our knees and thank the Lord for the
coffee and the bread. Occasionally,
Mom would scrape enough money
together to buy a single steak. One
steak cut neatly into seven little bits,
one for each of us.
Yet I do not remember my mother
complaining or expressing anger
at what God had allowed our life to
become. She proved that her trust
was not conditional. Even when
c i rc u m s t a n c e s h a d c h a n g e d s o
drastically, she never stopped seeking
God’s kingdom.
***
From the time I was kicking in the
womb, my mother prayed I would
preach the Gospel. “Go to towns that
don’t have a church!” she’d urge me.
“Take the Gospel. Plant churches.” She
pushed and encouraged: “Go, go, go.”
For my mother, seeking God’s kingdom
wasn’t something you just did on your
knees; it was something you did on
your feet. She was constantly pushing
me to preach.
But it took me a while to take that step
of faith. Once my mother and I were
walking out in the hills of Córdoba.
“You have to get over there,” she said,
pointing to the horizon. “You have to go
preach. You need to go plant a church.”
“Mom, I’m waiting for the call,” I said.
“The call?” she said, with that dry tone
only a mother perfects. “The call!” She
was getting upset. “The call went out
two thousand years ago, Luis! The
Lord’s waiting for your answer; you’re
32 • Solutions
not waiting for His call.”
She made a good point. If God calls
us in a special way, fine. But He has
ordered us to go. We don’t need a call.
We just need to obey. My mom was
never “called.” Her Bible simply told
her to “go.” And so deeply did she take
that calling to heart that she spent her
life obeying it with joy and teaching
her children to do the same.
My mother lived to see the answer
to her prayer. I became a preacher,
and I traveled the world over, sharing
the simple Good News of the cross.
Whenever I would return from a trip,
I’d call her up. She always wanted to
know about how the ministry went. She
prayed for me relentlessly. She sought
the kingdom until the day she passed
on to her reward in heaven. She was
faithful to the end and died singing, a
happy, firm believer.
I learned so much from my mother.
Foremost among those riches was a
solid-rock trust in God and his promises.
Her faith proved to be immovable. “In
this world you will have trouble. But
take heart! I have overcome the world”
(John 16:33). She believed that, sang
that, taught that, prayed that, hoped
that, laughed, cried, and lived that.
These days, I’ve been thinking a lot
about the cross. My cancer diagnosis
has put the fire under me—as if it
wasn’t there already! It has made me
a holy fiend upon the subject of the
cross. The cross of Jesus has been
the center of everything. It must be
the center of everything. It must be
the center of my life. It must be the
center of yours. I must see myself in