Hello, beloved!

I was going to post a general update, thinking I was done telling you what you had missed – in a nutshell, of course. But that was when I realised that I hadn’t really told you everything. I was telling you guys what I thought you wanted to hear, and while I’m sure you were glad to hear from me and hear about what I was doing, I totally disregarded the possibility that you would like to hear about what God’s been doing in me.

This post is going to be very transparent about what I’m dealing with. I just ask that you continue to pray for me and continue to show your support – I have been very, very grateful for it. Thank you.

I told you in my first “What You’ve Missed” post that I have had to deal with a lot of issues, and I suppose the best place to let you in is at the beginning. There are things I struggled with back at home that I subconsciously must have thought wouldn’t follow me here to Mexico, and for some issues, that has proved true. Surprisingly for some things, even. But then, there are things that I didn’t realise I packed and brought with me. Heavy things. Unnecessary things. Unhealthy, and maybe even dangerous things. Things I told myself I didn’t want anymore. But I brought them anyways.

Which begs the question: do I want to give these things up?

Of course, when I’m feeling strong spiritually, the answer is always “yes.” But there are also times when I’m feeling not-so-strong spiritually, and it’s in these times where the answer can change. Sometimes, the answer is “yes, but…” and other times it’s a flat out, stubborn “no.” Sometimes, it’s something else entirely. I feel ashamed. Why can’t I do the things I want to do? Why do I do everything I don’t want to do – the things I hate? I know I’m not the only one. Even Paul talked about this sort of thing in Romans 7:15, 19 (For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing).

I recognise this is a result of many things – it is not solely an attack sent by the Devil in my weakness. I knew before I came down here that I would have to endure refinement and pruning and all the pain that would come with it. In fact, I think that is mostly what it is. I first realised it when I was in my second or third week of school – I was attending the mandatory Wednesday night service when we, as a congregation, were asked to pray for one another. Fortunately, I had been sitting with a classmate who knew English, so I was able to let him know what I needed prayer for (and vice versa). I felt unmistakably led to address the things I harboured towards my father. Cue dramatic sigh.

For those of you who do not know, I do not have much of a relationship with my biological father, and what little I do have is pretty negative. So, of course I knew I would have to deal with it down here if I wanted to experience growth and have a testimony that would glorify the Lord and help others struggling with the same thing. But as I said in the aforementioned post, I filed this under things I didn’t think I would have to deal with till later. I was not happy, if I’m honest. I knew what was going to happen, and I didn’t want to have that responsibility laid on me. I didn’t want to let go of the hurt that was both directly and indirectly inflicted on me by this man who had never been a father to me, but it was under the guise of wanting worldly justice. By the world’s standards, I have a pretty legitimate reason for not forgiving him. I know because I have been told how right I am in my actions (or rather, my inaction). Why should I forgive him? Why let him off the hook? It isn’t fair.

But I ignored the world’s advice, and most of all, I ignored my flesh, and in that split second, I made the decision to tell my classmate about the poison I had been sipping on for 18 years. He looked at me for a few long seconds (though it felt like years) before he pulled out his phone. As he did this, he began reminding me of why it is important to forgive, and then he told me through a faint smile about a word he received and typed into his phone that morning. I read this message: Obedience to your father is not in punishment, but in love. After my initial shock, I realised something – as if I wasn’t convicted enough, the words were typed in English… by someone whose native tongue was Spanish. In that moment, while all I could think of was “seriously?“, my classmate went on to say how he thinks that word was for me, because he wrote it in English. I assumed that was a confirmation.

The next day, during our morning session which taught how to deal with conflict in the ministry, the lesson was about forgiveness. And the teacher was recounting a few stories of forgiving his father, and also of forgiving the man who had abused him as a child (both of those things are things I relate to, so I felt personally victimised* during the lesson). He ended by giving the class the task of writing a letter of forgiveness to whomever we needed to forgive. With the intention of actually following through and giving that person that letter. It was another one of my “seriously?” moments. And as much as I wish I had been able to do it, I never got around to finishing that letter, and therefore, haven’t been able to send it to my father. I do believe that before that Wednesday night service, I wasn’t ready to forgive him. I think that I am ready now – I want to forgive him. For his sake. For mine. For the sake of my future family.

But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t bring myself to write a letter that was truthful and saturated in candidness without the words themselves being laced with bitterness. I needed the letter to echo the truth I felt: you don’t deserve this. In other words, I knew what I wanted, and I knew what would be pleasing to God, but I did the opposite. I put aside what I wanted, and did the very thing I hate. I held on to my pain while trying to hold on to God. I didn’t want him to read it and think he had a chance at a relationship with me, because I don’t want to lie to him. The fact is this – he still leads a destructive lifestyle, and each time I have given him another chance, I’ve regretted it. But the truth is, I have to give it to God. He knows what I need to do. I know that regardless of what happens, He will be glorified. However, I still would appreciate prayer for this – whatever God puts on your heart. I have to write and send him that letter, but I still don’t know how. So if you could pray for wisdom and guidance in that area, that would be incredibly helpful. Strength, peace, humility… all of these are things I’ll need.

I miss you all back home and I was super thrilled to see the CITW team last week! It was nice to see some familiar faces and to speak in English guilt-free. I hope you guys had fun during and between all your hard work with the church buildings, and I hope you enjoyed Mexico as much as I have been!

My last post I was asked if I have been learning Spanish in class or through the people. Both, but I have been learning in class by trying my hardest to listen to the original Spanish as well as the English translation. As for the request of photos/videos of my life in La Casita, those will come soon – I am very forgetful. I am not used to people wanting to know what I do in my everyday life, but I will overcome that for the sake of the wonderful blessings I refer to as my followers.

*Not really “victimised,” but you get what I mean.

Hello! So it seems easier for me to post every two days or so. I hope you guys don’t mind too much. In between being sick with something new every other day (I now have pink eye, or, “conjunctivitis,” since down here, “ojo rosa” isn’t a thing, and a sore throat – unsure if it’s anything serious) and a crazy schedule, I’m finding it difficult to keep you all updated, unfortunately.

Speaking of a crazy schedule, here’s what has been taking up a majority of my time down here:

They start the calendar week on Lunes (Monday), so I’ll start there, too. This is our “down” day. They encourage us to rest and have fun and do whatever it is we want to do. Because it’s literally our only day off, I try to sleep in, usually until eight, maybe nine o’clock. Then, I take time for prayer (usually around an hour) before I make myself some breakfast (usually some pancakes, because I love pancakes). Every two weeks, we go shopping for food, and my roommates are some pretty proactive women, so we go relatively early in the day – so far, it’s been around eight or nine (so I don’t get to sleep in as much as I would like too, but I rest easy knowing we have food for the next two weeks). When we get home, we put the food away and start our chores. The assigned chores are rotated weekly and Monday is the switch-off day in our house. There are four different chores, each with their own set of tasks, and when you are assigned to a chore, those tasks are expected to be fulfilled every day. So basically, we are tasked with keeping a clean home. I also use my day off to catch up on my assignments and go over the notes and recordings I take during class. This day is also used by some of the students to get together outside of church and school every once and a while. It’s nice, because this is the day we evangelise downtown (this week, nine people gave their lives to Christ, as well as a group of kids we ran into at Parque del Madre).

Tuesday is the beginning of the school week. I’m the first to wake up so I can turn on the water heater, which keeps us from having to take cold showers. Every Tuesday, we are required to attend the prayer that is held at the main church. This starts at 8:30 am until nine, and then the Vanguard students make their way next door to the Vanguard building, which also doubles as the kid’s church during La Fuente’s services. The morning class is held from 9 am to 12 pm, sometimes ending a little earlier, other times a little later. Then, we have a break till 4 pm. During this time, we study at the “library” (which is just another Vanguard house similar to the one I’m staying in, only occupied by the guys), cook and eat, and get ready for the evening class. Also – siestas. They aren’t a myth. Of all the things I’ve decided to bring back home with me, it’s the concept of siestas that looks to be the most important. It must work down here – they get a lot done, and everyone seems a lot happier and willing to do more than we do in the States. Is there a correlation? I think so. After my siesta, I get ready for my 4 o’clock class at Vanguard. I have yet to attend a class I don’t enjoy – despite the language barrier and the fact that I haven’t been able to catch everything even with a translator, I still have been able to gain plenty from the different teachings and devotionals, something I’m extremely grateful for. When class ends, we go to the church for A18 – one of the two weekly youth groups of La Fuente that Vanguard students are required to attend (we have to go to at least one, and this is the one I’ve chosen). They do worship, a short message, and then some food. Part of me wants to refer to it as a “mini-Redefined,” but I don’t for my own sake.

We don’t have to be at school till 9:00 am on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which is nice, cause I can sleep in a little. Every school day is basically the same: morning class from 9 to 12, break from 12 to 4 pm, evening class from 4 to 6:30/7. It’s what we do after class that distinguishes each day. On Wednesdays, La Fuente holds an evening service at 7 pm (so we get out of class at 6 on this day). There’s nothing on Thursdays, but a small group (including myself) has been trying to go running or attend a Crossfit class throughout the week, and Thursday is the easiest day for us to go out after school. Fridays is another youth group, called “Anormal” (Abnormal), but it’s much more populated and is louder than A18, so I usually choose to opt out of this gathering.

Saturday is a mission day, meaning we go to our assigned churches (mine is in a town called Puga) to get ready for service the next day by cleaning, inviting people to the services and evangelising, and otherwise getting everything set up. There’s no real set time for how long we stay, but it usually doesn’t last too long (though I have heard of people staying till 5 pm, which is a long time if you consider we usually head out by 7 am). Because of my less than ideal health, I honestly haven’t been able to make it to these since I was reassigned to Puga (I used to be assigned to Compostela, but was moved so I could help relieve Puga’s pastor, Toño, of his duties on the worship team), but I fully plan on going next week. This is also the day I clean my room and touch up around the house to avoid having to deal with a bigger mess on Monday. I also use this day to practice for worship on Sunday. I’m not singing just yet, but that’s mostly because I’ve been sick. So stay tuned for news on that.

Sundays… oh Sundays. My team is scheduled to leave for Puga at 7:15 am (closer to 7:25 – 7:30, though, ’cause Mexico). We stuff a bunch of people and things in a sheltered truck bed and pick a few people up on the way to the church. We usually arrive at around 8:30, giving us an hour to really get everything done – mostly cleaning, because it’s pretty dusty in this part of Mexico, so things get dirty easily. It’s a fairly new building pastored by a younger couple, who are both really amazing (side note: if you guys can pray for them and the church, that would be awesome – provision, attendance, and anything thing else God puts on your hearts would be greatly appreciated). After the message, we stay to converse with the people, or in my case, to stand around awkwardly and say “hola” and “Dios te bendiga” and “gracias.” Baby steps. Then we head back to the main church, where we are given the option to go home and rest before having to attend the last two services. So I go home and try to rest and eat before going back to the church at 4 pm for the 5 o’clock service (Vanguard students have to be there an hour before service starts). Because there are now two services at night, we stay until the end of the 7 o’clock service, which means we don’t get to leave until nearly 9 pm. Which is totally fine with me; I usually stay and try my hand at socialisation with people who know at least a little bit of English, and sometimes I can go out for dinner, or I just hang out. Either way, I go home happy, knowing I can probably sleep in the next day.

I answered both the questions I received from my last post in this one. Again, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask! I love you all and of course, would like to thank you so much for your love, support, and prayers. Until next time, Dios te bendiga!

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.