Chiapas

Sorry to all of you who are regularly following this blog that I haven't posted in a while, but it has been a bit hard to find the time with all the amazing things we have been doing. Since my last post we left Mexico City and went on to the next leg of our journey which was in Chiapas. In Chiapas we stayed mainly at the YWAM San Cristobol base, which was quite a blessing. Staying at the base gave us a good amount of rest as we had beds, we didn't have to cook all our own meal, we didn't have to shop for food, etc. While there at the base the ministry we did most was going out to the streets, especially the city center and doing dramas and one on one evangelism, which was a great success. People seemed Pretty receptive to the Gospel in San Cristobol. Another ministry we did was working with a local youth group. We had the opportunity to teach this great bunch of young people the dramas we have been doing all through our Putreach and then go with them as they took them to the streets and evangelized with them. It was amazing to see their passion for the Work of the Lord and to see how with such little direction they were able to go out and do very effective ministry! It was really encouraging to see them at work and to see how missions and discipleship should really work! After staying at that base for a couple weeks we took a trip to some indigenous villages out in the moutiains. The whole trip was really almost surreal. We were a took a van for about two hours into the mountains where we took taxis as far as they could go into the mountains because the van couldn't go any further. From there we took a small footpath into down the mountain through the jungle for about thirty minutes where we got to the first village. The next village was a two hour hike from the road andyhe final one was about a three and a half hour hike, mostly uphill. The hikes were extremely physically exhausting, but it was worth it! Most of the people in the villages only spoke Tzotzil (their native dialect) and not Spanish so it was fairly hard to communicate without a translator. The women wore their own traditional clothing that they made by hand and the first two villages didn't have running water so we drank, washed dishes, and bathed in the rivers or other holes in the ground. We also slept on concrete floors or wooden benches. The whole experience was a bit difficult but it was amazing to see our brothers and sisters in the faith that live in different ways than we do! We left the villages and spent our last few days at the house of a married couple that is on staff with YWAM in Chiapas. They were very hospitable and really made us feel at home. It was a great, very relaxing way to spent the last few days of our Outreach! Now we are back in Mexico City for our debrief after Outreach, then it's back from Mazatlanfeom here. God has been so faithful during this Outreach and I can't wait to see what He has for me next!

Last Friday we left our temporary base at Jerusalem church in Mexcio City to go with the church on an outreach trip the church takes about every other week to another state called Michoacan. The place where we went in Michoacan was a rather poor, rural area where we worked in some pueblos(villages) called Aguacate, Tuxpan, and Fresnos. These are very small, farming villages in the mountains, and the culture is very different from the much if the rest of Mexico and definitively different from that of Mexcio City! The culture is extremely hospitably and very slow paced, which was a great break from the city life. I got to experience this hospitable culture firsthand because I got the opportunity to go on house visits for most of the day on Saturday. The people there were so kind, accepting us into their houses, feeding us from their meager amounts of food, and really treating us as family. During the house visits we got the opportunity to encourage a lot of people from the local Church, but I really felt encouraged as well. I also got the opportunity during the house visits to lead worship for a man who was housebound with alzheimers. On Sunday morning we split into two groups, with both groups going to different churches in the villages and one person Preqching from each group. My group went to a church that was held on someone's front porch with an amazing view of the mountains, then afterwards we were invited to go to someone's house for a great, traditional Mexican meal. Overall it was a really great weekend and a great ministry opportunity!

Mexico City: Week One (and a half)

Well, I've now officially been on Outreach since last Wednesday and it has really been a blessing so far! We took a 14 hour-long bus ride to get here on Tuesday night and we arrived Wednesday morning. The whole DTS came and stayed with us here in Mexico City for a few days so that people could see the city and maybe catch a heart for it and decide to help launch the YWAM Base that my school leader is planting at the end of this year. The first few days we mainly just took it easy and did what I would call some "missionary sight-seeing" which includes praying over the city wherever we go. At one point we were outside of a castle in the city and the Lord opened up an opportunity for us to somewhat hijack a clown's street performance and do a drama and share the Gospel in front of a huge crowd that was watching him. Since the Central America team left we have been going at a pretty good pace, which has included things like putting on a couple childrens' programs, doing evangelism around the church we are staying at, and doing dramas and evangelism at a celebration of Saint Judas Tadeo where tons of young people go to worship the saint and get high off of inhalants (which by the way was a great success!) It has been so amazing to see how God has been using this Outreach up to this point. He has been moving in some huge ways! I can't wait to see how He is going to move in the rest of this time!

Outreach!

Well, I am leaving this evening for outreach. I am a bit nervous, but I know that it will be a great opportunity to serve Christ and advance His Kingdom. During our outreach we will be doing things like working with street kids, doing street evangelism, praying for people in hospitals, and working with native people groups. Please be praying for me and my group during this time. Please pray that God will open up doors for effective ministry for us. Please also be in prayer for my group specifically. Pray that we will be unified and that we will put others before ourselves. Also please pray that we will hear the Lord about how He wants us to go about advancing His Kingdom and that we will be obedient in that. Thank you all so much for your support in this! I cannot do this alone!

Since Carnaval

The last three weeks have been a really amazing time of learning for me. The first week back from Carnaval we had teaching from Kayle Mumby about the Holy Spirit. His teaching was so spot on. He really challenged me to push into the things of the Lord more and to expect the miraculous in my everyday life. The next week was spiritual warfare with Harmony Brown. That week really challenged me to think more about the spiritual realm and to pay attention to the war that is going on among us. I know that I was set free from a lot of stuff that has been holding me back as a result of that week, and many other people have been too. Finally, last week's teaching was on worship with our worship leader on the base, Greg Brown. Greg really challenged all of us to look at worship a bit differently and to worship in Spirit and in Truth.

On a different note, all the money for my Outreach phase is due on this Wednesday and I am still in need of around $600-$700. Please pray that the Lord will provide for me in this time. Thank you.

Carnaval 2011

During the last two weeks here, Mazatlan has been celebrating Carnaval which is basically just a huge party before Lent. It was really crazy, and I'm not just talking about all the drinking and Banda music. God really poured out His Presence on this place. First of all, there was a huge program called the Invasion that took place during Carnaval, which is where over sixty churches got together and strategized about how to reach this city for Christ, then they went out and did it. In the Invasion over 4,000 people came to Christ. We here at YWAM Mazatlan also took advantage of thousands of people being in this city for the festivities. The population of our base nearly doubled as people came in as backup to help us reach the lost. We split up into four groups, one ministering inside Carnaval, one ministering outside the gates of Carnaval, one working a free coffee shop, and one team just devoted to intercession. I was on the team outside the gates for about the first half, and then I went to the team inside the gates for the second half. We saw such a great harvest! Over 400 people prayed to ask Jesus into their hearts during this time just from our group! It was really great for me especially because I feel that evangelism has been one of my weaker points in my Christian life for a long time, so it was amazing for me to have this hands-on experience and see God work! God gave us some great ideas for ministry too. On the first night I was tied up, with a rope around my wrists and torso, blindfolded, and led and pushed around by two people who were accusing me, then we would stop in a large group of people and preach about how sin binds us and blinds us but how Christ can set us free. Also, God told one group that was inside Carnaval that He wanted to heal people, so they began to pray for healing for people. Eighteen complete strangers were healed in one night, including a mute person speaking. God is so good and He really loves the lost and desires them to come to Him!

Sorry this is a bit long, but God moved in huge ways!

This week was a really uplifting week! For our teacher this week we had a man from the organization Victorious Christian Harvesters named Bob come in and share about evangelism. This man has an amazing amount of energy and passion for the Lord and for seeing the lost come to Christ and it truly showed through in his teaching! This man has shared the Gospel message with thousands of people and is truly an evangelist if I have ever met one. The teaching about evangelism this week was actually a bit challenging for me as personal evangelism has been a weak point for me in the past. Bob’s teaching really helped motivate me to do more in the realm of personal evangelism and gave me a good starting point to work from in that realm. He encouraged us to keep the message simple and to remember the fact that the power is in the Gospel itself, not in something we can do. One illustration he gave was from his earlier days doing evangelism in Mexico. In those days he made some note cards with the Gospel message in Spanish and began to memorize the cards, not really understanding Spanish at all. He then went out and presented the Gospel in what was to him just memorized sounds and people were getting saved because the power is in the Gospel message itself.

To wrap up this week, yesterday our Discipleship Training School took a trip to a small village about two hours outside the city called Apoderado. On Saturday we helped with a cell group and with a youth celebration at which I got to pray for a young crippled man, who felt the power of God, and a young girl with a heart problem.

Today we first learned a fun skit for little kids about God making each of us for a purpose and then went out into the village to share the skit with the kids. We first found about five kids, but they ran and got other kids until we had nearly twenty or thirty as an audience for the drama. We did the drama and then gave the Gospel message and gave an invitation for the youth to accept Christ. Afterwards, the kids were so excited that we were going to go over a block or two to do it again, but as we were on our way I saw a man with a crippled leg that made it so that he could barely walk. God told me we needed to pray for him, so we went over and asked if we could. When we asked we found out he was also mute but could understand everything we were saying. The man said that the leg gave him too much pain to walk on it and said we could pray, so we did. We prayed once, asked the man how he felt and he indicated that the pain had left. One person from the group said we should pray again, so we did. Afterward we asked him how he felt and he said that he had no more pain! So we asked him if he could walk and he began to walk out in front of us! He hurried over to the rest of the tough-looking men in their twenties or thirties nearly jumping for joy and motioning toward us indicating what had happened and telling them to listen to us. We had probably twenty or thirty tough men staring at us, waiting for what we would do next, so we got up in front of them and preached the Gospel, telling them that Jesus wanted to heal them physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally too, and then showed them how they could pray for Christ to come into their hearts. We then led the man who had been healed to Christ. I believe all of those men were affected greatly and that many went on to accept Christ.

As we were leaving, an elderly woman came up to us and asked us if we could pray for her nephew who had a tumor. We said we would and we followed her to his house. We prayed for the man, but the tumor didn’t go away while we were there. We told them, however, that it didn’t scare us that it didn’t happen right away because we believed that it would soon and told them that they should be praying for him as well, but when we said that the elderly lady said that she didn’t know how to pray. So we got the opportunity to share with her the fact that we can talk to God just like we would talk to our dad because He is our Father! The whole experience was truly a testimony to God’s greatness. Glory to God!