I'm reading a book in spanish called, "Seamos Personas de Influencia" by John Maxwell and Jim Dornan. I think the title in English is, "How to be an Influencial Person". Last night I was reading and came across a quote that I would like to share. It's by author and conference speaker, Richard Exley. This is what he has to say about friendship (translated)...
"A true friend is someone who listens and understands when you express your deepest feelings. He supports you when you struggle; He corrects you, gently and with love, when you're wrong; and he forgives you when you fail. A true friend impels you to personal growth, he stretches you so you can reach your full potential. And what's most surprising is that he celebrates your successes with you as if they were his own."
Monday, October 30, 2006
Friday, October 27, 2006
Soccer Game in Ruiz
We went to Ruiz (a town about 1/2 hour away) today accompanied by a handful of the youth to watch one of the Cofradia students, Jose Angel "Chupa", play soccer for his High School. It was fun to hang out with the students. Chupa's team won, 1-0. We stayed to watch the girls play as well and they too won, 1-0.
Chupa is the player on the left in green.
Chupa is the player on the left in green.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
$2.88 A Gallon
Just a little intersting fact that some may be interested in.
Yesterday, we went to Tepic to do some shopping and on our way home we put gas in the truck. N$7.89 pesos a liter for the "good" stuff comes out to $2.88 a gallon. For you mathmaticians, the dollar is at 10.75 pesos (in some places). Each month on the first of the month, the price goes up .01 or .02 centavos per liter...depending on what the economy is doing.
FYI
Yesterday, we went to Tepic to do some shopping and on our way home we put gas in the truck. N$7.89 pesos a liter for the "good" stuff comes out to $2.88 a gallon. For you mathmaticians, the dollar is at 10.75 pesos (in some places). Each month on the first of the month, the price goes up .01 or .02 centavos per liter...depending on what the economy is doing.
FYI
Latest Newsletter
To check out our latest newsletter, you can click here.
http://www.alternativemissions.com/Staff/Silberman.ashx?p=86&234_na=214
http://www.alternativemissions.com/Staff/Silberman.ashx?p=86&234_na=214
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Megaphone Need
With all the youth events and activities we have been doing lately. One thing I've noticed we really need is a megaphone. If anyone has one or knows someone who does and would like to either donate it or sell it to us, we would really appreciate it...so would my voice:). Please let me know by sending a comment below with your name and I'll get ahold of you. Thanks.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Cofradia Youth Pastor Prospect
I wanted to let everyone know that this young man, Julio, is genuine and I'm really excited for what God is doing in his life. He needs some financial help...here's what I've written about him.Dear Friends,
I am writing to you about one of our youth who is studying in High School at this present time. His name is Julio Hernández. His Dad, Gollo, is the Pastor here in Cofradía and he has three other brothers; two of which are studying as well. My purpose for writing is to encourage others to help Julio financially with his schooling. I believe 100% in this young man. I have written numerous times about him in Newsletters, Ministry updates, our webblog, and I have mentioned him when we have spoken at churches. He is GOLD.
His desire for the future is to finish High School, go to a Bible Institute, and come back here to Cofradía to be the Youth Pastor. I cannot express the excitement I feel for his desires. He is turning into a great, fun leader and will make an awesome Youth Pastor. I have been praying for an intern to work along side of me and he is quickly becoming that person; I wasn’t really expecting the intern to come out of Cofradía.
Julio will be studying in High School for three years and he will need $1,500 for each year, which would be $150 a month. Geña and I believe so much in this young man that we have committed to $50 a month. Would you be interested in helping with a one-time gift or monthly gifts? It would be completely tax-deductible. You can send gifts to Alternative Missions and we would be able to withdraw the money here from the account.
We appreciate your help and I know that Julio and his parents, Pastor Gollo and Mati, do as well. Please let me know if you would like to help. Below are directions for gifts.
Thank you,
Steve and Geña Silberman
Missionaries to Cofradía, Mexico
Alternative Missions
steve@alternativemissions.com
http://thesilbermans.blogspot.com/
www.alternativemissions.com
· Please send your gifts to: Alternative Missions/PO Box 5835/Goodyear, AZ 85338
· Checks made out to ALTERNATIVE MISSIONS
· Send a note on a separate piece of paper indicating that it is for Cofradía Student Scholarship: Julio
· Or, another option is sending online at:
https://www.egivingsystems.org/support/42705/
This page is found at www.alternativemissions.com under the “Donate Online” tag as you place the mouse over the “staff” heading.
THANK YOU!!
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Vida Abundante (Abundant Life)
Last night we had our youth group meeting "Vida Abundante" in our house. There were around 16 youth and we had a great time. We are talking about our Life's Purpose on Friday nights and last night we focused on Seeking God. We looked at King Asa's life in 2 Chronicles 14-16. He was a good King that did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. When he sought God he had success, but when he didn't seek God first, there was war. It's a good lesson for us to seek God first in all we do and he will be with us guiding our way. There will be peace.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Sunday, October 08, 2006
EL RETO (The Challenge) Video
I mentioned in the last post that you could check out the video by clicking "here." I forgot to make a link, so here it is...
www.cofradiamexico.com/Reto.wmv
Be advised that it may take a while if you have dial-up. Hope you enjoy.
www.cofradiamexico.com/Reto.wmv
Be advised that it may take a while if you have dial-up. Hope you enjoy.
THE FINAL CHALLENGE Report
We have not had a connection to the internet since Thursday. My intentions were to post this then, but something is wrong with our modem, it looks like we'll need a new one.
I don't have time right now to upload pictures, I'll try to do some later.
Here is what I was going to post...
It is hard to put into words the experience we just had with the youth. Originally, I started this game last year because some of the youth were growing “tired” of bible study after bible study. Some even quit going to church and never really made it a priority. Last year was a fun successful time of bringing back in the tired ones. This year, we did it again because of the fun we had last year and I added a few more things so it would be a great learning experience for everyone. Our primary goal was outreach; we wanted to reach out to more youth in the area, include the new students coming into Jr. High, and involve the fringe youth. I was so pleased on how this year turned out. We had 14 adults helping out with details and serving the youth. The team leaders (students) had more exposure as leaders and more freedom to lead their teams. This was our secondary purpose…to give the student leaders experience in leading groups. It was great! They ALL did a great job and we gave them certificates of appreciation at the end. It was also great to see some of the students who weren’t designated leaders step up and be great encouragers and strengthen their teammates when times were rough. This brought together the students; they made friends and they learned how to work together. Each week we gave a devotional from Philippians and encouraged them to apply the devotionals to the challenges of that week. The team leaders had time to spend with their team talking about the devotions and encouraging their team.
One of the neatest things that we saw was the development of leadership in the student leaders. They all stepped up to the plate. One of them, Julio, came out of his shell. He was a quiet shy guy until now. His desire is to become a youth pastor and let me tell you that after watching him during THE CHALLENGE, he definitely has what it takes. He lead his team and they followed him, he was goofy and everyone liked it, he corrected them and they listened, and he was a ham in the skit his team put together about Adam and Eve. What an amazing young man!
Another leader, Chuy (Julio’s older brother), is a natural leader. People follow him and he has a calm, mature way about working with people. One thing that stood out was that he came in late to take over for a different leader who wasn’t able to continue. The team was in last place the whole month (by a long ways, too) and when Chuy arrived, he kept the team alive and he was committed to them. He gave up watching one of the biggest soccer games of the year to be at the final meeting . That to most of us may not seem like a hard thing to do, but to him it was an “Abraham sacrificing Isaac” experience. Some of us may even be able to relate this to giving up watching the Super Bowl. He is a soccer fanatic, this was BIG! He showed a tremendous amount of maturity and commitment to his team and the program as a whole. WOW!
Another leader, Martin, has just come back from one year of Bible College and is a changed person. He was one of the most encouraging students playing the game. His team started a little weak, but by the end because of his leadership, his team won the game. He also brought in about 5 young guys from Arrayanes where it has been really hard to reach out to the youth. They all finished pretty excited and we took them to the beach yesterday for their prize. My prayer is that this will encourage those young guys to keep coming and be exposed more and more to the gospel to finally make a decision to serve Christ some day.
Finally, Lupita was the only female student leader we had. She did a phenomenal job taking on “the challenge” of being a leader. When I offered the position before we started the game to anyone who would come and talk to me about leading a team, she was there right away wanting to do it. I could see it in her face that she was ready! Her team was on top most of the time, but in the end they came up just short of winning the whole thing. She did a great job!
The events of the final evening consisted of a time of Praise songs, a short message about how God is the Potter and we are the clay and that He molds us through the “challenges” we face every day. Then each team presented a skit with the theme of their team name. While we were counting up all the points, Jay showed a video of THE CHALLENGE he put together special for that night. You can watch the video by clicking here. For the FINAL CHALLENGE we put together a Who Wants to be a Millionaire style game. They were to answer questions that started out easy, then got harder and harder about the Sunday sermons, different challenges they had, and a few other things that they learned in the past month. This gave the last place team an opportunity to catch up and actually win it. In the end, it had no bearing on who won; all the teams stayed in their same place and were unable to answer enough questions to pass another team.
It was a lot of work and we invested a lot of time and money into this outreach. It was a HUGE success. Thank you all for praying for and supporting this event. This has become a great tradition and they already can’t wait until we do it again…even some of the staff.
I don't have time right now to upload pictures, I'll try to do some later.
Here is what I was going to post...
It is hard to put into words the experience we just had with the youth. Originally, I started this game last year because some of the youth were growing “tired” of bible study after bible study. Some even quit going to church and never really made it a priority. Last year was a fun successful time of bringing back in the tired ones. This year, we did it again because of the fun we had last year and I added a few more things so it would be a great learning experience for everyone. Our primary goal was outreach; we wanted to reach out to more youth in the area, include the new students coming into Jr. High, and involve the fringe youth. I was so pleased on how this year turned out. We had 14 adults helping out with details and serving the youth. The team leaders (students) had more exposure as leaders and more freedom to lead their teams. This was our secondary purpose…to give the student leaders experience in leading groups. It was great! They ALL did a great job and we gave them certificates of appreciation at the end. It was also great to see some of the students who weren’t designated leaders step up and be great encouragers and strengthen their teammates when times were rough. This brought together the students; they made friends and they learned how to work together. Each week we gave a devotional from Philippians and encouraged them to apply the devotionals to the challenges of that week. The team leaders had time to spend with their team talking about the devotions and encouraging their team.
One of the neatest things that we saw was the development of leadership in the student leaders. They all stepped up to the plate. One of them, Julio, came out of his shell. He was a quiet shy guy until now. His desire is to become a youth pastor and let me tell you that after watching him during THE CHALLENGE, he definitely has what it takes. He lead his team and they followed him, he was goofy and everyone liked it, he corrected them and they listened, and he was a ham in the skit his team put together about Adam and Eve. What an amazing young man!
Another leader, Chuy (Julio’s older brother), is a natural leader. People follow him and he has a calm, mature way about working with people. One thing that stood out was that he came in late to take over for a different leader who wasn’t able to continue. The team was in last place the whole month (by a long ways, too) and when Chuy arrived, he kept the team alive and he was committed to them. He gave up watching one of the biggest soccer games of the year to be at the final meeting . That to most of us may not seem like a hard thing to do, but to him it was an “Abraham sacrificing Isaac” experience. Some of us may even be able to relate this to giving up watching the Super Bowl. He is a soccer fanatic, this was BIG! He showed a tremendous amount of maturity and commitment to his team and the program as a whole. WOW!
Another leader, Martin, has just come back from one year of Bible College and is a changed person. He was one of the most encouraging students playing the game. His team started a little weak, but by the end because of his leadership, his team won the game. He also brought in about 5 young guys from Arrayanes where it has been really hard to reach out to the youth. They all finished pretty excited and we took them to the beach yesterday for their prize. My prayer is that this will encourage those young guys to keep coming and be exposed more and more to the gospel to finally make a decision to serve Christ some day.
Finally, Lupita was the only female student leader we had. She did a phenomenal job taking on “the challenge” of being a leader. When I offered the position before we started the game to anyone who would come and talk to me about leading a team, she was there right away wanting to do it. I could see it in her face that she was ready! Her team was on top most of the time, but in the end they came up just short of winning the whole thing. She did a great job!
The events of the final evening consisted of a time of Praise songs, a short message about how God is the Potter and we are the clay and that He molds us through the “challenges” we face every day. Then each team presented a skit with the theme of their team name. While we were counting up all the points, Jay showed a video of THE CHALLENGE he put together special for that night. You can watch the video by clicking here. For the FINAL CHALLENGE we put together a Who Wants to be a Millionaire style game. They were to answer questions that started out easy, then got harder and harder about the Sunday sermons, different challenges they had, and a few other things that they learned in the past month. This gave the last place team an opportunity to catch up and actually win it. In the end, it had no bearing on who won; all the teams stayed in their same place and were unable to answer enough questions to pass another team.
It was a lot of work and we invested a lot of time and money into this outreach. It was a HUGE success. Thank you all for praying for and supporting this event. This has become a great tradition and they already can’t wait until we do it again…even some of the staff.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Catching Up
The past couple of days I've been catching up on some office work that I've kept to a minimal during the CHALLENGE game. We finished last Saturday and it was a huge success and a lot of fun. I'll try to have an update about it posted today or tomorrow.
Something else that we're really excited about here is that there is a Sam's Club in Tepic now. Tepic is the capital of Nayarit and just over an hour south of here. We've had a Wal Mart for a couple of years, and now we have a Sam's Club. This will be very helpful for when we have teams come because we normally shop from the Sam's Club in Mazatlan (3 hours north). This is great!
Something else that we're really excited about here is that there is a Sam's Club in Tepic now. Tepic is the capital of Nayarit and just over an hour south of here. We've had a Wal Mart for a couple of years, and now we have a Sam's Club. This will be very helpful for when we have teams come because we normally shop from the Sam's Club in Mazatlan (3 hours north). This is great!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)