Hola!
I can't believe another week has already gone by! My time here is flying! Thank you for everyone's prayers and awesome e-mails that you all have been sending me. I love you guys!
So this past week, we met a whole new family in the village! We haven't been receiving as much favor in our village as we had been hoping for, but this past week was different. The family we met is really nice! They welcomed us into their home and they were really excited to get to know us and to tell us all about their culture. They told us that they want to show us how to make tortillas, mole, and all kinds of stuff. They even took us to their grandfather's house to help us with our translation project. Older people in our village are really a great help when it comes to helping us with our project because they have a more extensive knowledge of the indigenous language than the younger people in the village. The only problem is that most of the older people that we encounter are a bit slow, and don't understand what it is that we need from them for our project. For instance, the older grandfather that we encountered mostly just wanted to teach us all about the language, rather than help us with claryfying our stories. But, it was completely fine because we have a recording of this man counting to 100 in the native tongue. This is really impressive because most of the younger people can only remember how to count to 30 in their language. The conversation took a sharp turn when the man asked us about what we believed. I began to tell him my testimony and when I reached the part about the time in my life when I realized that we can not earn our salvation through anything that we do, or any church that we go to, but through Jesus alone, the man cut me off and asked us to leave. I've learned that the gospel is offensive, and I just need to let it speak for itself. I've been going through the book of Acts during my time here, and Paul the apostle encountered all kinds of opposition, and persecution while he was spreading the gospel. God even told Paul in Acts 18:9 not to be afraid, to keep on speaking, and not to be silent. I'm learning that opposition is a very normal reaction to the gospel, and i'm learning to really listen to God and not be afraid to share the truth, and to never keep silent.
Throughout the week, we've been really getting to know the new family that we met. They taught Bailey and I how to make home made tortillas, and they also taught us how to mold our chocolate that we grinded up this week. They have also been teaching us how to speak their language. We're having a really great time learning some really hard to pronounce words in their language! We also had a chance to talk to this family about their beliefs. It was really interesting to hear that they do not consider themselves catholic. They told us that the catholic religion has too many rules and reqiurements that are impossible to keep, so they just call themselves "believers". They seem to be really open about talking about God, and discussing the bible, so please continue praying for more
opportunities for this to happen. We will be meeting up with this family again on Sunday for dinner in their home, so please pray for that meeting as well!
Also, on Thursday we finally caught one of our lady friends at home. This is the lady with the younger children that we met during the first week. She has been a great help with the project, and we were able to get some more help on Thursday. We were able to have a nice conversation with her and she told us all about many of the hard ships that she has faced in her life. She is truly a remarkable woman who has been through a lot. She also shared her faith with us. She told us that she also does not consider herself catholic because of the rules from church that she can not keep (there seems to be a trend here.) Although she is not catholic, she still has many idols in her house, and she prays to Mary. We were able to talk to her about that and we shared scripture with her on the subject. She told us that she has been taught that you can not pray directly to God, which is why she must pray to Mary to intercede for her. We explained to her that according to the bible, you can pray to the Father, because of Jesus. Jesus is the bridge between man and God, not Mary. Despite what the bible says, it is still hard for her to understand that she can pray directly to God, because it is so ingrained in her culture that she needs Mary and other saints to intercede for her. I can really understand this, because I was once catholic myself, so I completely understand why she does what she does, and why it is so hard to hear that the bible does not align with those beliefs. Please pray for this woman, as she is struggling with what the truth really is. Pray that she may feel compelled to read the bible, and let God speak to her through his words.
Yesterday was July 5th and our team celebrated the 4th of July.. in Mexico! (we were too busy to celebrate on the actual day) it´s a little strange celebrating a US holiday in another country, but we had fun watching our fireworks display on youtube and we enjoyed eating some home cooked American food!
Well, that's all for this week! Please keep praying:
-for all these people that we have met, and for more open doors in our village
-for unity of our team- love, kindness, gentleness, and humilty towards one another
-for energy and focus
Thanks again for the prayers!
Love,
Karen (:
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.
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