This is what happens when we forget to bring the guitar to the San Ignacio Mission.

Good Morning,

Happy belated Thanksgiving. I hope you had a wonderful day with family and friends. John and I celebrated Thanksgiving twice, which seems to be the Mexican way (even though Thanksgiving isn’t a Mexican holiday! Any excuse to celebrate is a good one.) We enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving a few days before hand at our pastor’s house and an nontraditional one on the day of at a restaurant on the beach.

 Thanksgiving Dinner: fish for me, pork ribs for him

John and I have been sick this week, so we have been moving a little slower than usual. I just had a cold, but John Mark had an attack of allergies due to a wind storm we had a few days ago. He is allergic to dust, which there is a lot of around here now that the rains have stopped for the winter. We are both beginning to feel normal again, thankfully.

The top floor of the new building at the church is finally partially inhabitable. They completed several offices and a storage room to replace the unit they had been renting. Last week, John Mark helped them more out of the storage unit and reorganizes their things upstairs. Sound equipment, craft supplies, medical gear, etc are now upstairs. 

 Preparing to pour the sanctuary floor

Freshly poured sanctuary floor

Last week in San Ignacio, we had Kilo x Kilo which is a work for food program. Several kids from the church also came out to help us. Several families came to work and received bags of food in return. There was also a lunch to say thank you to the volunteers who work at the mission. We ate at the main La Fuente church in Bucerias, which is the town John and I live in. It was fun to hang out and eat good food together.

 Cutting weeds beside the highway

 Twirling

 washing the tables

 Reading her new Bible

Kilo x Kilo food for work

I was asked to preach at the San Ignacio mission this week. I gave a short talk, my first ever, on Tuesday to about 10 adults. Misha, the pastor’s daughter and regular volunteer at the San Ignacio mission, translated for me. It went pretty well; I definitely have a lot to learn about preaching. I am really glad for the opportunity to try. John Mark is preaching three times this month. He is teaching at Eklektos, the jr. high age youth group, tomorrow. He is teaching again next Tuesday in San Ignacio, and again on the 21^st for the Spanish service at La Fuente. I think I am more nervous than he is. He is looking forward to it, I think.

 Me speaking in San Ignacio

Yesterday, I was responsible to bring refreshments for the English Adult Bible Study. My “oven” at home is actually a large toaster oven. It works great, and I am happy to have it, but it only makes very small batches at a time. I only own one oven safe pan, and it was not large enough for the brownies I was making. I decided to cook the brownies at the church since I was sure they would have larger baking dishes and a functional oven. You would think that I would have learned by now: nothing is easy here. I found a couple baking dishes that would work, but were far from ideal, and preheated the oven. When I went to put the brownies in the oven, I realized that it was cold.  A friend suggested that the pilot light needed to be lit. After ten minute of trying to light the thing, it was suggested that the propane to the oven had been turned off. John went to check and sure enough it was. Now, the propane was on, the pilot light was lit, and the oven was preheating. Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a small explosion in the oven. John rushed over and turned it off. We consulted our friend who reassured us, “oh yeah, it does that.” Not sure whether to be comforted or not, we relit the oven and cooked the brownies without further incident.

Today, one of the pastors from La Fuente’s parent church is coming down from Tepic to teach John, another pastor, and I about the new website design. Our site desperately needs some renovation. I am pretty happy about the change. It sounds like John will be the one primarily charge of the new templates. He is looking forward to doing some techie/design work.

This afternoon, I will also be teaching dance for the Christmas program this month. I choreographed a dance for the kids, and we have been practicing on Fridays. We only had two girls coming for a little while, then some of the kids from a nearby orphanage started coming. I am expecting between 8-10 kids to dance with us on December 18^th. I have really enjoyed teaching them, and I am thinking about offering to teach at the orphanage a few times a month.

Tomorrow is breakfast at the missions, so we will bring a typical Mexican breakfast food, sandwiches or tortas, out to San Ignacio with us. The Canadian volunteers are here at the church now preparing the sandwich fixings. They come at 6am on Saturdays, before sunrise, to prepare 200 tortas for all the mission locations. It is a huge help for those who work at the missions to have the tortas pre-made.

Cutting onions for tomorrow's tortas

Even though the weather has started to cool off (we finally need more than a sheet to sleep with at night), it doesn’t feel like the Christmas season at all. I don’t miss home as much as I would if it did feel Christmasy, so it is not a bad thing, I guess. We are staying here for Christmas, though beyond that we don’t have any holiday plans. Although, I should mention that the church has about 10 Christmas parties planned between now and then, so we will certainly be celebrating.

Thank you for all of your prayers. We would appreciate continued prayers for our health; we have been sick more in the months that we have been down here than we are used too, but I’m sure part of that is due to the time we spend with kids. We also need more teachers at the mission. Please pray that we will find reliable people who have a heart for kids and for Jesus. (Matthew 9:37-38 – He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields.”)

Blessings in Christ,

Moorea

Hello,
We have been just as busy as ever the last week or so.

Circle of Concern, a non-profit that has been a foundational part of La Fuente's prayer and financial support, came down last week. They were only here for 2 days, but those days were jam packed! They had a team helping with the construction and another team doing painting in the dinning room and the new offices upstairs.

 

Pouring the footings for the sanctuary columns

New paint!

They also helped the pastoral staff at La Fuente run a children's program in a new school in a nearby town called San Vicente. The schools in this part of Mexico often have two sessions of classes in a day. One group of teachers and kids come in the morning from 8am-1pm and another group comes in the afternoon from 1pm-5pm. We did a program for both sessions of kids. We had crafts, dancing classes, relay races, class photos, and teaching about character. There were also some dentists who held a free clinic and an eye glass station that gave free glasses away to the adults who came. We had about 500 kids participate in our program in San Vicente.

 Craft

 Free dental clinic

 Class Photos

 Team activities

 Learning a dance

La Fuente has a mission (church services and kid's programs) that operates in San Vicente twice a week. The mission had its one year anniversary about a month ago. That area has been recently developed. Hundreds of families live there but there are no churches. La Fuente has been praying for land to build a church in that area longer than John and I have been here. It was really exciting to spend some time with the kids of that area.

The next day, Saturday, We did had medical clinics and kids' programs in San Ignacio in the mission that John and I work with. The town is very small, about 300 people. We did not have the same number of kids, probably 50 all in all, but a lot of them were kids I hadn't seen before which is exciting. Lots of people turned out for the medical clinic. They had a pediatrician, three dentists, and a team of doctors from the state.  They also had an eye clinic and an opportunity for families to have photos taken together. They would print and frame the photos right there. The team was also sharing the gospel at the clinic and giving away Spanish Bibles. I saw several people praying with and talking with team members through out the morning.

 

Watching a drama

The drama

Teaching about the fruit of the Spirit

Learning a dance

Eye glasses clinic, and the waiting room for the doctors & dentists

Ministering to those who came

The government also sent a medical team to the San Ignacio mission

That evening, we had an outreach in the town square in Bucerias. We had some balloon animals and face paint for the kids and showed the movie Soul Surfer. It was a really fun time. We had a lot of people come out for the movie, which was great.

Watching Soul Surfer in the downtown square in Bucerias

Side Note: downtown is a dangerous place for John Mark because there is a churro cart that makes chocolate, caramel, sweet and condensed milk, and strawberry filled churros. This particular evening I believe he had FOUR. He has made it a tradition that we stop for churros after mission on Tuesdays and whenever we happen to be downtown.

One of the young couples on the team had lived here in Bucerias and worked with la Fuente two years ago. They were really interesting and fun. John and I got to spend a little bit of time with them. It was great. One of the things that we really miss when we are here is having friends who are close to our age and stage of life. We know a lot of wonderful people who live here, but all of them are 10 years younger, 20 years older, or have two kids. It was fun spending some time with a couple near our age and who understand the dynamic of living in Mexico. We are happy to have met them.

Over all things are going well. We will be going up to Tepic for a couple days next month to learn how to use a website template which we will then implement. It sounds like it will become John's job to keep up the website, which he is excited about. I hear that Thanksgiving is next week :) We don't have any specific plans, but we have decided to have fish at a nice-ish beach side restaurant or to go the the local sushi place. Basically fish or fish for thanksgiving.

Please pray for the San Ignacio mission. There have been some miscommunication and shifting around of leadership. We are talking about making some big changes. Please pray that those in charge now do not get offended and that we will have enough teachers to cover our kids' classes would be very much appreciated. We need more help.

Thank you so much for all of your support.
Blessing & Love,
Moorea

So, this happened yesterday...



They tore down the old building and two trees to make way for the foundation posts for the new sanctuary.
<3
Moorea

Hello,
Here is a video made from the photos of the baptism we had last week. A couple of our friends are talking about organizing another swimming trip since that day was so fun. Enjoy.

I learned last night that "estoy caliente" does not in fact translate at "I'm hot" but as "I'm horny".


No wonder those kids looked at me funny.

Good Morning,
Pastor Keith gave a message this week about how important it is for a church to have a focused children's ministry. You can listen to the message entitled Fight IV. The statistics he gave are staggaring:
19 out of 20 Christians accepted Christ before the age of 25
85% of Christians accepted Christ between 4-14 years of age
Half of all Mexican citizens are under the age of 25

I an not sure where he got his stats, but I did find this interesting article from the Barna group concerning the age of conversion in the Christians church.

In the message, Pastor Keith talks about applying the business concept of investing where you will see the most return to ministry. Kids are the most important part of La Fuente's ministry from an evangelistic standpoint. Children and young people are much more likely to make a commitment to Jesus often will keep that commitment for the rest of their lives. The kids are not just the future of the church, they are the church. 

When I was home last month, I shared at our missions meeting that my understand of children's ministry has totally changed since I have been in Mexico. I used to think of kids' ministry as a babysitting programs so that the adults could focus on God. My perspective is so different now. Kids are so easy to impact and willing to learn. The older I get, the more I see how uncomfortable an adult must become before they are willing to change on a fundamental level. The philosophy and worldview of most adults is set. But children are like wet cement, they will take whatever mold they are poured into. This information is very powerful because it shows us how to develop a ministry that raises up lovers of God.

Of course, this is not to say that ministries focused on adults are less important. They aren't, but when talking about evangelism, and adult convert is an exception, not the standard. God is not surprised by this statistic. He knows how people think. He also loves children. A lot. I am really grateful to be learning this lesson, which I know is close to God's heart.

But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.” -Matthew 19:14

 
“Yes,” Jesus replied. “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘You have taught children and infants to give you praise.’ ” -Matthew 21:16

 
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. -1 John 5:1

"And in the future, your children will ask you, 'What does all this mean?' Then you will tell them, 'With the power of his mighty hand, the Lord brought us out of Egypt, the place of our slavery.' - Exodus 13:14

Love,
Moorea