This past Sunday we enjoyed spending the day in Mirror, Alberta. In the evening I presented the Maximizing Your Short-Term Mission Trip seminar. Below I’ve shared some clips from the first half hour of the seminar, so you can hear a little of what we talked about.
For more on some of the seminars we’ve offered, see our seminars page.
Do you want an idea of the kinds of opportunities that are out there in the Spanish speaking world? Check out this overview of the summer program with CAM International. It’s in pdf format – just right click to download.
This weekend marked the end of the CAM International internship program here in Mexico. On Sunday they flew to Dallas, to spend a last brief time together before going their separate ways. (All except for Tiffany, who is actually a part of our team here and will be here for a year – hurray!)
The interns had a very eclectic few weeks here, there’s no doubt about it. They did ministry all over the place – here in Ixtapaluca, of course, but also in the State of Veracruz and up north of Mexico City at Camp Koinonia near San Juan del Río.
They taught English, Basketball, and of course the Word of God. They also spent a lot of time just sharing their lives.
I made the video below for their time in Dallas. Of course it leaves out a lot of things they did – I had to work with the video and photos and time that I had. (By the way, this isn’t all from me – it’s a pool of video and pictures from Rod and the interns and myself)
But one thing struck me as I watched the footage you’ll see here. There are so many people that I see that I didn’t know at all or knew very little about when the video was being taken. Now they are people that I do know… people that are involved in Bible studies, and in other events.
In other words, God used these men and women who came for the internship to bring the Word of God to more people, and to connect more people with the believers here. And I’m only going by what I see – who knows what else God did in and through them.
If you want to see some of what they did while they were here (maybe you want to come next summer!), check out the video below. It’s about 10 minutes long.
As promised in my podcast from earlier today, here’s a little tour of the neighbourhood where we’re currently offering 10 weeks of English classes. You’ll see a little bit of what the area is like, meet the English teachers, and see some of the potential for more ministry in this area.
I failed to mention in the video someone who has been helping with teaching. Rod’s son Daniel has also been helping teach, and you’ll see him in the video in a green shirt with Allan.
In this video you’ll hear from both Rod and I, and even see a glimpse of the planning meeting we had just last night. Most of the footage from Jesús MarÃa was taken last week during the English classes on Wednesday and Thursday.
Edit: Rod corrected the population numbers for me. He writes: In the neighborhood of Jesus Maria, there are 3800 houses. Bordering it lies Los Heroes, Ixtapaluca, with 27,000 individual residences …Just beyond Los Heroes lies San Buenaventura, a huge, sprawling neighborhood of 22,000 homes … Figure 3-4 people per house, and just in these three neighborhoods you have approximately 200,000 people living.
Note that this is the immediate area – I also spoke about “hundreds of thousands” that were close – the municipal area has hundreds of thousands, and of course connects to the millions going further into Mexico City.
Here’s the video:
Passing through Dallas this summer, I was in the CAM International office. I came across a little information page that had "priority ministry needs" for Mexico – in other words, these are some areas in which we could especially use people here in Mexico.
So, I thought I’d share the list with you – maybe God could use you in one of these areas, either short term or long term. What do you think?
Of course, those are just priority needs – there are others. See anywhere you might fit? Let’s talk about it!
Today I’ll be heading to the Mexico City airport to help pick up the team from Troy, Michigan. The team is going to be involved in a lot of Christmas activities here over the next 9 days (they fly out on the 22nd).
Now, obviously we would love to have some of you come down and join them – but I know some of you would love to be a part of the team through prayer!
But … what can I pray?
I pulled out some ideas from the seminar I teach on Maximizing Your Short Term Mission Trip. Here are some things you can pray today – or each day – that the team is here!