Two Suitcases and a One-Way Ticket

In 2019, Maria and Carlos Gutierrez sold their three-bedroom house in suburban Dallas, packed two suitcases each, and moved to a small fishing village outside Oaxaca, Mexico. They had no guaranteed salary, no return flight booked, and no contacts beyond a single church elder named Don Refugio who had emailed them once. Their friends thought they had lost their minds.

Their first week, three doors slammed in their faces. A landlord refused to rent to them. Maria cried in a borrowed kitchen while Carlos wondered if they had misheard God entirely. But Don Refugio introduced them to a widow named Esperanza, who offered them a room above her tienda and fed them tamales every morning without being asked. Within six months, a small Bible study of eight people had grown to forty.

When Jesus sent out the seventy-two in Luke 10, He gave them almost nothing to carry — no purse, no bag, no extra sandals. He told them to eat what was set before them and to shake the dust off their feet when rejected. The mission was never about preparation or resources. It was about dependence.

Maria will tell you now that those slammed doors mattered as much as the open ones. Every rejection stripped away another layer of self-reliance. Every welcome reminded them that the harvest belongs to the Lord, not the harvesters. The seventy-two returned rejoicing over what they had accomplished, but Jesus redirected their eyes: rejoice that your names are written in heaven. The power was never theirs. It never is.