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