Chiapas Pastors Conference Sept 2014

Remote Mentoring

As we have trained pastors through biannual conferences, we have noticed that the spiritual momentum achieved during the conferences decreases between conferences. Pastors no longer have the initiative to implement tools they learned while they were with us. In an effort to maintain progress in their ministries, we have begun to meet with pastors outside of the conferences to mentor and encourage them in their ministries. For pastors in Chiapas and Guatemala, we are only able to meet with them one additional time per year so we have begun communicating with them via Skype and other video call methods. Before the conference in Chiapas this September, Pastor Rafael and I travelled into Guatemala for one day to visit with pastors close to the Guatemalan-Mexican border, and help a few of them set up video calling methods and accounts.

Pastor Carmelino talking with Pastor Marco via Skype

Pastor Rafael and I crossing the bridge into Guatemala

Pastor Carmelino in the top picture is currently pastoring in a city 2 hours from the border, but will likely be moving to start a church closer to the border. This transition is not his desire, but that of his denomination, so please pray for him and his family's ability to adapt to this new assignment. As we were leaving, Pastor Carmelino told us to tell YOU how thankful he is that someone is willing to minister to him. As Pastor David mentioned in the GCP video some of you have seen, pastors throughout Latin America diligently minister to their churches, but very few people are ministering to them. Thanks for enabling us to be God's encouragement and comfort for them!

Returning to Mexico! Can you see the look of relief on Rafael's face?

VBS and GAMELIFE training

Pastor Rafael teaching children.

VBS

VBS stands for Vacation Bible School, a name which sounds about as exciting as a stale piece of bread, and for many of us, including most children, is frequently how some view church, or at least many churches we have seen or been a part of. Church, even from the start, has been a very grown-up exercise and yet Jesus very clearly instructed us to not hinder children from coming to Him (Matthew 19:13-14, Mark 10:13-16, Luke 18:15-17). In modern times, VBS is supposed to be not be boring, but if you ask most kids, the part that should be the most exciting (learning about God) is in fact made quite boring by well-intentioned adults as we struggle to communicate who God is to a young heart and mind.

Thus, we were very excited to have a team from Mission Hills Community Church from San Marcos, CA come to bring new passion and joy into this year's VBS here in Chacala and Las Varas. The team did an excellent job in demonstrating many new methods and games to us and the church from Las Varas who we hold VBS with. Modeled in the same philosophy of the GameLife ministry, MHCC sent a team of 17 adults and young people who demonstrated how to more effectively organize and teach children in dynamic and fun ways. By the end of the week, the local church here was leading the entire VBS with us "gringos" serving in the background. We were thankful to have MHCC choose to invest their time with us, and look forward to more joint ministry in the future. For those of you who have an interest in sending short-term teams, this is one opportunity here which makes for an relatively inexpensive and easy introduction for teams to learn about what God is doing outside the US and Canada. We were thrilled to see 41 children make spiritual decisions. Many of the team from MHCC connected with leaders from the local church and have remained in contact. A few folks from the MHCC team also have radically changed their focus on international ministry and are seeking to step out in faith by serving God internationally. Through the generosity of MHCC, instead of spending the funds they had set aside to rent a van while they were here, they decided to help the local church buy a van (which was less expensive than renting one), and enables the church here to use this more reliable van to transport children and adults to services and activities (most folks here don't have a car and so either walk or use a taxi).

GameLife / Juegos de Vida
Las Varas

Continuing the 2 day trainings we held the week before VBS, each afternoon the team from MHCC drove to Las Varas to help start a weekly Friday night Juegos de Vida (GameLife) ministry for children. Starting ministries by providing training and material is the central goal for us as a ministry, and we are so excited to see this new ministry get up and running in the church here. We are so thankful to have hosted the team from MHCC whose vision was to equip the local church here in Las Varas to carry on the ministry. They brought passion and equipped each local leader to run the entire Juegos de Vida (GameLife) ministry, and now the church here has around 30 children coming each Friday night. Already, 5 new families who were not previously connected to a church are starting to connect to the church in Las Varas, and we expect this number to grow as the church expands is potential to minister to more people. Won't you pray each Friday night for Pastor Rafael, his leaders Karen, Pauly, Laura, Rafael, Xavier and others? This starts a whole new chapter for us too, as we seek to further equip the Mexican church to demonstrate and teach the love Jesus has for us. We are already planning with Pastor Rafael's church next year's ministry project to join the local Juegos de Vida team here with a team from North America to equip another Mexican church to start a mid-week Juegos de Vida ministry in their church. Thanks for praying for this project and for your support to enable us to continue to expand and equip the local churches here!

New directions

This is the back story to possibly one of the most important new aspects of our ministry here in Mexico. We have known for some time that the Church in the US is losing young people at the age where in most families church attendance is at the discretion of the young person (6 in 10 by the time they reach 15 years old).  The situation in Mexico is very similar, with one major difference. Many churches don't have cool youth groups or children's ministries to give young people a reason to stay.  I had thought that this could be a future aim of our ministry here, but over the last year God clearly turned up the volume for us to hear the need more clearly. We have acted accordingly.

Shortly after we arrived in country last year, we started attending various churches in our area. We go to different ones because many of our Mexican pastors/board members have churches relatively close by, and this gives us more insight into their ministry and how we can position ourselves to be helpful to them. Last summer we visited a church close to us that only has 2 rooms for church, one for the worship service and another small room (10' x 6)' for small children. For elementary school-aged children, the church sets up a table outside the church on the street, and they watch YouTube Bible story videos on a laptop computer. When I realized that this was the only curriculum that this church had for children I was not surprised, as when I further investigated other churches, who also have 50-100 members, none of them had access to any curriculum other than what they could make up themselves. So last year we began to pray for a way to bring children's curriculum, training and materials to the churches here. Amazingly, Emmanuel Faith Community Church in Escondido sent us boxes of Sunday School craft materials, color templates, shirts, and caps which we distributed to churches here. Theses resources were graciously received.

In a previous post you may remember us mentioning a family, who we had met in March, who are one of the producers for Willow Creek's Leadership Summit in Latin America. This amazing family also has extensive experience in children's ministry and we had been talking about how we could start a conference here in this area for children's ministry teachers. You might be asking yourself, "Doesn't Mexico have children's ministry conferences?" Yes, there are conferences, but only in Mexico City and for most folks that isn't financially feasible. Plus, we know now that the best training isn't done by someone watching a teacher, but by practicing what they are learning. When we had asked one of our Mexican leaders about how many times he has had the opportunity to take his teachers to a children's ministry training, he replied that in the 14 years he's been in his location, there have only been 2 children's ministry conferences offered in this area in the last 14 years. For those of you who have ever taught children in church, imagine having to wait 7 years to advance your teaching skill.

Back in January, another church contacted us to see if they could help with VBS this summer. Remember how we have been praying for this since last August? They sent down their missions leader and children's (!) pastor to scope out the area and church we do VBS with each summer.  When I heard that they were sending their children's pastor I immediately called him to explain to him the need we have down here for ANYTHING to do with children's ministry resources. Turned out that he already has an international ministry for children that is easy to teach, and he was willing to give us an entire year of his curriculum for FREE! All we had to do was to translate it. We quickly assembled a team here to translate the training manual and the entire 1st year of curriculum, some 350 pages in all. A great thank you to those of you who donate the funds for us to bring these conferences to pastors all year long. Now that the translation is done, it will cost $20 to bring and entire year's worth of curriculum to one church.

Training in Tepic, Nayarit

First Children's Ministry Training Conferences

So as not to overwhelm Pastor DJ, we only invited 2 pastors and their teachers to each 2 day training in two cities here in Nayarit. When we held the training however, we had over 50 people at each training with over 7 churches represented! We had clearly found an open door. We had scheduled the trainings in the afternoons and evenings so that people could come after work, but after the first training day, we were booked solid meeting with teachers and pastors in the "off" times from the mornings until the next training time, and then even after the training was finished, into the night.  The second conference in Las Varas, Nayarit was even larger with 4 churches attending, and again more after-training meetings taking place with pastors and teachers who had questions regarding implementation.

Practicing games

Pastor Jose translating for Pastor DJ

Training in Las Varas, Nayarit

Practicing Games

Students practicing teaching the material

Since this post is already quite long, I've continued our summary of VBS and the subsequent GAMELIFE training on the following post.

REFLECTIONS FROM THE ROAD

your comfort food . . .
Steamed Meat, Cooked Cow's Head, Hominy Soup, Beef Stomach Soup, Creamy Oatmeal

I posted this picture on our 

When comfort food isn't

Facebook page a few weeks ago on our drive back to Chacala. Truthfully, we were exhausted from our time in the U. S. Now, before you feel bad for us, we have learned something about the missionary life as we've watched our own missionary heroes travel the globe, visit churches, and on occasion, when the opportunity allowed, visit with our family. So we knew (well we thought we knew) that furlough, missionary style, means a small window of time where we try to catch up with as many people as possible. Unfortunately, we only covered part of southern California this time, which leaves us with many more states to visit in the future. We pray for the opportunity to visit so many of you. You see, missionaries aren't really on "vacation" sitting on the beach, or by the lake, during furlough. Any missionary we know, and many of the mission organizations we are familiar with, require their missionaries to visit churches, update donors, AND raise more support. The truth is that life happens to everyone, supporters have unexpected expenses too, and so despite the fact that we have the most amazing, humble, loving and encouraging team of supporters, some people stop giving. Now, I'm not the most spiritual person by nature, so when we started this faith journey, it would seriously freak me out to think that we could actually live (buy groceries, pay rent, buy gasoline and maybe even buy clothes) solely based on 40 families, generously giving us small and large portions of what God has given to them. Hold that thought for a minute, I'm going to come back to it.

So, please don't think that we need a vacation from our furlough because what we did on furlough, meeting with so many of you and having time to catch up in person was so wonderful and really encouraging. With each event or shared meal, we were able to share with you, our dear friends and family, what God is doing in Mexico and Guatemala through the church.

Indulge me for a few minutes more about some observations we had while in the good ol' U. S. of A.

First of all, American roads are so SMOOTH and BIG. I'm not just talking about the size of the lane, but the number of lanes, the overpasses which allow you to go in multiple directions without stopping, and even angled lanes so that you don't have to slow down. For Americans, I couldn't help realize how valuable we think time is that we can get in our cars and have tons of free space to drive almost as fast as we want to get somewhere. We used these lovely roads A LOT during our time in the U.S. driving an average of 150 miles/day. I began to wonder . . . if what we are in a hurry for really matters. Stop for a minute and ask yourself what matters? What REALLY matters? It really prompted me to ask these questions while we were driving around, because we also get "busy" with lots of things in Mexico, that maybe don't help the church grow or help pastors, and I would encourage you to make sure that when your life is going 80 mph in the carpool lane, does it matter? In the economy of heaven, is it worth it?

Second, (that is if you're still reading), is there space for God to work in our busy lives? We have a great luxury living in a foreign and sometimes risky country to depend on God and see God work in many ways, because many times we have no other option. In the U.S., we have lots of options not to see God work, and they are easy to access. I LOVED ordering the majority of stuff that we wanted to take back with us from Amazon, but once all the things started arriving, my appetite to finish buying the rest of the stuff on our list (wire, hard drives to replace broken ones, fans, etc.) I found my desire to buy evaporating and instead thinking that we can make do without this or that for awhile longer. I have to confess that when we first arrived in Mexico we (I should say I was) were a bit fanatical about replacing broken or missing things that we thought were important. What we've realized over this year is that leaving room for God to work is often a MUCH BETTER SOLUTION.

Now back to thoughts on support raising. (You can skip this part, if you've already heard it from me directly.) One of the biggest things we've learned this year is to allow God to work. To get out of the way. I don't want this to sound arrogant, so please understand that we are so humbled in the way we have seen God work to raise support. Of course, we had to show up, and some of you showed up as well (i.e.: showing up to serve at a conference) to witness first-hand what God is doing in the Church in Latin America. Back in 2012, as we prepared to move to Mexico full-time in 2013, we sought the opportunity to visit with many of you to share our story and rally support. Now, I'm not a fundraiser.  I'm not comfortable asking for money (actually it's a pride thing I think, but I like to spiritualize it as humility), and the last thing we want when we call to visit someone is for them to think that we're going to ask for money (as one might be naturally inclined to do). So we never do. What we do do is pray a lot. We pray before we share, we pray for you to do what God wants you to do (which may be to do nothing).  I'll never forget, after we enjoyed dinner with a sweet family, and we were finished with the meal, the husband says to me, "We'd like to support you guys for $xxx/month." I thought I was hearing things. I could believe that people supported missionaries for anything other than what comes in the tens column. I was so humbled. This is the way that God works. God works BIG. In orders of magnitude that we often don't have faith for. But we do have to show up. We might not have the courage to ask, but we DO have to show up. If you're wondering if we have 100% of what we need, actually we still lack a modest amount, but if we lacked nothing we would have no place for God to work. As I drove (a lot) around southern California last month I couldn't stop thinking "This stuff isn't really important, impressive, but not REAL." People are real, God is real, Jesus is real.

Excitement on the road

It's 10:20 in the morning as we leave Starbucks for some much needed caffeine as I drive south through Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, and I remember that we need to find a bank to withdraw some pesos. As I search for a bank, the caffeine still hasn't kicked in, I decide to turn left onto a side-street to go around the block instead of attempting an u-turn in the middle of a busy street. As I start my left turn off the side street into the next street, suddenly there is a loud bang against my door and the next thing I see is a motorcycle with the rider laying on the street. We need help God! I run over to the rider lying in the street. His ankle and knee are clearly hurt, but otherwise he looks OK. Colleen moves our car out of the intersection, she the kids stay in the car, and a small crowd of witnesses starts to gather. I ask someone to call an ambulance, but before I can even finish, an ambulance pulls up. If you read the blog about Juan, you'll know that ambulances don't just show up in a minute in Mexico, if they ever show up at all. A minute later, a policeman pulls up and starts evaluating the scene. Witnesses come forward, the vast majority supporting my version that I was turning left with my blinker on and the motorcyclist tried to pass me to go straight on the left side before I turned. After the policeman finishes his report (partially), we both sign it and even though he says that the motorcyclist is more at fault, he suggests that I should pay for an x-ray of his leg so that he can't claim anything against me later. The owner of the company, who the young man works for, has also come to the scene, along with her husband, so we follow them to a small private hospital a few blocks away. The couple call their personal physician, who just happens to be an orthopedic surgeon working in the same hospital. He looks at the x-ray (for which I paid $30 US) and examines the cyclist and pronounces him OK with only a "golpe" (bumps & bruises). The doctor also refuses any payment. So in less than 2.5 hours we are free to go. Remarkable! How's our car? Well, it does have some dents in the driver's side door and the running board, but in light of how this event could have played out, we have no problem with that. Sorry we didn't get any great pictures of the accident, but I did take this picture of the intersection where you can see the police car on the left side and the motorcycle to the right of the intersection. God is with us!

What happened in Guatemala?

A key principle that we operate from as a ministry, and among our team here in our ministry is to: 1) only go to places where no other ministry is operating, and 2) where the pastors are in clear agreement to continued training and ministry together.  Thus, we were rather confused to receive 3 urgent emails from Guatemala over the winter inquiring . . .

"When are you coming back?"

"We have more pastors who want to come this time, how many more can come?"

"Can we do the conference next week?"

When we responded "How about the first week of March?"

They responded "We can't do the conferences right now."

(Something must be going on).

Now, let me first say that the church ("church" meaning all Christian believers, not just the "church" as in my church or your church) in Latin America is much more entrenched in divisions, jealousy and petty issues. To the same degree that the North American church is overwhelmed by consumerism (i.e.: select your favorite church, music, youth group . . .  you choose = consumerism vs. accepting (dare I say submitting) by faith to what God wants you to do). Pastors in Guatemala are distracted by similar issues that our Mexican brothers and sisters struggle with here in Mexico. The struggle is authoritarian denominations controlling church property and pastor assignments based on favoritism, sheep-steeling and almost every other conflict is then exacerbated by poverty. It's no surprise that the Gospel doesn't flourish in an area when so many pastors are distracted by issues of jealousy and division. In societies where corruption is expected in the public arena, the same corruption of the Gospel is being committed by its leaders! That's not good news.

Therefore, instead of conceding to the news of a closed door, we were genuinely interested in understanding what had caused such an abrupt change of heart within a group of pastors we had previously worked with. We cancelled the upcoming conference and quickly sent Pastor Marco and myself to Guatemala and Chiapas for a 5 day follow-up. First, to investigate the problems with the one group of Guatemalan pastors, and second, to help the pastors in Chiapas set up the next conference that we have been planning for this August. Many potentially fruitful connections resulted from our visit.

Since flying to Guatemala is actually cheaper than flying to Chiapas, we started in Guatemala City to visit 2 pastors we know in the capital, as well as, meet with the Guatemalan Bible Society. The GBS is starting a new ministry to offer training to pastors in the capital, and so we met with the director with the hope of establishing a partnership which would enable them to reach more rural pastors and for us to be able to establish experienced teachers within an existing structure (GBS) that could continue training pastors once we train the pastors to present the material. We're very hopeful that this connection will greatly magnify our opportunities to serve Guatemalan pastors.

Guatemalan Pastor Carmelino and his family

The following day we drove north from the capital to visit with the group of pastors who had suddenly changed their plans for the upcoming conference. Our meeting with them was brief, but we quickly discovered that a small group of pastors was responsible for raising funds for a multipurpose building, and that they didn't want anything to interrupt the completion of this building. While there is a group of pastors within their group that want to continue the teaching, we thought it would be better to remove ourselves from their conflict, and to leave another pastor outside of this group in charge of coordinating future conferences in northern Guatemala. Thus, we continued to visit additional towns close to the Mexican border over the next 2 days.

Pastor Marco buying a snack as we walk the streets in Tecun Uman, Guatemala

In the last town, we walked around asking people on the street, "Where's a good church around here?" or "Do you know a good pastor around here?" This is one of my favorite survey methods in new areas as it gives us a really good idea of how Christianity is operating (or not) in an unknown area. We met 5 pastors in 3 hours of walking through the town of Tecun Uman, some with tragic stories, some with business as usual stories. Few seemed interested in learning more, or would be able to. Resigned that maybe this was not the place of opportunity that we had felt when we passed through yesterday, we decided to grab a quick bite to eat in the plaza before crossing into Mexico for our meetings with pastors in Tapachula.

The Baptist church complete with extraordinary book store across the plaza in Tecun Uman.

As we were sitting eating fried chicken (fried food is sterile), I turned around and saw a cross on a green building across the plaza. As we only had minutes before we needed to head north, I ran across the plaza to find a small church and a Christian book store of the size and completeness that I've never seen anywhere in Mexico or Guatemala. We quickly located the pastor and explained why we were visiting his town. He told us that he would be interested in working together to start a training center in northern Guatemala because while there is training available in the capital, pastors from the north cannot afford to travel to the capital, and traveling north into Mexico is also dangerous for them (see below). Thus, after a brief introduction we left with the agreement to continue communicating with this great pastor. When we are feeling called to new areas, most of the time just showing up is all that is needed to open the door.

Google's satellite version of rafts crossing the same area in the picture below.

The Suchiate River which separates Guatemala (right) from Mexico (left).

Some of you might be thinking "Is it safe to walk around border towns?" Probably not. As a team we plan ahead, keep moving, and pray all of the time. Of all the risks we could encounter, it's seems like thus far, the driving is the most hazardous part of our ministry here. In Guatemala in particular, the highways are treacherous with huge unexpected potholes and very fast drivers. For Guatemalan pastors wanting to attend our conferences in Mexico, since most of them don't have visas to allow them entry into Mexico, they have to pass by raft over the river that runs between Guatemala and Mexico. Many other things come back and forth on these rafts all day and night into Mexico and Guatemala also, so this route is not safe for anyone.

Very public transportation in Guatemala.

Another paradox in Guatemala is that evangelical churches are about as common as Starbucks or McDonald's in the US. You would think that with that many churches, a country would generally be safer. Sadly this is not true. Even in the smallest town, every pharmacy, fast food restaurant and even cell phone stores employ security guards carrying shotguns. Think of it as small scale mutual deterrence.

Dunkin Donuts in Guatemala: Those are some very valuable donuts!

As we passed into Mexico at dusk after walking through Tucun Uman, I was suddenly surprised to feel a sense of relief as we came to the "Welcome to Mexico" sign. Funny that Mexico suddenly felt "safer," like we were home now.

Crossing north into Mexico from Guatemala.

Our meetings with the pastors in Chiapas were even more fruitful than we expected. They have formed a committee to coordinate the next conference there this August, and they are well organized.  There are so many more things to say about the progress we are seeing in Chiapas with the pastors, but if you've hung in there to read this much, thank you. We're thankful to be serving the pastors in this way, and thankful for YOU who read, pray, encourage us, and support us.

Coming home is always better!

Pastor Marco with some of his family.