12/27/10

Hi everyone.  Its been a little over a week since i have been here in mexico city.  I am with my team in a district of mexico city, the name is pretty hard to spell so i am not going to attempt to.  The area that my group is in is like an hour from downtown mexico city, but there is still so many people.  There are two or three story concrete houses as far as the eyes can see. Our group is living in a pastors house.  The living conditions are pretty nice actually.  We all share double beds with matresses, have hot water most of the time,  have wash boards.  Everything we really need, accept internet, lol but that has actually been a good thing.   

     The community we are living in is nice, but it was an adjustment for me when and still is.  The biggist adjustments have been a new group dynamic and having people stare at you all the time.  Since our dts group split up into two different outreach groups many people i was close with are on the other team.  so i miss them, but also since our group is different i guess the way we interact is also different.  But i get along well with everyone here but it has been an adjustment.  Also, everywhere we go people look at us becuase we are white. haha, we are lnot in downtown were most of the tourist are so we look out of place.  

   I am getting used to these things though and am starting to feel more comfortable.  As far as ministry goes.  Our group decides what we do each day. We are not really working for another ministry, but are doing our own ministries. So far what we have been doing this past week a lot is reading the bible out loud in the community, for spiritual warfare reasons.  Last thursday we had a vacation bible school for the kids in the area.  We went out into the community to invite people.  When we started no one was actaully there, but we decided to start our skit and when we did kids kinda of started coming out of the cracks.  and eventually there were like 25 kids there.  so that went well.  another ministry i have been doing is playing soccer at the local park.  a lot of kids play there and i have been getting to know them.  some of the kids were the ones that went to the bible school.  so now we are looking for ways to share the gospel with them.  today we went to the downtown area of our district.  we split into groups and read the bible out loud, prayed, interceded for the city,  read the bible in the catholic church, prayed for people.  Its was a good day.  I am running out of town at the internet cafe so i got to go. love everyone. peace out.

12/14/10

Yo yo.  This past week the speaker was Jeff Pratt, the brother to the speaker three weeks ago, Tim Pratt.  The topic for the week was spiritual disciplines.  There were a few things that stood out to me from Jeff's lecture the first day.  One, that all of us have three longings; to be loved, to be needed, and a desire to be significant in this life/desire to leave a legacy.  I definitely can relate to longing for all of these things.  The first day was related to fully living in this life.  Another point he made related to this topic is that you are not really living until you have a passion worth dying for.  He then stressed the importance of having God be your passion in life, and what your passions are is what people are attracted to.  So that is one thing that really stood out to me is that I want to have more passion for the Lord that is evident in my life.  The next few days he spoke on spiritual disciplines and why they are so important.  Then on Thursday we drove like 30 minutes away from the base to have a time of silence and solitude with God.

We arrived at a rural ranch on the coast with large mountains on right next to the coast.  It was so beautiful.  We were told that we would have 4 hours to be alone and have some time with just us and God.  Jeff gave us some worksheets that we could look over for some guidance on silence and solitude.  My expectations for the day was something along the lines of reviewing the notes that I have taken throughout DTS to see the things that have really stood out to me, talking with God and asking him my questions,  and looking over the notes Jeff gave us.  So when we were released and our silence time began my initial desire was to find a really remote location were no one was around me.  I started climbing the mountain to the left.  I followed a horse trail, I knew it was a horse trail because there was crap on the trail, up the side of the mountain.  The trail eventually ended though so i decided I would be able to keep blazing a trail through the brush on the mountain and I decided to keep going.  It was a lot harder then I anticipated, but I kept going.  As I was walking I started to sing out lout worship songs, but shortly after I started singing I started to get paranoid and scared of rattlesnakes.  I eventually got to the top of the mountain and had a beautiful view of the coast for miles.  I chilled there and just appreciated the surrounding creation and ate lunch.  I chilled there for awhile then started back down the mountain.  Once again I had to blaze my own trail.  I eventually got back to the base camp, but I was the last one to arrive because I hiked to far away and it took a long time.  It was a really good day. instead of the initial plans I had of going over my notes and stuff, it turned into a time of worship, appreciation for Gods creation, relaxation in silence and solitude with God, and a lesson in trusting the Lord.

This is the Last week of the lecture phase of my DTS.  I will be leaving with my group for Mexico City this Friday.  The time has flown by and I have learned so much.  Hopefully I have grown and matured a little.  I am pretty anxious for what the next two months hold.  I am really excited about what God is going to do in the places we visit and in us.   I am also a little nervous though because there are still a lot of unknowns about what exactly our ministries will be and things like that.  But I know God is with us and looking after us. Romans 8:28 comes to mind,

  "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who^[a] have been called according to his purpose." 

This will probably be my last blog update for like two weeks or so.  Keep me and my team in your prayers, we'll need them.  Thanks for all the support.  I love you guys.

12/05/10

Hey guys, sorry i didn't update the blog last week, I never got around to it.  Anyways, two weeks ago the speaker was Peter Brownhill and the topic was the character and nature of God.  The week for me was alright.  The topic had some interesting points that i never thought to much about, but i felt like a lot of what was taught was review and also there was a little of information given so it was hard to take everything in.  There was some things that stood out to me during the week though.  Peter talked to us about the nature and Character of God.  He really wanted us to remember this little summary about God's nature.
    God is an-
       - invisible, personal, everlasting,
       - infinite in power, presence, and knowledge
       - a trinity of beings
He described God's character as
       - love, holiness, mercy, righteousness, justice, wisdom, faithfulness, and truthfulness

During that week I also finished reading, The Shack.  It was a really good book about a guy who's daughter gets kidnapped.  Through that experience he blames God for losing his daughter.  The man, Mack, recieves an invitation in the mail to meet God at the shack where he found evidence of his daughters death.  He goes to the shack and ends up meeting God.  Its a great book that really helped me to understand the trinity better and also was a good example of what God's character and nature is like.

A cool thing that I did last Sunday was climb the mountain that is in back of the base.  There was like ten of us who hiked the mountain, all together it was like a 6 or 7 mile hike.  here are some pics.

This past week we didn't have a speaker.  Instead we worked with one of the ministries on base, homes of hope, and learned dramas that we will use for outreach.  The homes of hope ministry provides low income households with nice homes.  The families that get homes built for them are families that are in a really bad housing situation as well as other situations.  Groups will donate money to come down and build a house for a selected family.  So group donated money so that our DTS would be able to build a home fore some one.  So that is what we did monday and tuesday this week.  Its was a lot of fun, tiring though.  The family that we built the home for consisted of a mother and her three girls.  The family really deserved the house and its was such a blessing for them.  The rest of the week we worked on different dramas that would be helpful with evangelistic in mexico city.  It was a good week, tiring though.

Another thing, our DTS as a whole needs around $30,000 more dollars to afford to go on outreach.  I, fortunately, have all my bills paid so i will be going.  But some of my other classmates are struggling financially.  It would be a huge loss if one person would be able to come along to outreach because they couldn't afford it.
It would be really helpful to my classmates if anyone would be willing to donate.  Contact me over email or facebook if you are interested in donating.  my email is elliodo803@gmail.com.  Thanks, with love.

Below are some pics of the build: