The 30th of April is Children’s Day in Mexico! It’s the 20th of November in Canada, but it tends to be a much bigger deal in Mexico.
In 2016, ten years ago, we had a group from Word of Life (Palabra de Vida) in Ixtapaluca to add to the festivities. They helped us out with some evangelistic activities, and part of the fun included a huge BALL!
To read more, check out a post from that era – A Weekend for – KIDS!
If you’ve ever been involved in planning a Sunday service, you may have noticed that, once in a while, a theme emerges in the service that you weren’t really planning on. Or, maybe the songs fit with the sermon in a very unexpected way.
Or, sometimes in the Bible studies and conversations that are going on in a local church, it starts to look like God really wants to emphasize certain things, even though you weren’t planning to focus on them.
One of the themes that has been emerging over the last little while in our church here in Ixtapaluca Mexico is our personal study of the Bible.
Our hermeneutics course is ending this week, but one of the last lessons had some practical tips for personal devotions. It turned out that personal devotions was also the theme of the Bible study that week, followed by how to understand the Bible (this past Saturday) and how to study the Bible (this coming Saturday).
My Dad used and developed a tool for his personal devotions called the Bible Card System, which I thought would be useful for the hermeneutics class. So they’ve been trying it out, and I will likely introduce it to our Bible study group and the rest of the church as well. (If you’re interested, you can read about it in English or in Spanish now.)
Of course we continue to dive into Bible study in general at church. On Sunday we continued our biblical anthropology with the theme of Family – an interesting one as we enter into a season with Children’s Day, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day (we celebrated the first one at the service yesterday). This study was all about marriage and gender among other things (and I think the adults especially wanted a few more hours to talk about it! – issues of gender, marriage, family and sexuality are of course pretty practical, especially here in 2021!).
By the way, it was a fun service (although rather eclectic!). Oscar led the service and had some special things for the kids. After the service, we had some photos of children or adults when they were younger, and had to guess who they were (not hard with Hannah and Nathanael – especially that picture of Hannah with a snowman!). Shari made up some gift bags for the kids, and a GIANT COOKIE!
But back to the sermon topic. We’re planning to do one anthropology study a month, and so far it feels like a year-long look at Genesis 1-3. You can just go deeper and deeper into those chapters, and you keep discovering more! But this week, unexpectedly, I think that a big theme that struck me was the theme of identity, and where our identity comes from.
Just to keep things interesting, this Sunday in our study of Romans we arrive at Romans 13. Ah yes, this chapter has been the source of a lot of discussion, studies and sermons in the past few months! So although we didn’t pick it because of recent world events, you can bet we’ll be talking about some of them. (In case you’re wondering where I’m coming down on some of these issues – well, I’m still studying! Maybe I’ll write some posts about it.)
I think we’ve been learning some practical things from one another as we study God’s Word. May we put it into practise in the challenging days ahead!
I’ve been slow to report on recent ministry, because it’s just so crazy around here right now! May is traditionally our busiest month, and this year is no exception.
The team also participated in our morning service, teaching Sunday school and sharing from God’s Word in the service.
We had more visitors last weekend, from a church in California, who came to see what all the excitement is about here. 🙂
We have a busy weekend coming up, where all four of us will be serving during the morning service – fun fun fun! AND, it’s “birthday month”, so there are some parties coming up.
If you want to hear more about the Word of Life team, check out Rod’s blog – he has a video there if you can view it in your area: Word of Life/Palabra de Vida Mexico for Kids Day 2018 (video)
Here it is!
In case you can’t read it, it says…
Come and celebrate Children’s Day with us!
When? 4pm, Sunday the 24th of April
Where? Party hall “The Happy Corner”, Palmas 1, beside High School #161.
You’ll have fun. There will be games and much more!
Don’t miss it! It’s completely free!
Does that sound great, or what??
This is just one of the activities will be taking place in three different communities this week, with a team from Word of Life Mexico! I’m not sure I have all the terms right, but I think this is part of their ministry called “Fusion Zone”.
I think they’re doing a presentation called “The Great Escape”, but we’ll learn more in a few days.
The team will also be helping out at our service on Sunday, with the kids. Someone from the team will also be sharing God’s Word with the adults.
The fun starts at the first event – 7pm on Friday – and continues until the above event is over.
This is a weekend that we’ve been looking forward to (and praying forward to!) for a long time. And I know that some of you have too!
Tonight, a group of students is coming to Ixtapaluca from a Bible institute north of Mexico City (Word of Life – some of you are familiar with them). This is a big weekend in Mexico, because it’s CHILDREN‘S DAY (on Saturday, but we can celebrate all weekend)!
Tomorrow the team will be doing presentations for kids, and a youth event, and who knows what else, in the neighbourhood of Santa Barbara, hosted by the Path of Life Bible Church here.
On Sunday, they’ll split up between the two churches, helping with Sunday school and music. Then in the afternoon they’ll do their children’s presentation twice – at 3pm in Las Palmas, and at 5pm in Jesús María. Busy day!
On Monday they will be doing some presentations in the local public Junior High. Now, there are I think 1500 students there, so they will be doing classes, 3 going at the same time every hour, from 7am until early afternoon.
Why not just do the presentations in two or three big groups? Well, apparently because of the current state of pollution, the school is not allowed to have classes outside. Never mind that they have classes in rooms with open doors and big windows with no screens a few metres away. ??
So – busy weekend! We’re still getting organized to make sure everyone is fed, and to be prepared for what happens and for the new people we’re looking forward to meeting.
Thanks for your continued prayers, for the Palabra de Vida (Word of Life) group, with students, as I understand, from various countries in Latin America, for us, for the other believers here who will be involved, and for the many who will hear God’s Word.
On the 1st of May, our new community centre in Jesùs María, Ixtapaluca (the community centre is now called "Tiempo de Vivir") hosted a Children’s Day event.
Children’s Day in Mexico is on the 30th of April, but of course there are events all around that time. The day landed on a school day, so there were big parties in both our children’s schools.
But let’s get back to the event in Jesùs María, which was the next day (Saturday). The event was a big success. We had lots of amazing help from all sides – people really gave to make this event happen! Shari was heavily involved, being in charge of children’s ministry in the church.
About 150-180 children were there, plus all the adults, so it was a big crowd. It was also a very windy day, as you’ll see. So that made things interesting!
Anyway, thanks to those of you who prayed! Here’s a few minutes from the day so you can see what it was like: