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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
and Special guest Rosemary Lokers
(J) Well Martha and I have come down to Honduras, and we’re setting Rosemary up with a Mac, and the ability to be able to produce with the Mac software, a new looking website. So we’d invite you to go to that; it’s looking really good so far, this is just a shell but she’s going to continue to revamp it. We’re really looking forward to how that’s going to bring interaction between those that are listening to the podcast and the web so they can go and see pictures of the people we’re talking about in the podcast and during the updates from Honduras. As well we will bring the pictures into the podcast itself. So we’re really excited about that. She’s made a good choice to jump to the Mac where it’s a lot easier.
(M) Is there something up already on her website?
(J) Yeah, she just put up a bunch of pictures, and she has two different photo diaries. She has a page about her family, and then the newsletters. We started a couple of months ago putting their newsletter up on our website, and that gives people the ability to go read it, as well as get the printed version. But now she is basically going to have these on her website so you can go and view them at http://web.mac.com/rlokers. Or you can go to our website and find them as well as the Wilson’s from Mexico. You can click right in there and see all the pictures; you can see the pictures of Christina who has the house. We’ve got Rosemary here right now, and I’d like to talk to her about that, because we’d like a little update about what’s going on since we’re here. And, we’d like to know, has the structure started, and have they started the building project?
(Rosemary) Yes John, they actually have begun the foundation and have the walls about halfway up. Our rainy season in Honduras typically begins the middle of May, and they’re hoping to build her house before the rain starts, because of the deteriorated house. It was just raining inside her house. So the church is overseeing the money, the donation, purchasing the materials and getting workers to go out there from the church and other workers to help put up the house. And they’re trying to get it done as fast as they possibly can. So they’ve made a lot of progress, and we’re real happy with what’s been done so far.
(J) What are the materials, what are they building it with?
(Rosemary) They’re building it out of adobe blocks, which are actually blocks that are made out of dried mud. They take the earth, which is like clay, and they put it in a mold and then dry them for several weeks. And then those blocks, which are quite large, bigger than a cinder block, are put together with cement in between them, and the walls are raised up that way.
(J) You know I think, when I think of adobe houses, mud houses, I think the rain would wash it away and it wouldn’t last very long. But you were saying that actually the old buildings in Santa Rosa De Copan, are actually built with that and they’ve been around a hundred years. Tell me, how is that working like that?
(Rosemary) Well after the adobe houses are built, if they’re stuccoed over with cement, then those structures can actually last for hundreds of years. And all of downtown Santa Rosa, our city has a historical society, and they want to keep the antiquity of the city as it originally was, so the streets as you know, are cobblestone, and the downtown area in a certain perimeter they won’t allow the people to tear down any of the old adobe houses. So they can take the cement stucco off and re-stucco it to make it look nicer, but the actual adobe houses, and all of the downtown stores and the municipality building, and a lot of the downtown buildings are still the old adobe blocks. So it is a structure that will last.
(J) So it’s not something that’s going to just wash away, it could actually last a hundred years.
(Rosemary) Well if it’s covered with cement it could actually last that long. But even if it’s not, it will last several years.
(J) Do they mix anything in with the mud? Like hay?
(Rosemary) They use straw, or pine needles. Yeah the adobe blocks, mixed in with the mud are pine needles. And we’ve had neighbors that have come and asked us to collect the pine needles that have fallen off of our trees to use in making the adobe blocks.
(J) It’s amazing, because the Egyptians did that with the Hebrew slaves. And how long have the Pyramids lasted. So it obviously lasts a long time.
(Rosemary) And I don’t know if you remember when you all went into Marisa’s house when it had been recently built out of adobe, but you could actually see the pieces of straw on the walls. Do you remember that? You could see the pieces of straw kind of sticking out from the adobe.
(J) Does Christina know where the money has come from?
(Rosemary) No, the church told Christina that they had not taken a collection, nor had they collected the money, but that God had provided for her need. So she has really no idea where the money’s come from, and that was really our request. (J) How does that work; I know it’s a wonderful idea to do it that way. But how does it work out better, to have the people not know where the money’s coming from. To have it be an anonymous thing.
(Rosemary) I think, just because God gets the glory. Her thanks will go to Him, and she will not feel obligated, or be able really to express her gratitude to any human.
(J) That’s wonderful. We’ve seen that when people in the Third World believe the Americans are coming down and being their supply, that the focus is on the Americans, and they really start looking for that American to supply other needs. But if you have no idea where it came from, I think it’s an awesome idea.
(Rosemary) I’m real excited about the fact that she doesn’t know. I think it’s really neat. They said when they gave her the money that she just broke down, sobbing tears and just looked up to heaven and said “thank you God, thank you God, thank you God”.
(M) Well since we’ve done these things, some money went out to the pastors too, so tell us a little about how they responded to that.
(Rosemary) I was just amazed at the timing issues of it all, because it seemed like some of the gifts just arrived right in God’s timing in specific peoples lives. Just to give one example, a lot of these pastors that are down here receive a small amount from the church, but they’re not on salary, they never know from month to month what the offering s will be, how much they’re going to get. And most pastors will have a job in addition to pastoring because they cannot support their family from the income from the church. So one particular pastor we were able to help, when I got to that house to give the money, the pastors wife was there, and when I handed her the money and said this is a two hundred dollar gift from Shulamite Ministries to you all; She broke down crying. And she told me that just a couple days before they had received their monthly amount from the church and it had been very, very low, and they did not understand how they were going to make it through the month with the amount of money that they had been given. And the pastor had said, we’re going to have to figure out some way to work this month to make some extra money; and when she got the gift she said, “Oh God is so faithful, He meets every single need”.
(J) Two hundred dollars to an American doesn’t sound like a whole lot. Tell me the difference. When two hundred dollars is given to a Honduran what does that signify?
(Rosemary) Well, this particular family is actually considered a middle class, they’re poor, but they’re not poor by Honduran standards, but poor by American standards. By Honduran standards there are a lot of people who are poorer. But they live as a family on about four hundred dollars a month. So it was like half of their monthly need.
(J) It’s incredible.
(M) Recently we got a very generous check from a friend of ours, a long time friend of ours. And I was so excited to come down and meet with Rosemary and Bob is at home with the family, thank you Bob. Rosemary’s former life was being a computer expert, so he’s holding the fort down while we go through training. We were excited to tell you Elsa, if you remember Elsa is the lady who works with the Loker’s and she was born again through this ministry, and she wanted to come down and spend one night here. Well she was just so excited to get to stay in a hotel, a very nice hotel that the Lord provided for us through John’s economy. And we were able to take her to two or three lovely dinners, and she was like a child. She just received it all. And Elsa probably has never eaten in such a place. Would that be true?
(Rosemary) No, never, never in a place like that.
(M) But she have any problem enjoying it; it was so cute, she is such a good receiver of the Lord, and yet a hard working and responsible woman. And so we had this wonderful generous gift that we still have a lot that we have to pray about where it would go. It just happened that Elsa had had a backache and Elsa’s not young, she’s in her 50’s I think…56. And Rosemary had suggested it was the bed she was sleeping in. Well, she had slept at Rosemary’s house, and the next morning she had said there was no backache, so she said, you’re right Rosemary. Well she slept in the hotel like a baby. And we decided to go buy her a bed. So we took her, and John had her lie down on every bed, and not look at the price, and we just had the most fun. I wish everybody who gives could have gone with us; because she was like a child. So we got her a wonderful bed, and her brother will pick it up and take it to her house. Well we went to pay the bill and we were sitting on a sofa and Rosemary and John and I were chatting, and I looked over at Elsa, and her eyes were closed and tears were running down her cheeks. And she just said, I’m just thanking God, He’s so good to me. Well, what we didn’t know was that her daughter had just moved back home, and there was no bed for her daughter and a new baby. And so Elsa’s old bed will go to the daughter, and the new bed will be Elsa’s, and so it was a double provision.
(J) That’s the economy of our loving Father.
(M) Yeah, and she was so, you know she thanked us and she said I don’t know how to thank you, but she was really spending time there in the furniture store thanking God for it, and enjoying His goodness to her. And we had taken her another pair of those wonderful shoes that help her too. So it’s just so blessed to give, so much more blessed to give than to receive.
Martha’s insights on fear.
(M) So this morning in my time with the Lord, I had another insights about fear. I don’t know when the Lord’s going to let us get off of that. But at least for this little bit I’m going to turn to ‘how blessed are those who fear the Lord’. I think now that I see this it’s good to turn from our fears to the fear of the Lord. And as humans we’re going to be afraid; and all over in the Old Testament God calls us to fear Him and not fear man. It’s been one of His words to me many times. I was in Psalm 112, and I just got the most wonderful revelation that ties in with what we’re talking about. It says, “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commandments. His descendants will be mighty on earth. The generation of the upright will be blessed; wealth and riches are in his house.” It is how blessed is the person who fears the Lord and delights in His will. The New Testament perspective would be not His commandments, but His will, His specific will. And the great promise, the ‘angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him’. So the turning from fears that are human and unnatural fears and seeking the fear of the Lord. David was able to say I’ll teach you the fear of the Lord; ‘those who love life and would see good days’ in Psalm 34. I talked about that on the tapes that you’ve been mentioning. David had to learn to conquer fear, and that’s what life is all about. So many situations produce fear, and they’re tests to develop a trust in God, and a fear of Him. And then the great benefits that flow from fearing God and not fearing man, no situation, not even your own failures. But it goes on to say, (Ps.112) “It is well with the man who is gracious and lends”; but then it goes on to say, “the righteous will be remembered forever, he will not fear evil tidings, he is steadfast, trusting in the Lord, his heart is upheld”, meaning God will uphold his heart. You get out of fear, and God will meet you. “He will not fear until he looks with satisfaction on his adversaries. He has given freely to the poor. His righteousness endures forever, his horn will be exalted forever.” And the person that does that will have strength and authority. And I got so excited that the end result of getting rid of fear is that you give to the poor.
(J) That’s awesome.
(M) And I realized that the people I know that are afraid are very stingy, and of course you would be if you don’t think God’s going to take care of you, then you’ll grip everything. And you will think oh I can’t give that, because the supply is limited. And I realized that this wonderful large gift that we have been given to distribute is from someone that has no fear. And he will be blessed, and his children will be blessed. The most wonderful thing you can do to secure your children’s future is to get rid of your fear, and come to fear God who has the final ‘say’; who has the last word and is the One to be feared. Jesus said, ‘don’t fear those who can just kill your body, fear the one that can put your soul in hell’. And that is God. So one of the big human dilemmas, if not the major one, is fear.
(J) Is fear not believing that God is good? Where and how does that fit in? Do we fear because we don’t have a good God? Or do we not have a good God because we fear?
(M) Well I don’t know John, but I’m just thinking of that Ps. 34 that I mentioned. Years ago, I went through the whole entire Bible on the fear of God and listed the benefits of fearing Him.
(J) I’d love to see those notes, I really would.
(M) Oh, it was fantastic. I came out of that amazed. But one of the things that hit me the strongest and has remained is that David said, “Come you who love life, and would desire good days, come and I’ll teach you the fear of the Lord”. So it seemed to me that that was the person who could learn the fear of the Lord. So if you think life is bad, then you think you have a bad God.
(J) Right, sure, sure.
(M) And so you’re not going to be a likely candidate to learn the fear of God. Because the fear you have is placed in evil unusually. Because people who suffer believe that evil has power. So the whole stress of the universe is who has power?
