Ohhhh the week of goodbyes.  This week was full of "lasts"- the last time going to our internships, the last time in Granjas, the last time in Estrella, our last Sunday at church- God has been so abundantly good in the way He planned this week- even though it has been full of tears, we have had some really sweet times of prayer and fellowship with friends here. 

Tuesday we said goodbye to Sara's family.  We met Sara in November, I believe, after already having known her 3 children for at least a month.  Junior, Justin, and Kimbo were always running around in the street, and we never even really knew which house they lived in until we decided one day that we really should meet these kids' parents.  We chatted with Sara a few times before we left for Christmas break, and she was pregnant when we met her, so Jenny especially got really into finding lots of things for the new baby (she originally told us the baby was due in February).  When we came back after Christmas, the family had moved to another part of the city, but had left their three year old son Justin behind with a neighbor.  This is quite a foreign concept to most of us, and as well it should be- you just don't leave your kid behind when you move.  The neighbor told us that the parents always hit the kids (who are 5, 3, and 2- and all from different dads), and she didn't know when the family was coming back to get him. 

About a month ago, I saw Sara again- still pregnant (either the doctors had been off about 3 months, or she hadn't ever had a checkup and just made a guess about when the baby was due).  Every time we see her, she's been a little bit less stand-offish than the time before, but has never welcomed any talk about God/ accepted our invitation to cell group.  Last week her son Junior came to cell group to tell us that his little baby brother had been born, and his mom was in the hospital, so Jenny and I thought we would just try to see if we could find favor in the eyes of the hospital staff to get in and visit her (they've always told us that's the only wing we're not permitted to enter).  But we prayed, and God answered!  It was so cool, because we didn't even know her last name, but somehow the Lord granted us that favor and we got to enter the big room where the 25 plus new mommies all hang out together for a few days while their families find the money to pay their hospital bill and get them out.  She was so glad to see us- it was really cool how seeing someone in a situation like that somehow makes you feel so much closer to them- and I think that's how she felt about us.  Like we had done something huge to come visit her, even though it was just the Lord's creative provision that allowed us in.  We got to hang out with Sara and her new baby boy for about 45 minutes, and God gave me the honor of being the first person to ever pray over this little boy for his life- it was really neat.  

   We got to see Sara and her husband two more times after that- we talked to him a little bit about what an incredible blessing and huge responsibility God gives along with the gift of children.  I don't know the current situation in their household regarding their physical actions towards their kids (other than the fact that they are the dirtiest kids I see in Granjas, so hygiene is not a priority), and saying bye to their family was absolutely heart-wrenching.  As I held Kimbo for the last time (that I know of), I prayed for a layer of protection around her and her brothers.  I wanted so badly to take them all with me.  

Our relationships are changing, but it doesn't have to mean they're changing for the worse, right?  Even as I write that I only halfway believe it.  Because I'm thinking, I'm in control, to some degree, and so as long as I'm here, I can build this relationship more, show this family more of Christ's love, and somewhat control their lives.  What a me-centered attitude.  My God is the Sovereign "I AM"- and He loves those kids more than I could ever imagine.  As much as I want to think its about me, I claim the fact that it is about what God is doing here, and the ways in which He honored me with the privilege of knowing and loving on those kids for the time I did- and that they loved me back!  What a gift- and that alone shows that whatever goes on in their house at least has not caused them to completely shut down when people hug them or hold their hand or rub their back.  Knowing everything going on in their family life, He brought them into my path for these few short months.  This has been a hard few days as I prepare to leave, but Jenny showed me Psalm 12:5 the other day, a verse she found while she was praying for the kids-

"Because of the oppression of the weak
       and the groaning of the needy,
       I will now arise," says the LORD.
       "I will protect them from those who malign them."

Back in March I made a plan to read through the Old Testament before I left, and even though I should be somewhere around Joel or Amos by now, I am still in Ecclesiastes.  But God in His infinite mercy is showing me exactly the thing I need to learn right now before I come back to the states- He has set ETERNITY in my heart (Ecc 3:11).  In the 15 days immediately after I get home I have two wedding and three graduations to attend, which I am absolutely so pumped for, but a graduation does not "redeem us from the power of the grave" (Ps 49:15) and there is no ultimate saving power in a marriage.  These things are joyful, but they are all eventually "a chasing after the wind" in King Solomon's words. One really cool thing about being in this program is that its been a little easier to "set my mind on the things above, not on earthly things" (Col 3:2) because we have an hour of quiet time every morning, then group worship, and then we sit around for an hour and talk about what God is doing in our lives and hearts and internships and colonia ministry, then we have a different teacher fly in almost every week, people from all over the country coming to impart their knowledge on us, and then we go to our different internships or colonias, depending on the day, and allow God to move in whatever cool ways He wants to through our conversations.  So the challenge will come when I go home- will I seek my reputation and approval, or will I seek first the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God?  When we don't have the title of Missionary attached to ourselves, is it a little harder to fully set our minds on things above?

As my time in Mexico is ticking away (3 weeks left!), one thing that continually crosses my mind is when I start to get sentimental is, "at least I will have my own room again."  Living in community can be so difficult, but the Lord is reminding me of what a refining process it is.  I can't have things exactly the way I want them to be, catered to my preferences, which can be frustrating, because many of you can attest that I am a woman of many systems.  I really like my systems.  They work for me.  But when I really think about it, the last thing I want to be is like King Nebuchadnezzar, "contented and prosperous" in my "palace"- what a dangerous place to be in, where you control everything about your little world.  We had some teachers fly down for the week to talk about worship, and one of the things Dick, who used to be a Chemistry professor, mentioned was that He saw us as diamonds, sitting on a backdrop of carbon.  We start out as just ordinary matter, but in the heat of the furnace of living in community (and it sure can get hot in here!) comes this priceless opportunity for God to refine us into diamonds.  Not that I feel like I've been perfected this year- as soon as I think "I'm doing pretty well these days" I've fallen into the miry pit of pride, where the darkest sin lurks- of thinking I can do anything without Jesus.  But instead of sitting around mourning over how crappy and dark my heart is, the Lord is teaching me what He taught His people in Nehemiah 8- God's holiness is actually violated if we have accepted him as our Savior and we still dwell in our sin.  May the JOY of the Lord be our strength!

Since we returned from Christmas break, I have looked ahead to the Johnson Ferry project as being one of the last things we did before going home. Its very bizarre to now be past that project with only a few more weeks of regular ministry left before we return home, but God is reminding me that He is going to carry this work that He began until its day of completion- in other words, it is not time to check out of the program. Fortunately, I am still absolutely loving the work He is involving me in here, and He is constantly allowing me to see that what He is doing is on a much larger scale than I ever could have imagined. So much is happening, I thought I'd give you a week in pictures:

Recently at the hospital, we have been spending all of our time in the new pediatrics wing, where we have had multiple rich conversations with moms who are waiting with their kids.

Our friend Laura is having a baby in just over a week! Tomorrow we are throwing her a baby shower- so many people have been gracious in donating the "gear" for a little girl, so we are going to really shower her with goodies.

At the shopping center, I saw Karina, one of the girls I met while with the Johnson Ferry group. She has just started reading the Bible on her own, and we are going to try to catch up next Monday to hang out.

This week we've been building the house for our friends… it isn't the same family that we originally thought we'd built it for, but being in Granjas is definitely cementing our witness that we're not just about loving with words, but also with actions and in truth (1 John 3:18).

For the past 2 weeks, our team has been at the Gateway (the long-term AIM base here that hosts short- term trips) prepping for and leading a group of 250 high schoolers from Marietta (of all places!) on their spring break trip. Leading this trip was the undoubtedly the most exhausting thing I've done in Mexico, but it was just such a cool opportunity to rely completely on what the Lord was doing through me and in the hearts of these high schoolers. There was so much of the unknown going into the week- all of our FYM team had various leadership positions in which we had no experience (I was the ministry coordinator for one of the sites, and most of us served as ministry coaches/ translators/ cultural trainers, etc)- but as we made ourselves available to whatever God had for us, He just exalted Himself and we got to be in the privileged positions of watching how He was growing and refining some of these students. It was incredible.

One of the coolest things for me about this week was that as I tried to instill in the students a love for the Mexican people, I realized how much God has made my heart so soft towards their culture specifically. I think that in many instances, short term mission trips do more for the participants than for the people. This was a frustrating realization, and this sounds really harsh, but I'm going to be really honest here (what else are blogs for?) Without having some cultural training, there were some things that the students would say/ do that I just didn't want the Mexicans to hear/ see. Or I just had to pray that they had the grace to see that these students were still really young. In praying about this, God reminded me that one of the first times I really experienced him in a powerful way was when I went with Young Life to build a house in Tijuana, Mexico. I'm sure I did some really ignorant things while I was there and seemed super insensitive to their culture, but that was my first out-of-the country missions experience, and He used that to built a foundation in my life for seeking more of him. That week, I remember Allen Levi (big-time singer/songwriter in the YL world) led worship and I guess in between one of the songs or something he said something that completely changed the way I thought about myself as a Christian. He said, "God doesn't grade on a curve." That's the first memory I have of realizing that being a Christian involves a lot more than avoiding the "bad stuff" that a lot of high schoolers get into; that it demands us to wholeheartedly seek continual refinement as our goal is to "be holy, as I am holy" (that's somewhere in Deuteronomy I think and then again in 1 or 2 Peter- but I can't find it right now!). And I've come a long way since that week almost exactly seven years ago, but that doesn't mean I'm like, slowing down or getting close to the final goal in terms of how much work the Lord has left to do in my heart. God calls us to this life of following Him that's radically different from how the world sees goodness. I mean, how many times did the crowds say, after Jesus' preaching, "surely this teaching is too difficult". I'm just so thankful that we can't reach that holiness here on this side of heaven, but that instead we spend our lifetimes pressing on toward the goal (Phil 3:14) of holiness, toward Christ, who is the end of the law, the substance of the Gospel, and in living life doing this, we receive his mercies anew every day, moment by moment, as we depend on Him, the author and perfecter of our faith.

I wanted to kind of give an update on last week. I really enjoyed getting to know some of the students, seeing their hearts grow and their perspectives broadening. One thing I came face to face with last week was simply how much our different backgrounds give us different lenses through which to view the world. I simply want to have God's perspective, unbiased to see people as they are, as our Creator made them. My favorite part about being one of the project leaders was getting to know the family. This was such a privilege, and an open door since after the first day, I was mainly there as a resource in case the group needed anything while they were doing construction. So I just spent a lot of time with Carmen (yellow shirt in above picture), the mother of the Agustin, the man we were building the house for (his wife is Jessica, in the red stripes). She has such a heart for knowing God, but she has only been a Christian for a couple years, so there's a lot in the Bible that she doesn't understand (well, there's a lot in the Bible that none of us really understand) but she hasn't heard or read much of the Old Testament history, which makes it difficult to understand a lot of the New Testament as well, so I just had the opportunity to teach some about the Israelites as God's chosen people, and then how we are grafted in through the New Covenant, which was about the last thing I had expected to do. But God was so in the time, because then this lady came over to visit Carmen and she wanted to listen too, and then two of Carmen's daughters came in, so it was really neat to share with all of them. Before we went to lunch on the first day, she asked me if I thought the group could maybe build a house for her daughter and son-in-law next year. I told her I would let the AIM staffers know about the need, but our group (the 8 of us left, plus our 3 leaders!) have decided to build the house (we have the money, because we had planned on building a house for a lady in Granjas, but it turns out the Lord provided for her in abundance, because another church got to her first and asked if they could build her a house!) So its just really cool that God has connected us with this family now, I just really love them already, and I'm so thankful we'll have this opportunity to show how quickly and creatively God answers prayers.