I took a quick trip to Oaxaca this past weekend to teach the final class in the certificate program there. I left early Friday morning, taught that evening, all day on Saturday, quickly visited the zocalo (downtown square), and then came back to Mexico City.
I had a great time with the students there. We finished up their year long program and are planning to have a graduation ceremony something in August or September (after they turn in their final homework).
For the third straight year I will be participating in the National Youth Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City from May 17-18. It’s an honor to be able to help plan and then teach at one of the largest gatherings of youth leaders in the country.
ReAcción, the book we published with four Bible study lessons for youth groups, has been downloaded more than 1000 times since July 2012. The other day, I received the following testimony from Kelly a youth leader in Guatemala:
“I am very happy to have found your youth ministry site, which I consider a special tool that allows us to continue in the ministry with young people. Thank you for the site.
I want to share a story from last Sunday in my church. I downloaded the book Reaccion, and I taught the first lesson last Sunday. When I finished teaching my class, I asked all the young people who was sure who Jesus was. Most of them responded that they were sure they knew Him, but there were some who responded, “no.” Right then I talked with them and invited them to receive Jesus, and one of the girls gave her heart to Christ. It was something very special, and I was so happy because of the decision she made. I will continue with the others so that they can all have an encounter with Jesus in their lives.
God is using the lesson series, and it brings us joy to be able to empower youth leaders to guide young people towards Jesus. Who knows how many other stories there are like this. Thank you for your support of our ministry.
We are working on publishing several other projects that will help youth leaders all over the world.
I started teaching a new Certificate class yesterday. It is called “How to Organize Youth Camps.” It’s a fun class that has a final project where the students have to organize a retreat for the class. It’s a fun way to spend time together and learn some skills. Some of our students have never been to a camp!
This week we started off by talking about the Biblical reasons for camps. We started by talking about how connected our young people are. They have notifications flying at them all day, and they never really get a chance to be still.
In contrast, there is a clear Biblical mandate to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Our purpose for using camps and retreats is to allow people to be still and know that He is God. Unfortunately, even much of what we do in church is a stark contrast to being able to be still. We keep ourselves busy with activities thinking that they will bring us closer to God (and many of them will) at the expense of taking time to be still. I hope to convey this to the class during the camps course. I think they got it today.
Everything seems to be in place. After a few months of negotiating, we have reached an agreement with the Institute, and it appears that classes will start in April of this year.
Please pray that registration will go well and many of the youth leaders in Monterrey will be able to receive the training they are seeking in order to better serve the families of this important Mexican region.d
Besides training at the formal level at Seminaries and Bible colleges, we also do informal conferences and seminars in order to train local church youth workers with a Biblical philosophy of youth ministry that they can apply to their ministries. In Mexico, we have branded this one or two-day conference as “El Gran Viaje”, which means, The Great Journey.
We talk about how on any great journey, or road trip, you have to know where you are, where you want to go, and how you are going to get there. Then we talk about youth culture, the goal of youth ministry and how to help young people move towards spiritual maturity.
This weekend, in Monterrey, two of our graduates (Josue and Kareny) taught “The Great Journey” to 44 youth leaders from 20 local churches. They went all out and did an incredible job. Here are some pictures from their Saturday workshop.
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