We’re looking forward to a full weekend. On Saturday morning we’ll be heading over the the church building in Jesús María to clean in preparation for our service on Sunday. Why are we going to Jesús María? Because they’re the ones with a baptismal tank! Actually, it was just over four years ago that the tank was being constructed…
Baptismal tank/stage in Jesús María – July 2017
On Saturday afternoon, we’ll head to the next class of Biblical Doctrine, with our teachers from Dallas with us in person this weekend. A few tacos together, and then some reflection on the doctrine of Jesus Christ – it should be a great afternoon/evening! Care to join us?
And then, Sunday morning, back “up the hill” to Jesús María for our Sunday morning service, and the baptisms. Please be in prayer for the baptismal candidates and their families! Pray also for the health of everyone in the church, so that everyone can attend and celebrate with us.
Pray also that the Word of God would be clearly shared – multiple times – on Sunday morning/afternoon!
Anyway, I have lots more to do today, so I’ll run for now. Lord willing sometime next week I’ll be able to report about the weekend.
Yesterday, late afternoon, when it should have still been sunny, it suddenly got dark. Street lights started to flicker on. And then it started to rain.
And hail.
The first major storm of the year (as we’re just coming out of rainy season) was the kind of a storm you don’t see every year. Rain and hail, then rain, then hail, then rain, then hail, and on and on it went.
The water covered the street, and then started pouring over the curb. And then it started pouring into people’s houses.
As for us, the garbage can outside started to float, then tipped over. The leaks in the roof started. And water started to stream across our kitchen floor.
So the rest of the evening was full of moving things, putting out buckets and towels to catch the drips, mopping, and watching the doors to make sure the water didn’t get high enough to start coming in from there. Thankfully, it never did.
A lot of people had it far worse than us. Other than the flooding itself, in a lot of areas traffic comes to a standstill, and people trying to get home from work are stuck for hours.
We’re thankful for a number of things.
First, that we were home. It would have been a lot messier if we’d been away.
Also, we’re thankful that we have water in our taps and electricity. Yes, in these situations we do sometimes lose one or both of those things. The lights flickered quite a bit, but never actually went out. So we’re thankful for all the many people in our community that work hard to make sure that these things work and keep working.
So this morning we’re washing some of the towels and rags, sweeping up, and opening windows to try to get everything dried out. But it’s still pretty moist outside, and still cloudy, so it may take a while!
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.
“The Best Bible Study Tool” translated version of my Dad’s booklet
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!
Decorations up for Children’s Day on Sunday morning
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!
It’s been a whirlwind of activity around here – and it’s continuing, actually! But finally I decided I’d better write something here to update you all. 🙂
Holy week began with Palm Sunday, and I was preaching. It was very interesting, I’ve never specifically preached on a Palm Sunday theme, so I learned a lot. For example, do you remember that verse that talks about the people waving palm branches as Jesus rode by? I don’t think you do, actually, because there’s no such verse. How about that? (For the record, I think there’s good biblical evidence that the people did wave palm branches – but there’s no one verse specifically saying so. In fact, only one Gospel actually mentions palms.)
During the week we went up north of Mexico City to the ranch where our friends the Howers live, for a missionary kid camp. It was designed for the kids and teens, but lots of adults (many MKs themselves, but not all) came as well. It was a great time of sharing and learning and fun and fellowship.
Ice breaker
Group Photo
Ok, who said it?
Back we came to Ixtapaluca, in time for a Good Friday service, led by our friend Edgar, in which Ezequiel led us through a meditation on the meaning of Christ’s death.
And then, of course, Resurrection Sunday! Oscar preached on – well, the resurrection, of course! And I led a game of “Who said it? Resurrection Sunday edition”.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of quotes in the resurrection story – and it’s not always so easy to remember who said it!
Today I’m getting ready for this coming Sunday, when we’ll be continuing our study of biblical anthropology. We’ve been doing it the first Sunday of each month, but we made an exception because of Holy Week. I don’t know how it’s going for everyone else, but I’ve been learning a lot from our study!
Enjoying some time together!
On Saturday we have our institute class – and in our New Testament Survey we’re finally arriving at the last book of the Bible! So that should be fun.
So it has been busy. Nathanael is starting to head into the home stretch for school, so that will be a little crazy over the next few weeks.
But Lord willing we will be able to get away for a few days next week and have a break, before diving back in again.
There’s a lot coming up, including the usually very busy month I lovingly call Manic May. Lots of decisions to be made. May we be faithful in service to our Lord as we take each step!
On Monday we headed up to Rancho la Mesa Parque Ecológico – (Plateau Ranch Ecological Park) for our mini men’s retreat! It was a statutory holiday, as we say in Canada – a day off for Benito Juarez‘ birthday.
We couldn’t park close to the picnic area, but the park graciously provided us with wheelbarrows. So we rolled our tent and other supplies across the field, and we were all set.
We got all the food ready, taking our cue from the words of Moses to Israel:
When the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he has promised you, and you say, ‘I will eat meat,’ because you crave meat, you may eat meat whenever you desire.
Deuteronomy 12:20
And just to show that we didn’t neglect our veggies, here’s a picture of a little grilling in-between the meats – some nopal cactus and green onions.
Sausages and beef and of course our veggies all went into tacos, and I thought about what Heaven will be like.
We also had time for a game of kubb, which was fun even though my team lost. But it was pretty close.
There was a pick-up game of soccer, with the added hazard of a nearby artificial lake. But don’t worry, the ball was recovered.
And a time of Scripture reading and testimonies.
It was a good time overall, with lots of talk about how to better serve the Lord and how to be accountable to one another – and even how to help and serve one another. Very encouraging!
Thanks to those who prayed for our time together. We continue to pray that God will be glorified through each life, in each family, in the church, and in our communities.
One wonders, does one not, how goods and services are really being affected by lockdowns and shifts in economic power. But maybe some of these things aren’t so unusual, if you look back over the years!
Like mailing some letters, and having them delivered to your house by mistake (I finally brought those back to the post office, by the way. The nice lady just rolled her eyes and took them.). Or ordering something and having the wrong item delivered (do you know how hard it is to actually contact someone about a mistake like that?). Ah, the little things that take up our time!
But there are also a lot of things to enjoy! For example, we enjoyed a visit to the city of Puebla earlier this week, and were able to visit some friends we haven’t seen in a while. These times are not only fun, but a good time to share ministry ideas.
I finally had a chance to look at some new tracts that our friend Chalo created (pictured here). It’s titled “Uncertainty”, and talks about the uncertainty that the COVID-19 situation has created. So we’ll be providing those to our church as another witnessing tool.
The weather changed here, as it usually does (in our perception) – very quickly. In a few days we’ve gone from several layers of clothes and lots of candles and hot drinks to t-shirts and fans. The jacarandas are in full bloom and everyone mentions the heat in casual conversation.
We’re heading into another busy weekend now, as I prepare a Bible study for tonight (on the Second Coming of Christ!) and worship music for tomorrow. Nathanael will be joining us again on the ukulele, so that’s always fun. 🙂
Then on Monday we have a one-day men’s retreat out in the country, which should be fun! Meat will be involved. Please do pray that this will be a good time of sharing together.
On Sundays we continue our study of Romans, so I’ve been spending lots of time in Romans 11, which is a real blessing, though also a real challenge! And then we’ll be taking a break and doing some special themes – Palm Sunday, a special Good Friday service, and then of course Resurrection Sunday. And then we continue our biblical Anthropology series.
So there will be a lot of interesting and worship-causing study over the next few weeks!
