Friday, November 13, 2009

Some big things

Well, I've been here for over a week now, and I'm still super excited to be here, I miss home and my community there obviously, but I can totally see why God has me here right now at this point in my life. There is so much going on here that I'm so excited to be a part of. First of all, there's a worship night tomorrow night (Saturday) for all of the youth in the churches. I'm really excited about that, and you can be praying that God would speak to the students that come.
Another thing that I'm excited about is a recycling program that we're trying to start. There is no recycling center here, and so plastic bottles just get thrown away in the trash, and there's a lot of money to be made that can be put back into the community if people would just recycle instead of throwing everything in the trash. First of all, It will help clean the town up, and second it will make money to fix up parks and such. There are many parks with non-functioning playground equipment, just because no one maintains it so it all gets run-down.
A third thing that I'm excited about many of you already know about and that is the Our City event that's coming up here at the end of November. We've been preparing for that and its really getting me fired up. This city is like right on the brink of change, and it just needs a couple of pushes to get it over and I think this is definitely a way that God can show the people of this town what love really looks like when its lived out.
One last thing that I'm excited about that's kind of a ways off in the future is a dream that the staff here has had for a while that is starting to come true. We want to open a coffee shop here in town, and we have a location now, and an opening date (approximately), and God is really opening doors for us that we weren't sure He would open. It is really cool how much has come together in even just the week that I've been here. The plan is to start paying rent in the middle of January, and open the first of February once everything has been fixed up to our liking and such. So we're all super pumped about what God is going to do in the next two months.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

The First few days

I’m in Mexico!! My trip down was good but long, I was travelling for about 22 hours total including bus and taxi rides. Communication with non-english speaking people was kind of hard, but I realized it is something that God has been preparing me for in the last few months with communicating with my sister Brihan.

I am staying with a really awesome couple down here named Dan and Wendy, and life down here is great. There are a lot of things that I’m going to have to get used to, but I’m trusting that God will help me get through it all. I’ve already met quite a few people here, and so far including Dan and Wendy only like five people speak English, but I can usually understand about 60 percent of what all is being said if I really concentrate on the conversation. I never realized how much work it takes just to comprehend Spanish conversations. I’m kind of hesitant to speak Spanish right now, just because it would be very broken, but I need to get over that. :)

Dan and I spent about a day and a half taking out an old mango tree stump (which is super hard wood by the way), fixed a pipe (that I accidently broke), and planted a new tree in place of the old one. The food here is so far amazing! We went out for tacos the night I got here, and Wendy is an amazing cook.

I’m amazed at how everything looks, from the buildings, to the trees to the plants, and even just the way the downtown is set up. The night life here is cool, most restaurants don’t open until like 7 or 8 at night, and then they’re open til like 3 in the morning.

It’s a very lively place and fun to be, but kind of overwhelming at first. Tonight we went to a birthday party for one of the local pastors, and it was crazy. The music was as loud as it could be and there was a ton going on. One thing that was really cool was that they sang the songs hosanna, and sing sing sing, so I could sing along in english. I guess I wasn't expecting to recognize any worship songs so knowing what was being sung was really exciting.

The more time I spend in this city, I'm amazed at the ways God is showing up here. He is really moving in a lot of the people, and the YWAM staff here are absolutely amazing. Well, I think I'm going to head to bed now, I hope to write again soon!