John Mark & Moorea

Hello,

So this is going to be a guest post by John Mark, so it may not be as refined as you are used to but I will give this blog thing a shot. We have been doing really good, staying pretty busy with the day to day work but finding really fun things to do in our free time. We really feel at home here in Bucerías and are enjoying the work we are able to do with La Fuente (the ministry we are working for).

Team

We had a team of five people come down from Michigan from a church of approximately 1500 people to check out La Fuente. They sent down their mission’s pastor as well as one of their youth pastors to see if their church would partner with us and send more teams down. Whenever La Fuente has teams come down, Moorea is in charge of scheduling the team and what they will be doing while they are here. She acts as a coordinator and spends time emailing the teams and answering questions, acting as a go to person for both the team coming down and the pastors here when they have any questions. I also help with the teams but more logistically and hands on. I coordinated some painting and other construction projects the team helped us with while they were here. I also am the professional chauffeur for the team, picking them up from the airport and driving them around while they are here. Having the team kept us running for the whole 10 days. We ended up being behind on a lot of the stuff we normally take care of and it seems like we still haven’t caught up, and it’s been several weeks since they left. We enjoy spending time with all of the people who come. We end up meeting people from all over the US and Canada who come from all different backgrounds and are missions minded.  All in all having the team was a great success. We were able to get a lot done with their help and they have already planned a team of their youth group this summer and another team of adults next February! I think you could say they caught the vision of all that La Fuente is doing and believe in it.

Some of the team painting at the church

Santa Fe

La Fuente has been working for some time trying to get a land donation from the government in a town near Bucerías called San Vicente. Nothing has ever opened up there but the government said there were several options in a nearby town called Santa Fe. Santa Fe is an area that has several large housing developments around it, yet has no church. None. No Christian church, no Catholic church, no Jehovah's Witnesses (JW’s are actually fairly numerous around here), so the opportunity to expand the kingdom is great. Last night when they had a service in a park near the land we are hoping to get there was 90 people (mostly kids) who attended! There is also a ministry in the US called Kids Around the World who wants to donate a playground to La Fuente but we need the land in Santa Fe to put it on. Please be praying that we will be able to get this land and get it quickly.

San Ignacio kids classes

Moorea playing catch with a girl from San Ignacio

We have been going through the story of Moses in the bible with the kids in San Ignacio. The older kids were doing well at remembering the story but the younger kids (ages 3-6) were not remembering it as much. Something we have found though is if you do very tactile things / hands on things with them, they are a lot more likely to remember the story. One example of this is when we were going over the plagues in Egypt and how the Israelites had to paint the door frames with lambs blood Moorea took some paper and put it up and let the kids paint it red (I lifted the little ones so they could paint the top of the frame as well).  Another example is when the Israelites went through the red sea we brought a bed sheet and had them walk through it to music. When the music stopped we would drop the sheet on them and tickle the “Egyptians” who were drowning.  The kids really liked that one.  One more example is when the Israelites were going through the desert they were led by the cloud by day and the fire by night and if it wasn’t for that they wouldn’t know where to go and basically be lost. So I made a maze out of the chairs and tables that day, then I crumpled up a few napkins in my hand to be the cloud and blindfolded the kids and put their hands on the napkins that were in my hand and led them through the maze. I then explained how that just how they trusted me the Israelites trusted God, and how we need to trust God the same. Really simple things but it really helps the kids learn the stories better.

John Mark playing with the kids at the orphanage

Friends / Crew

This is my new love language,
carne asada tacos

We have started hanging out with the same group of friends several times a week. The best part of it is they are our age as well. We typically go get taco’s from a stand after church, but we also go to the movies, go hiking, play the Wii (Just Dance 2), go to different church events, and in general stay up ridiculously late. Moorea and I have really enjoyed having people closer to our age to spend time / goof off with.

Salsa classes

Moorea told me even before we left the US to come down here that she wanted to take salsa classes. We have a friend who told us about one and we have been going for two weeks now, twice a week. Our teacher is a little Venezuelan who has studied several kinds of dance and has even danced competitively in an international dance competition that was aired on ESPN. I have really been enjoying it. I am not super motivated to work out and this is a way that I am doing at least some cardio every week. It is also nice to have a something else that my wife and I have in common that we can do together. Another perk of the class is I feel like my Spanish comprehension is getting better as our classes are taught in Spanish.

New vehicle

We had a nice little Honda civic before w left and came down here. Since deciding to stay here longer we decided it would be best to sell it and buy something that can handle the Mexican roads better (dirt roads, pot holes, cobble stone roads, heavy tropical rain). We decided to get a Toyota 4runner as it has better ground clearance, bigger tires, and can haul people and stuff easily. My dad took the money from us selling our car and started looking for one and bought a nice clean white little 4runner for us that was down in Stockton. He is having our mechanic go over it, taking care of different maintenance items and make sure its good to go.  My mom ran around and made sure everything was squared away with DMV. The CD player was broken in the 4runner and my parents are taking a cd player out of one of their other cars and putting it in ours. My parents have been such a blessing helping us get a car and make sure its road worthy. Thank you mom and dad!

Trip Home

We are planning to fly home in the end of May for two weeks and then we will drive the 4runner back down. We have a close friend getting married and Moorea is in her wedding. We will also be visiting friends and family and shopping for cloths, technology items, and other things we cannot get down here (or there is a large markup on them). We will be having a missions meeting talking about the work we are doing, stay tuned for when.

Vision Juvenil

We had the opportunity to go to a youth conference in Tepic, which is the capitol of our state with some friends and some of the youth from church. The church we are working for has a sister church in Tepic and the conference was held at that church. There ended up being 1,200 youth from costal and central Mexico, it was awesome to be able to worship with that many youth really pressing into God! We went up early and spent some time in a big park and going to the mall for a while. After the conference we went out for hamburgers and hot dogs and didn’t get home till 4:30 in the morning! (it’s a three hour drive).

Even the monkeys drink coca in Mexico,
At the park in Tepic

Our neighbors

We rent the top floor in a little   two-story apartment building, and our neighbor downstairs is one of the pastors at La Fuente named Greg and his family. Greg is the worship leader for the Spanish services and a really awesome, upbeat guy. Around our apartment there are more apartments and a few months ago a tarot card reader moved in downstairs, directly across the street. We were defiantly praying and doing some spiritual warfare, both for the tarot card reader himself and his family and for the people who were lost and looking for answers coming to see him. But Greg took it one step further. In Mexico many businesses don’t have hours they work or normal days off. They just work when they want to and don’t work when they don’t want to. Greg took advantage of that fact and whenever someone came to see the tarot card reader and he wasn’t there Greg would go out and talk to them. He would invite them to sit on his porch and talk to them. He would say, “if you ever want you can come talk to me. I have what you are looking for”. He spent time counseling different ones and praying with them, and out of that one family got saved! They are even serving on the usher team now and the adults are scheduled to get baptized next time we have baptisms. Praise God!

Oliver

Oliver Version 2.0

Two weeks ago, we had a big scare. One of the pastors has a small son, about 14 months old named Oliver. One afternoon, he fell down a flight of stairs several meters high. When he hit the floor, he started convulsing and then stopped moving or breathing. He turned blue and then yellow.  Both his parents were there and said afterwards that they felt that his spirit was gone. He was dead. They immediately started praying for him, hysterical as any parent would be in that situation. Several minutes passed as they prayed. Suddenly, his eyes opened and he started moving normally. They put him in the car and sped to the hospital. When they arrived, little Oliver was acting totally normal, mimicking other patients and asking to go home. They stayed for several hours, testing him, but nothing was wrong. He didn’t even have a bruise or a bump the next morning!! We have been celebrating and praising God who is able to raise people from the dead. We are in awe of this amazing miracle that God has done for all of us who love this little boy. His parents have declared that Oliver has been born again in a literal sense – according to their reckoning, he is two weeks old on Sunday.

Thank you all for your prayers and support.

Peace be with you,

john mark

Please pray:

La Fuente will receive the land donation in Santa Fe

John Mark’s health (allergies)

Building permit for the sanctuary would come through

That we would continue to learn the language

Protection for the Staff and their families at La Fuente