Sunday, June 7, 2009

Weekend Report

We spent Friday night and Saturday morning at Beulahland Bible Camp hanging out as a team. It was great to bond with old and new friends while we did some cultural presentations, shared what God's doing in our lives, prayed with our partners and studied God's Word. It was exciting to hear two of our team mates express a desire to be baptized. Both of them had been baptized at a young age but wanted to be baptized now as a public statement regarding their faith. What a cool end to our time together.

Because of people's schedules, it didn't work to get baptized right then but they planned an evening baptism and invited a few others via text message to join in the celebration. It would have been great to have the whole church family but it wasn't really a baptism that we planned in advance.

There is a lot to be decided and figured out for our trip yet. We have several trainings to get under our belts. Currently though we know that God is at work and we're surrendering to Him about it.

By the way, a few people have made it their goal to not complain one single time while we're gone for 9 days. Pray for them. And pray for the rest of us that God will work in us so that we might not complain either. God calls us to suffer for him and we know that growth will come from that but I'm not sure that anyone is asking for suffering at this point!

Friday, May 29, 2009

Estamos aprendiendo a hablar espanol!

Hola! Please be in prayer for our team as we learn to train our brains (& tongues!) to think & speak in a new language. And pray for our teacher that his patience with our learning abilities continues to remain ever so steady as it was last Tuesday - muchas gracias Ignacio!! Though we cannot learn everything in this short time to become fluent, we pray that God will use these sessions to help us learn just what we'll need to communicate with the people whose lives we enter in Mexico City - that we may feel a sense of being more comfortable and ready to speak, opening our lives with Christ to theirs. "Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say." Exodus 4:12

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Spanish Class

We met for our first Spanish class tonight. Senor Ignacio seemed quite surprised at the turnout.

We learned and practiced some of the basics: greetings, asking a person's name, asking a person's age, etc. It was informational, educational and fun. The time went by very quickly and before we knew it, we'd been there two hours.

We also learned that there are appropriate ways to enunciate certain words as a mispronounciation could translate differently and be quite embarassing.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

FUNdraiser Update

My how our God provided last weekend! We are so thankful for those that God used in the last few days. So many participated. Thanks for partnering with us by:
  • donating items both large and small.
  • organizing the items
  • helping "man" the garage sale
  • stopping by and showing your support
  • shopping for our items
  • donating to the cause
  • praying for us and those we rubbed shoulders with

Regardless of our unbelief and/or lack of faith, God did provide every penny we asked for, and then some. Different team members have different stories of how God worked during the garage sale. Here's two quick ones:

  • One guy who likes to garage sale and bargain had various conversations with one of the team members. Bothered by the lack of price tags, Tamara told him to pay what he thought it was worth but reminded him that they were fundraising and would be appreciative if he wanted to donate in addition to his purchase.
  • Another guy who is not the type to garage sale came in and proceeded to check out what was on the various tables. As one of the team members watched him, he knew full well that the guy wasn't interested in anything we had to offer. Was he scanning each table, or counting to 10? We'll never know. But we do know that Rhett got to witness God working through this man as he eventually walked over to the donation box and put a wad of greenbacks in the box.

Lord, You are the Provider. Go we know that you are capable but didn't even begin to imagine how quickly you would provide. Thank you for working in the hearts of believers and those in unbelief. Continue to use us and prepare us to be your hands and feet!