A moment of confessions

     Today we had a team talk about culture shock, and I feel as though I must be honest with my prayer and support team and share a journal entry from last week that reflects one of the more difficult days I have had lately, mainly because of culture shock settling in. So here I share my honest thoughts, and you will see that I am not some mightily strong missionary woman but just a broken sinner in need of a Savior daily like everyone else. Let me not pretend to be someone I am not.

June 19, 2013
    What a day! Very, very tired right now so my thoughts may be scrambled. Today started with an absence of quiet time in His Word leading to a short temper and some moments of lacking grace with my roommate; thoughts of "I hate the Metro! Why do Mexicans put up/subject themselves to this torture of cramming into a car?"
   But most of all my mind lingered on this: "How much easier it is to say yes and believe yourself to be willing, and desiring, to go where the Lord will send you when you are surrounded by the comforts of a nice hotel room to return to and a jumbo screen projecting flashy images and lyrics, thinking about how it is just a place to go to, never really call home, because "home" will always be where rest is plentiful, communication is easy and instantaneous, and everyone else is waiting for you to return. How much easier it is to raise your hand, stand up, or sign a card in response. Yet it isn´t until you are being streched in that place do you begin to see the true desires and intentions of your heart. Right now I desire to have at least 6 inches of space around me. I desire to be sitting down on a bus that doesn´t stop randomly nor let more people on when it is already full. I desire to have one night of sleep where I can sleep through the night without being woken up by all the city sounds outside my window. I desire a soft pillow to rest my weary mind upon. I desire the comforts of culture I´m used to already.
    Oh Lord, I know your Word to be true, and your personality to be unchanging, so please teach me, try me, and help me to know you truly as my Great Comforter, that I may find full peace and rest in your arms. How much harder it is to say yes to you right now, in the midst of all that is breaking me down, but here I am Lord on my knees surrendering it all to you, and I say yes today, this day. I leave these at the foot of the cross, resting in the pool of your cleansing blood- Oh how my heart needs cleansing!"
    My mentor meeting with Jackie was blessed as well. I shared with her that patience is what I hope for the Lord to teach me the most about this summer- patience with my roommate, patience on the Metro, patience with my church, my family, and the people of Mexico, patience with myself and not getting frustrated, patience in waiting and trusting the Lord with the silence, the unknown, the uncertainty, and not dwelling on what He has in store for me in the future. The Lord certainly has a sense of humor because I was immediately given the opportunity to practice having patience with another competely packed, humid, and slow Metro ride home from that meeting.
     Grateful to have experienced my first street evangelism excursion here today. I´m not so sure how I feel about quick 5 minute Gospel presentations- I wonder if they are honoring and glorifying to the Lord and the depth of the message of the Gospel, as well as if they are really effective in Kingdom-building. I´m much more of a relationship-building, discipleship type of evangelism person. It was extremely challenging though, and I felt kind of like a failure because I couldn´t direct the conversations how I wanted them to go, mainly because I couldn´t come up with the words in Spanish. But it at least opened my eyes and my heart to what I should do in preparing my testimony to share and having spiritual conversations in Spanish. I desperately desire to be able to communicate this with the people here- I really don´t care about worrying in adjusting in any other aspect except for being able to share my faith and testimony. Praying for Mineal (16-year-old Tourism student who is a Catholic and doesn´t find it hard to be a Christian at all- I jokingly said to him, "Well I guess we have a Saint here now do we?" which probably wasn´t the best thing to joke about with him, but truly I was at a loss for how to steer that conversation into the saving grace of Christ, but again, I surrender him to the Lord now. It´s out of my hands) and Victor (20-something-year-old man who believes in many gods- Pagan- and felt rejected by God when He didn´t answer his prayers in a time of depression and unemployment). 

Don't perform, PRAISE.

I just finished about 3 hours of practice with my Mexican brothers for the prayer and worship service (Velada) tomorrow. I'm needing lots of prayer right now because tonight we decided to add 6 more songs, and all of them are Mexican worship songs that I had never heard before, and most of them had chords that I have never played yet in my short time having a guitar. Back at home I would always skip over bar chords or other chords that were too difficult to play, but today during our practice I knew I couldn't tailor songs to myself because it's not about me. I'm here to serve under the leadership of my Mexican brothers and sisters in Christ and learn from them. And boy, did I learn from them tonight. I learned new chords, new strum patterns, and new songs with new Spanish words I had never heard before. I do confess that there were many moments when I was getting caught up in the "performance" aspect of it in getting frustrated with myself for not being able to just move my fingers to the right strings or strum on beat, and I couldn't even get to adding the singing on to playing at the same time. I felt sad and fearful that I am letting my family down because I'm taking so long to get it down. But God is so sweet and at the end one of my brothers just kept saying over and over to me, "No te preocupes! Si se puede!" (Don't worry! You can do it!) I also took my eyes off my own fingers and looked up at my other brother who had been teaching me the whole time and I was so humbled by the gentleness and patience in his eyes. I then started to take a breath and remind myself that we are doing this not to show anyone anything but purely to worship the Lord. And I am showered in blessings with having incredibly musically talented brothers who will lead and patiently teach me, an encouraging sister and roommate who will be standing up there with me tomorrow night, and such a supportive Mama who took us to get pan dulce (sweet bread/pastries) after our hard practice. I'm certainly still nervous, but I am keeping my eyes fixed on Christ because it is to Him that I am singing and playing. No one else. Only him. And I know there is nothing I could ever do that would be fully satisfactory in adequate praise for what Christ has done for me, but even my smallest attempt is better than none and I dont need to get distracted by the technicalities but take this as an opportunity to be emptied of my inabilities and filled with His abilities.
Thank you for the continued prayers. :)
¡Dios te bendiga!

Though my tongue be tied

A short stanza of poetry on my honest thoughts tonight:

Though my tongue be tied
and my mind slow to understand,
because it is in Christ I abide
that I may offer my love and my hand.

His sweet gifts of love even on a rough day

Today was one of the hardest days for me so far, mainly because culture shock is starting to hit me and my body started to react to just the mental and physical changes. I am quite a stubborn person and while I am loving this experience and not emotionally stressed at all, having my body physically react to the stress made me really frustrated today. I also got really homesick at one point because I just wanted to be in my own bed and let me tell you, being sick in a country where the language is not your first language is no fun at all. My Mexican mama was trying to ask me what was wrong, what she could do to help me feel better, and as much as I wanted to communicate with her I couldn't because I dont know those words, and I was so sick with nausea that I didn't want to talk in general. But tonight when I came home from school, she had prepared a special meal of chicken and rice soup for me. She is truly the sweetest.
While this was a hard day for me, I am overwhelmed in the many blessings the Lord gave me today:
-Multiple times different people from my team prayed over me, and when I couldn't come to my Spanish class my professor had the class pray for me at the beginning.
-On the last two legs of my metro ride home I was able to find a seat and rest. (Normally it is an hour and a half ride with people packed in everywhere, really hot and stuffy, and standing for the whole time. Didn't realize how exhausting it would be.)
-Tonight I went to take a nap after dinner and when I woke up there was this sweet, gentle rain starting outside. The sound of the rain hitting the tin roofs, the wind rustling the trees, the rumble of the thunder in the distance and the fresh smell of rehydrated earth is one of the saving graces for me of God's beautiful creation in nature amidst this packed and dirty city. In these smallest ways God is showing me that He has not forgotten about my love of nature and that he will demonstrate his love for me throughout the day if only I open my eyes, ears, and heart to his hand at work in this city :)

Prayer requests

Last night we went to El Torre Latinoamericana, a tower that is taller than the Empire State Building, and did a prayer exercise where we were given a list of statistics and spent some time praying over the city as we looked down on it. It was incredibly humbling, and my heart was so burdened after realizing how great the need is here for the people of God to reach out and care for the poor, fatherless, and oppressed. I'm going to share just a few of the facts that we were given below, and I ask that you pray for these needs as well, but first I want to share a neat story that resulted from our trip up that tower. One of my team facilitators, Jeff (a 19 yr old Canadian, incredibly gifted in outreach and evangelism) got into a conversation with a young man who had been drinking at the tower, saw us and began to follow our large group because he was looking for a party and thought we were one :) Jeff started talking to him about why he felt the need to drink and party, and ultimately it led to at least an hour long conversation in which this young man just poured his heart out to Jeff. His sister died of lupus, and grief-stricken he didn't go to the funeral, which then led to his family abandoning him because of that action. He has been turning to alcohol, sex, and partying to try and get rid of his pain. Jeff shared the gospel with him and invited him to come to his church. Please be praying for this young man (I think his name was Javier) and that he will come to church tomorrow and get plugged into a community of Christ-followers who will be able to love on him through this desperately needed healing process.
Okay, so now the list:
-Mexico City is the world's most visted religious tourism destination, ahead of the Vatican and Lourdes in France, largely because of the Basílica de Guadalupe, which receives millions of pilgrims each year.
-There is a growing percentage of the educated population turning to atheism.
-Mexico City has almost 2 million underprivileged and street children. 240,000 of these are abandoned children.
-About 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, based on a food-definition of poverty. Asset-based poverty statistics estimate almost 50% of the population lives in poverty.
-The Mexican standard of living is way below the US or Europe. The minimum wage is 46 pesos per day, about $4 US dollars a day (that's less than half of the minimum wage per HOUR in the US!)
-It is estimated that 15% of the workforce in Mexico City are alcoholics.
-Water shortage is an ever-present reality in Mexico City.
-Heavy reliance on automobiles, added to the city being located in a valley, contributes to heavy pollution and poor air quality.
-International organizations fighting child sex tourism say Mexico is one of the leading hotspots of child sexual exploitation, along with Thailand, Cambodia, India, and Brazil.
-95% of Mexico City's 13,000 street children have already had at least one sexual encounter with an adult.
-The majority of girls and women inducted into prostitution wind up in Mexico City.     

Los días primeros en México

¡Hola todos! No puedo escribir mucho ahora pero quiero compartir con todo que estoy en México y ya estoy haciendo un tiempo grande!
Ok, in English now :) Hello everyone! I can't write alot right now but I want to share with everyone that I am in Mexico and having a great time already!
Just finsihed orientation. Tomorrow morning I move in with my host family and roommate. Please be in prayer for us as we transition into this total immersion into the culture. And Sunday I will experience my first Mexican church service. I am actually living with the Pastor of my church, and we have been warned to prepare a brief word to share in front of the congregation on Sunday because there is a high chance they might as us to share so please pray for the Spirit to give us the correct Spanish words! I will share more details about my bust family later when I know more details. And maybe I will have a photo!
I lost my camera before I left home so I won't be sharing as many photos as I originally intended but I will still try to do my best in keeping my supporters back home, and anyone else who might be reading this, up to date as much as I am able.
Muchas gracias por sus oraciones.
¡En el amor de Cristo!