Hurricane Gustav hit Cuba pretty hard yesterday, forcing evacuations of more than 300,000 people. Having gone to Cuba a few times, some of my favorite people in the world live in Havana and Pinar del Rio, the two major areas that got hit by the storm.
Please pray for the country as they recover from the storm. I haven’t heard much from them, but I’ve been in the old buildings and have no idea how they could stand up to 150 mile per hour winds.
Here are some pictures from the BBC that show the preparations and damage in Cuba.
I was eating a quesadilla yesterday, and I put some salsa on it. This salsa is made from Habanero peppers, supposedly the hottest chili peppers in the world.
When I closed the lid, some of the salsa (in slow motion) flew off of the top and went near my eye. It stung for a while!
The moral of the story: be careful when closing the top to the salsa.
Tonight we went downtown to a meeting with leaders of various ministries from all over Mexico City. We were invited by the people at Passion Ministries.
The idea is that Passion is doing a world tour next year, and one of their stops is Mexico City. They wanted to pull together leaders from all over the city to see if this could be a reality in 2008.
When we got to the meeting, it was obvious that the room they had reserved was not going to be big enough. It was full. We crammed in there, and we had a great time hearing about the vision for the event. The mere fact that there were that many people interested in an event that is more than a year away is a huge step for its success.
I loved being in the room with all these leaders from different denominations, coming together to see Jesus glorified in the lives of young people in Mexico.
Here’s a rundown of the activities for the next few months. It always seems like there’s a ton of stuff to do. I’m not even the kind of person who thinks that you have to be busy to be successful, etc. Most of these things came to us as invitations more than us looking for them.
February 6-9: Youth Emphasis Week
February 7: School presentation
February 24-25: Youth Ministry Workshop
February 26-27: Visit from two US youth pastors
March 1-2: Final Exams
March 5-9: Master’s Level Youth Ministry intensive at seminary
March 13: Beginning of 4th quarter
March 31: Generaciones Lideres in Puebla
April 1: Special Youth Ministry Service at church
April 2-7: Holy Week – No class
April 7-14: Center for Youth Ministry Quest trip
May 11: End of 4th quarter
May 14-15: Final Exams
May 14-18: Intensive youth ministry course in Monterrey
May 26: Graduation
Today was a pretty good day. I had the chance to finish up writing our June Newsletter and sent it out to our church. Thankfully, they send it out to our mailing list whenver we write a snail mail newsletter. If you want to receive that newsletter, we’d love to add you to our mailing list. Just leave a comment on this post. Of course, if you have Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download the PDF file by clicking here. You can also check out the back issues of our newsletter on our newsletters page. Also, leave us a comment if you want to be included on our email list. We promise we won’t send you spam.
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I went to Guadalajara for a National Baptist Youth Leadership Workshop. It was the same type of workshop that I went to last year in Mazatlan. Huberto and Oscar were supposed to go with me, but they cancelled on me. Instead, I got a flight out on Friday and came back on Sunday.
We stayed at a home for retired Baptist pastors, and there were about 40 young people there in all. We had times of conferences, workshops, games, and worship. We visited downtown Guadalajara and had a photo scavenger hunt. The students were really creative with their pictures. We also visited the Mexican American hospital, the only Baptist hospital in Mexico. It is really nice and gives free treatment to Baptist pastors and missionaries.
While downtown, we ate some “tortas ahogadas,” or “drowned tortas.” They are normal tortas drowned in salsa, and are typical of Guadalajara. I also tried some Tejuino, a drink made out of corn, salt, and lime. It was okay. I had to try it since I was there.
Check out more photos from the trip.
Check out the video I made here.
