The Beans of Life - Frijoles De Vida

Hey guys,

So we took 5 days and went to guadalajara for a vision trip for a couple people (paul, eric, and lindsey) to show them the city where darren and justin will be planting a church next year. It was a couple of amazing days in this city. We stayed with a couple pastors of a church Rey de Reyes (king of kings) on the outskirts of guadalajara. They were really hospitable, thankfully, and we were able to spend all day seeing the city, the downtown, and also able to spend some time on a couple university campuses there talking with students.

The trip was an eye opening one. Darren and I stayed with the head pastor of rey de reyes, kenton, while the other guys stayed at the english service pastor's house, ray. We were able to chat with kenton a bit who was raised in mexico as a missionary kid then had to leave when he was 14 (both his parents died in an airplane accident). He came back to mexico, however, a while ago and spent 10 years in acapulco pastoring a church and has been in guadalajara for about the same.

I remember one thing specifically he asked us "what do you think the main difference is between roman catholicism and christianity?" The answer was a simple one and one many would have guessed, "catholicism values tradition more than scripture, for the most part". I hadn't actually thought that through or studied that for terribly long, yet it was striking. Catholics here have a respect for the Bible sure, however, it is unfortunately true that many will discount the scripture for the sake of following tradition. That is just how it is here, after a long time of tradition it is just so infused within the psyche here people will take it over scripture saying the opposite.

A thought on evangelism toward roman catholics: Darren actually taught a bible study while we were in guadalajara and he brought up some good points about evangelizing to roman catholics. namely, it is important to reach common ground. for example, instead of pointing out that we don't worship the virgin mary we should talk about that we agree we worship jesus and he is the source of salvation.