Well the time has come once again. Time for us to pack up say our good-byes and get ready for another crazy amazing summer of service in Tijuana! As some of you may know since we’ve been doing this in 2006 we were able to pack up our vehicle, a Jeep Liberty, and take a long yet fun drive across our wonderful country from Ohio to California. This year with our beautiful addition we’ve decided to both fly down to San Diego instead. We don’t think for Adah that long of a trip would be the best way for us to travel. Pray that we’ll have a pretty non-eventful trip you know, no delays, Adah adjusts well to the new environment, etc… We will be leaving on June 11th at 6am. We hope to be all packed up by Tuesday of this coming week. The summer season of outreach begins on June 13 and ends on August 21. We will probably be staying beyond the outreaches for a few days or weeks to debrief, rest, and meet with people there.
This summer brings a new position for both of us. We are now officially going to take on a position as Outreach Directors. It’s so amazing to see where God has led us the last 4 years that we’ve been involved with YUGO. When we first went to take part in the outreaches, we just wanted to do whatever God wanted us to do…we really didn’t have any plans. Now he has given us the ability to lead others in a really powerful way. The whole time we have worked with YUGO, our goal has been for unity. We are driven by Jesus’ prayer for us in John 17: 20-23:
“I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me…may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
This has been at the core of what we do when we’re in Mexico. We put almost all of our effort into maintaining the bond of peace and love amongst the staff, the team members that come from the US, and the Mexicans that we have the privilege to work with. We have seen that as we love each other and serve together, we are able to show the world God’s love. So often in the Church and as Christians I think we don’t realize how much our love for each other really needs to be at the center of what we do. When Jesus prayed to God in the above passage, this was at the center of his heart, and we strive to make it the center of the ministry that God has entrusted us with.
We wish there was enough space here to fill you in on all that will happen this summer and all that we hope to see God do in us and through us. We could probably fill many pages!! We hope to update our blog (and Facebook!) as much as is humanly possible throughout the summer to try and fill you in on the details of things as they happen! One of the most exciting things this summer will be our Mexicanos a Mexicanos (Mexican to Mexican) outreach week during the last week of July. During this week, we will be bringing in Mexican youth from the Tijuana area. We will be training them and sending them out as teams into the local communities to reach their city for Christ. It is an amazing and humbling thing to watch God use us to empower the local people to reach their own people for Christ!
Our prayer for you is that the Lord would richly bless you as you pursue Him and His will. I have discovered lately that life is all about relationships. Our relationship with God first, then our relationship with others. I think that relationships are all that really matter in this life. It is through our relationship with God that we are able to find strength. It is through our relationship with others that we are lifted up, are able to serve, and most importantly, are able to point people to HIM.
