Pastor Von

I went on a one day trip to Mexico years ago. I wouldn't say it changed my life forever, but there was a man on that trip that people called Pastor Von that has forever been etched in my memory. Although I couldn't remember his face, I could remember his fearlessness, his blunt manner of speaking, and his loving determination to change lives.
Now, years later, as a youth pastor I sit here in my office thinking about cool things the youth group could do for the Lord and the name Von came to my mind. I knew two things about him: he worked out of San Diego, and he had a ministry where he brought people into Tijuana to clean/feed/help the impoverished. I decided to google "von mission trips" and nothing came up. Then I remembered someone mentioning him to me in an email a while back so I went into my yahoo mail and searched "von". Lo and behold, there was an email that mentioned Pastor Von's ministry. When I searched "Pastor Von" this was the first item on the list.
When the picture loaded, I recognized him. I also remembered the name of his ministry: Spectrum Ministries. When I saw he had a blog, I had to read it. And lastly when I read these words, a smile came over my face and I almost welled up in tears...I don't know why but these things are close to my heart. He wrote, after much talk about the dangers of Tijuana:

"Sunday I'm heading into one of the more dangerous areas of the city to preach. Does this make me a hero or a fool? Neither. I'm just doing what God wants done in a dark part of the city that needs a little light. I'm not preaching scared or walking scared."

Man, how awesome is that. We could use more of that in the world.