Camp!

The other week, we had youth camp for ages 12 and up. I have to admit that I was extremely skeptical about having jr. high and high school AND young adults in the same camp. But it actually turned out REALLY well!

We had some huge snags in our plans on the first day (camp was thursday thru saturday) that had to do with the facility that we were renting... We weren't given our rooms when we arrived, there was a huge group of teens that should've left in the morning that was still there when we arrived, lunch was 2 hours late, etc. But, we went ahead with some activities that we could do on the lawn, like games and a devotional; and enough kids brought lots of snacks that we were able to stave off the hunger with Cokes and chips. Everyone had incredibly good attitudes despite plans not going, well, as planned.

Our camp theme this year was "My Identity In Christ." We had some great times of worship, some activities that related to "my view of me," and "God's view of me in Christ." We had two guest speakers (adults from Horizonte Church) and a few people from the young adults group share Scripture and experiences related to the theme, and encouraged students to think and pray about what actions or steps they need to take in their lives once they begin to discover an identity in Christ.

The worship group: Ruben, Alex, Job, and Chino is hidden behind Alex


Students participating in the worship time:

Some of the young adults sharing experiences and Scriptures:

Girls hanging out! (Ana, me, Aurea, Brisa, Lluvia, and Amayrani)

And we had some weird fun times... This was in a photo scavenger hunt in downtown Tequisquiapan (a town about 1 hour away from Queretaro), one of the things we had to take a picture of was our team with weird hair-do's. We had four teams for all the games and activities at camp, this was my team, the red team... They're awesome (Back: Alan and Abdiel. Front: MariJo, me, Amayrani, Mary, Dirce, and Justin was taking the picture.)

And a terrible picture of me and Ana after a game... We always seem to get our picture taken together at our worst!

The camp turned out very well, and the students wanted it to last longer! Maybe next year we'll shoot for 4 or 5 days... I feel like the students really learned more about their walk with the Lord, and they definitely built stronger relationships with each other as well!

Quick Update...

Wow, I haven't been good at writing in my blog for quite awhile...

We've been pretty busy... Jean Paul has finished with the political candidates' visits to his school (see previous entry), and is busy with another semester. He graduates in August 2010!

Oh, speaking of August, we received a large enough financial gift from a generous person to be able to go to Oregon THIS August!! We still haven't bought tickets, but it looks like we should arrive on August 15, and stay until the 26th. It will be JP's first time to the States - actually his first time ever leaving Mexico!!

As far as the young adults group goes, things are good! We are planning a youth camp for ALL the young people (age 12 and up); that will be 16-18 of July. Please pray for the planning of the camp, in which we're trying to involve many of the college-age students, that the Lord will give us wisdom in WHAT to talk about with the teens, and what to plan for. We want this to be a camp that is not only FUN, but that also IMPACTS their lives! Our main theme is "Identity in Christ." We hope that the speakers can communicate well to the teens, and that all activities are uplifting, fun, and learning experiences! The camp will be held in a place with cabins in the town of Tequisquiapan about an hour away from the city of Queretaro.

Our friends Mark and Abby, who have been in Queretaro since January, are leaving this week. They came here to study spanish before moving to the state of Chiapas (southern boarder of Mexico with Guatemala) to begin a youth ministry there. So the time has come to see them off to their ministry destination!


And, my 10-year high school reunion was a couple weeks ago - that makes me feel old - and No, I didn't go, but I heard it went well. It looks like about half the class was there! (Yeah, there were only 45 in my graduating class...)


Look! Most people look just the same as 10 years ago! haha!

Some Updates, Finally!

(I started to write this 3 days ago, but the power went out, as it has frequently in the past weeks, and with it went the internet... so this is a bit delayed!)

I'm SO sorry about not having written in FOREVER! But, you can probably imagine that things have been busy since we got married!! Busy in a good way, of course! :)

I just want to give a little update about what the Lord is doing in the lives of some of our college students...

I don't remember if I've mentioned Maricela before... She's a 25 year old girl who we know because she's been spanish teacher to some of our short-term missions girls, and she used to attend Justin's english class. Lluvia (Justin's wife, both work with students at Horizonte) began to have a Bible study with Maricela about a year and a half ago. I think it was about 10 months ago that Maricela accepted the Lord! She was always nervous about coming to any church because she'd always had bad experiences with churches in the past. But, in May, Maricela began attending sunday service at Horizonte! She's come regularly ever since, and come to thursday night college group when her work schedule permits.
Last thursday, Maricela called Lluvia after college group that she attended, and explained that she was really enjoying being a part of the group, especially this past thursday, as we had an awesome time of worship and opportunities to spend a lot of time in prayer and reading the Bible. Maricela said that she plans to invite her sisters, who are between 18 and 24 years old, to this week's meeting, which happens to be specifically for inviting non-Christian friends. It has really been amazing to see how Maricela's life has changed in the past several months. We doubted for a long time that she would ever start attending church, and now she's even inviting her sisters to come! We thank the Lord for His work!

Here is Lluvia with Maricela (yeah, I stole the picture off Lluvia's blog...):

Brisa is a 19 year old girl who just entered college at the State University this semester to study foreign languages and linguistics. I've known Brisa the entire time I've been here in Mexico, she's Lluvia's little sister, and has grown up in church. She's also quite shy around people she doesn't know, so I knew it would be interesting to see her form friendships with her new schoolmates. Brisa has said that she feels like she needs to get her act together as far as being a Light for Christ to her school friends. I'm very encouraged to hear her desire to reach out to those in her class who don't know the Lord! We're looking for an open space in the week for me to go to her school for a little while each week to pray with her and any friends that would like to join us!

Brisa at a birthday party...

Rafa is our friend who is 24 years old, and has been paralized in a wheel chair for 7 years. He's VERY shy, but has opened up to Phil and Justin (two missionaries who work with college students) more and more in the past months. When we closed Global Grounds cafe in the location, we were nervous that Rafa may stop coming to college group. Why? Because the only other apt place to hold the group was UPSTAIRS in Horizonte Church. And no, it has no wheelchair access. Rafa didn't come for about 6 weeks after we changed locations, but decided to give it a try one day. Two guys lifted him up the stairs and two other brought his chair. Rafa has come very regularly ever since! He also has been sharing with Justin about his relationship with the Lord, and his struggles in life.

Along with Rafa comes his 17 year old cousin, Hector, who helps Rafa's mom take care of him (Rafa's dad passed away 6 months before he became paralized). Hector rarely talks. For a long time, he would just help get Rafa into the college group area, and sit by himself and not want to talk to others, even though several guys made a good effort to involve him in the group.
In our recent few group meetings, Hector has opened up a bit to Justin and Phil, sharing about his recent trip to the beach, and also asking for prayer that he would be able to follow Christ more effectively! As far as we know, Hector has not accepted the Lord, but wow, he's heading down the right path!!

Rafa at his birthday party a year ago...

And finally, Mariana. My little girl grew up and went away to college!! I feel like a mom saying that. Mariana has been out of high school for a little over a year now, living in Queretaro with her mom and brother, taking intensive English classes (I think she speaks better than I do now!). But in August, she got the opportunity to study Bilingual education at a college in Puebla, about a 6 hour drive from here. So my wednesday nights from 7-10pm seem quite vacant now without looking forward to meeting with Mariana.
However, Mariana has come home a few weekends since she moved away. She's asked prayer for her relationships with ther classmates - that she can have a good friendship with them while keeping moral limits (the classmates like to party a lot). This is also Mariana's first time living alone, and 19-year old girl living alone here is not very common, so it's a BIG adjustment.
So far, all is good, and very busy!, in Puebla, and I trust that they Lord will help Mariana develop healthy friendships and thrive in her new school and living situation!

Mariana and I...

Por Que Continues!

On last tuesday (yeah, I've been really busy to write!) we had a little follow up meeting/party for the Por Que event, for the Horizonte folks who helped out with the event. The purpose was to thank God for what He did, to thank those who helped out, and to hear any stories the teens had to share about what God did in their lives or in the lives of their friends.

We broke out all the coffee stuff from Global Grounds, and brought a couple of cakes. We had a time of worship with Ruben, Phil, Job, and Alex:

The kids really got into it!!

Even the moms and not-so-young volunteers came:

And later, EVERY teenager, and person under the age of 25 shared in front of the group their thoughts or feelings about the event, or what God did in their life or the life of a friend they had invited. Many great testimonies were shared, but I'll just tell you one, the one that impacted me the most!

Alan, pictured below, has grown up in church with an awesome Christian mom (he's the little brother of Mariana who I disciple). He's pretty mischeivious, but what 16 year old boy isn't?? Anyhow, about two years ago, Alan invited his neighbor friend Eliu to start coming to youth group with him. Eliu came, and liked it, so he kept coming. He started making good friends at youth group, and started coming on sunday mornings too. Alan shared that ever since he'd met Eliu, he'd wanted him to know the Lord. Now, Eliu, his mom, and his sister Alma come to church just about everytime the doors are open, and the mom is in a womens' small group and has accepted the Lord!

Then Eliu, pictured below, got up to share his side of things, more specifically having to do with the Por Que event. About a month ago, Edith, the leader of family ministries, asked Eliu if he would be insterested in helping lead a small group of 9 and 10 year old boys during sunday school. Eliu was honored to be asked, and all the little kids really like him, but he mentioned that it would be a huge responsibility, and that he was scared that maybe his life didn't reflect Jesus as much as he felt it should to lead young boys.

Anyhow, during the Por Que event, more specifically the question and answer time, Eliu felt impressed that he'd never actually said in his heart that he wanted to follow the Lord; he just showed up for church and helped out a lot, but hadn't taken the step to let the Lord be number one in his life. Eliu accepted Jesus at the Por Que event!!

Something good is happening among the junior high and high school students at Horizonte. God is touching hearts and lives, and we pray that the kids don't let that die! Please pray for the college students, as we don't see the same fire in them as in the younger students. Please pray that God can use us (the college ministy team) to encourage the college kids in their relationships with the Lord!

¿Por Qué?

This past Saturday was our big outreach event called "Por Que." (Why? in english). We had first an excellent turn-out of students from Horizonte who came to help set up as early as 10am.
Here, the students are in a short pre-event briefing so we're all on the same page during the event:

It had rained every day for over a week before Por Que, and several times it even began raining in the early afternoon (which is unusual). We were very nervous that it would rain on July 5th, and we didn't want new students staying home because of the event, or leaving early!
But it didn't rain!!
Here, some students are enjoying the volleyball tournament:

This was an outreach event for junior high, high school, and college students. We had many different activities going on such as the climbing wall, a room with three video games on big screens, the volleyball tournament, ping pong, Global Grounds cafe, and a graffiti contest. We also had live music performed by Job, Phil, Alex, and Ruben from Horizonte, along with several other young adults from other Churches in Querétaro and even from Monterrey.

We had quite a good number of students come to PorQue who were not from Horizonte (the whole point was to INVITE those who don't go to church!). I was a little disappointed at first at the small turn-out of college students, but we do have some good stories... Keep reading...

The band "Juan," which is part of Semilla de Mostaza in Mexico City came to play in the evening, and Kike from Semilla Cuernavaca and the band guys took questions from the students about Christianity, God, and life in general. Kike has a TV show that deals with tough questions and Biblical answers for young people. The show airs every Monday at 7pm in Cuernavaca and I think Mexico City. Horizonte Querétaro will be on the show this coming week!

Some of the students left after the outdoor activities had ended. But the ones who stayed for Juan and Kike got a good message... The group answered questions like, "How can I know that God really exists?" "Why do Christians hate homosexuals?" "Is there really a heaven and a hell?" "Why is there so much crime and sickness in the world?" And of course the token mischievious question, "Why are Alma Rosa and Jana so weird??" (obviously written by one of the Horizonte girls in the junior high group that Alma and Jana lead...!) The group had some amazing responses to these questions and more, answering straight from the Bible. At the end of the night, the group gave an invitation to accept the Lord (explained really very well!), and approximately 10 people raised their hands to make a first-time decision to follow Christ!!

About 4:30pm, a young man about 20 years old, Jorge, came into Horizonte. He works at the car wash across the street from Horizonte and saw the activities when he got off work, so he came over to see if he could play ping-pong and volleyball for a while. Obviously we welcomed him in. He played with us for a couple hours, then stayed for the Juan concert and question session. He accepted the Lord at the end of the time! We found out later that Jorge had been attending a good evangelical church near his home for about a month, and had a lot of questions, but something inside him told him that Christianity was good. So he made the decision to follow Christ! He will probably continue to attend the church near his home, and I believe someone from Horizonte is going to talk with someone in leadership at the other church so they know about Jorge's decision, and have someone available to disciple him.

Also, Bere, my friend Ana's niece, came to the event. Bere is in high school. We've been praying for Ana's sister (Bere's mom) for a while. Bere also accepted the Lord at PorQue!! Her mom, during the PorQue event, was in a pretty nasty car accident, but wasn't drastically hurt. Bere and Ana were able to share with the mom about God's protection. We hope that soon Bere's mom will come to believe as well!

I know there are other stories of PorQue, but I'll have to share those later!!

Thank you to all who prayed for this event, and we hope that you will continue to pray for the Horizonte students, and the students of Querétar in general.

If you want to see more pictures, click HERE!!

The Few, The Proud...

The............. Horizonte teens!!

On Wednesday night, we held a prayer and worship time for the youth and youth leaders of Horizonte, to pray for the Por Que event that will take place this saturday, July 5th. (If you're wondering what that's all about, you can read a little about it HERE).

It was pouring down rain, and a lot of people at Horizonte don't go out much in the rain (especially teens who don't have cars!!), so I was discouraged about the meeting, and almost didn't go - I was ridiculously tired from inmigration/moving JP's stuff to his house/running errands/Por Que preparations/etc.! But I went, and this is what we saw:

Kids joining together in praise and prayer to our God who we love and serve. Pretty much, we had a good core group of teens - ones that come faithfully to events and are not apathetic toward their relationships with God. I was very blessed to see true worship from the hearts of these kids, and around the bonfire (it quit raining for about 2 hours, and we prayed around a fire that was made in the yard!), several of them prayed for their friends' salvation, and that God would use the Por Que event to bring more youth of Queretaro to Him.

We trust that God has great plans for this saturday! Please pray with us for this event, the teens who come, and the leaders!

5th of July

On July 5, we here at Horizonte Church be holding an outreach event for the youth (ages 12-25) of Querétaro. We aim to invite non-churched, non-christians, especially the friends of the youth at Horizonte. We plan to follow up on the new students who attend the outreach event, and are planning regular events that cater to the needs and desires of non-christians who have somewhat of an interest in spirituality.



PLEASE PRAY for this event that God will use it to bring more students to a growing relationship with Him, and that we will be able to follow up with all the new students.

ROJO!!!!!!

Last friday, we took several of the youth group kids to a concert of the band Rojo here in Queretaro. It was a benefit concert for Pan de Vida orphanage!

Getting there was interesting though... The concert was held in a really really big meeting room in the Hotel Real de Minas, and for those of you who are familiar with QRO, you know how that area of town gets on friday nights... On the same side of the highway all clumped together are: the hotel where the concert was, Cuernos Chuecos rodeo and the bull ring, the movie theater, the casino, and three popular friday night restaurants. There was NO parking anywhere, we ended up parking in Jardines de la Hacienda (a neighborhood not terribly close to the hotel).

Anyway, despite the crazyness outside, the concert was wonderful, and I think all who went really enjoyed it!


For me, one of the highlights of the concert was when they played "Never let go" by Matt Redman, but in spanish. You've probably heard the song in english:

Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me

Here's Andrea, Julieta, Alma, and me enjoying the concert!

And after the concert, all the girls, plus Paco who needed to be in every photo!

Santa Rosa

Ok, I'm WAY behind on blog updates... Just wanted to share a few pictures of the Horizonte youth group trip to Santa Rosa (a town just to the north a Queretaro) to help paint a the Horizonte church there!

Jana and Alma Rosa looking enthusiastic! -

Gaby (she's my mexican sister, we live together), me, and Alma showing off our handiwork!

Horizonte kids and Sta. Rosa church members at the end of a long day of painting sunday school classrooms and the outside of the church!

This was a good time for the Horizonte youth to step out and lend a hand to other instead of just participating in "fun" activities like bowling or going out to pizza. It was rather hard work, but everyone said they had fun doing it!

Faith Like Rafa

There's a 23 year old guy at Horizonte church named Rafa who I think has more faith and perseverance than anyone I know.

Five years ago, Rafa graduated from high school, and went out with a few of his friends in the new car that one of them received for graduation. You guessed it, they got in a really bad wreck, and Rafa was the only one who survived (there were either 2 or 3 other guys who died). Rafa was in and out of the hospital for a year, and ended up in a wheel chair with no use of his legs, and very limited use of his hands and arms. His condition is degenerative, meaning he's gotten worse over the past 5 years, and will likely continue worsening as time goes on.

Rafa came to Horizonte with his mom and cousin Hector (Hector goes everywhere with Rafa and takes care of him) a little less than a year ago. He loved the sunday service and youth group, and began coming regularly. He made quick friends with Dany (who's always gone to church, not the Dany mentioned below) and Jean Paul.

We began to learn more about Rafa, and found out that he's very artistic and attends art classes at one of the universities. He also does quite a bit with computer graphics. When I said he has limited use of his hands, I mean he has REALLY limited use - like it's hard to hold a pencil! And he does art by hand and computer!! Then in one small group time for the college guys, he mentioned to Dany and JP that he'd like prayer... not that he's one day walk again, but that God would give him patience to be content how he is now until God lets him walk again. Wow.

Here's some pictures from Rafa's 23rd birthday party a couple weeks ago:


Taking the traditional "mordida!" (Biting the cake)

Great sense of humor: posing for the picture arm-wrestling with Juan! Juan is the biggest guy ever (for a mexican)! And look, Rafa is winning! :)

Chaos... But In A Good Way!

I think we had a record turn out for youth group last saturday night! It was our valentine's day celebration since it was the saturday before valentines. We had some typical youth group games, and a candy exchange. There were even several teens there who had never been to youth group before, but just had been to church on sundays a few times. We had right at 40 students, plus 6 leaders! That pretty much packed out the cafe where we hold our youth group! (Horizonte youth meets at Global Grounds, the cafe that is a hang-out for university students monday through friday). It was crazy!!
Anyhow, it was amazing to see so many kids involved this past week! Please be praying for our upcoming trip to Chiapas - a 15 hour bus ride from here - with the youth! We are hoping to fill an entire bus (the more people that go, the cheaper it will be per person!) so that would be 45 people!!

Christmas Banquet

Stepping back a little over a week, I have some pictures from our youth group Christmas banquet at Horizonte Queretaro!

The banquet was an evangelistic event - we asked the youth from churh to please invite a non-Christian friend. We figured about 35 or 40 from our church would come, and that maybe 10 would invite a friend. When it came time to buy food and stuff, we had 94 people registered to come!! 85 actually came!

Here are several of the university girls:

Aide, Ana, Whitney, and I

My good-looking little sister Gaby, and little brother Roberto

And, me with friends Dany, Ana, and Kike (KEE-kay)
It was a fun night!

Super Super Heroes - Part 2... And My Not-so-super Immune System

We finished off our SuperHero series in youth group this past saturday with a lesson on Daniel. The hommade video this week was so funny, I thought we were going to have to bring in oxygen for the youth group kids they were laughing so hard! Ok, not really about needing oxygen...

So here are our 5 heroes: La Mole (the big guy from Fantastic 4) - Adiel, Superman - Alex, Spiderman - Dany, BatMan - Justin, and SuperWoman - Whitney.


Now on to a not so fun subject. My failing health. Ok, not really, I'll be fine. But I have had a rather bad illness apparently since september, it just kept reappearing, and I thought I was just getting sick a lot. Nope. But now, after two weeks straight of being sick, I'm on the road to recovery. On Thanksgiving day, I was diagnosed with Salmonella, but sent to get blood work done just to make sure. Yesterday, I went back to the doctor to find out that it was really Typhoid (Salmonella is a type of Typhoid). Thankfully, I had been immunized against Typhoid in 2002, but the vaccination only lasts 3 years. I had enough still in me to keep the illness to a minimum. I feel alot better, but will be on a diet for the next two weeks, and anyone who knows me knows that I'm NOT a diet person. I'm a "street-tacos, ice cream, and pizza" person. I think I'm up to par with being a healthy Mexican now though - I got a new Typhoid vaccination (a must for living here...), and will get "de-parasited" every 6 months. Thats a nice thought, now isn't it! heehee!

All in all, I should be feeling better in the next few days, be ready to eat normal things in two weeks, and I'll be off to Honduras December 17!! Of course being very careful as to what I eat...

What's been going on the last few weeks - Part One

Ok, I have no internet in my new home yet, so I've completely neglected everything that has to do with internet for about 2 weeks now...

Here's a picture update of what has been going on...

The youth group "anti-halloween" party:
All the teens trying to shove as many marshmellows as possible into their mouths (I WON! 13!)

And here they are trying to pop balloons that are hooked onto other peoples' feet.

We had our monthly church potluck - picnic style!

Super Super Heroes - Part 1

Before we get started, I just wanted to mention that I DID post the very few pictures that I took in Oregon on my blog - the one in spanish, in case you want to see them, you can click here...

In youth group, we are doing a really cool series - super heroes of the Bible! Every week, we have a fictional superhero who comes to youth group, and then the study on the real superhero from the Bible. We have had two weeks of the study so far: "Spiderman" - Samuel (the topic was serving God and others), and "La Mole" (don't know what his name is in english, it's the rock guy from Fantastic 4) - David (the topic was "a heart that seeks the Lord.") Each week, Spiderman (a.k.a. Dani) will introduce the fictional hero of the week, here he is with La Mole (a.k.a. Shultz).

Both weeks so far we have made videos of the hero from the movie, and they are really funny! This past week, with La Mole, we paid a city bus driver to pretend to run into Mole in front of the university! There were a lot of angy drivers backed up behind the bus but it was hilarious! (In Fantastic 4, Mole stops a firetruck, so we had him stop a bus...)

The teens have been really excited to come to youth group (I think the funny videos helped draw them in...), and have remembered what the topic of the real superhero was each week. I asked some of the high school girls what we learned about the previous week, and after saying "spiderman," they all remembered that we learned about Samuel and being willing to serve God in whatever capacity He asks!

I think this will be a great series, and we have some really creative people on the youth group staff to make the lessons memorable!

More to come next week: How is BatMan relavant to someone in the Bible? :-)

Before Oregon...

Here, I'll let the pictures more or less talk for themselves... Here's the events of the week before I left for Oregon:

Water-night at youth group, above we are playng American football with waterballoons.

The past month, we did "Dive Deeper" as the theme for youth group - diving deeper into a relationship with the Lord. So, as a way to help the teens remember that concept, we set up the pool at church, and everyone (who wanted to) got to jump in!

Horizonte School of Evangelizm

I went to Bernal (a BIG rock/small mountain outside of QRO) with the school of evanglism students for a team building activity - we all climbed Bernal with one foot tied to the foot of another person!

Success! At the top of Bernal!!

So, that was a packed week before leaving to visit my parents in Oregon!