{"id":836,"date":"2008-10-05T18:48:55","date_gmt":"2008-10-05T23:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/?p=836"},"modified":"2008-10-05T18:48:55","modified_gmt":"2008-10-05T23:48:55","slug":"the-challenge-of-mexico-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/2008\/the-challenge-of-mexico-city.html","title":{"rendered":"The Challenge of Mexico City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>On Friday night I went to Texcoco<\/b> (<a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.ca\/maps\/ms?ie=UTF8&#038;hl=en&#038;msa=0&#038;ll=19.475008,-98.986816&#038;spn=0.536659,0.820541&#038;z=11&#038;msid=100314537749728903170.000458815297b3d52ea62\">east of Mexico City, toward the north<\/a>) to meet with some of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.caminternational.org\/\">CAM International<\/a> missionaries from the Mexico City area. &nbsp;We were there to see the mission director and his wife (<b>Dan and Sue Wicher<\/b>, who were served for years in Mexico City themselves), and two of the CAM board members;&nbsp;<b>Jon Campbell<\/b> (his wife is Wanda but she wasn&#8217;t there) and <b>Walter and Dottie Baker<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that was interesting was that everyone was sharing about the joys and challenges of working in Mexico City.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the joys we talked about are what you might expect anywhere &#8211; watching Jesus &quot;invade a family&quot;, for example (as Rod Fry said during his presentation). &nbsp;But I thought you might be interested to hear about some of the challenges we talked about.<\/p>\n<table width=\"135\" align=\"right\">\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/images\/mexico-city-challenges.jpg\" width=\"125\" height=\"448\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" alt=\"The challenge of Mexico City\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Traffic.<\/b> &nbsp;Just getting from one place to another. &nbsp;People may look at Mexico City and wonder why it&#8217;s so hard for us to get together with believers from other areas. &nbsp;But when people are an hour or two late for meetings like this one (even people with board members in their car), they are reminded. &nbsp;It&#8217;s not easy to get around in Mexico City. &nbsp;You plan for it, but it&#8217;s drastically unpredictable. &nbsp;When Mayra Fry came to pick me up Friday, she was stopped by the police. &nbsp;When Rod and I left from his house and headed to Texcoco, <i>we<\/i> were stopped by the police (not because any of us did anything wrong, by the way. &nbsp;No one got a ticket.). &nbsp;And we were among the first to arrive. &nbsp;There are accidents, construction, delays of all kinds.<\/li>\n<li><b>Fear.<\/b> &nbsp;One missionary mentioned just the challenge of safety in the big city. &nbsp;Every missionary does need to take precautions and be aware.<\/li>\n<li><b>Discipleship.<\/b> &nbsp;I was trying to carry on with my one-word summaries &#8211; maybe that&#8217;s not the best word. &nbsp;But one missionary shared what they&#8217;d heard from a Mexican believer. &nbsp;The Mexican pointed out that so many of the Mexican believers are <i>first generation<\/i> Christians. &nbsp;That means there is an incredible lack of role models. &nbsp;They&#8217;ve never seen a functioning Christian marriage, or how to parent as a believer, or what Christ-like leadership looks like. &nbsp;It&#8217;s exciting when your church is almost all new disciples &#8211; but it calls for a different kind of discipleship.<\/li>\n<li><b>Commitment.<\/b> &nbsp;Someone else pointed out (and I&#8217;ve heard this a lot) the challenge of a lack of commitment. &nbsp;Now, a disclaimer here &#8211; there are many very committed people here &#8211; Mexican and non-Mexican. &nbsp;But when you&#8217;re on the front lines of disciple-making this is always a challenge, no matter where you are.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This reminds me of the great summary of challenges that Dennis Poulette shared in his post <a href=\"http:\/\/ymimexico.org\/2006\/07\/17\/if-you-can-minister-in-mexico-city\/\">If you can minister in Mexico City\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/a> &nbsp;He listed <i>space, transportation and time<\/i>. &nbsp;That was in the context of youth ministry, but I think those three things fit everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>If you work in Mexico City, I would love to hear what you would add to the list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday night I went to Texcoco (east of Mexico City, toward the north) to meet with some of the CAM International missionaries from the Mexico City area. &nbsp;We were there to see the mission director and his wife (Dan and Sue Wicher, who were served for years in Mexico City themselves), and two of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[89],"class_list":["post-836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mexico","category-missions","tag-mexico-city","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Challenge of Mexico City - Finding direction<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cottrillcompass.com\/blog\/2008\/the-challenge-of-mexico-city.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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