Hello again! So, as it turns out, I may have spoken a bit too soon regarding my health. It’s not anything alarming – just some swollen lymph nodes underneath my jaw, and still a killer headache. But, it seems that every time I find myself afflicted with a new sickness, it is less severe than what I had before, so I’m praising God for that.

Sorry for not posting the last two days, but Saturday night was pretty weird (the woman who lives in the other half of my home had her house broken into and robbed, so we have had to relocate for a few days), and Sundays are difficult because of the “multiple service” thing they have going on for the Vanguard students (I’ll get into that in one of my next posts).

But it’s Monday, which means that I’ll be evangelising in downtown Tepic (Centro) with a handful of my classmates. I went for the first time last week, y fue muy chido (for you English speakers back home, that’s Español for “and it was really awesome”). While some of my classmates went around the main square to share the Gospel with the civilians, they asked me to sing – in English, of course, since my decision to go was last minute, and I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare a song in Spanish.

So I ended up singing How He Loves per their request – I sang it one time in front a small group of people during one of our study hours, and I guess they enjoyed it enough to make them want me to sing it.

Funny story: I was about a third of the way through “How He Loves” when I felt a tug on my hair, and I looked at Andrea (my roommate), and she gave me an odd look of awkward discomfort – she hadn’t touched me, but she knew who did, but she was singing with me, so she couldn’t tell me what happened without interrupting the song. So I looked to the guy who was playing guitar, Israel, and he directed my attention to what was behind me: there was an older man looking at me desperately, repeating a phrase I couldn’t quite understand. He held in his hand a coin worth two pesos and repeated that phrase as he laid it in my hand. At this point, I had stopped singing in an effort to tell him I didn’t understand him, so I had to awkwardly start the song from where we left of before a stranger touched my hair. I learned later that night that he was saying “me recuerdas,” which translates into “remember me.”

Alrighty, then. I’ll be framing those two pesos to make sure I do just that.

In addition to that slightly odd flattering encounter, after I sang my English song, the group came together to sing in Spanish, which was really nice. This all led up to a message given by one of the students to the crowd that had gathered to enjoy a group of youngin’s singing and preaching about in public. I witnessed a willingness to hear the Gospel I had never really noticed in America – when they were asked if they wanted to give their lives to Christ, 14 people were willing to accept prayer for salvation. On Wednesday, one of the families that were there came to La Fuente and apparently plan on going permanently. Pretty good for a 10-minute presentation of who God is and why Christ is essential for our lives. I was impressed. Back home, I was never able to even mention anything that suggested any religious undertones without receiving resistance and arguments against my beliefs – but here I was, helping my team lead a good portion of a random crowd to Christ. It was phenomenal.

Here’s a picture of my friend Enrique sharing the Gospel to the aforementioned crowd of people – it was pretty amazing.

So needless to say, I’ll be going as often as I can.

Again, I’ll be posting *hopefully* every day (barring certain circumstances, such as the one mentioned above) until you guys are caught up. I still would like to encourage you all to ask me questions about my experience here in México.

I was asked if the food here in Mexico tastes the same as the food in Mexican restaurants in America – Yes, if you are asking about the restaurants that claim to be “authentic.” Though I would say these restaurants usually lack the (nearly excessive) use of limes that the people here seem to be so fond of. I haven’t tasted all of the food here, yet, but so far, this has been my experience. Of course, it depends on where you eat in America. There are some real deal Mexican eateries that assure us Americans that Mexican cuisine is not a myth, or just limited to Taco Bell, and then there’s Taco Bell.