Ministry

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Taking Advantage of Opportunities

August 25, 2008 in Day2Day, Ministry, Prayer by Dave | 4 comments

Here on the mission field, we’ve come to recognize that it is important to take advantage opportunities. Take the grocery store for example. Certain staples that we depended on in the US, like applesauce, make appearances for a limited time only. So, when we saw the display of “puré de manzana” at the local Wal-Mart, we bought 5 jars.

Of course, taking advantage of opportunities requires a certain amount of preparation. First, you have to be looking for them. If we had decided that we would never see applesauce again, it’s possible that we would have passed by the display without even noticing. Second, you have to be able to make the investment. A hand-to-mouth style of living doesn’t allow wiggle room for large purchases, so without the needed cash we would have had to pass up the sweet appley goodness.

Ministry can be the same way. Opportunities arise at time when we least expect it. Take this week: a casual dinner conversation turned to a daughter in need; a meeting the next day touched on the subject of a marriage in trouble; and a greeting after service brought with it a story of sickness and family strife. How would we view each situation? Would we see them as opportunities to apply the gospel we preach and teach or would they be taken as distractions in our otherwise busy day?

I’m happy to say that each situation that I mentioned we took the opportunity to minister. A daughter was counseled, a marriage encouraged, and a fellow believer prayed for. Still, I wonder, did we see all of the opportunities? Was God working in other ways that we weren’t prepared for? Or perhaps we simply weren’t willing to invest?

Paul asks the Ephesians for prayer in chapter 6 verses 18-20 that he might boldly speak the gospel. I believe that this petition not only has to do with attitude but also with availability. Paul wrote his letter in chains. He did not have the freedom to travel and to teach. It would have been easy to say that others now need to take up the work, that now was his time to rest. He could have closed himself off from the world, and yet he asked for prayer so that he would “open his mouth” to share.

We too ask for that prayer, that we who have been called as ambassadors of Christ will take advantage of every opportunity available to us. That we will be able to recognize how God is working in each situation and align ourselves to cooperate with Him as He carries out his mission here in Mexico and around the world.

Oh, and if you’ve got the scoop on where to find some Twizzlers here in Mérida we’re ready to buy.

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Learning to Fly

July 10, 2008 in Devotional, Ministry, Prayer by Dave | 5 comments

Preaching Friday night, teaching Saturday morning, a week long class next week, the schedule keeps on piling up. The difference is, I’m not the one who’s dealing with it, it’s Kelly. Being invited to preach in a youth service, leading a Saturday Morning Kid’s Service, and teaching during our church’s Vacation Bible School has kept Kelly occupied, planning and preparing. So much so that I’ve decided to take some flying lessons. No, not that type of flying.

Actually, flying is a clever way of talking about housekeeping that Marla Cilley a.k.a “the FlyLaydy” invented to encourage those who would like to keep a clean house, but were never “born-organized” to achieve that dream. With my Kelly out of the picture for long stretches, I needed a little bit of motivation to help me pick up the slack around the house. So I turned to the site for tips and routines that would help me keep the house up, while enabling me to devote time my kids, who just got out of school last week. Fortunately, although FlyLady.net is definitely geared to the feminine audience, I found lots of time saving techniques that have helped me to let Kelly devote herself to her preparation, while keeping me from a nervous breakdown.

In fact, as I have been swishing toilets and scrubbing pans, I found myself thinking of the spirituality of it all. No, I’m not saying that doing the dishes is helping me get closer to God, but switching roles has helped me understand a bit more about ministering as a missionary couple. Ephesians 5:22-33 is the classic passage on the husband and wife relationship. Wives are to submit, while husbands are to love. What many of us miss, however, is that Paul, in verse 21, commands all to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Now, I am not saying that Kelly is now ordering me around or leaving honey-do lists on my pillow in the morning, but what I am saying is that there are times in ministry, and I could say in secular life as well, that the husband is up front, doing the public relations and making the decisions. There are also times when that shoe is on the other foot, and the wife takes the lead. Perhaps this is what Paul was saying when he recommended Phoebe to the Romans saying, “After all, she has proved to be a respected leader for many others, including me.” (Romans 16:2 CEV)

So this week, Kelly has become the face of our public ministry. She’s been the one up front, going to meetings and making the decisions, and that’s a good thing. I’ve submitted to what the Lord is doing through her during this time knowing that He’s called us both to serve Him here in Mexico.

Speaking of what the Lord is doing, I’d like to request that you say a prayer for Kelly this weekend, and if you can, remember her throughout next week. I’m sure she’d appreciate that, and while you’re at it you can pray for me as well–dishpan hands can be really annoying.

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Freely You Have Received, Freely Give

June 29, 2008 in Ministry, Missions, Progress by Dave | Permalink

As Jesus sent out the 12 in Matthew 10, He gave them the motive for their ministry in verse 8: “Freely you have received, freely give. Their mission of mercy–healing the sick, casting out demons, and even raising the dead is the logical response to the mercy that they had already received in the form of God drawing near. They had seen Him, touched Him, and from Him received divine power. In Matthew 10, they are sent out to tell others about Him.

What Jesus modeled is the end of any discipleship program. He made disciples who in turn made disciples, and, here in the Yucatán, we had the privilege of seeing this cycle come full circle. This past Saturday night, the ministers and members of the Assemblies of God of Yucatán met to commission and send out Norma Uitzil, a missionary, born here in Yucatán, who will be ministering among the “Untouchables” of Calcutta, India.

Yucatán has freely received. Silverio Blanco, the director of the Bible Institute, took time during the service to tell of the first evangelical missionaries who arrived in 1866 to preach in what was then the inhospitable conditions of this predominately Maya state. Since that small beginning, many have come, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Pentecostals among others. In what was once an area devoid of believers, now roughly 1 in 10 attends an evangelical congregation. Granted, there is plenty of work to be done, but the work here in the Yucatán has entered a different stage. It is time for this district to take its place in the evangelization of the world, and missionary Norma Uitzil is one of the first to respond to that call.

About a year and a half ago, I spoke of Jaime and Jaqueline Chacon, missionaries from Costa Rica that are now serving in the U.S. I echoed in that post the words of our regional director, Dick Nicholson, who said that missions is no longer the U.S. or the traditionally Christian Nations that are sending missionaries to the ends of the earth; missions has become a movement in which God is calling people from everywhere to go to everywhere. We believe more than ever in that idea. To that effect, we are currently heading up the missions program in the church that we attend, and we are committed to continually preach missions in the various congregations in which we are invited to speak.

Some might say that it is an impossibility to promote missions in an area where the minimum wage is $5 a day, but people like Norma are proving that we serve a God who makes the impossible possible. So, as we were called forward to pray for her, I asked as well that God would begin to call others to respond to His world-wide mandate, that others would hear His heartbeat for the nations and dare to believe that they can make a difference. After all, freely we all have received, its only natural that we all freely give.

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The Most Excellent Way

June 9, 2008 in Devotional, Ministry, Missions by Dave | 3 comments

I just finished up another evangelism conference, this marking my sixth opportunity to hold such an event here in the Yucatán. With more experience comes more confidence in sharing the material, but that experience also brings a certain familiarity with the topic–an anticipation you could say of the inquiries and the reaction of the audience, but during class this last Thursday, a question was asked that I hadn’t anticipated.

We had been studying Mark 6:30-44, the account of the feeding of the 5,000, and contrasting the disciples’ reaction to the crowd’s needs with that of Jesus. Analyzing the context, we concluded that the disciples’ inaction and Jesus action was related to a key element, compassion. Jesus saw the plight of the crowd and the compassion that he felt moved him to action even though he was in the midst of extreme personal sorrow. The disciples, coming off of a successful preaching tour, failed to react because their lack of compassion.

Usually, the anticipated question is “How do we learn to react in the way Jesus did?” a question that I anticipate and answer within the lesson follow-up, but this time an unanticipated question was raised; a student asked: “Should we act compassionately first and then preach, or should we preach first and then display acts of compassion?” Caught off guard, I had to think a bit about the question. I wanted to know what it was that this student was trying to clear up in his mind. His clarification clued me in. Some organizations emphasize compassionate acts, feeding programs, rehabilitation centers, and medical clinics while others emphasize teaching and preaching engagements. This student was trying to understand what stance we should take in the debate between presenting evangelism as a moment of decision or what what some call the “social gospel.”

The question illustrates the danger of thinking in predefined categories. It can cause us to limit our outreaches to traditional activities like preaching, teaching, and passing out tracts while avoiding food distribution or medical clinics in an attempt to show our emphasis on “telling the good news,” or it can cause us to add mandatory evangelistic events to our “social outreach” in order to justify the undertaking, a practice that can lead others to criticize us as evangelicals for opportunistic proselytizing, or can lead to the phenomenon of “Rice Christians,” those who confess Christianity as long as the hand outs keep coming.

Separating compassion and preaching/teaching into separate categories should make us ask the questions: “Is our preaching without compassion?” and “Is social outreach condemned or considered second-class by scripture?” Obviously the answer to both questions is no. The real question, therefore, should not be, “How should our evangelism look?” but rather, “How should our evangelism be motivated?”

Returning to the passage in question, we see that Jesus taught and fed the needy crowd. There was no separation of his actions into evangelistic and social. Rather compassion motivated him to meet the need before him. Jesus wasn’t checking off items on his list; he was instead showing us that the compassionate response considers its recipient as a whole person.

Interchanging the word compassion for love can perhaps clarify the point. Paul, in trying to settle church division in Corinth, culminates his argument for unity with the famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, which he introduces as “the most excellent way.” In his opening words, he lists both “spiritual” (prophesy and tongues and the practice of faith) and “compassionate” (giving to the poor) acts as worthless without love. It’s little wonder then that 1 John 4:12 says that we would be known to be true, not for our excellent Bible teaching or for our hospital building, but rather for our love, and this is fitting because love when perfectly applied led to eternal life. (Jn 3:16)

Reaching out to a lost world in love then enables us to push past the categories and throw away our checklists. Ultimately it allows us to utilize the appropriate means to communicate God’s love, be it through a cup of cold water or an offer to pray the sinner’s prayer.

Learning and encouraging the most excellent way here in the Yucatán,

Dave

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Rethinking the Task of Teaching

June 4, 2008 in Ministry, Missions by Dave | 2 comments

I’ll be traveling to Florida next week in order to attend an ACLAME summit where teachers across Latin America will be meeting to discuss what we do as missionary educators. This upcoming convention has given me pause for thought about my own experience some of which I’d like to share with you today.

As I’ve been here in Mérida, I’ve had the privilege of teaching for a year and a half in the Bible Institute. This is a job that I have met with much fear and feeling of responsibility. As James says, “Not many of you should presume toJ be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” I understood the need to prepare myself mentally and spiritually for the task before me, something that my family could attest as they frequently find me in my “cave” praying and writing, trying to sort out what I am to share with my classes.

Nevertheless, as I become more aware of the environment that I find myself in, I have found something that I was not prepared for. I entered into the learning environment with expectation. I was under the impression that the students that I would be teaching would be looking for answers, trying to hone their skills in order to seek the gospel take root in otherwise fruitless ground. I expected students to challenge me with their questions and compel me to further study as we sought to practically apply the theology that we assimilated each day, and in some cases, this is what I have found. But as I look over the half-finished assignments and the failing grades of others, I’ve faced a different reality, one that is in stark contrast with my expectations.

So I’m left with the task of answering the question, “what am I doing wrong?” Bruce Wilkinson, a teacher associated with Walk Thru The Bible Bible Ministries, says that motivating his or her students to learn is the task of the teacher. Therefore, if I am to be brutally honest with myself, and if I am to take James’ admonition at face value, then I need to reevaluate my teaching style and find out how I can reach those who fail to excel in their studies.

The Bible College system in Latin America accepts all students who feel called to the ministry regardless of their educational background. They need only letter of recommendation from their pastor in order to gain entrance into the program. This means that many of those who study lack the essential tools that they need in order to complete the requirements of the classes that they enter. I have found that the majority of students have never written a paper or done an investigation. One of my students admitted to me that her studies only reached as far as the fourth grade!

What does this mean? First, it seems to imply that education, according to my interpretation as the exchange and analysis of ideas is not necessarily the goal of my students. Instead, they are looking for intensely practical and readily applicable methods that they can use now in their context. They are not interested in asking questions; they are looking for answers. Therefore, my task as professor requires me to meet the expectations of my students by providing them answers while at the same time builds the tools that they need to make learning a lifestyle.

I find myself taking the role of a Mr Miyagi of the Karate Kid. Daniel, his student, wanted to learn to fight, but Mr Miyagi only left him to menial tasks like painting the fence and sanding the floor. Only when Daniel blocks a series of kicks and punches with techniques that he had learned by painting and sanding does he come to understand and appreciate Mr Miyagi’s style. So I’m restructuring my teaching style. Instead of driving ahead in order to complete the material, I am finding myself teaching concepts of research and reasoning, helping students formulate good questions for interviews, and locating good resources in the library. I’m breaking concepts down and trying to reinforce small steps toward large goals, all the while seeking to illustrate how the job of the minister makes the learning of each tool we cover essential.

On one hand, I lament not being able to get to “the meat” of the course, but at the same time, I realize that formal education, if it is honest with itself, must admit that it cannot impart all knowledge. I have only 3 years with a Bible School student. That is an incredibly short amount of time to communicate knowledge. Furthermore, I have to admit that I have forgotten far more that I have internalized over my 8 years of higher education. However, if I seek to impart the tools necessary to study, and convey an attitude that promotes learning, I can create a lifetime learner, an investigator who seeks to find the answer and apply truth in such a way as to create change. I guess that you could say that my goal is to create someone like the Karate Kid, who will find they have what it takes to survive and thrive in a world increasingly hostile to the traditional Christian message. I appreciate your prayers as I attempt to make this happen.

I have to go right now though. There is a fly buzzing and I need to find my chopsticks.

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Putting Ourselves at a Disadvantage?

April 29, 2008 in Devotional, Ministry, Missions by Dave | 3 comments

I have the pleasure of reading some excellent blogs about missions and discipleship. Recently, I came across this excellent post from Guy Muse a Baptist missionary to Ecuador. He writes:

Everyday for the past two weeks and continuing for two weeks more, our team has been teaching groups of fifteen pastors who are coming to Guayaquil from all over the coastal region of Ecuador. They are being introduced to our COSECHA (Harvest) discipleship/church planting training materials that will be used to reach the goal of 1-million disciples in one year.

The heart of the training is making disciples. The only way to win/disciple a million in a year is to begin making disciples that make disciples. Nothing new. But are we doing it? Am I doing it?

If we are out there everyday exhorting everyone about the priority of making disciples, who am I discipling? My biggest fear everyday in the trainings is that someone will bluntly ask me who I am discipling!

These strong soul-searching words hit home. We solicit funds saying that we are going to reach the lost, and yet, as we look at our schedules, our calendars are full of spiritual retreats and Bible conferences. Our to-do lists include research for Bible school classes and fund raising for church projects, but discipleship, defined as reaching and training followers of Christ, seems surprisingly absent. If we were to truly provide evidence of meeting our goals of reaching the lost based on our professional activities, it is highly possible that we’d come up short.

But why? God forbid that we would have intentionally mislead churches into thinking that we were doing something that we are not. I think that we hit the ground intending to see lost people saved and an impact made in the community where we live. So what keeps us from being able to see the results that we so desire?

One reason I believe that this happens is because of our dependence on the local church as we get our “feet on the ground” in ministry. As we arrive in the community where we minister, we look for people to help us establish our lives in the foreign context. We need everything from furniture to handymen to help us to get started and build a secure environment for our families and a base from which we can work. Being representatives of a religious organization, more often than not we find that help coming from Christians.

This in itself is not a bad thing of course. There are few things more assuring to a man or woman who is dealing with his or her second complete move in a year to two separate and absolutely foreign environments than to be able to delegate important tasks to another believer who will treat him or her honestly and amicably as the missionary stumbles through cultural adaptation and adjustment. However, the downside to all of this is that we begin our experience in that new culture by building a cloistered environment for ourselves that keeps us from relating with neighbors who do not have a relationship with Christ and may be seeking the message that we came to share.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that these Christians generally introduce us to other Christians who then invite us to address any number of groups and participate in any number of events generally frequented by other Christians. Before we know it, we are deeply entrenched in a Christian culture and, although busy, have severely hindered ourselves from having a real first-hand impact on the predominantly non-Christian world that we live in.

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe that those of us who serve a predominantly Christian audience, doing leadership training and pastoral conferences, do a great deal of good. Nevertheless, there is a question that haunts me: Does my professional schedule exempt me from fulfilling the Great Commission?

Another often repeated concept is that most of what is learned, that is what is transferred and actually applied to a person’s life comes through the teacher’s ability to model what he or she is communicating. In other words, that which is learned is more often caught than taught. This serves as well to make the reality all the more convincing, we as missionaries can’t just train disciplers we have to be disciplers ourselves.

But how? How can we who have been caught up in the busyness of the ministry refocus our lives in order to prioritize discipleship ministry? I have a few ideas:

  1. Don’t stop preaching discipleship. Our continued involvement and reflection on the theme will continue to motivate us to “practice what we preach.” It will also enable us to explain our inability to fulfill expectations that others may try to place upon us that do not enable disciple-making ministry to take place
  2. Expand our circle of influence intentionally to include non-Christians. This requires an honest look at our lives in order intentionally create relationships with those who do not know Christ. Are we truly like our Master who was known as a friend of sinners?
  3. Look for opportunities everywhere. Discipleship opportunities can take place over a play-date with the kids or a late night greeting across the street. But we need to look out for them, recognize them for what they are, and utilize them to bring seekers closer to a relationship with their God.
  4. Be in constant prayer. When I prepare for a meeting or a teaching, I can control the elements. I pick the theme, the illustrations, and the length of time that I am going to speak. As a discipler, I don’t have these luxuries. I have to rely on the Holy Spirit for direction and clear insight into the matter at hand. Hearing his voice is only enabled as I practice acknowledging his presence in every moment.

These things are coming to pass in our lives as we have evaluated our ministry and daily life here in Mérida. I’m happy to report that we can count many non-Christians now as our friends. Pray for us as we engage ourselves in their their lives and adjust our schedules to keep discipleship a true focus of our ministry.

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Raising the Roof in Yaxkukul

April 15, 2008 in Ministry, Support by Dave | Permalink

Door to the church called \"El Tabernaculo\"I don’t consider myself a builder. I’ve never created anything that I can remember, except maybe the lopsided pencil holder that I made for my mom in my Boy Scouts basket weaving merit badge class. Still, I can tell when things aren’t quite right. That’s exactly Pastor Rudy Manzano noticed shortly after he took the pastorate of “El Tabernaculo” church in Yaxkukul. The roof above his congregation was bulging in the middle, a sure sign that things were amiss.

He spoke with an engineer about his problem and asked him to give him his opinion. What he had to say was not what he wanted to hear. The beams that held the roof in place had not been cured correctly. Therefore, they were unable to hold the weight of the blocks and the cement used in its construction. The roof was in danger of collapse. It had to go and soon.

So the congregation tore down the roof. The danger has passed, but now they face a problem. The rains are on their way. Beginning in May, the Yucatán receives rains almost each afternoon, and hurricane season from July through November means that it will be months before this congregation will have a building to call their home.

Kelly, the kids, and I had a chance to visit the site on Sunday. Being the type of person that likes to worship outdoors, I found the service under the blue skies to be a welcome change from the traditional unfinished concrete structures that characterize so many Assemblies of God churches here in the Southeast. Still, I knew that my breath of fresh air was a day-to-day burden for Pastor Rudy and his congregation.

I preached on faith, from Mark 7:24-30 the story of the Syrophoenician Woman, and I spoke on resolutely seeking after God. In the passage, the woman surpassed the spiritual understanding of even Jesus’s disciples as her response to a supposed rebuff revealed a truly amazing faith.

Many times we feel that obstacles are things to be avoided. Pain and suffering are products of bad choices, or even worse, sin. But in Mark 7, and I venture to say in the situation in Yaxkukul, that isn’t the case. Suffering in the case of Syrophoenician Woman caused her to resolutely seek an audience with Jesus and not be put off until she had her response. In the same way, I see the loss of this congregation’s roof as an opportunity for them to see the hand of God moving in their lives.

We had a chance to speak with the Pastor Rudy and his wife Laura at length following the service, and we found them upbeat in the face of this situation. It didn’t take long to find out why. Their oldest daughter, now attending high school had battled years before with a life threatening case of pneumonia. The strength they found in their faith brought them through that crisis. Now, they wait patiently on God knowing that He will yet again provide.

The wonderful thing about the family of God is that we have an opportunity in this situation as well. We can be an instrument of God’s provision for this congregation. The people of Yaxkukul are doing what they can, but it will take time for this group to get together the $13,000 that they will need to finish the work, time that they do not have.

Would you consider being a part? If you would like to donate directly to this work, you can give through this secure web-server by entering your offering and the project name and number “RECONSTRUCTION OF CHURCH ROOF TABERNACULO” #14312.”

For pictures of the project click here.

I Get by with a Little Help…

April 1, 2008 in Ministry, Missions by Dave | Permalink

There’s an old song that says “I get by with a little help from my friends…” It’s been a full two weeks since my last post, and I have much to tell about the missions trip that we hosted and the work that we accomplished, but I’ve been sick. Yes, sick like last year. So this latest offering is offered with the help of my friend, my brother to be exact. Here is a highlight from the Chi Alpha missions trip that he mentioned on his blog:

One of the most rewarding parts of the trip was seeing the result of our work last year. At the end of that week, we met a man named Daniel. He was a member of the church in Muna and the tour guide for our visit to the Mayan ruins of Uxmal. During our time together, he mentioned to Dave how much he liked our presentation and that he would love to develop the church’s evangelistic outreach. That conversation opened the door for Dave to begin training church leaders in sharing their faith. Together, Dave and Daniel set up opportunities for us to work alongside trained church members sharing the gospel in 5 different communities. Amazing–and to think it all began on our day off from “missions work!” I thank God for the opportunity to see the impact of our trip first-hand and I can’t wait until next year.

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Missions Trips: All Leave Changed

March 18, 2008 in Media, Ministry, Missions by Dave | 1 comment

We’ve made it back from our second annual Chi Alpha Spring Break Missions Trip in Yucatán. (You can read about the first one here) We are still in recovery mode following 8 days of hard labor and evangelistic services, but we didn’t want to let time slip away without filling you in on some of the details. This post and its companion video speak of the impact that missions trips can have on its participants.

Cenotes are a common feature of the landscape of the Yucatán. Cenotes are created when the acidic rain region eats away at the limestone bedrock. Eventually, water filled caves are created by this continual erosion. When finally the roof falls in, the cenote is revealed.

Cenotes today are a welcome relief to the Yucatán heat. Their cool water and regulated temperatures serve as a refuge and source of recreation for many, but, years ago, cenotes were a primary water source and a site of religious ritual.

Because of the lack of rivers, streams, and lakes, cenotes were the main source of water for the indigenous Maya that populated the region before the Spanish conquest. Furthermore, cenotes were thought to be the entrance to the Maya watery underworld known as Xibalba (prounounced she-bal-ba. For this reason, in many cenotes can be found pottery, jewelry, and other offerings as well as human remains in such cenotes as the Sacred Well at Chichén Itzá.

Why all this talk about cenotes? Well it just so happens that this natural limestone formation, so important in ancient and modern times has just taken on a new significance in the life of one of our team members, Ashley Wall. A return member of our team, she decided to be baptized in a cenote near the city of Muna, where we did the majority of our work.

This cenote is a rather young one; it was uncovered by a family drilling for a well some years ago. So there was little fear of encountering ritual remains as we entered, but still, the connotation cannot be dismissed. This ancient source of life-giving water gave witness to a declaration of dependence on the Water of Life, Jesus Christ. This shadowy entrance into the underworld was converted into a place of rebirth, and this refuge from the heat became a symbolic bath where sins were washed away.

We hope that you enjoy this installment from our Chi Alpha Missions Trip ’08 and rejoice with us as we congratulate Ashley for taking this step of faith.

Preparations

March 7, 2008 in Ministry, Missions, Prayer by Dave | 1 comment

Evangelism Preparations

We are preparing for a busy week of ministry as we receive my brother, Mike, and his team of 9 students from the Chi Alpha Campus Ministry at American University. Instead of choosing a party spot, this group has decided to invest their Spring Break in ministry, trading a beach towel for a shovel and all night partying for evangelistic rallies.

The group arrives at the Mérida airport tomorrow at 9:00 PM, but that’s not where the story begins. This event has been in the planning stages since November of last year, and it’s scope is larger than anything we’ve attempted before.

Preparations began with two intensive evangelism training courses held in Muna and in Mérida. In these sessions, 4 churches had the opportunity to learn about personally communicating the gospel. We encouraged each student to focus on a list of five individuals that they could evangelize, praying, serving and sharing with each person in the months that preceded the arrival of the Chi Alpha team. The team in turn was preparing to share a gospel message, with the hope to be able to share this message with people who are ready to receive.

At this point, the excitement is brewing with several churches looking to capitalize on the special event that is the ministry of these college students. In Abalá, a village 1/2 hour away from Muna, there are plans to plant a church, in Opichén a town on the route to the Maya ruins of Uxmal, the town square is being reserved for the event. In Muna, the evangelism committee has painted 20 walls with the phrase: “Do you feel dry?” (Te sientes Seco?)The answer will be brought as the team distributes water and an invitation to the night’s service that says “Jesus is the water of life!” In Sacalúm the church has planned a 3 night campaign that the team will open on Wednesday.

Thinking about all of this, I can’t help but smile. Our desire when we arrived in Mexico was to serve as a catalyst within the state of Yucatán–an element that would enable the local church launch out in ministry. As this event begins to take shape, I have the feeling that we are accomplishing that goal though these efforts, providing opportunities for congregations to take their place as Christ’s ambassadors as they announce the kingdom of God in their communities.

Keep us in prayer this week, and keep posted for the good reports as Americans and Mexicans work side by side in ministry.

By the way, for those of you that voted on last week’s post we’ve declared Mike the winner! His prize? Well a trip to Mexico. of course!

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