I more or less kept track of what we were doing as the day progressed, so here are my notes from the day. I’ll try to upload some actual photos and video later, but this will give you an idea what’s been happening…
Ice breakers with Tiffany and Melissa.
A time of worship together.
Jeff shares a personal testimony about resting in your position in Christ.
Rod shares about the purpose of the weekend – the Great Commission and the love of the local church.
Jim shares about how Mexico fits in world mission – a strategic country, especially for the Spanish speaking world. And Mexico City – the world’s largest Spanish city and the challenges there.
Robert and several others share about religion and culture in Mexico – beyond the statistics, what do people really believe?
Antonio (a pastor in Mexico City) speaks on the needs of the church – what is the biblical model for the church? What are the needs of the church in Mexico City?
Rod speaks on philosophy of ministry – what are the special opportunities of Mexico City and this part of Mexico City? What are the challenges? Where do we want to go from here? What kinds of people do we need, and what could they do?
Lunch break – some yummy Mexican food, of course!
A trip up to Ixtapaluca’s ancient ruins to get a good view of the surrounding housing developments (what a beautiful day!)…
Going down to Jesús María to see the community centre where English classes are going on. Alyssa is also working on the mural on the water tower, so everyone goes to see it (and perhaps even help paint!).
Then off to reorganize – some heading to downtown Mexico City to see the sights (because you just can’t be so close and not go, if you’ve never been!), and some decide to take it easy and rest up for a big day tomorrow.
Day one of the Vision Weekend has been great! Tomorrow we’ll meet in the building in which the church in Santa Barbara meets, and join a bigger group. First, a little rest (maybe)…
After 4 tries or so, we finally caught the mechanic and were able to take care of part one of the repairs we need as we prepare for our trip. If you can believe it, we got our heat/AC blower fixed, after who knows how many months. And just when we finally have a cool day. 🙂
However, we’ll need it since we’re going to be doing the "desert tour" in July, and it’s going to be hot.
So there you go – now we’ll have to get it to another mechanic… hopefully we’ll be able to find him a little quicker!
While Nathanael and I waited, we played what may be the funnest game ever. It’s called weed toss. In case you ever want to play, here’s how:
Pick a weed (a big one)
Play catch with it
That’s it. Try not to pick something with thorns, or poison ivy or something like that. Trust me. It’s more fun than you might think. 😉
Some red and orange flowers across the street from the mechanic
Rare and beautiful in this part of the world – two local congregations meeting together to worship God!
That’s what we did today, as two churches in Ixtapaluca met together. Why so rare?
You have to think of Mexico City as a small country. There may be quite a few churches in the whole "country", but compared to the population there are hardly any at all. Then you have traffic, which separated people more than space would in a larger country. Then on top of that you have people that can’t afford to drive or take public transportation more than absolutely necessary. Suddenly, the distance from one small church to another small church is insurmountable.
So we have a dream. What if there were a group of churches close enough that they could actually worship together once in a while? What if they could share resources? Help one another?
Days like this are a glimpse of that dream. What an encouragement!
29 May 2011 – Joint Service… click for a bigger version of the photo
These photos (two stuck together), taken near the beginning of the service, show Rod welcoming visitors. There was one after another after another… new people getting connected with believers here in Ixtapaluca.
Of course there wasn’t room for all of us in the room we’re renting, so we set up a tent in front of the community centre. We’re kind of a nomadic church – Nathanael always asks,"Which church are we going to?" … not because we meet with different people every week, but because we meet with the same people in different places! 🙂
All went well, although when I was sitting at the keyboard in the front, all of a sudden my feet got sprayed. I guess someone was watering the grass behind the tent. Do things like that happen at your church?
There are still some local businesses right there, so one man was selling snacks and someone else was filling water jugs during the sermon. That was a little noisy, but I still enjoyed the message on Mark 8 from our friend Samuel.
Afterwards, some great food!
Yes, a rare and beautiful thing. And next time the two churches are together – we’ll be baptizing new believers!
Ah, the school projects Hannah gets to do these days.
If, for example, you want to avoid diarrhea, you have no further to go than the project that she was assigned this past week. The answer to this dilemma, according to Hannah, is illustrated on a large poster which I have reproduced for you below…
For those who are Spanish-challenged, it can be translated,"Don’t buy food in the street!", and then above the poor person in bed,"…or you can get sick.".
Well, I haven’t eaten in the street! In the past week or two… Well, except for a couple of times…. ummm…don’t tell Hannah…. 😉
I know, three posts in one day – somebody stop me! 😉
I just thought I’d better give you another update on a few things here, especially if you’ve been checking out what we’ve been saying on Twitter and Facebook and all that.
Yes, there has been another Chalco Flood. The good news is that the highway is already open, and there were no fatalities, and far fewer homes were flooded.
The bad news… well, there was another flood! The canal burst open… again… and dirty sewage water swept into the city… again. An estimated 500 families have been affected by the flood. No doubt many personal belongings were lost and ruined, among families that simply can’t afford the loss.
The highway near Chalco earlier this afternoon. There was a lot of cleanup going on. You can see the white stuff they use to help dry things up. Helicopters, police cars and other emergency vehicles where there – something we hardly saw for the first few days last year…
You need to realize that this flood isn’t … shouldn’t be … an annual event. When the flood hit last year (a disaster, though largely ignored by the media), it hadn’t happened for 10 years. It was the result of a number of unusual factors, including several days of rain in the middle of dry season.
After life got back to normal (and many promises were made by the government), there was no reason to think something like this would happen again so soon.
Thankfully, this wasn’t the disaster it was last year. Still, it’s no small matter to families who have had their houses flooded with filthy water.
There was actually some flooding – though not sewage water – in Ixtapaluca. Thankfully, not where we are. Although our house leaked in a few interesting places.
In other news – I just got back from another doctor appointment. It was a medical test. Very entertaining. Somewhat painful at times. And the results should be available soon. I’m doing all right health-wise – better – but the tests need to continue for a little bit. I have at least two more appointments with specialists, and I may request some more tests because I think we may be looking in the wrong direction.
So far, all the doctors can tell me is that I’m in excellent health.
However, because of the test I wasn’t able to eat for severl hours today – which means migraine attack – so I have been and am in a lot of pain. And hoping I’ll be able to get some sleep and get the attack over with.
For those of you wondering about Nathanael, he is doing very well health-wise. We’re very thankful for that!
And now – Mexico stats for you. If you’ve been checking out Twitter and Facebook, you might have caught these interesting tidbits, but I’ll share them again just in case. First, according to Twitter statistics, we’re just really happy here in Mexico (or maybe we complain less?) beating out Canada and the United States and almost every other country in the world.
Another study confirms that Mexicans work very hard. In a survey of 29 industrialized countries, Mexicans work the longest days. This is no surprise to us – many Mexicans hold 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet.
They’re also busy at home – averaging more than 3 hours a day doing housework (and when do Mexicans sleep, may I ask??).
A while ago I heard that those in Mexico City were Mexico’s worst work-a-holics. So these stats don’t surprise me at all. Still, interesting to hear them confirmed.
We’re going to live up to the cultural expectation by working hard over the two week spring break time, which started today. Hannah has school work that needs to be done for when school starts up again, plus she’s catching up on English work. Nathanael is continuing school as usual, since he’s been getting behind with all these doctor’s appointments and things. And we’re trying to help the kids and get our own work done. But for now – I need some sleep!
I’ll leave you on a positive note – another shot of a jacaranda tree in bloom, in the neighbourhood near Hannah’s school, pictured on the left. For a bigger and better view, click the picture to see it in the Photo Gallery (click the photo in the gallery to see the full-resolution version).
