so fresh and so clean

After a couple of weeks of craziness, our team is attempting
to achieve some level of normalcy, and the new beginning really has been a
breath of fresh air in a lot of ways. Its
been an adjustment, learning to function as kind of a new team. In the midst of all the changes, five of our
team members felt the Lord calling them back to the U.S., and so losing that
many people obviously creates a climate of change, and the general team dynamics
are quite different now. We were able to
have some really cool times of sharing/ debriefing/ eating really good Mexican
food at our favorite restaurant before they left, but of course it was sad to
say goodbye to Laura, Ifeoma, Jess, Matt and John. However, it certainly hasn’t been a hindrance
that we were able to get an incredible new house for the 10 of us that are here
for the rest of the semester! I really
didn’t know it was possible to live in Mexico and feel clean. My past experience has shown that the two are
mutually exclusive, but now I can walk around barefoot in the new house and my
feet don’t get muddy! Oh, and you can’t see it in this picture, but… we have a trampoline in our yard. Yes. God is GOOD. We will still be
going to the same internships- last week was really cool because a group from
Canada came and our team kind of led their trip, and Laura and I took took two
of the Canadian girls to the hospital with us, where we met a woman named
Elisabeth, who has AIDS, along with her baby (who she decided not to name,
because he also has AIDS, and will die within the year). We were able to talk to Elisabeth for about
an hour, sharing with her what we believe about God and His goodness- it was
just really cool how God used us in a really powerful way during a week where
neither of us had anything of ourselves to pour from- we were completely spent,
and so every bit of us ministering to her was so clearly from the Lord. WOW is looking mostly the same except that the
Granjas and Estrella teams are combined now (which is not a big change for me, since
I already went to both colonias). We’ve
really enjoyed exploring our new neighborhood, so I think we are going to spend
one WOW day a week trying our hand at building some relationships here. Its so different from our old colonia, because
we’re now living among the wealthy, where everyone has a gate surrounding their
house that they pretty much contain their activities within. We’ve been told that people aren’t very open
here to the type of ministry we’re used to- just kind of walking by and
striking up conversations with whoever is outside (which is not abnormal, and
can easily turn into a full-fledged friendship), so I’m excited to follow the
Holy Spirit’s leading to see how life will look in this new area of town. This week our leaders asked us to let God
develop a kind of personal mission statement for our remaining 2 ½ months here
in Mexico, and in listening to God, the first thing He said was that He wanted
me to find utter pleasure in His company.
It makes so much sense for that to come first- our ultimate goal in life
must be to glorify God and ENJOY Him forever!
Everything else will just come as a natural outpouring when we are
living in right relationship with Him. I
don’t want my blogs to always be marathoners, but they are starting to look
that way, so I’ll stop here. GRACE and
PEACE to you, my friends.