Sergio and Lucia Conde Varela have been leaders in our community for many years. If you read the book The Bible on the Border you may remember reading about them in it. Several months ago they shared the following amazing story with us.
At one of our centers in Mexico, which Sergio and Lucia are in charge of, there was a devastating fire in one of the buildings. It was caused by a wire that shorted and sparked. The sparks quickly became a huge fire that engulfed the whole house. A propane gas tank in a storage room exploded further igniting the blaze. A worker was alone in the building at the time but was able to get out before the tank blew, and thanks be to God no one was hurt.
The building burned to the ground and everything in it was destroyed – beds, chairs, tables, desks, bookshelves full of books – nothing escaped the ravaging flames. The fire was so intense that even the heavy duty commercial stove we had in the kitchen (like the kind used in restaurants) melted down as if it were butter on a hot day. Everything was lost – or so we thought.
“When we arrived at the site,” Sergio and Lucia shared, “we were dumbstruck by how complete the devastation was. In less than two hours, all that we had accumulated in the 20 years we had been using this building was gone just like that. But we both had a tremendous peace and tranquility as we gazed at the ruins. The neighbors were surprised at how calm we were. God had allowed this fire for some reason, and we submitted right away to His will. We only asked Him to show us what to do.”
Lucia continued, “Our neighbors wanted to help in some way, so a few days later a big work party came to shovel out the mounds of ashes which were 3 feet deep in places. We filled truckload after truckload with the burned debris. Suddenly we heard someone yell excitedly, ‘I found something!’
Everyone stopped working and rushed over to see what he had found. There on the ground buried in an ash pile was a book. When he picked it up and brushed it off, I recognized it at once. It was my bible! I had kept a bible on a wooden pedestal on the desk in the bedroom. This young man had been shoveling ashes in the place where it would have been. He handed it to me and I carefully examined it. The bible had some slight burn marks around the edges but when I opened it the pages were in good shape — and these are delicate onion skin pages! The desk was gone, the pedestal was gone, everything else in the bedroom was reduced to rubble — but the bible survived!”
Sergio added, “Right away the words of Matthew 24:35 came to mind: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away but my Words will never pass away.’ Praise God!”