Day Care Fire

You probably have heard of the tragic news of the fire at the daycare here in Hermosillo that has claimed 43 lives to this point.  We thank you for your prayers on how to respond with the love and compassion of Christ to this overwhelming need.

We were heading out for our annual youth retreat on Friday afternoon and it seemed something big was happening.  One of the youth was delayed because of a shoot-out between the army and drug trafficers that had a major street blocked and then as we finally left with 4 vehicles packed with youth as we passed through downtown the traffic was snarled at every intersection, police were directing traffic, ambulances were going in all directions.  One police told me there was a fire at a daycare, and that is all we knew until Shelli let us know Saturday morning on our retreat that many children had died and there were many others in critical condition.  We ended up coming home earlier than scheduled from our youth retreat to see how we could get involved.  Last night many from our church attended a city-wide service of churches where we were among thousands praying and crying out to God for the suffering families and our city.  We prayed for the city mayor and the state governor that were in attendance.

We don’t know any of the families personally and so far it doesn’t seem that any of our church families have direct relations to the affected families.

Right now, we are seeking that Lord on how to get involved, with immediate needs and long term needs.  The whole city is flooding the families with food and meeting other immediate needs.  We need your prayer on how to love and show compassion as Jesus would.

Please pray for the leadership of our church Arbol de Vida (Tree of Life) as we need to respond in unity, wisdom and compassion.  Pray that as we wait upon the Lord He will show us the way.  There will be many long term needs that will seem less urgent (even though they aren’t) once the initial shock is over and that is where we hope to get invovled as well.

Thank you for your prayer.

Greg