Prayer for Adrian

In ministry, you see how God draws people to himself. There is this kid name Adrian, who started coming to church a few months ago. He started coming because his cousin invited him. He is 13 years old. I am not sure how his family life is or how his relationship with his parents is? What I can tell  you is that this kid keeps coming. Sometimes these young kids start coming to bible studies or church service but after the newness wears off they get tired of coming or look board. This is not the case with Adrian. No one is telling him he needs to come to church or any bible study but is is there every time the doors are open. He gets nervous whenever I talk to him. He will fidget with something. I am trying to talk to him a little bit every time I see him. I do not know why he keeps coming. His mom used to go to a Christian church in town, but doesn’t anymore due to taking care of her other son who is 3 years old. A hard age to manage.  The reason I bring him us is that I would ask for prayer for his young kid. On Wednesday we have a youth bible study, studying the 2 book of Timothy. Very practical since the main theme of the book is do not be ashamed of your faith. I am trying to connect with him personally. I want to talk to him about what he really believes and what he wants to do about it.

Below as you can see as must young people these days, has his cell phone. ​

We have endured another year of carnival. If you have followed us through the years, we mention it every year because is causes us change everything, from where we meet as a church to getting groceries downtown to trying to find a parking spot. Everything is a battle. This year because we have moved to an outer part of Autlan, if we didn't know it was going on we would have missed the whole thing. The only thing that affected this year was church. We met with another church for two Sundays. A good time to work on projects which right now there are many. 

The church is located right on one of the main streets where Carnival is because we are less than a block away from the front entrance to the bull ring in town. The streets around the bull ring are shut down and filled with Tequila booths. Each company that produces Tequila has their own booth that they sell at. If I could describe what carnival is like, imagine your are walking down the street and hear a small band playing. This is fine, but times it by 30 different bands all playing different songs at the same time, what would it sound like? All the bands fighting to be heard by the patrons that have paid them to play. The patrons are not there to "talk" because it is too loud, but they are there to get drunk and take advantage of every kind of evil you can imagine. The amount of pregnancies (which is many) that happen from these 10 days is only one of the many affects of carnival. I have been told that if you want a drug, you can get anything you want. Prostitution is a huge problem as well.

Every year we get the chance to talk about our freedom in Jesus. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:23 “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up." (ESV)

It is in moments like this we are able share the truth of the bible with young believers. For example, one person asked about going to the bull ring to watch a show. I said "Well, here is the thing, I understand that most people when they go to any kind of event involved in carnival it is usually done with some alcohol involved and getting drunk. The question is will you be sinning if you attend an event in the bull ring? Maybe. I myself have never been drunk so for me I have no problem being at a rodeo show and not drinking alcohol. (Bull fights are a different story) What will your testimony be if you attend an event where most of the people there are drunk? Will you be a light in the darkness or will you just be like everyone else there? What does it mean to protect your brother and causing him to sin because of something you do? The bible clearly teaches us that we are to not cause our brothers to sin. So do we sin  if we go maybe or maybe not, but what if you some knew that you were a christian, what would they think of Christians but what your are doing here? There are so not very many Christians here in this city so our testimony is so important." You get the idea. It was a reminder to me of being the only white American in our town that people will talk about who and what I am doing here in a rural Mexican town. I need to take advantage of that, because most are curious as to why I want to live in Mexico when I can live in the US. What kind of testimony am I giving to those around me by what I do or say or don't do or don't say? 

Hello from Mexico. It has been several months since last updating something here. We moved from our home in the center of town to an area on the outside of town. Our mission has had a property and facility for over 15 years.Off-and-on there have been people who lived here but never anything permanent. When we went to Tecate for our mission's annual meeting that we attended (first time in 10 years) we discussed with our mission director about us moving into the "center". He loved the idea and thought we should do some remodeling to make it more of a home for our family. So we drew up some plans and sent them away. He gave us the go ahead and we moved in just after Carlos and Barbara left in October. This was a big step for us as we had lived in our other house for more than 8 years. We loved the location and the house but not having to pay rent on a monthly basis was a big incentive. 

With this move has come a great deal of extra work of making it how we want it. We first had to enclose our bedroom area. People could jump over the walls and get into the rooms from the inside. It has taken months to get finished because our construction worker was only coming from 6-8 PM after he worked the whole day at another place. He gave us the greatest price for the work that needed to be done. While he was working on that, I installed a complete bathroom on our bedroom level. It may be confusing but I am going to put some picture below this post so you have a better idea. Where the bathroom is now, was only a bedroom so everything had to be installed from the ground up. Not an easy task for me, but I finally got it done. We have all the plumbing for the shower installed but haven't bought the tile yet to start taking showers. So it is a work in progress that is for sure. 

My office was in a different room. But after some months of living here, we moved it to a different room as to not take up one of the 11 guestrooms we have for when groups come to stay. After so many months of not fully sure of where my office was going to end up, I am ready to get back into my office schedule like I was doing before as well as unpack and organize it. As you can see from this post, I am getting back to things like this that were put aside until I was able to get the bathroom project done. Just after Christmas we had two sets of visitors, my cousins and my in-laws come for a visit so that was also a factor in getting back into a routine. I will be updating here more often now, Lord willing. 
Blessing, 
Andy