Straight from Oaxaca

Greetings direct from an EMMC in the state of Oaxaca! It is so exciting to be able to share what the Lord is doing while on an EMMC and not have to wait until Victor gets home or until the next newsletter to share with you!

There is nothing more incredible than riding in a 15 passenger van:

• sitting next to the love of my life (my husband, Victor), knowing that he is just as passionate as myself, if not more so, about Jesus Christ and serving him


• sharing the van with my nine children, six of whom have been rescued from the pit of Hell
  
• accompanied by 3 short-term, college-aged summer missionaries whose lives I know are being transformed forever


• having another van and truck follow us full of Mexican volunteers anxious to use their unique talents and abilities to serve the Lord
  
• watching the highway stretch out before us up into the hills, illuminated by a bright blue sky, accompanied by green fields and evergreen trees with a snow-capped volcano as the backdrop
  
• knowing that after this week of work, tens, if not hundreds, of lives, will be transformed by the power of the love of God expressed through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ on the cross to pay for our sins

Our family, along with Zach, Emily and Holly, pulled out of our house at 7 a.m. on Monday morning and met the rest of our team - another 21 volunteers- at the WalMart parking lot an hour and a half later. We all ate cereal for breakfast in the parking lot as we finished loading everybody´s luggage on the top of the white 15 passenger van. Then, at 9 a.m., we hit the road! This trip consists of 33 volunteers (11 of which are the Zaragoza family). This requires two 15 passenger vans and our cab and a half pick up truck, which carries the medical supplies.

We arrived in the city of Oaxaca at about 3 p.m. and then spent another hour and a half getting through the city and up to the communities surrounding the city dump. Ninety-five percent of the homes in the community in which we are working are made out of tin, including the two rooms in which our family is staying. (At least we do have a cement floor in our rooms! But, did you know that rain falling on a tin roof is extremely noisy?)The streets are all dirt/mud streets with lots of gulleys and huge potholes cut out by the rain.

The pastors with whom we are working serve two churches in this area. We are serving in the ¨lower¨church, called that because it is about 10 blocks further from the dump than the other church. However, the ¨lower¨church has electricity, which is necessary for some of our medical equipment. The women on our team are sleeping at the upper church, while the men and most of the Zaragoza family are staying at the ¨lower¨church.

We have no shower facilities - just curtained off areas in which to take showers using buckets, and all the toilets are pit toilets. But, GOD IS GOOD ALL THE TIME!

The crusade is going very well and everybody is working hard - from Ruth and Ana helping us to invite neighborhood children to the clown show (put on by Diana, Josiah and a girl from our church, Erika) to Dr. Escamilla (a retired military colonel that, despite his wife coming home from cancer surgery yesterday, he took a bus to Oaxaca to join up with the crusade team and arrived today!)

I will sign off for now, but hope to be back tomorrow to give you more details and stories about the crusade itself. (We had to come about a mile down from the church to find an internet cafe that had high speed and not satelite internet service.)

We love you all so much and are so thankful for your love, your prayers and your generosity that allow us the incredible privilege of serving the Lord! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Life doesn´t get any better than this!

Humbled by our Lord,
Julie (I better start signing my name since we soon hope to have other staff members blogging here too!)