Saturday, September 27, 2008

Quick Update


Hello friends on this warm sunny day in Central Mexico.
We are happy to announce that we had a full week of langauge classes! Yeah! Soon we will be starting our exchange program by helping with several English classes. Please continue to pray for our learning situation and that we will get sufficient time in Spanish everyday. We need as much time as possible studying Spanish. Also, this week we start our mentor program with another missionary couple. They will be mentoring us and will be meeting with us weekly. We are excited about this time of growth! Thanks for praying for our relationships. We had several people over for meals last weekend and are slowly making friends. Thank you for your continued prayers in this area because as we mentioned making friends has been more difficult than we thought.

More later...

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Celebration




The past several days we have had the opportunity to experience more of Mexico and to celebrate for various reasons. Saturday we had the opportunity to travel to nearby San Miguel de Allende one of the oldest cities in our state to learn more of the history and culture of Mexico. We traveled there with our good friends and language helpers Rosi and Manuel. We had a great time visiting the city and practicing our Spanish.
Sunday we celebrated the completion of one year in our new building as a church. There was time for personal testimony and special music to give thanks for how God has provided us with ways to serve him. Afterwards we shared in a huge potluck with tons of delicious Mexican food! In the evening we had about 25 of our new friends over to our apartment for Jennifer's birthday and we enjoyed tres leches cake and Josh's homemade Nutella gelato!
Monday was not only Jennifer's 25th birthday, but also the day in which we celebrated Mexico's independence! In the late afternoon we went downtown with friends from church to see a ballet folklorico, to eat amazing street food, and to witness the "grito" ("shout") commemorating the moment when Mexico gained her independence (see the video).
The past few days have been quite festive. Hopefully, tomorrow we will be able to celebrate for yet another reason. Tomorrow is supposed to be the day that we finally and officially begin our language classes at the university. It has been a painfully slow process getting the classes and schedule set up and we hope that this all comes together tomorrow. We are very ready to have more time in structured learning to compliment the daily lessons we are getting through PILAT and life. We are hoping and praying for classes to begin and begin well.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Patience





Over the past few weeks we have been quickly learning the meaning of patience. The way time is viewed here is far different than in the states. We knew that before we got here, but you cannot really know something unless you experience it yourself. This week we had hoped to start language classes in the University. Instead, we found out the day we were supossed to start that we would be starting this next week. Please pray for us as we hopefully begin classes tomorrow. Thankfully we've been working with a language helper every day using the progam we learned in Colorado (PILAT). Our language helper, Rosi, has been a blessing to us. She's gone out her way to help us with Spanish and also help us get acclimated to the city.
Saturday we had the wonderful opportunity to participate in one of the church's ministries. You probably heard us discuss the outreach our church has in one of the poorest neighborhood's in the city. In the neighborhood "La Canyon de la India" every Saturday several women from the church teach the children a Bible lesson as well as a school lesson, and they feed them a meal. This ministry has grown immensely as many children from the neighborhood flock to the house that the church owns there. We were humbled by these sweet children who run the streets without much direction from their parents. They were not only hungry for food, but hungry for our attention. We are excited that the work with the children is growing and that the church is dedicated to reaching out to neighborhood.

We appreciate each one of you and your participation in what we do here!

Ways you can pray:

-That our language courses go well at the Univeristy (both taking and teaching classes)

-That we will be able to pick up Spanish quickly and dedicate much time to studying

-That we will make more new friends both in and outside of the the church (we've had some lonely moments)

-That we can adjust smoothly to our new culture and our church culture (our church is very different than what we are used to at home)

THANKS!
Josh and Jennifer