can stand under those canopies, I guess is what they are. The food was cooking up on grills.

And so, we went and said hi. They have three lay pastors who are part of the ministerial team. They call themselves the elders of the church. So, we met two of those people and they all have outside jobs, which was really interesting.

David:      Interesting because you have said many times, I think that it would be helpful to ministers if they would work a normal job just to see where their parishioners are because you go through seminary and then you go right into the pastorate.

Karen:      Right.

David:      You kind of lose touch of where the people are a lot of times.

Karen:      One of the wives, a pastor and elder, sort of attached herself to us and was there for us and we chatted, and we learned about the history of the church and what their outreaches were, which were really thrilling actually. The boundary of their church property is right near the West Chicago High School. And they’ve established a really wonderful relationship with the principal. And they have an outreach ministry to college kids who have gone to West Chicago but are home for the summer. It’s a training kind of thing. And just the more we heard about it, the better we felt about it. And this was without even attending a worship service. Their service that they did have was testimonies from people who had met Christ.

David:      Six different individuals and what Christ was doing in their lives and they were very touching.

Karen:      There was English and then it would be translated into Spanish, or they would speak in Spanish and then it would be translated into English.

David:      And the gentlemen said we have six and they’ll each take about five minutes. Well, they didn’t.

Karen:      It was more like 20 for each one.

David:      But they were wonderful stories.

Karen:      It was wonderful stories.

David:      A gentleman who came up to the States from Peru.

Karen:      Not a Christian.

David:      How the Lord has sought for him and drawn him into the kingdom. That was neat. There was an African American young girl who, first one from her family, who had come to the Lord and told about what a radical change it was in her life and how it’s bringing her immense joy to walk following Jesus. They were fantastic testimonies. One gentleman who was again Hispanic and he was saying I didn’t realize it, but God was with me all these years.

Karen:      Even when I didn’t know. It was so beautiful.

David:      It was very thrilling. It was a neat experience.

Karen:      So, we drove away from there and what did you say?

David:      Well, I said to myself, I kind of like that. There are some differences, but Karen probably will think they don’t allow women to speak or whatever. We don’t know.

Karen:      We don’t know.

David:      But Karen, probably, I’ll like it and she won’t like it. By golly, you open up and said that was a wonderful morning. I thought, oh my goodness, maybe I don’t have to go to the 19th church now. So that was a neat thing and we talked about it since then. And we think, “Yeah, let’s go there. Let’s explore this further but it looks like a very good connection.”

Karen:      So, that long story is to illustrate an obvious answer to prayer because we have been praying about a church home for a long time.

David:      Yeah.

Karen:      And at our age, we don’t have to run the place. We don’t have to be crucial lay people. We just want to be there and enjoy this kind of body of Christ.

David:      Contributors were able.

Karen:      Yeah, it was where able.

David:      I said to myself, I’m sure that Karen’s going to mess this up.

Karen:      You’re mean.

David:      You don’t know. And then when you said, “That was a wonderful morning.” I really enjoyed it. That I said to her, how are we going to celebrate this? Because I was trying to figure out what would be appropriate if the Lord answered that prayer after I prayed it so many times. You said, well, when the time comes, we’ll invite all those elder leaders and their wives over to the house and we’ll have a big meal.

Karen:      So, that just sounded wonderful to have them all over and get to know them and say, “If there’s any way we can help, we’d love to be a part of this. And let’s sit around and hear each other’s histories and become friends.” Really, is what we’re saying. So, what are we saying again in this podcast?

David:      If I put it into a sentence here and I had trouble trying to do this, with this long prelude, I think maybe it will be interesting. And helpful to people.

God’s children should celebrate events such as God answering long term prayer requests.  

Karen:      So that means not just saying, “Gee, thanks God.”

David:      Well, it means that you write it in the notebook and keep that notebook, which is important of these God-hunt sightings. But then you go beyond that and say, “This is not thank you God. I’m going to have a blast.”

Karen:      I’m going to rejoice in this.

David:      Any obvious answer to prayer, that’s one of the categories for God-hunt sightings. Any help to do God’s work in the world, any unusual linkage or timing, how God put those pieces together. One of those lay ministers, as we walked into the church and just saw the band rehearsing, he came over and talked and then he said, “Come on back in the room here. We’ll just sit down. I’ll tell you whatever you’re interested in knowing.”

Normally, if we’d known that it was an 11 o’clock service instead of 10, we wouldn’t have had that opportunity. So, like innocent children, we walked in.

Karen:      We had a wonderful conversation. Beautiful.

David:      The other category I didn’t mention is unexpected evidence of his care. I think that experience kind of nailed all of those. Just interesting. But we’re also saying to people, when we say God’s children, we mean people like you as a listener. You should celebrate events when God, in a special way on your behalf, tends to kind of lean very close and say, “Look, and I answered your prayer. You said it so many times. I heard you. Did you notice?”

Karen:      So, in other words, we’re saying Cerillo was right. Americans don’t do a fiesta very well. But do a fiesta when God answers your prayer, and you recognize that he’s worked in your life.

David:      Yeah, we have taught Cerillo a lot and he’s taught us a lot.

Outro:      You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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