We're Back!

Yes, we are back and we are excited! I am not sure that I can really put all that God has been showing us into words, but I can share a little about our time in Oaxaca and of course show pictures!



After a long, exhausting day of travel and then a good night's sleep, we got right into our first training session the next morning. Randy and I were thrilled to hear that the first message was "God's Heart for the Nations," the recurring theme weaved through scripture from Genesis to Revelation. We had first heard this during the Perspectives course last year and at that time the Lord used His word to really shake us up to be ruined for the ordinary! Sometime I would love to be able to post the whole thing here for you to see how our very purpose in life is to bring all nations to worship the King- we have been blessed to be a blessing... More on that later.



The remaining part of the two days was spent learning more about the Kingdom of God, Stewardship, lots of time in prayer, worship, and inductive Bible study and learning about the culture of Tlaxiaco and some Spanish phrases. The whole time during this phase we just knew that we wanted to bring a bunch of youth and adults with us next year- and we hadn't even been off the base yet!


The next five days were spent preparing and going out for our outreach times, which was teaching English to little children in the surrounding areas. This was of course a wonderful time, connecting with kids and playing and laughing with them is always a blessing. We did other things during the days as well, but being with the children was definitely a highlight for Randy and I. Here are a few pictures from these sweet times.

The last day was a fun day in Oaxaca City, where we went to some really cool ancient ruins and shopped around the town for some good bargains! I had gotten sick the day before this, so I was disappointed that I still felt bad on this day and couldn't enjoy it nearly as much as I would of had I been well. Here are some pictures of us at the ruins- it was like being in a history book-very neat. The best part of our time in Mexico though, wasn't even the teaching times or the cute Mexican kids or the cool cultural things. Hands down, it was watching a group of people come together as the body of Christ and live out the commands of Jesus as part of a missional life. We were amazed to see so many passionate young people giving up their entire summer vacation to come as interns and work and serve others! We couldn't believe the way that there was a constant leadership training going on- college students leading us during this trip! The gentle and humble spirits of everyone on staff was apparent from day 1 and never changed. We were beyond blessed to have the priveledge of meeting and spending a week and a half with such wonderful people and have learned so much from them in such a short amount of time. We hope to see them again someday...

I could go on about many more wonderful things we learned in our short time in Oaxaca, but I am confident that because God has done a work in our hearts, I won't have to just talk about it- the transformation will be evident in the way we live our lives and that is the real proof...