About yesterday

Hey Fam,

Yesterday was last day.  It was very emotional for everyone.  We went to Church this am and Pedro spoke from Exodus 15:1-21 with Wilson translating.  God the warrior King.  It was powerful.  For any of you who know Pedro, he is a man of very few words- except when he is preaching.  He was on fire!  The church was packed.  Yolanda came with Joselito, Angelina, and Denis Claudel.  After church I had my home visit and then we were invited to lunch at Alex’s new friend Jeremy’s house-what a blessing and an honour.   The visit to Miguel’s was very relaxed and our prayer time was meaningful.  I found out that this family has saved enough money to purchase a piece of land and they are praying for the means to have their own home.  We have been praying for this eventuality for 3 years.  Praise God!

  Lunch at Jeremy’s was tons of fun.  He just loves Alex so much he could not stop hugging him, playing with his hair, sitting together listening to Lecrae…  So beautiful to see the young people bond.  As I said before, they are the future partnership.   Good-bye was very hard.  There were lots of tears.  Bernabe escorted us back to the hotel and I was not prepared for my own emotions as I was saying good-bye to this amazing man of God.  He is such a faithful, joyful servant and such a friend to all of us.  I cannot forget Benjamin as well.  We said good bye to him in the village because he had a surprise visit from his girlfriend.  Ben did such an amazing job with co-ordinating the entire visit and especially the Friday night youth night which was a total blast.  When I had a chance on Friday night to share my testimony with the youth I said that I was so excited for them that they have found God{or are on the path toward God} at such a young age because I wasted so many years without Him.  Benjamin is such an amazing example of a young person totally surrendered to Christ and God is mightily using him in his community.

Two of my favourite songs by Switchfoot are “I dare you to move” and “This is your life”.  If you put the two together the message is something like this; 

Now that you know, and now that you’ve seen-what are you going to do about it?  I dare you to move like this trip never happened.  You cannot.  Look at your life and examine yourself.  Are you who you want to be?  If not then what are you going to do about it? 

Tough questions that I am sure this team will be wrestling with over the next while as they experience the reverse culture shock of re-entering their Canadian lives. 

I am going to ask each of you reading this to seek out someone who has been on this team and listen to their stories.  As we have all said over and over you can’t really understand missions until you go, but maybe hearing first hand stories will start a fire in you that would help you take that step to go.  I swear to you, you will NEVER regret the time/money sacrifices you make to go.  In fact you will kick yourself for waiting for so long.  Here are some more pics that would not load last night!  Hasta Domingo, Michele

 Jennifer on the right accepted Christ

Bernabe Mendosa Gil and Fam