Crazy Walk

Hey everyone. I just came inside from one of the craziest walks of my life. I had just left the house to go down to the pharmacy to draw some money out for my rent, which is due tomorrow. Well I got down to the corner and some of my neighbors were outside talking, so I told them good evening, etc. Two of them went inside their houses, but one of them, a lady I have known since i arrived here, stuck around. She is in her 50's, knows both Spanish and English perfectly, and is usually really friendly. After she started talking to me, it was obvious to me that she was very drunk at this point. I had already known that she struggled with drinking, so it didnt come as a huge surprise to me. But the next 15 or 20 minutes or so were very crazy. She began to tell me how she wanted to kill her dog and then take her own life with a pistol that she keeps in her house. She said she is tired of life, that when she goes to America, the people treat her like a Mexican, and when she is here in Mexico, she is treated like an American. She is tired of bad things happening to her, because she thinks she is a good person. She also continued to explain to me how she is a lesbian, and no one will accept her for who she is. She wanted me to go into her house, and I hesitated but eventually went in. She began to cry and ask me how I knew God and am so young, but why hasnt she found him? She let me pray with her, but even as i was leaving, she kept telling me she was going to kill herself. My point is this... some people in this world just need a friend. Of course we want everyone to know Jesus, but sometimes, we have to accept them for who they are, in this case a suicidal, drunk, lesbian. I told her that even if know one else does, I love her, and so does Jesus. By the way, the girl in my picture if my friend Nadia from church, NOT the lady whom I mentioned in the story.

hey everyone, im doing better, right? im trying haha its hard. this last week my whole team went to mexico city to see the current AIM class, but i only went for Friday and Saturday. It was a hard decision to make but for a number of reasons, i wanted to be here in Leon for the rest of the week. Im glad i stayed, i had my friend David stay the nite and we went out to the movies and had coffee, which was good because i havent spent enough time with him lately. I also cleaned the house since Donovans parents were coming and are now here. tomorrow is Valentines Day. being the person that i am, i was already pretty skeptical of this holiday in the first place (maybe more so since i dont have any girlfriend or wife to express my love to) but i had to http://www.wikipedia.com/ valentines day to find out where the origins come from. turns out, St. Valentine is a martyr of the early christian church who was buried in Rome on the 14th of February. Has nothing to do with love, somehow Chaucer put this into the mix and now its a world wide holiday. Now tell me, how would the follower of God, of Jesus Christ, be supposedly killed for his sake, and wind up having a holiday named after him? Not that i really care, because i know that Jesus should be celebrated every day in my heart and by my actions. MAybe someday i can explain this to my wife, in hopes that i dont have to buy her chocolate and roses. just joking, but seriously, we need to keep the focus in our lives on Christ!!!!

Hey yall! things here are going good, we have two young men from the Lima, Peru team staying with us for a week, and then this Friday we are all going to take a bus down to Mexico City to meet this years AIM class and have some fun with them. It has been a blessing to hang out with AIMers from a different field, getting to share our experiences and talk about what God has taught us. Something lately that I have picked is that His grace is so sufficient... more than we can even imagine! Sometimes its easy for us to judge others because of the sins they have committed, in the mean time forgetting that Gods grace has already forgiven that person for what they did - no matter how bad the sin might have been. What a comfort! To know that we can wake up each day with a fresh start and a loving God to trust in. Amen.

New Year, new hopes for my blog haha

hey everyone. i have to apologize, its been way to long since i have updated this blog. but now that Omar is our new coordinator, i have some motivation to fix my laziness. the new year has started and its already looking busy up until the time i plan on leaving. my ministry focus here is a young woman named Jazmin, whom i baptized in December after 3 months of studying english and also the bible. now that she is my sister in Christ, our studies in the bible focus more on application, how to live your life as a christian and after we finish that up i would like to do a series of studies on falling in love and knowing Jesus, our Savior. also, studying English with her is now a lot easier because we use the bible to study English, so im not trying to convince her anything. these English studies with her have been turning into really great Bible conversations. i know it sounds like i should be having thousands of bible studies with lots of people instead of just one, but i know that through Jazmin, God will be able to reach so many more people. also we are going to start visiting families (and hopefully studying) who came to the lense campaign that we had around Thanksgiving time. i also have a goal to turn the supply room in the church building into a multi-purpose type room, that would house a small library i would like to run, couches and chairs, coffeetable and coffeemaker, computer desks, etc. basically it would be an area where people could read, study the bible, us AIMers could have english studies there, small groups, pretty much anything where a comfortable room is needed. Well there is much more but i need to go over some things i am studying with Jazmin tonite. God bless!

hey everyone. wow im horrible at writing these, havent updated this in forever. plenty is going on here, mainly spanish for us "new" AIMers, other than that i am leading a small group every other week, trading off with our coordinator Chris Johnson. its been an awesome experience for me, not only a challenge to get into the Word more but also touching to see others who havent known Jesus realize what kind of man he really was. the past few days we have been working on a house, getting it ready for a missionary family that is moving here from Toluca Mexico. its been awesome doing some manual labor, painting, plastering and just getting the place spruced up. it seriously looked like crack house before we started working on it. whats even better is the connections we have made with the neighbors. God works through everything! well i will try and do better about updating this. thanks.

hey everyone well this my first time doing this blog thing so i am hoping it will progressively get better. its the beginning of august and the month is looking crazy as usual, right now we have a campaign going on and there have been quite a few new faces around the church so thats very encouraging to see. we are still in spanish classes about 3 days a week so i am plodding on with that. will update with more news and pictures later.