I forgot to post about this earlier, but today is the beginning of the “Mi esperanza” campaign. All over Mexico, Christians will be opening their homes tonight, tomorrow night, and Saturday night, to invite their friends and relatives to watch a program produced by the Billy Graham Association that will include a gospel presentation. It’s the first time in the history of Mexico that an evangelical event will be televised nationwide. Please pray for this event and the Christians who are participating. It has the potential to impact a lot of lives.
In my opinion, there are two great reasons this has potential: 1) Christians are finally doing something individually. They aren’t inviting their friends to an “event” as much as they are inviting them to their houses. 2) It is breaking across denominational lines. There are churches from lots of different evangelical backgrounds participating in this, making it a reality. When you are less than 2% of the population, you need to stand together.
Guy Muse posts some good thoughts on missions on his blog. It’s all about being able to reproduce what we are doing. It’s called Third Generation Thinking, and I believe it is vital to what we are doing here in Mexico. If what I am teaching cannot be taught by the learners to others, then we are being short-sighted in our thinking. Here’s an excerpt from his post, but go check it out.
In third Generation Thinking, the emphasis is not on the first generation (the teacher), it is not on the second generation (the learner), but on the future generation who will be taught by the learner. Before teaching anything, we ask questions like; “will the learner be able to teach this as effectively as I do?†and “am I doing anything that will prevent my student’s learners from being able to pass on the message just as effectively as I am passing it on?â€
Doing some research for my youth culture class, I came across these statistics on youth in Mexico City. I left them in Spanish and translated them into English so I could use them in class, too.
¿Sabias que…
Did you know…
…en la Ciudad de Mexico habitan 2 millones 380 mil 815 jovenes de entre 14 y 29 anios de edad…
…In Mexico City, there are 2,380,815 young people between 14 and 29 years old…
…51% son mujeres y el 49% restante son hombres…
…51% are women, and 49% are men…
…las y los jovenes representan el 27% de la poblacion del Distrito Federal.
…young people represent 27% of the population of the Federal District.
36% solo estudia, 32% solo trabaja
36% only study, 32% only work
22% estudia y trabaja.
22% study and work
51% cuenta con servicio de salud.
51% have some social health service
63% fuma y 56% consume bebidas alcoholicas.
63% smoke and 56% consume alcoholic beverages
62% ha tenido relaciones sexuales.
62% have had sexual relations.
(more…)
Today was Janell’s birthday. So, we left Nathan with our friends and went to Italianni’s. We tried to go there last night, but there was a HUGE wait. Tonight was a great night to go out and have dinner. Anyway, happy birthday, Janell. I look forward to spending many more with you.
