We spent four hours in the car yesterday driving from one end of the city to the other to attend the missionary Christmas party. The traffic was horrible. We had a good time at the party, and Nathan got a mega block train. But, four hours to cross the city! Wow!
Nathan is officially a very healthy boy. We went to the doctor today, and they said that Nathan is the size of a Mexican two year old (he’s 19 months old). He got two shots, but only cried a little. As soon as we put him down to play, he stopped crying and ran to the little car they have in the doctor’s office. He’s a trooper. So we took him to McDonald’s to let him play on their playground.
I made this video (in Spanish) to use in my Ministry to Troubled Youth class. The statistics are from Mexico. If you understand Spanish, click the video link to watch the video, or you can watch it on Youtube.
It was my first attempt at actually makings something in Flash with Swishmax, a cheap program that you can make flash videos with. I think it turned out pretty well.
In Columbia, each day (population – 43,593,035; 30% of which is under 14):
1,106 teens have an abortion.
1,035 bring weapons to school.
In Mexico, the number one cause of death in young people is alcohol.
80% of suicides are committed by young men under the age of 25.
In the US, a study of 5,000 university students from 32 different institutions shows that 25% of the young women have been raped or forced into sex.
In Mexico, more than 400,000 teen abortions are committed each year. 80% of the teenage girls who are pregnant drop out.
85 teens are put into jail each day in Mexico.
In 2002, thirty-one thousand teens (ages 11-17) were put into juvenile treatment centers (Mexico). When they committed the crime, 23% of them were in 9th grade; 18% were in 6th grade; 13% were in 7th grade; and 16% were in 8th grade.
(Source: Adolescentes en Llamas by Dr. Sergio Canavati; Esperanza para la familia)
It was great to sit with them outside of class and get to know them all better. We sat around the table and talked about what God has done in our lives to bring us to this point. It was great because that part wasn’t planned, but we had a fun time talking about our life experiences and laughing about different things.
