We went about 2 hours away this weekend to Ixtapan de La Sal. It was a retreat weekend at a nice place with the missionaries in Mexico City. We had a great time playing, relaxing, and sharing together. We left on Friday afternoon and returned Sunday evening. Everyone loved on Nathan, and we rested. We also got to know some other missionaries who are working in the city.
The time of worship and Bible study was based on 1 Thessalonians 1, and we had a great opportunity to focus on what God has in store for us.
I can’t believe I missed this. I’ll post more about why later.
Another thing I missed. What a weekend!
This is exactly what I needed today. I came home from an extremely long day (class, meetings, youth meeting at church) to this funny story about a guy named Ronald McDonald who is suspected in a robbery of a Wendy’s restaurant. Hilarious.
We finally got our email to work again. The people at compuserve said that someone had used our screen name to send out unsolicited bulk email to 486 people. I told them I don’t even know that many people. So, finally, we changed the password with them and got it working again. It was frustrating to be without primary email for 4 days. If you want to contact us, please use the gmail account that is on this page.
I went to the office to pick up the regular mail, and I found my latest copy of The Journal of Youth Ministry. It’s a journal from the Association of Youth Ministry Educators. I also received a package with a book called The Perfect Program and other fairy tales. I didn’t order it. They just sent it to me. Seems like an early Christmas present.
We’ve been here for a few years now, and I still haven’t figured much out about youth ministry in this country. For example, the young people (18-29 year olds) at our church have decided that they want to vote in and organize the group with a president, vice-president, secretary, and treasurer. They voted a guy in for president who wasn’t even at the meeting. I’m a bit frustrated because of their strong desire for a traditional structure of a “Union de Jovenes” and their lack of vision for ministry. I am praying that this can be sort of a mix of old school tradition and Biblically based philosophy. Rigo has his work set out for him with this.
We aren’t even talking about a youth ministry like we talk about in the US. There is little or no ministry to the middle school and high school kids. That needs to change. I am praying for a breakthrough in thinking and ministry, but I don’t have the time to put in at the church that is needed to build a strong ministry. At times, this is very frustrating.
