The Reward for Going to the Bank

Car Wash - Local Style

Here's a local car wash (the best one I've found so far) where we take our car (the white one) to get washed, and bonus, providing you bring the filter and oil, they will change your oil too. The car doesn't look that dirty you say? True enough, but you should see the inside! Now, when we first starting using local services here over 8 years ago, I had the same reaction you might have of how different things are here.  Most things here are built for utility with very little attention to form. So when you come from the land of smooth roads, clean sidewalks, air conditioned businesses with manicured lawns and gardens, your first impression here isn't a good one. Also, I have encountered enough folks here who seem to see dollar signs when they see my face, that I started to become wary of every transaction that I needed to make. Over time, I learned to take notice of details that would result in dependable service. At a car wash, it is subtle things like having a key rack to hang the keys for each car, speakers for the sound system spread apart to provide ambient music (read: not a overly loud ghetto blaster), and chairs for clients to sit in while their car is washed are small things, but indications that they care about their business. This one even had a recycling bin. Big deal you say?  In a country where many folks just toss their trash out the window (even while driving through the middle of town!), a business that voluntarily maintains a recycle bin (there's no $ in it for them) is significant. A complete wash, vacuum and windows cleaned is around $6 USD.  With today's oil change it will be around $10 USD including tip.

Fruitful Time in Compostela

Over the past weeks we have both had the opportunity to spend time with the Diaz family and their church, Perdon y Amistad, in Compostela (about 45 minutes away). This is the same church that was able to complete building their church building after an incredible fundraising campaign, led by Rob & Mary Honer, several years ago.

One evening, Colleen was invited to share at their women's bible study. It was a great time of understanding more about what God says about prayer. The ladies listened intently and God was faithful to remind us of the power of scripture. Everything sounded even better through Fernando's translation, his first time at the women's bible study too.

A week later, Chuck was invited to preach at their Sunday worship service. Chuck preached in spanish and was received very warmly. He was challenged by a few new words he had learned during his preparation, but really delivered a powerful message. The church leadership has also asked for support and encouragement with their discipleship and leadership training in the weeks to come. What a great opportunity!

A special treat at their services is the exceptional music! This family is so talented. Nothing like rockin' out for Jesus.

Highlights from the May 2013 Chacala Pastors Conference

An incredible conference indeed, here are a few reasons why . . .

A lot of new pastors in attendance ~ It is always a tremendous blessing when a large percentage of attendees are first timers. It's reassuring to know that previous attendees are sharing their experiences with their acquaintances and sharing the vision. Then there are the amazing testimonies of how these precious pastors and their wives were able to come to the conference and what they are expecting God to do during the week.

A group of new pastors, hanging out, during registration.

Reaching the indigenous people ~ As a result of Chuck, Rafael, and Pedro's visit to the mountains a few months ago (see previous post), an indigenous pastor and his wife came to this conference. During their mountain adventure, Chuck's team drove over questionable roads, through a river, parked, and walked a mile to visit pastors in that area (this is before rainy season). The indigenous couple many more hours into the mountains from where Chuck's team visited. The couple hiked several hours and travelled by car for at least 14 hours to come to the conference. They had heard about the team's visit and wanted to find out what this conference was all about. Awesome! During the conference, they were invited up front to translate what was being sung & said into their native tongue, what a treat! They would love for Chuck & the team to come visit their area, Chuck thought he may need to hire a pack of burros.



A Time for Healing ~ During the conference, as we strive to strengthen marriages, we provide a special opportunity for the husbands & wives.  During one day, there is a special teaching time for the ladies, and during this time the husbands write a love letter to their wives. Then that evening during fellowship time, letters are picked at random, for the husband to read to his wife on his knee, while she sits, in front of everyone. For some this is very moving, as they may not hear these words of admiration, love, and affection from their husband very often, let alone in front of a whole crowd. This week a husband shared of his thankfulness to his wife for her patience, endurance, and love for him as he had abused her and been an alcoholic previously. What a transparent moment and opportunity for healing in their relationship. Would you pray for them? That God would continue to bring healing, transparency, and growth to their marriage.


Special friends ~ What fun it was to serve the pastors with our dear friends, Dave & Dala Breummer (see their posts).  They were incredible! Dala used her spanish to have many conversations with many in attendance.  Dave taught the men. Dala taught the ladies. They both served meals, moved chairs, hung tarps, cleaned tables, prayed, and loved on everyone.  Their patience, humility, and tireless energy were an inspiration to us all. What a special week!




Wisdom Shared ~ Something new this conference was a panel on marriage, provided by Paul & Elaine Newkirk and Bill & Jane Robertson. Both couples have faithfully served at many conferences, and what an significant impact they made. God spoke profoundly through their experiences and wisdom gained through their own journeys. Difficult questions were asked and thoughtful, practical, insightful, and discerning wisdom was shared.

Alistair is taking it all in.

Sydney entertaining the kids.

An awesome lunch crew.

     

Outages and differences

Thank you for your prayers for us in transition!  We have certainly been encouraged by your notes, goodbye greetings and updates of goings on up in the States.  Some of you have asked how life is now that we have arrived in Mexico permanently. In our experience the leaving was not too difficult because we were excited to be doing ministry full-time here in Mexico.  Our departing was mixed with some saddness to say goodbye to many good friends we have known in our 13 years in Escondido.  Arriving however was like a birthday, you know you should feel different, but you hope not too different.

There are some clear differences in lifestyle that we have been acquainted with previously, but all of these differences take on new meaning when you are here to stay.  One of these differences is the unreliability of utilities.  Those of you who have travelled in Mexico and other places in the developing world will remember seeing water tanks on top of each house in Mexico and elsewhere.  Roof-top water tanks solve two problems.  The first is that it alleviates the need for each city to have pressurized water because the water in each tank is then gravity fed into the house.  The second reason is that when the water service is interrupted (a somewhat frequent occurrence) you always have the water in your tank to use until the service is restored. 

Broken water pipes and a long ditch always portend bad news about water.

The funny thing for us was that the last full day we were in our house in Escondido, the water department left a note on the door that the water would be turned off on our street for repairs for 12 hours. We put some water in buckets to give our house a last cleaning before our renters moved in, and the next day, the water was only off for a few hours, not the 12 hours they had announced. Therein underscores the small differences in life in Mexico as opposed to the U.S. After arriving last Monday, I was leaving Chacala early Tuesday morning for a meeting with some of our leaders when I saw that a large section of the water main pipe was dug up indicating that we would be without water for at least another day (it has been off since a week ago Saturday). Thus, we were hopeful that we would have water restored by today (Monday), but yesterday the town officials announced that during the night Saturday that the town water pump had been stolen extending our water outage for another week (hopefully). Thankfully the house we rent has a large cistern, which should last over a week, so we are fine and we can order a water truck if we have to.  

La pipa (water truck) delivering 14,000 liters of water is a welcome sight with one more week of waterless Chacala to continue.

Here the people are not happy to be inconvenienced by the lack of water, but everyone finds another way. Imagine in the U.S. if your water was off for 2 weeks or more, these things make national news back home!  Power outages are common here too during the rainy season (June-October) and sometimes longer ones (3-4+ days) when folks come in the night to steal the wire from the transmissions lines. Of course, there are other things which we foreigners consider inconveniences, but we're relatively used to them. Besides, if all we ever had to report from the field was how different everything is here, we probably wouldn't make it here for very long!  So don't read this as a rant, but rather a description of the reality of life, which is ever so more rich because we can invest our lives with these great folks without concern of when we have to return.  Thanks for holding us up in prayer as we seek to serve God here in His kingdom.

February's Remote Survey Trip

DAY 1 - I have to start with this picture first because it illustrates the unexpected nature of working with folks in Latin America. Trying to make the most of my time, I flew into Puerto Vallarta early in the morning so that I could meet with one of our leaders along the way, and then pick up another leader who asked to accompany me in our 4 hour drive north to Acaponeta. When we arrived in Acaponeta, we met up with another pastor/leader who wanted to eat. That was fine with us, as we hadn't eaten anything but snacks so that we could arrive as quickly as possible. 

Mexican funeral

So, while we were eating tacos, Pedro says that he has to go "do a funeral." A funeral? That's right, Mexican funerals are usually at night, and if you really know the family you're supposed to stay there ALL NIGHT talking with them. Funeral homes in Mexico occupy very small store-fronts that barely have space for a small showroom (think 20'x20' small) for caskets. Instead, the funeral home, which is hosting the funeral, host the funeral in front of the house of the deceased (or in front of the church) IN THE STREET. The street is closed for the day, a canopy is erected in front of the house, chairs are set up for people close to the family to sit, and the service typically doesn't start until 10pm. You can tell from the picture that while certain close friends stay under the canopy all night visiting with the family, other less connected townsfolk sit on the motorcycles for the service before leaving. When we finally arrived at Pedro's house for the night, after the funeral, it was too late to heat water for showering, so we went straight to bed.

When the road stops you start walking

DAY 2 - 5:00am we start driving north-east out of Acaponeta where the pavement ends about 40 minutes outside of town. We stop to pick up Miguel, who is an indigenous indian pastor, who lives in the first town we visit, some 3 hours drive into the interior.  As the road gets progressively worse (when you are driving 5 mph and braking, it's bad) I start to wonder who actually lives out here? Just then we come down a steep grade into a village of about 300 people. I have my answer, these 

Rafa and Pedro visiting with Pastor Bartolo

people do. In the next town (which is actually a 4 hour drive, instead of the 3 hours suggested by the locals), we arrive at the first pastor's house. Pastor Bartolo (pictured here to the left) has pastored in this village for just 4 years now. Where we are sitting is where Bartolo and his family have church.  After visiting with Pastor Bartolo and hearing his story, he invites us to lunch inside a small adobe building where we have some homemade tortilla, eggs, potatoes and cactus.

Lunch being prepared

Cooking fire

As it would be very expensive to bring in propane or other fuels for cooking, all cooking is done with wood fire.  Sometimes the fire is the corner of an outside room, so like this design above, it is incorporated into the structure of the house with only a small percentage of smoke making its way around the metal cooking griddle over the fire. In this case, the smoke cures and dries out the corn hanging from the roof so that the bugs won't eat it. Using wood fires for cooking is also very common in smaller towns even where propane is readily available because of the lower cost. It's hard to convey the texture of tortillas made by hand ground corn, but I'll leave you to imagine a much thicker and coarse texture.

Pedro with Pastor Samuel

What's unmistakable is the joy and encouragement these families show when we arrive. Separated by distance and a few hours of practically impassable roads, the pastors living in these remote areas rarely have opportunities to see friends, let alone have people visit them. I've frequently contrasted this with the opportunities our family has had over the last year to spend time visiting with friends and family before we leave to reside in Mexico. Electronic communication is a marvel at being able to communicate facts, events and to be able to "update" each other, but it is really not the kind of connection we share when we are able to be with each other in person. This makes me so exceedingly grateful that we'll be able to really start connecting with our leaders, pastors and other folks in our community in Mexico.  Thanks for making this possible!

Mexican Leadership Team Retreat Jan 2-6, 2013

In the Old Testament, Proverbs 15:22 says,  

"Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed."  

Leadership study session

Do you have an amazing team you work with?  We do!  In fact, we have two great teams, our American Board of Directors here in the US, and our Mexican Leadership Team with whom we met with last week in Puerto Vallarta.  This Fall as we were planning out the rest of the year, one of my US board members suggested that I take our Mexican Leadership Team to a nice hotel with their families and bless them with a time to relax and study together. 

Pastor Oswaldo and his wife Natividad

Pastor Pedro and his wife Maria

Pastor Marco and his wife Rosa with two of their 5 children

I have to admit that while I love relaxing, sitting in a chair, and reading a good book, I usually feel like there's one more thing that I need to do, "and then I'll sit down."  Our great Mexican leaders are all the same hardworking folks that rarely take a break, so the idea of leading them to take a break was a genius idea.

Fernando and his wife Claudia and their daughter Pauley

Pastor Rafael and his wife Ofelia

Early on in this ministry we realized that inviting the spouses of each pastor to the conferences was a critical aspect of both training them, and encouraging them.  Our leaders are no different with most of them pastoring their church while working a job, and their wives working another job also, AND they volunteer their time helping lead the ministry we have together to train, mentor and encourage pastors.  Thus, it was a wonderful idea to bless them with a party of sorts where they could bring their families, and mix a little study and discussion time in as well.  Wow, what a party!

I've mentioned previously that one of my core philosophies of ministry is the belief that God brings your team to you.  The people who are around you are your team, and each one has a God-given talent to contribute to the great fulfillment of your organization's goals and vision.  The hard part is organizing all of that passion and vision into something that enables people to participate, but doesn't end up going in 50 different directions.

Maria Soto leading our discussion on women's needs

One of the aspects of each conference in Chacala, Nayarit has been our focus on blessing the women who come with a special event.  As Colleen has developed relationships with many of these women as well as the wives of our Mexican leaders, she has developed a better understanding of how we can minister to the women at each conference and develop ongoing mentoring groups for women in their regions.  It was to this end that we were both excited to have the wives of our Mexican leaders join us for our meetings.  In fact, from now on when we refer to our "Mexican Leaders" we hope you understand we're talking about these 8 couples and not just the pastors.  Thus, after I had finished some teaching on the character of leadership (for those of you interested in what we teach you can find it here), I told our team that I wanted to use the remainder of our time brainstorming and studying how we transform the lives of the women at each conference.  It was like popping the cork off a bottle of champagne.  Immediately, we had large post-it notes filled with ideas, and before long we realized we had been talking for 4 hours into the night. It was truly the best, most effective discussion we have ever had. Then it was time for tacos!  Thanks for being a partner with us in this great privilege it is to serve these pastors.  Since you've made it this far, if you're ever in Vallarta and want to impress your friends, you HAVE TO go one night and get tacos here.  If you want to see more pictures of our retreat time you can click here. Enjoy!