The Beans of Life - Frijoles De Vida

Hey, so here are a couple more contextual shots of what UNAM is like. My friend memo here is one of the guys i spend the most time with on campus. He is a really open and honest guy that like most mexicans is really turned of to bible by the abuses of the religious people he has encountered. Institutions of religion has left a really bad taste in his mouth about God and the Bible, but he has been pretty open about letting me know where he stands thankfully. Recently, his grandmother has been not doing so well so his family is preparing for her to pass on. He seems at peace with her going but she is a huge figure in his life and we have been able to talk about what the bible tells us about heaven. His grandmother, he is convinced, is a believer. Memo needs prayer that he would be less apathetic towards jesus what his death on the cross means for his life and sin. He seems at times disinterested but hopefully he will really be rocked by the conviction of the holy spirit about his life. pray for him.

Our garage went from empty to completely packed a couple weeks ago when we received a shipment from miami of over 200 boxes of bibles. These bibles were given to us for the specific purpose of getting them in the hands of university student who dont have a copy of God's word of their own. This shipment was over a year in the making and only done with a lot of hard work from our director here, craig johring. The bibles in total are 209 boxes, thats about 5,000 of them, weighing over 10,000 lbs, with an approximate value of $100,000 us dollars!

More Resting! We had an absolutely fantastic week! Thank God for giving these people the desire to bless us in this way it turned out to be so good for us! Here is a couple snapshots of how we spent the week! Now its back to work!

So the rest of Enfoque Mexico is going to Acupulco for a week of R and R. So we decided to
follow suit with a week of vacation of our own. We have a few friends in the Cuernavaca area who graciously offered to host us from monday to friday. So we ended up staying with the marquez family who are a christian family who we know pretty well at this point. Darren has come over to spend time with Arturo (26) and Mario (30) a couple of times. In addition, mario and I volunteered for registration during Passion so I got a chance to know him pretty well over the course of a couple days. Mario (senior) and Susie are so nice! They are Mario and Arturo's parents and just offered to let us stay in their bottom floor/ basement type set up which coincidentally had 5 beds! This week has been incredibly restful and rejuvenating. God speaks again and again of resting in the Bible. From resting physically from labor and also finding your rest in Him. He is the great provider of this and we have been so blessed this week to spend a week in the sun, sleeping in, and seeking God.

So Victoriano is this really cool guy i met at the college group we go to on mondays. He is a full-time musician and working on a electronica type music album right now (he says he is kind of really behind on it). So occasionally we get together and go to the center of coyocoan (a colonia) to hit up el jarocho cafe (which is really famous) to get their hot chocolate and get some churros at the best place for it in the city. This guy is a lot of fun to be around. He loves Jesus and has a hilarious sense of humor. He definitely would like prayer for his album to get finised if you guys have time.

So during Passion we passed out a lot of flyers for all those who were interested in potentially starting a movement on their campus. Passion seems like the perfect event to get the word out about the Enfoque Mexico, with all the christian college students in the city basically coming to one location. So we passed out a bunch of flyers and saw a pretty good turn out at the meeting. The individual teams are now following up with students in their focus area: like for us UNAM. Hopefully, the lord will use this to jump start a lot of studies and evangelism on the different college campuses in D.F.! In the picture, Joe Cross (1 of 2 directors for enfoque mexico) and Chris Chown (roommate and teammate here in Mexico City).

Hey Friends,
After a morning meeting with our team we took the metro to UNAM to do our routine of looking for those divine appointments on campus with christians in order to encourage them to share their faith, start a bible study, or in other ways build up the christian body on their campus and take those opportunities that they might not have in the future to talk with their friends about Jesus. So, during the train ride i ran into Ivan! Ivan is a picture of the culture here: after a few minutes of chatting he asked for my number and asked if i wanted to go to hang out with his girlfriend and him for lunch and just hang out. He was so kind and we became friends instantly, he and his girl friend valerie both are catholics (she seems to be the spiritual one in the relationship, however, they both agree that what my team is doing here is great). if you are able friends, please pray for opportunities to speak truth to them! it seems that Valerie knows Jesus but i am not sure about Ivan (he is definitely nice though). Pray for grace and love to surround my words as we become closer friends!


Also, i went to the post office today. On the way back we took a taxi which was driven by Abel, a friendly 40-something guy with a wife and 2 kids (19yr old son, and 15 yr old daughter). I felt instantly like asking if he wanted to go to church! Abel was at first pretty stand-offish but after we talked for longer he could see i wasn't interested in converting him to my institution. After a few minutes i asked if i could give him my number so that if he wanted to go to church sometime i would love to take him to my church, to which he said "claro que si!" (of course). It was sad and enlightening after this to see his response after thinking about my offer..." Pero, soy pobre y no tengo dinero" (I am poor and dont have money). My response to him was that Jesus didn't ask for money and neither should anyone else because the gospel is gratis... "free". He was excited at this and seemed very open to calling me for church. Keep Abel in and his family in your prayers!

Our house hosted mexican independence day dance party! for 4 hours or so we were entertaining our guests in a circle of crazy dancing latinos and gringos!
We didn't plan any of this, they just asked to use our house to have a "couple of people over" for one of the ministries on campus and then at 9 or so a group of people came in to the house with a trunk full of dj equipment and started a dance party!
me and jen in the kitchen taking a break and making some snacks for our guests!
the d man showing how low he can go with a member of crusade's national staff, alejandra, towards the end of our dance party. I was really glad to see so many non christians come! Darren had invited a group of people he had been witnessing to at starbucks and they showed up! They didn't know what to expect with a bunch of "religious" people on the biggest party night of the mexican calendar, but i really do think that we were able to show them a good example of how in christ we can have tons of fun without a drop of alcohol! pray for those starbucks folks tho as we are still able to see them on a daily basis!

los ninos en la calle (boys in the street) who come from broken homes or no home at all and spend most of their time washing windows and getting high off of paint thinners. Consequently, most of them are fairly malnourished as the paint thinners kill their hunger pains! pray for the bible studies and that God would use us to help these kids get off their addictions and more importantly that they would know their true Father who loves them.

Chris and Scott are just loving this rain however they are also well equipped with shoes as opposed to the sandals that me and tim are sporting. We actually started running and at some point it got so bad i could barely see tim running 20 feet or so in front of me, seriously tho, rain drops the size of fists!
Aaron, my roommate in mexico, and miguel (who plays bass for our church, semilla de mostaza, here in MC) are acting like tough guys. Earlier on miguel, showed aaron a couple moves and had him on the floor pleading for mercy, no lie! haha. Miguel is awesome though, he is helping us to meet with los ninos en la calle (the boys in the street).

A little McDonald's with the guys... :( i do think that of all the places i could get sick in mexico city, mcdonalds ranks pretty high!

so, la avenida de reforma is the most famous street in all of mexico! i am standing right in front of the indepence column that has a golden angel on top. This place will be packed for independence day celebration which just so happens to be today September 15th!

UNAM is a huge campus and it takes so long to get from the metro stop to the central library were most of the students seem to be hanging out. But i love it! The students are pretty nice and open to talking about what they think happens after death. They see that we came a long way just to talk with them as well so they are very welcoming. so far i have met 2 christian on UNAM who aren't already plugged into a ministry like campus crusade or something. When we asked them if they wanted to get involved it seemed pretty natural to them and they were immediately on board to help other students build a community of love and encouragement amongst christians on the UNAM campus!