On The Road Again

I hit the road today! By that I mean it is time to leave for Mexico. Each year at this time, I pull up stakes, and head south of the border as part of my job with Adventures in Life Ministry. While there, we will help a couple of local congregations build a place where they can worship, hold Sunday School classes, and develop or improve ministries that will serve their communities. This year we are finishing an addition to Iglesia Bautista Esmirna in El Sauzal, located about 70 miles south of the US/Mexico border, just north of Ensenada. That addition, pictured here, has four classrooms, and new storage and bathroom facilities for the church. After almost five years without sufficient space, this church will now have a place for their adults, children, and youth to gather, study, and learn about God. After we leave Ensenada, Guadalajara will be our destination. In this area we will be helping facilitate a camp for a circle of churches. About 80 young people will attend and it is the highlight of the year for many of the youth of these churches. Amazing that something a lot of us see as a right, attending a Christian camp, can mean so much and really be seen as a privilege by the people of our partner churches in the Guadalajara area. We will end the summer in Oaxaca, where we will be doing the foundations for a church in San Baltizar Guelavia. That church will be about 1300 square feet. Those foundations will be done in August and the rest of the building will be done in September as part of our Annual Men’s Ministry. You can read more about that trip here, but if you are interested in participating, please call us. There is still space and we would love to have you! This year my son is going to with me for part of the summer and I could not be more excited. It is his first extended missions work with Adventures in about 5 years as he has been away at college. I am looking forward to serving alongside him as he too is preparing to enter the ministry fulltime. While I will be in Mexico until the end of August, I will continue to post, as I am able. In fact my next post will be from Ensenada. Until then, just to expand the window into who I am a little more, I am adding a little footer if you will, to the bottom of some of my posts. This time it includes a little something I am currently reading, "Organic Church, Growing Life Faith Where Life Happens" . Enjoy y nos vemos pronto!

The Bake Sale

Yesterday was a great day. My church asked me to share a few words of encouragement about an upcoming Mexico trip that our youth group is participating in as part of our denomination. Each summer between 50 and 60 students and leaders from our Los Angeles Churches travel to Ensenada to serve our sister churches in that area with Adventures in Life Ministry. We have about 12 kids from our church who want to go and they will have raise a little over $300.00 each to be part of this ministry. I talked about how lives can be changed when people leave their comfort zones and learn to serve. And I shared about Chad. My first real impression of Chad was a few years back when he came on a mission trip to Mexico. He seemed to be there just to check out the girls, not really focused on Jesus and always sneaking around to have a cigarette. In short, he was not Hudson Taylor! Chad was with us again last year on mission, and while still not quite Hudson Taylor, he was a joy to have around. He had a servant’s heart and the change in him was apparent. On that trip Chad rededicated his life to Jesus and committed himself to missions. Yesterday Chad was baptized. That is what I love about ministry. Seeing change in peoples lives and watching them live out that change. Watching Christ transform someone, like a piece of clay into something unimaginable just a few months or years before. But getting back to our kids and their mission trip, as I was saying, they have to raise some bucks to be part of this experience. Chad is in charge of helping them raise the necessary funds. So, like all good Baptists, Chad organized a bake sale. It is interesting to note that even bake sales are falling victim to our over committed lifestyles. Lots of people brought store bought goodies to sell, apparently not understanding that the term bake sale means you are supposed to actually bake the stuff. After all, it is not a store bought pastry sale. Anyways, we had our kids helping people pick out their stuff and they raised over $1,000.00! One thousand dollars! We are not a large mega church. Maybe 120 people on an average Sunday. But they raised $1000.00, from a bake sale. Incredible. Jesus has changed Chad. From a kid sneaking around for a cigarette to a leader organizing a bake sale at a small church to raise over $1,000.00 to send others on mission. I can’t wait to see what happens when the rest of our group steps out, leaves their comfort zones, and serves in the name of Jesus. I’ll keep you posted.