mountain top experiences

Yesterday we had a mountian top experience. Literally. We climbed up to the top of one of the mountians surrounding Tlaxiaco. It took us over two hours to get to the top, and I think it was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, and it gave me a completely different picture of Moses climbing up the mountain to meet with God! It was completely worth it though, becasue the view from the top was absolutely amazing. At the top, we chilled and ate lunch, and then had a time of praying over the city. It was incredible to think that this is the view of Tlaxiaco that God has all the time. He is always looking over the city! After we spent some time on the top we climbed back down (actually it was more like running down the mountain! We all fell so many times, and we laughed a ton. It took us more than 2 hours to get up the mountain and only 40 minutes to get back down!)

Yesterday night, all of the girls were also invited to a Quinceaños. It was a really fun look into such an important part of the culture here! It is such a huge deal here, but after watching everything that the quinceñera had to do, we were pretty glad that it wasn´t our fifteenth birthday party! I even thought it was really funny when some of the people we talked to were surprised that we didn´t have anything like a Quinceaños in the states! There were lots of cultural and traditional type dances with the quinceñera and 3 "cabelleros" who were actually three guys about her age. For most of the night she was dressed in this huge pink princess dress, but for one of the dances they did the cumbia and all changed into less formal clothes. There was food, and then more dancing with everyone. Toward the end even all of us joined in the dancing, even though we really had no idea what we were doing. Mexicans, though, love to dance! We left at around 1 in the morning, but the party was still going strong!

when God takes over

My last update was a little short as far as words go (but at least there were pictures!), so I will try to talk a little more about everything going on here. I wish I could paint for you all a picture of everything that is going on down here, but I have doubts that that could ever be accomplished in words... especially on the Internet.

English classes started last week, which means that from 7-9 in the morning and from 7-9 at night we are teaching. Here, we use a method of teaching called TPR or total physical response which is actually pretty sweet. Instead of using a lot of books and worksheets or anything like that, TPR is kinesthetic learning. For example, we run and say the word run. Then we tell everyone in the class to run, and they associate the action with the word. TPR also encorporates a lot of other methods of teaching like stories, lots of props, and even drawings. For someone like myself who has a pretty short attention span and is not very good with repetitive things, the variety of TPR is awesome. It is really neat to see how much the students enjoy it too... and they are learning really quickly! In the morning Christy and I teach the group of adults (actually anyone older than elementary school). On the average morning we have 15-20 people, and the class of elementary kids has about 10-15. At night, Christy and I work with two of the guys-- Daniel and James-- and we teach the kids. 25-30 or so of them... which can definitely get a little loud and crazy in our lecture hall-like classroom! There is also a class at night with the adults, taught by the other interns.

Aside from English classes starting, the rest of our day generally follows the same schedule. The afternoons are definitely still one of my favorite parts of the day. Sometimes I get to see the ways the Lord is moving in my relationships with women in town, and sometimes I don´t, but I am always trusting and always praying that he is taking the seeds that are planting and making them grow. I am daily learning what it means to surrender it all to God and trust him. Really, nothing I "do" down here or anywhere for that matter can make that much of a difference for the Kingdom. But what the POWER of God can do through me and through all of us is far more than any of us could imagine.

This week during a time of prayer God led me to Jeremiah 1, and I have found myself constantly going back to what it promises. In verse four it says:

The word of the Lord came to me, saying "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

"Ah, Sovereign Lord," I said, "I do not know how to speak; I am only a child."

But the Lord said to me, "Do not say I am only a child. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the Lord.

Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, "Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant."

Praise God, this is the promise I am seeing manifested in my life. As I talk with my friends, and as doors open to share the words of the Lord, I am realizing that this is not of my doing, but of the Spirits. I have prayed before, Lord Jesus, I want transformation to take place here. I want people to come to know and live in you because I know that that is what you yourself want. Here I am Lord Jesus, use me. I am ready and willing! I want to be used, Spirit, but if you do not use me use someone else. Because really, its not about me at all, and its all about you.

Once I started to pray that, my outlook on everything here changed. I am finding myself relying on myself less and trusting the power of the Lord´s Spirit more. I am finding myself praying more, and as I pray I am finding the Lord reaching down and touching my mouth just like with Jeremiah. May we all come to surrender all and find ourselves humbly praying, not my will, Lord, but yours be done, and may we come to see the power of the Spirit of the Lord radically transforming the whole world!

ruins

Yesterday we went to some nearby Mixteco ruins as a group, and it was fun day just to hang out and relax as a group. The ruins were small, but we got to explore them a lot, so it was still fun.

1. More beautiful mountains and a fun little shack we found on our walk to the ruins

2. Some steps that were part of the ruins

3. More ruins... there was actually a Catholic church right nearby that had these stone faces all around the courtyard. It really shows the mixture of Catholicism with ancient animistic practices

4. A tunnel inside the ruins that we all crawled through

consuming thoughts

Most of the time that I am down here my head is filled with random thoughts. Things that God is doing in my life. Intriguing conversations about practically everything. Prayers for my Mexican friends. Prayers for the States. Spanish words and phrases I am trying to learn.... I´m sure you all get the picture.

The funny thing is that when I come here and try to tell them all to you, my mind becomes blank. Either the thoughts all disappear, or they all mush into one thought that is completely undescernable I am not sure, athough I would probably perfer the later. I have decided that my thoughts come out best in conversations with others, and well, a computer screen doesn´t quite cut it. Hopefully we will all have opportunities to have those conversations when I come back to the States, because I am realizing more and more how glorified God can be when we share life with eachother.

But until then, here is a little peak into the thoughts that consume my mind most of the time.

First, let me just warn you that God is moving in some crazy ways in my life. Sometimes I don´t realize how much I have learned and how much I have grown down here until I think about who I was before I came here. So far, God is teaching me about three main things... prayer, the Holy Spirit, and faith. What is really cool is that I realized the other day those were the exact things I asked God to teach me this summer in a prayer I wrote before I left for Mexico. God is good.

I see the Spirit of God moving so much down here, and it makes my heart break when I realize that so many believers in the States have not claimed the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. We are reading a book called the Blueprint down here by Jaeson Ma (I´m not finished with the book yet, and normally I don´t recommend books to people that I haven´t finished, but I´ll make an exception this time. Read it). In the book their is a quote from a Chinese pastor who visited a megachurch in L.A. The quote said this,"It is amazing what your American churches can do without the Holy Spirit." Talk about a heart-breaking quote. We can do a lot by our own power. But it is nothing in comparison to what the Holy Spirit can do in and through us when we allow him to consume us. I pray that the power of God would be at work within all of us more and more. Just check out Ephesians 3:14-21 if you want to know what I am talking about.

Since I am here, and learning about missions, I am learning how much this all is a part of that. I want so badly to see the people of Tlaxiaco come to know and love and live in Jesus Christ, but I cannot make that happen by my own power. I can spend years and years here, I could have the best intentions in the world, I could even spend all of my time talking to people about God, but if it is through my own power, nothing great can come. The battle we fight is not one of flesh and blood, but a spiritual battle. Because of this, we cannot fight the battle by means of the flesh, but by spiritual means. By means of prayer and faith and the power of the Holy Spirit.

We´ve also talked a lot about the Church, which means that I have also thought a lot about it. How much of what I see as Christianity is actually cultural? How much is actually Biblical? I have more questions than answers, but at least right now I think that is an ok thing. I want to dig into the word and probe the heart of God to find out what the Church should look like. I want to know the commands of Christ, nothing more and nothing less, because down here I have seen what becomes of a church that isn´t that. We cannot plant cross-cultural churches that conform to Western culture. It doesn´t make sense. I think the most glorifying thing for God would be for all people of all nations to learn how to be followers of Christ in the context of their culture. Lord Jesus, use me.

Well, enough with my thoughts...

-Que Dios les bendigo-
God Bless,
Elizabeth

photos!

1 and 2. The view from off the third floor of our apartment

3. The beautiful mountains at the "camp" we went to last weekend. The picture really doesn´t do it justice at all!

4. Fellow interns Laura, Abby, Daniel and I cooking at the guy´s house. We were all hungry for American food, and Daniel really wanted fettucini alfredo. We tried to make it, but we didn´t quite have everything we needed... it was still good though, and we definitely had a lot of fun trying!

5. One of the barrios attached to Tlaxiaco

its raining... again

So, it rains a lot here in Tlaxiaco. Today, I was sitting outside on a bench, reading and praying when it started pouring. Normally it rains really hard here but not for very long and since the closest place to go and stay dry was in here, I thought I would come and use the Internet. So here I am.

For any of you who are curious, here is kind of what a "normal" day looks like for us:

Mornings start early. Really early. Normally, the three other girls in my apartment and I wake up around 5:45 and leave by 6 for the house where the guys are living. We have prayer for the nations at 6:15, which is a time that we dedicate to praying in community for an unreached people group. We talk a lot about unreached people groups here, which are groups of people that have no established church, or no Christians. Reaching the unreached is a passion of GFM, and it has quickly become a passion of mine too. So anyway, each morning we take a people group off of the Joshua Project website (www.joshuaproject.net if you´re interested) and we pray for them. After prayer for the nations, we have breakfast made by two of the interns (American food!), and then a time of worship. Each day we also have some sort of discussion. Up until now, they have been about basic concepts in Christianity (prayer, worship, the Holy Spirit...), but next week we are going to start talking specificially about church planting, house churches, and discipleship.

In the mornings we also do community development, which up until now I have not been that excited about. The boys have been making water filters which is pretty sweet, and definitely a need of the people here, but for the girls it has been a little harder. Today though, we had an awesome talk and brainstorming session about what community development should look like, and I am really excited about what we came up with to do. It is hard to explain online, but some of the needs for community development is to give identity to the long-term missionaries, create jobs, and meet a need of the community. What we decided to do is work toward the goal of a comedor (a place to eat) that serves American food and in the evenings a place for the teens to hang out. A place for the youth here is definitely a need of the community because right now there is literally no where for them to go. As a result, they find other ways to entertain themselves, most of them really not good. As interns, while we probably will not get to see the vision come to full realization, we are excited about our part in it. We are going to daily cook new foods and then go out in the streets and sell them to people, trying to figure out what people would like and what they won´t like.

For lunch, we all go to different comedors. Laura, one of the other interns and I, have found a comedor that we really like, with some really nice girls who work there. It is really fun to build relationships with them. The first day we went there, we kept telling them how much we liked their rice, and Claudia, the owner, invited us back to learn how to make it!

For the rest of the afternoon we make friends and find ways to share Jesus in the context of those relationships. It has been absolutely incredible to see the ways that God is moving, even in simple ways in these relationships. Talking with the friends that I have made here is by far my favorite part of the day for me, and I know it will be incredibly hard to leave behind these relationships when I have to leave. But until then, I am continuously praying that God is using me. I am praying that doors will be opened to life with Christ. I am praying that when my friends look at me, they actually don´t see me at all, but instead they see Christ in me. I am praying that God will start a revolution of disciples making new disciples who make new disciples, right here in Tlaxiaco and the surrounding Mixteco region.

All for Him,
Elizabeth

following Christ

Well, I´m back in Tlaxiaco after a really great weekend. As a group of interns plus the four full-time church planting members we drove about 3 hours through the mountains to a little "camp" where we fasted, prayed, and spent lots of really great time in silence and solitude with the Lord. The idea of the weekend was death to self, and that is exactly what we did. We examined unconfessed sin in our lives, and then we experienced the freedom of forgiveness. We worshiped, we enjoyed the beauty of God´s creation, and we rested in the presence of the Lord. I finally was able to take a few pictures because there weren´t Mexicans around (we have to be careful of what we take pictures of and when we take them because most of the people here really don´t understand it), but I forget my USB cable today to upload them. Hopefully I will be able to post them soon, because both the time at the camp and the ride there were absolutely beautiful. (The only thing I would have changed were the roads, but praise God, none of us got sick!)

Lets see... what else is there to talk about.

My dad wanted to know what kind of things I say to people here... like how relational evangelism works... so here you are, Dad, this is for you:

Pretty much for most of the afternoons here we do what is called relational evangelism. So really, I am in Mexico to make friends, which if you ask me is pretty sweet. Sometimes it can be frustrating when I lack the Spanish to really say what I want to say, but in those times I am trusting that the Spirit of the Lord is working through my weaknesses. More than anything I want my entire life here to be a testimony of the love of the Lord.

Religion in Tlaxiaco, the Mixteca, and really all of southern Mexico is incredibly important. The problem is that the Catholicism here has become incredibly distorted, and is now a really sad mix of animism and Catholicism. The Christian church here also has its issues. Many foreign missionaries have come throughout the years and planted "churches" in the form of buildings, but because so much of what they taught was Christianity within the Western culture, the people here did not understand it. The Mexicans have not been allowed to be Christians and Mexicans at the same time, which absolutely breaks my heart, and I know breaks the heart of the Lord as well. The few Christians that are here have turned Christianity into complete legalism, and like the Catholics here they do not get to experience a life-giving and life-sustaining relationship with the Lord. The other part of the Christian churches here that tears me apart is the divisions within the Church. For the Mexican Christians here, you are your denomination. Pentacostals say that Baptists are a cult. Baptists say that Pentacostals are not Christians. The have completely grabbed onto Christianity as a religion within their denomination, but they fail to see it as a relationship.

Because of all of this, the word Christian here has really strange conotations to the other Mexicans. Most of them know or have heard of a few Christians, but the Christianity here is so foreign and strange that they really want nothing to do with it. So instead of calling myself a Christian, I call myself a follower of Christ. When people ask me what that means, I will tell them that I read the Bible and I put it into practice in my life. Sometimes I will try to explain that in the Bible the word Christian really meant "little Christ," and that daily I try to live as Christ would live. Sometimes people will ask what the difference is with Christianity, and I explain that many Christians here have lots of rules and regulations that don´t come from God, but that come from man. I say that when you follow Christ, it isn´t a religion with a lot of rules, but it is a relationship. Other than that, the rest is up to the Spirit. I have been praying that I meet people here who are thirsty for something new, and that they would be curious enough to ask questions. The really exciting part is that it is happening!

Sometimes, it is easy to get frustrated. My Spanish abilites really limit what I can say, but the fact that I am only here for 6 more weeks limits things more. I am continously reminding myself that while what I can do is really limited, what the Lord can do is limitless. I think I am here to plant seeds this summer, so that is what I am doing. I am scattering as many seeds as I can in culturally appropriate ways, and then I will continue to keep praying that more people come along to water the seeds, and even more so that the Lord would make the seeds grow and flourish. I pray that the seeds that are being planted right now would one day grow and grow, planting new seeds as they go.

All for Him,
Elizabeth