Off to Guadalajara

Gena, Rebecka and I are going to Guadalajara today. We'll be back on Friday.

Rebecka's new look

Rebecka and Luis

Just about every day Luis comes over to play with Rebecka or Rebecka goes to Luis' house. Luis is Hugo's boy. They play really well together except when they start to get a little tired. The are a lot of fun to have around.

Front Porch

We started construction on our front porch last week. I was taking pictures daily hoping to show the progress, but because we weren't able to get online, we weren't able to do that. Here are a couple of pictures of what it looks like right now. Tomorrow my brother-in-law, Hugo, will continue with the foundation of our carport.

August Youth Event

Saturday night we had our once a month youth event. We invited "Pocho", the director of Music for a church in Tepic, Nayarit called La Fuente. He has come two previous times with his band to help our students who are learning instruments. This time he brought his youth group from Tepic to minister and hang out with our youth here. It was a very successful evening. Our youth were able to make friends with other Christian youth and they had a lot of fun. Pocho ministered the word and had all of our youth come forward for prayer. I believe many were touched. God is continuing to move amongst the youth here. It's an exciting thing to see and be a part of.

Martin

We had a going away party for Martin (young man in center with black shirt) last weekend. He is one of our on-fire youth whose involvement in the youth group; discipleship group; worship band as a bass player; and friendship will be missed by all of us. Martin is a great young man that God has called to the mission field to work with the indigenous in the mountains. He left on Friday for a two year Bible School in Oaxaca, Mexico to study and get some more on-hand experience in Missions.

Back On-line

We've been offline for a few days. We had some computer problems. We need to go to Tepic today, tomorrow we have a Worship band coming to help with our youth event and a youth group that's coming to do some evangelism. I don't think I'll get to send any pictures of all the things going on this week until Monday. One of our youth is going to Bible college in Oaxaca, Mexico; we've started on our front porch; and Rebecka got a haircut. We'll be informing more later on.

Discipleship Class

Every Saturday morning we meet for our level 3 discipleship class. The book we are studying is from the Navigators 2:7 series, book 2. This morning we had a couple of them missing because school is starting and they’re leaving town. This has been one of the greatest things for the youth here. They are getting into the Word, studying it, and receiving inspiration from God. This is very encouraging to me as a leader and I’m so proud of them. They are doing an EXCELLENT job! Please continue to pray for these young people, God is working in them and through them.

Vacation Anyone???

I ran across this in the Yahoo! news. This is crazy! Click here.

Testimony from Cofradia

You need to read this! Click here.

Here comes the storm!

On our way home last night from the Home Group, we encountered an awesome sight. The sky was half black, half white. A storm was coming and it was going to be a good one. When we got home I climbed up on the roof and took some more pictures. We unplugged everything and waited...nothing. It passed right by us, it seemed like only part of the town got hit. Weird. Anyway, we woke up this morning to some more impressive thunderstorms and lots of rain. It's actually kind of fun...this weather. The only drawback is that it got 106 degrees yesterday and it was very humid. Ugh!

Home Group

We had a great time at our Home Group last night. It meets every Wednesday at 5pm MST. Antonia is the leader of our group and she did an excellent job last night. She is the one that is sitting down on the left hand side. There were a few people absent because of sicknesses and what not, but we had a great time. We are going through The Purpose Driven Life, one chapter for every week or two and we've been at it since May of last year. We are almost finished with the book. At the end we split up into groups of three or four and pray for one another. This has been one of the biggest avenues of growth in our church since we've started it. Great stuff!

Steel

We had been praying that in our support for this month we would get a little extra to be able to put a front porch on our house. When it rains, the windows are not really well sealed so water comes in and we have to always be careful of the furniture (which is not ours). Well, praise be to God, the amount that we recieved for support this month was DOUBLE what we were asking for! So, we not only will be puting a front porch on, but a carport on the side of the house(where there are two more leaky windows). This is a HUGE blessing. Thank you to all of you for your generousity and involvement. Today, the steel arrived at the house. We'll probably start next week on the foundations and pilars which should only take about a week to finish. Then, a bunch of welding. Thanks again, may God bless all of you, too!

Rebecka's Birthday

It was Rebecka's birthday on Saturday. She woke up not feeling well and was not really in a happy mood. Later on, she felt a little better so we decided to go on with the small party we had planned for her. She really enjoyed everything. Her face lit up when she saw her friends showing up and she had to show everyone the cinderella pinata. She was really excited. She loved her cake as well, she calls cakes, "the happy birthday." We had barbecued hot dogs for dinner with everyone. It was a lot of fun.

Rebecka's painting

This is Rebecka's painting from the Youth Event. Each team had to paint a picture for a contest, there was an extra board so they gave it to Rebecka to paint. She was so excited to be able to paint a picture!

Watermelon

We found this in our back yard. Seeds that have been thrown out are now starting to grow. This watermelon is one of many that we have picked from the plants that have sprung up. It was really good!

More pics from the Youth Retreat

Youth Retreat

We just spent 5 days in Sinaloa with 7 of our youth from Cofradia and Arrayanes. They had a great time and made many friends. It was a small retreat made up of many different villages making it easy for them to relate to the others. Our youth band was given their first opportunity to play worship for a group outside our community. They were very excited and did an excellent job. God is opening up doors for the youth to be able to minister to other youth. At the retreat, they were able to see other youth their own age with similar backgrounds (coming from a village) leading worship, leading small groups, and ministering to other youth. These are the things that await our youth here and they are excited for what is to come! In the words of the testimony of one of our girls, “I learned that I CAN do things.” God is developing our youth to be the leaders of tomorrow.

Youth

I'll be leaving tomorrow morning for La Cruz, Sinaloa (one hour north of Mazatlan) with 5 guys from our youth group. We'll be attending a youth retreat. We would have liked to take more, but this is as much as we can fit in our base vehicle, so some youth are disappointed that they can't go. This is one of the reasons why we would like a Minibus for the ministry. Please pray that God would provide us with one. I am working on getting a proposal done for one.