Our construction team is ahead of schedule. Almost all of the drywall is hung and more than half of it has been taped and mudded. The kids team told the story of David from the Jesus Story Book Bible today. We had 16 kids today in the kids club.
The next update is something I am very excited about. The elders of North Church have been praying since we started talking about going to Mexico about finding a church that we can establish a partnership with. We did not want this to be a single trip. We want to have a long-standing partnership that takes several trips each year. In order to do that, we want to have a church to partner with that has a vision for reaching their city. We want that vision to be rooted in reproductive discipleship. We want to partner with a church that disciples its people and sends them out on mission.
To tell you about how that is happening, I need to tell you about two people. Luis is a man I (Rik) met on Wednesday. He works for an organization called Cross Vision. Luis lives in Acuna and his job is to equip churches in Mexico to be on mission and reproduce themselves. Luis and I were spending Wednesday night in the same house and talked about his work and the work that we hoped to accomplish with our trip. His vision, the vision the NC elders have prayed for and the vision of NC are all in sync.
That night, Luis and I prayed that the church we were to work with would be open to the vision that God had given us. We prayed for an opportunity to do more than just do some kids ministry or construction. We prayed for an opportunity to begin to help train leaders for reproductive discipleship. We prayed for opportunities to help this church begin to develop a vision to start new churches. We prayed that we would be received in those things. We did not want to be arrogant or come off as though we had it all figured out.
The next day, Dennis (our contact and leader of the La Puerta Esperanza), introduced me to Juan Carlos. Juan Carlos is the pastor of the church we are working with. Within a few minutes of meeting Juan Carlos, I knew that God had ordained this relationship. Everything that Luis and I had prayed, and Dave, Mike and I had prayed, was in his heart already. God had paved the way for the conversation to happen. Juan Carlos has two families in his church that will be sent out soon, each to start a new church.
I have written about most of the above already. Last night I began to pray that Juan Carlos and Luis would get a chance to talk. Luis has a big vision for Acuna and is an apostle for the churches there. Prior to today, Luis and Juan Carlos had never met. Today, as we worked, Juan Carlos and Luis talked for more than an hour. Luis was very encouraged with that conversation and Juan Carlos is seeking his help in training his leaders to begin to think about reproduction.
All of this is an answer to prayer. We have begun to establish a partnership with Juan Carlos. We have established a relationship with Luis. This trip is way more than a kids Bible club and four rooms built in a church. This trip is step one in a fulfilled mission and vision.
Tomorrow we will be attending church in Acuna. Chance are we will not understand much of what is happening. But, I have been given an opportunity to share why we came to serve this church during their service. Pray that God would give me words and pray that they would be translated well.
Thanks for reading and thanks for praying.
Rik
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