The team went on to report how that the desert temperatures can be extreme: very hot during the day and extremely cold during the night.  They also reported that the windows and a couple of doors had not yet been installed in the building.  They would need to sleep in that building, so they were quite concerned about the desert creatures that may freely wander into the building seeking warmth.  Some of the boys had already killed a couple of snakes that day, and then there were the spiders!  Now these were not your garden-variety spiders; these were the large tarantulas, that they had been warned about, that live in the Mexican desert.  So needless to say, they spent a cold, sleepless night on spider patrol!  They each took turns standing guard, watching so that they didn't have any of these unwanted visitors sharing their bed.

When the morning came, they were looking forward to a hot breakfast.  One of the ladies there in that small town had volunteered to cook for them and prepared cornmeal cakes.  They all sat down together, gave thanks, and began to eat and talk about the events of the night.  They were about half finished with their breakfast when the cook mentioned that rats had gotten into the cornmeal.  One of the ladies of the mission team commented, “What a shame to see the food ruined and go to waste - to have to throw out all that corn meal!"   The cook replied, “Well, I knew you'd want to have breakfast and that's all we had, so I just did my best to cut away that portion of cornmeal that the rats had eaten away and used the rest for your breakfast.”

When one of the ladies of the mission team heard this news, she was furious!  She stood to her feet, looked the cook straight into her eyes and said, “Let me tell you something...  if I had only known that conditions here were going to be THIS BAD, I would've NEVER come!”  And she stormed off to her room.

Well, after she had spent some time lying on her bed thinking, she began to feel guilty.  “I should have never said that to her,” she thought.  “That was wrong!  In a few days, we will return to our comfortable air-conditioned lives.  But this is their home and their way of life every day!”  Then she had a chilling thought.   “What if… the Lord Jesus had thought the same about coming HERE to this world?”

Jesus knew the condition of the world before He came into it.  He knew the horrific treatment that awaited Him here at the hands of sinful man.  But, He still came.

If he had NOT come, where then would that leave you and me?  We would have been left in a deplorable, deadly condition (Romans 6:23).  But because of His great love for us, Jesus came to this world to die on the cross for our sins so that we can be forgiven and receive the gift of eternal life in a place (heaven) where conditions are delightful, not deplorable (see Revelation 21:3-4).

God will forgive and give eternal life to those who place their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turn from their sins in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confess Him before men (Romans 10:9-10), and are baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse from sin those who continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7-9).

“He still came just for me, He still came.
Knowing all He would endure, He still came.
Disregarding ev’ry cost, from the manger to the cross.
He still came just for me; He still came.”