Relationships and Learning

Sorry for all of you who have been eagerly waiting for this post...
I really appreciate knowing that people back home care and are praying for me. I am feeling better physically and everything else has been going great so keep the prayers coming!!

The past week has been pretty busy, it goes a little like this...
We moved into new apartments last Sunday. Four of us are living in two rooms close to town and another 3 live in a different apartment a little bit further away. I have loved getting to know the girls on my team through living with them and spending time with them. It´s a totally different expirience then living in a Mexican home! During the days we spend time together as a team, us 7 girls and the 5 guys. Mornings are prayer from 6-7 then breakfast and worship and then we have different teachings and bible studies. Last week we all shared our testimonies and it was cool to see how God brought each of us here through different circumstances. Almost everyone has a heart for missions and learning about the unreached people of the world has been eye opening for all of us. If you are interested in that or never knew that there are people who have never heard the gospel you should check out joshuaproject.net.
We also spend time during the day working on our community developement projects, water filtration and improving life here for the people, it´s still in process but I am excited. English classes should be started soon too, we are doing that through the government for a barrio which is like a neighborhood here. The ciriculum is very hands on and fun so that will be cool.
In the evenings I spend time with my Mexican friends in town, talking and hanging out in their stores. Im hoping to build relationships to the point where I can start talking to them about their faith and the Bible and stuff. I am praying for those òpporunities too. Pam, one of the long-term church planters here actually just baptised a couple who decided to follow Jesus recently. Home churches are starting and we are seeing people from villages accept Christ even through persecution. These people literally are beat up and torn down for their faith. We have it so easy in the states and yet they are more willing to share their faith with their neighbors.
After my time with friends and language learning I usually spend the nights with the group, we have fun cooking and playing games and just hanging out at night.

Now that the overview of what we will be doing for the next five weeks is layed out I would like to get more specific in my posts. Its hard to describe what Tlaxiaco is like. It´s not really what you would picture Mexico to be like becase we are in a city, but its not a big city like Mexico City or anything. Any of you who have visited Northern Mexico are probably picturing that as you read my posts but from talking to the people here it is a very different culture, even the language is different. So, with that in mind I am just going to try to describe as best I can and hopefully you can get a picture of life here.

Every day for lunch we have 40 pesos to spend, about 4 dollars, for lunch. We go in pairs to the same ¨comedor¨to eat and are working on building relatoinships with the owners. Comedors are like tiny restaurants where you dont have to order. When you sit down in the cozy little room you can see the women cooking in the kitchen right there near you. Usually its a mother and her daughters or a couple employees. They will bring out soup or rice with tortillas and a fruit water to drink. After your finished they bring out the main dish which is usually a type of meat, sometimes kind of scary, and beans. It definately varies but those are typical situations. It is important to eat it all since we are trying to build a relationship and get to know the people. Food is a love language here and if you rejet it they WILL be offended.
Me and Elizabeth decided to venture off our first day, last tuesday, to fine some good home cooking. We walked down a busy road in the city for a couple of blocks looking here and there for a cute comedor without scary men inside, ha. We found one with some women that was empty and decided to give it a try. The women were so welcoming and sweet and we had a pretty fantastic homeade lunch. The rice was delicious with onions and carrots and a great flavor so we raved about how much we liked it. The owner, a sweet Mexican mother, offered to teach us how to make it and invited us back on Friday. Me and Ellie were thrilled. So we went back on Friday and made rice and fresh tortillas and sopillas and got to know a bunch of girls who worked there. I am excited to see how God will use the situation, we will be going there 3-4 times a week to eat and talk to them so I am praying that some doors will be opened to talk about the gospel with the girls. It seems like everyone here is dying to have something to believe in and they usually turn to Catholicism because it is the most popular thing. It is sad though, their faith is not their own and there is a lot of corruption in that religion here.

This weekend we had an amazing opportunity to go to the mountains here and camp out. We spent all day saturday in prayer, confession, fasting and silence. It was amazing. Setting aside that time really felt like great preparation for the rest of our time here. It was a gorgeous atmosphere and im so glad we had that time to seek God´s face.

Mondays are our Sabbath day and we are going to try to make some American food, the food is great here but sometimes you just want some Chicken ALfredo Pasta without tortillas and salsa haha. It will be interesting to see how it works with what we can buy here...

Thats all for now...
Hasta la proximo vez