First Trip to Village "M"

Team M (Me, Dale, Natalia, David, Kyle, and Shaye who didn't go this trip)
Natalia and I are the only first year trainees on our team
Seriously this WAS the best shot of the team 

I am sitting here just amazed at the last 4 days!  I will try to give you a brief overview of this past week.  (Huge side note- the previous week we had Russ Kennedy speak with us for a whole week on the theology of the heart.  It was an incredible class and really wonderful to look into the Bible to see what God says about our heart, not the "thing" inside of us but our beliefs and wants that shape our world view.  I am still processing all that was in there for me.)

Monday:
We were supposed to have classes until noon and then head off to our villages.  With hurricane Ingrid making landfall just south of the villages we were going to in Mexico that morning, it was decided that we should wait until Tuesday morning to see what the hurricane would do and how bad the rain would be.  So we shifted gears and had a full day of class studying Acts in mission.  There is always work to be done here and never an afternoon to be wasted.

Tuesday:
We met at the suburbans and after looking at the reports and a call to someone close to the area, it was decided to go.  So our team of five loaded up the red suburban and headed off to village M (for safety we won't say the names of the villages we go to or the real names of the people we visit with). 
I can't say exactly where we went, but through surprisingly dry conditions (except for a portion of the road) we made it safely to village M.

 

                   

We arrived and began cleaning the house we are able to sleep in while we are in M.  It is awesome to have a place to sleep that isn't in tents. 

 

We are continuing the church planting work started years ago.  There are two Christians in the village we know of for sure.  There is no church for them to go to.  Can you imagine that?  We have trouble picking the church we like the best.  They don't have that choice in their area. 

 

So the rest of Tuesday the second year students took us around the village meeting those who were out and about.  We are blessed to have Natalia with us on our team.  She is a fluent Spanish speaker and does most of the translating for us.  It was great to meet with different people and hear that the hurricane didn't do any damage to their houses or boats.  Most of the houses are made of wood or concrete with a sheet metal roof and approximately 15'x20' in dimension.

We ate with "Roger" and "Abby" (again, not their real names if you couldn't tell) the first night and had a delicious meal.  They are the known believers in the village and it was great and hard to see that they desperately wanted more teaching from the bible.  They want to know more about Jesus and be able to share with their neighbors when they come to them.  Abby talked about how the village seems to come to her when there is a crisis and she wants to know how to help them with more than just the immediate calamity.  She and Roger are both hungry for teaching. 

 We got back to our house at dark and used our headlamps since there wasn't any electricity.  I must have caught a flu bug because that evening I spent the next 3-4 hours really sick outside.  But God was gracious to me and the next day I was ready to go(a little slower than normal though).

Wednesday:
After normal chores getting ready for the day and devotions we again set off to visit more people.  It was great to be able to visit with some of the people the second year students hadn't seen since last May.  It seemed like half of the conversations turned to spiritual things and it was good to know there is interest in the gospel.  This is a fishing village and most of the people survive by fishing.  The fishing hasn't been very good the last few years and most are hoping the hurricane will help bring more fish closer to shore. 

I had the privilege to pray for "Oliver".  We were able to talk with him for quite a while about life and what it means to follow Jesus.  He knows some things about God and Jesus and it will be exciting to pour into him and the other people in the village over the next 8 months.

We ate dinner with Roger and Abby again that night.  In the span of a day they became more open with us and we also started conversing more casually, using our translator when we could, or if they were in conversation with someone else we would communicate with words and gestures and pointing and laughing.  It made me want to dive into Spanish (and charades) all the more!

Finally, after dinner we sat down with Roger and Abby for a bible study.  We used some of the many awesome tools we are learning at school.  We showed them in a practical way how making simple observations of the text of scripture can really bring out great insight and understanding of the meaning in the text.  I wish I could have captured how, just like us in school weeks before, they were starting to see how observations of who, what, where, repeated words, and so on really help us understand what the writer was trying to convey.  They asked great questions and the interaction was so good!  Natalia was exhausted but she did great and our first study was a big success.  We left them with some homework and another text to study while we are gone.  God was so good to us.

Thank you all so much for the prayer during the week.  It is awesome to be a part of the ongoing church planting work here and know that your prayers and support are reaching people in Mexico.  What a privilege to do this with you all!

Praise:

• The hurricane didn't have any effect here in Los Fresnos or in our village!
• We had a fruitful first trip into Mexico.
• We are here.  It still seems crazy!

Prayer:

• Please pray we can continue to disciple the very few believers in village "M".
• Pray that we can give an opportunity for the whole village to hear the gospel.
• Pray I will be able to keep up with the mounting assignments and reading we have! Yikes!
• Pray Brita and the kids will continue to firm up their homeschool routine and daily living here.  
• Pray we continue to raise financial support.  We are currently at 65% of our monthly goal for living expenses. 
• God would be glorified and worshiped through all of this!