Guadalajara, Mexico

We have been in Guadalajara for about 5 days now. It has been fun remembering and in some ways re-living how our lives were a couple years ago. We have been enjoying the Mexican foods: tacos, frijoles (refried beans), pozole (soup), birria (beef stew) and of course corn tortillas and chile (spicy flavor added to almost everything in Mexico). We have been finding our way around the city alright, taking mostly buses. The bus routes have come back to us really quickly. We haven't even got lost yet and for me, that is saying something! We have been able to communicate fairly well, even though we have had to shake a couple years of rust off of our Spanish language skills. Sometimes I have to resort to a form of Spanglish.

On Friday we got to go and visit with Chayito. She is the lady who I lived with for my eight month internship. She has such a strong faith and it was encouraging to see her. For a while now we have known she has cancer, she recently had surgery to remove a couple of vertebrates and she is recovering from that. However, cancer is still in her body and so we hope for a miracle and trust that God has a plan in all this. If you think of her, keep her in your prayers.

On Sunday we had the opportunity to visit the church Casa de Paz (House of Peace). It was so good to see many familiar faces and also to see how many new faces there are at the church. I had the privilege of being around when this church was planted a couple of years ago. I had the opportunity to help on the first worship teams and to support David, the pastor, in various ways. The church sometimes refers to us as the co-founders of the church and on Sunday they introduced us as the grandparents of the church and that the congregation consisted of our grandchildren (Karmen and I found this quite funny). In many ways we feel a part of this church and loved by this church, however, they like to give us far more recognition than we feel we deserve. First and foremost, God is the one who deserves the praise and glory for changing lives and He is responsible for the growth in the church. Secondly, we have had an incredible opportunity to witness a group of believers, who are following passionately after God and are using their gifts to impact many lives in their community and city.

It has been so great to reconnect with friends and with the church here in Mexico. God is working and moving. I find this to be exciting, inspiring and challenging!

Greg