Week of Rain (Week 4)

Navigation...When it rains a lot here, they close the roads. We drove around for an hour in flooded streets on Monday trying to get to Iteso (using a different route) with 17 people piled in the suburban. It was quite an experience…

Zoo…Ben and I went on a date to the Guadalajara Zoo. It was quite an “adventure”. We rode on a Safari- an open truck that drives you through free ranging animals. This was the highlight of the zoo, but it was also quite terrifying as we were driving through flooded creeks, rough terrain, and drove within 5 feet of an un-caged rhino. Ben could have touched him, but he chose not to..:)

Sadness…The Baxter’s (the other staff couple here) found out they had a miscarriage of their third child on Wednesday. This was very sad for all of us to here. She had to have a procedure done on Thursday to remove the baby. Although it wasn’t my own baby that was lost, I was especially sad and felt like I could relate to Kim in a strange way.

Ben and I felt spiritually attacked later this week as we prepared to take the students to Matzamamitla for a retreat. Please pray for the Lord’s protection over us.

No transportation...We lost one of the suburbans on Friday. Duane was going to put gas in it and got pulled over by a Mexican cop. He spoke no English, and Duane speaks very little Spanish, so they were getting nowhere. Duane couldn’t bribe him (a common practice here) because he had no money- so he took the car. We later found out it was because they are doing a city wide check on exhaustion production, and considering it’s a 1988, we didn’t pass the test.

Matzamitla….The Lord really blessed our weekend. We had 35 total students (including our team), which was a tremendous blessing! We cooked dinner that night for everyone (a near disaster), made s’mores (on the gas oven b/c we couldn’t start the fire), a Mexican student shared his testimony, and we watched a movie. The next day we had a spiritual discussion group on a verse and the themes in the movie. This is the first time the gospel has been shared with these college students in the context of a group. It made some uncomfortable (“you don’t talk about these things in front of others in this culture”), but for most it was received very well. Several were very interested and asked questions. Others just listened. We feel as though the Lord is breaking down some major barriers and really allowing us to have some tremendous conversations. Thank you for your prayers.