Life in the city

Now i've been here in Mexico for a little more than 1½ month. Things are still going great and the DTS just graduated. We had our last day of ministry on friday, and since then it's mostly been debriefing, so me and Lupita have had time to do some other stuff that needed to be done while the DTS talked about thier experiences and about going back to thier normal lives. Now that the DTS is over there is DTS staff debrief that we're part of some of it, but not all since we aren't real staff on the DTS.

Fun at the roof of out appartmets

Getting connections in the city
Sometimes you are amazed how things turn out. Some weeks ago we did sign ministry in the street, i wrote about it in a earlier post. That day a lady came up to one of the teams with a sign that said "I love you" in spanish. She asked what they were doing and they answered that they were just trying to make people happy, then she asked if they were christians, and when they said yes she asked if they were YWAM'ers, and yes again :) This lady who currently lives here had been in a ywam base in Chile. Since then we have kept the contact with her and through her we got a chance to hold a night for a very traditional church she is connected to, and through one of her friends also with connections toYWAM we got 2 really nice couches for free if we just picked them up, so now we have 2 couches :)

Last saturnday she invited us all (19 people) to eat with her and her family. It was a really great night, and we also met some of her friends that also had been connected to ywam. It was especially interesting to talk with this guy from switzerland who is married to a Mexican and have been living here for 12 years. So i think it's kind of amazing that all of this came just from a random meeting on the street :)

Lupita was really excited about seeing the penguins :)

oh, and as a side note we keep meeting people here. Just a few days ago we had the house full of a Christian group (half Mexican, half American) that were doing ministry in the city. It was a guy from the base (Daniel) who randomly met them and invited them over to see our base, we had a good talk with them, and i think there is potential to do something together with them in the future.

Visiting a highschool

Lupita, her little brother and I spend a day in Mexico
Zoo, sadly the gorilla were hiding that day

Our last day of ministry with the DTS was at a high school where we had been invited to spend 2 hours with them talking about relationships and other things. First hour went with some introduction and then 8 or 9 small dramas with couples (preformed by all of us) that didn't do well, the bad relationships had names like "osama bin larden", "microwave" and "chicken mom" maybe you can guess from the name what the problems were in those. After that Lupita and I talked a bit about what it requires to be in a good relationship, and i used the movie "twilight" (Lupita's favorite movie that i've had to endure :) ) as an example of how you shouldn't be in a relationship. The next hour went with some testemonies, a little more talk, and a few different small activities. It was a good day and they said they wanted us to come again. (I'll hopefully have a picture or 2 up of it next week, we had a mexican friend who took a few pictures that day, but i'll have to get them first)

DTS graduation

Yesterday the DTS graduated. We had a good night with a few from the staff in Mazatlan, where the DTS began. Now that the DTS is over we're going to spend the next time with figuring out what we really want to do here in the city (along with some other events we're planing) and then we also need to connect with the around 12 people who currently have expressed interest in joining our first school here in July. So we're going into an exciting time with alot of stuff to figure out now.

The day of the graduation we had a meeting with the base leader in Mazatlan. He was giving us advice and we talked about different things and challenges about it. At the moment we're still a base under YWAM Mazatlan so he will be visiting us some times to see how it goes and guide us in this whole process of starting a base.

Along alot of very usefull advice he said one thing i've been thinking alot about, it was:

"Give effort, not excuses"

I think it's a thing we need to remember in all phases of life, we should do our best and not bother with excuses, it's a waste of time.

From the DTS graduation. We did it in the basement of a church that i also stayed in during my outreach. They were really nice and cooked delicious food for us :)

Lupita and her best best best friend Montse on the roof of our building. In my relationship with Lupita I quickly learned that it was a packaget deal since they are really hard to seperate, but it's okay because she is nice, but also a little crazy.