A Hodge Podge of Real Life by: Julie

I am so glad that life provides such normal moments, such "unnormal" moments, high moments, low moments, fun moments, sad moments, moments of excitement and moments of drudgery that challenge us to infuse them with the purpose of Christ. In all these moments we have the opportunity to witness, experience and depend on Christ's power. Today's blog shares some of those moments of drudgery, AKA "laundry", some of those moments of excitement and some of those simple moments that fill your heart with warmth and remind you of the most important treasure in life...people!

Drudgery

Laundry, laundry, laundry! If Eve would have only known what her sin was going to mean in terms of sentencing all of us to loads of laundry and endless folding! Seriously, how many hours are "wasted" around the world each day simply washing, folding and putting away clothing! Not to mention money for water and soap, or parental stress caused by changing fashions! Even in this, the Lord must have a purpose! (I have yet to discover it, but He MUST!)

At our house here at Refuge Ranch, I have a theory regarding laundry. Our laundry reproduces itself! Seriously! It has to! That is why we are literally never done with the laundry! Our clothing is never all clean, all folded and all put away! (I know, part of my problem in life is having unrealistic expectations, right? After all, there are 14 of us in the family!)

BUT, to my surprise, my theory was proven correct this past weekend! On Saturday morning, Erika (our staff member Magda's adolescent daughter) and I took all of Daniel's clothing out of his closet to refold and put away. Lo and behold - I discovered that clothing does reproduce itself! Check out this picture as proof!


For as many times as I have folded, put away, refolded and reorganized Daniel's closet in the last 8 months, I NEVER realized we had two of the exact same outfits! I was amazed! Shocked! Horrified! Our clothing was reproducing itself before my eyes! Actually, it was quite comforting because there is now a true explanation as to why our clothing is never all clean, folded and put away!

Joanna Marshall did suggest a solution to our 'clothing reproduction' problem. We really need to start separating the male clothing from the female clothing in the dirty clothing bins!

Excitement

Yesterday at church over 15 youth and young adults made a commitment before the Lord and our congregation to remain sexually pure until their wedding day! It was a beautiful promise ring ceremony in which each individual brought their own rings, Victor and I shared with the congregation the purpose of the ceremony and then we placed the rings on each of the youth's hands as they signed a purity commitment. It was incredible to watch because many of these young people are newer believers who have not lived pure lives and are now committing to doing so. Others are much younger and want to live their lives for the Lord from now on. It was an especially meaning ceremony for us because our daughter Martita participated. Angie and Diana had done their own promise ring ceremony shortly after Martita joined our family several years ago. At that point, Martita was very new in her faith and, due to her past, did not feel worthy or capable of making such a commitment to purity. Praise the Lord that all of that has changed, by His restorative power, and she made a commitment to sexual purity yesterday before the Lord, our congregation and our family!

Martita hugging Victor after he placed her purity ring on her finger. May the Lord, in His grace, grant us the opportunity to one day witness her place this same purity ring on a Godly man's finger as part of her wedding ceremony. All in His time!

Some of the girls showing off their rings and purity promises after the service! Several of them do not have their parents' support in this decision and one even said she felt like it was her wedding day!

The guys showing off their rings in a manly way!

Then there are the sweet moments in life!

Pure Sweetness

A rainbow anyone?

Bath time is one of my favorite times and Saturday night proved no exception! Ruth, Daniel and Ana had a blast in the tub together. (It is rare for me to bathe more than two at a time because the bathtub is not exactly a "tub built for three", but they were in a really great mood and even helped me bathe one another!) After I downloaded this picture onto my computer I noticed the different shades of skin color among the three! Is there anything more beautiful?! And they are all siblings! I am so thankful God was so creative when he created each one of us in a unique way and then brought us together as a family! Wow!

Bonus picture: You have been a part of transforming children's lives through your prayers, giving and participation in Fishers of Men. If you doubt that, just compare Daniel's smile and eyes in the picture of him in the bathtub (right and above), with his facial expression and eyes in the picture of him on the left, one of the first pictures we ever received of Daniel.

True Treasures
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." Matthew 6:18-20

Relationships are true treasures because what we invest in relationships will pay eternal dividends. Here is a picture of three of my treasures! Friday night I guess I took a little too long putting Ruth, Ana, Jocelin, Josiah and Fidel down for bed. I had left Caleb and Daniel with their Daddy while I put the others to bed and when I came to get them....well, let's just say Victor had done a good job of putting them to sleep...including himself!

And, finally, an opportunity to witness a miracle! Victor leaves on a three day crusade tomorrow to the state of Tlaxcala, to the northeast of Mexico City. As of this morning, the Fishers of Men bank account had a balance of: $1.04! We praise the Lord because this is simply an opportunity for him to shine forth with His miraculous provision! Several years ago, Victor organized an EMMC to the state of Chiapas and literally had only enough money to get the team to Chiapas and purchase food for the week. He went, not knowing how he would get the money to get the team back home. While he was gone on the crusade, the Lord provided $500 in an amazing way. Just enough to get the team home!

Please pray for the Lord's provision and that His name would be glorified in all!

"A Project with a Purpose" by Ashleigh

I have been planning on sharing a story with all of you for quite some time now but it hasn’t work out. There has always been something that just happened and was time sensitive to share with all of you. So, this story kept getting pushed back.

It all started over a year ago now. Pati, Jocelin and I were the only ones that lived in the basement at the time. (Hard to remember what that was like!) :) Pati came home from market one day with a twinkle in her eye. She showed me the tablecloth that she had bought to sew as a surprise for my mother. I wasn’t allowed to breath a word of it to mom and so I didn’t. Pati started working on it diligently at first. It was a rather overwhelming project and at times it got put to the side as life would get crazy.

When I returned to Mexico after my brothers wedding I spent several weeks cleaning out Pati’s room and organizing things after she passed away. It felt like I was just a bit closer to her for a little longer. As I was going through a stack of things I ran across the tablecloth. I asked Julie if I could have it and she said “yes”. I spent several days debating what I should do with it. Pati had only finished one clump of flowers out of 12. I had toyed with the idea of making one myself but didn’t know if I wanted to tackle a project like that. Plus, Pati had chosen very Mexico colors like florescent pink! It was very Pati but didn’t exactly flow with the colors in my mothers dinning room. :) However, I also knew that I wasn’t going to be able to just throw it away. So, after thinking about it for several days I decided to finish it.

Looking back my decision was very much led by God. I spent 5 months working on it almost every evening. Many times as I would sit in my room and work on it I would listen to audio sermons and lectures that my brothers had given me. It was a blessing to my soul that was greatly needed at that time and I can now see how God was ministering to my spirit.

I had to really push to get it done by the time that I went home in February so that it would be ready to give to my mom. Right before I left I had Lucy get a picture of me with it so that I could post it here. My mother loved it (and cried when I told her the story just like I thought she would). :) Much thanks goes out to Rosa who was the patient teacher and showed me how to crochet the edging around it to finish it off.

Guess We'll Have to Go Through It...by Lucy

We try so hard to make plans that fit our schedule, but God sits on His throne and laughs at us sometimes, I think. There have been times when I have been so stressed about getting the apartment finished. We hope to at least have the bedrooms finished so we can sleep in them when we have family coming to visit in 1 1/2 weeks.
Mark has diligently been working on the tile floor, which is a slow monotonous project. Our bedroom floor is finished, except for grouting. Aaron and Joanna's floors are close too, but we don't even have bathroom tile yet.
Cirino and Alejandro have been busy digging a long deep trench for pipes to connect us to water so we will have a working bathroom soon. As they have worked on that project in the hot sun, everything was going well until...they hit a rock! Not just a little rock, but veins of lava rock (which are harder than any we have come across so far), that travel just under the dirt. No amount of hammering will move it.
Cirino rented a backhoe. It helped and removed some pretty big rocks, but could not budge the large veins of rock in our way. They tried to go around it. They tried to go over it. They tried to go under it (Anybody familiar with this song?). So now, we must go through it!
How? With dynamite! While the family is gone to church on Sunday (Where else would we be safe?), Cirino and his brave helpers will blast the rock, in hopes of removing it without doing damage to vehicles, windows that we just put in...

Sometimes in our lives, we run into situations (like a rock wall!) too big to handle. We find that we can't go around them, over them, or under them. We must go through them (just as God planned), and let Him blast the rocks out of our way, in His time. Those situations tend to bring us closer to God (just as He planned), to strengthen us in our faith (just as He planned), and to help us to rely on Him more fully (just as He planned).

One day, I was feeling overwhelmed by all there was yet to do to finish the apartment. Ashleigh said to me, "You are finishing each day exactly what God intended you to finish. That is all you need to do." I try to remember that now as we wait to see what God will do Sunday with the giant rocks in our path. And I will try to remember it each time I come up against a "rock" in my path that I somehow must go through.

Different Kinds of Harvests

When I was growing up we would go and visit my grandparents on their respective farms in Iowa and Minnesota. There was lots of grown up talk that I didn't understand about the soybean harvest, the corn harvest, the hay harvest. I thank the Lord that my grandparents raised my parents in the faith, and that my parents, in turn, raised my brother and I to love the Lord. Now, we have lots of conversations about soul harvests!

In just this past week, Victor and I have had the honor to be a part of several different kinds of harvests. The first type of harvest happened during the most recent Evangelistic Medical Mission Crusade (EMMC) to the state of Guerrero. Victor, as director of Fishers of Men, has the primary responsibility of scheduling, planning, preparing for and supervising the carrying out of the EMMC's. However, the Lord gave Victor a special blessing on this crusade by giving him the opportunity to personally share the Gospel with several gang members. It was a true joy for Victor as he could use his strongest spiritual gift, evangelism, and also see the marvelous way in which the Lord could use his own horrid past to bring others to the Lord.

Victor sharing the Gospel with a local gang member. Notice the beer bottle to the right and the lit marijuana joint between the gang member's fingers. We praise God that he is now a member of a new gang - God's gang!

One day during the crusade, Victor suddenly began to smell the odor of a marijuana joint, having recognized it from his own marijuana smoking days. He began to walk around the crusade area when his sight rested on a tattooed man standing on the fringes with, sure enough, a lit marijuana joint dangling between his fingers. Memories began to course through Victor's mind as he was transported to the streets of Mexico City, surrounded by similarly tattooed fellow gang members, passing a marijuana joint among themselves and drinking in a futile attempt to fill the gaping emptiness inside. Brought back to the moment by the Acapulco heat, Victor approached the young man. He quickly reverted back to his old way of greeting with a series of hand slaps common among gang members. Victor's vocabulary and manner of speaking immediately changed, almost like a second language from years past. He could easily identify with each experience and feeling expressed by the gang member, having lived the same life himself.

As the Lord continued leading and guiding the conversation, Victor was able to share the hope, forgiveness, purpose and love that he had found in Jesus Christ. When asked if he wanted to pray to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, the gang member answered affirmatively and Victor led him in a prayer of salvation. As they prayed, the gang member repeated Victor's words with great passion and forcefulness, as if they required great work to say them. As soon as he said "Amen", he sighed very deeply and commented: "Wow! I feel totally different! It is as if something came out of me!" Satan and his demons cannot stand against the power of the Lord Almighty! He didn't light the next joint, asked his buddy to get rid of the rest of the alcohol they had brought with them and said he was exhausted and was going home to sleep awhile.

Throughout the remaining time of the crusade, several other gang members came to Christ, including one that had arrived at the crusade armed with a pistol under his shirt. The local missionary has a good relationship with the gang members and they respect him, so we look forward to some excellent discipleship taking place.

Also during the crusade, Victor had the opportunity to reap a different kind of harvest. The seeds for this harvest were planted by Mark and Aaron Marshall who dressed up as clowns and blessed the children with their smiles, juggling, skits and other antics. The Lord used them to prepare the children's hearts for the gospel message. Victor commented that when it came time for him to share the Gospel with the children and invite them to pray to ask Jesus to be their Lord and Savior, their little hearts were very prepared, open, willing and had already understood the essence of the Gospel message.

"What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow." I Corinthians 3:5-7

This past Saturday night Victor and I had the opportunity to plant a different type of seed and, by the grace of God, bring in the harvest, too! As members of Iglesia Cristiana de Paz, the church we have been members of since our arrival in Mexico nearly seven years ago, we try and seek the Lord's will as to how to be involved in our local congregation, while balancing that involvement with the call the Lord has placed on our lives here in Mexico to lead Fishers of Men. One of those opportunities took place this past Saturday night. The high school and young adult youth groups held a campout here at Refuge Ranch. About 30 teenagers and young adults descended on our property at sunset. The guys set up the tents while the girls made hotdogs for supper.

The youth group enjoying some ice breaker games.

After our own youngest children had been put to bed, Victor and I headed out to the campfire to meet up with the youth and our own five oldest girls: Angie, Diana, Martita, Lolis and Martha, along with Erika, our staff member, Magda's, daughter and Aaron Marshall.

The youth leaders had planned this campout specifically at our place wanting Victor and I to speak on purity. The Lord's view on sexuality is so neglected in churches and, sadly, the dating and relational habits of Christian youth are almost no different from those that don't know the Lord. This is a topic that both Victor and I are very passionate about. The Lord, in His grace and mercy, gave me the opportunity, which I chose to take and obey, as a young lady to make a purity promise to Him and my future spouse. The day of our wedding, I gave Victor my purity ring as a symbol of having saved myself for him. Victor's story, as many of you know, is quite the opposite. As a gang leader in Mexico City, Victor had many intimate relationships before coming to know the Lord. Our Heavenly Father has so blessed our marriage, but we are passionate about teaching, and showing, others to live their lives fully committed to the Lord, including their sexuality.

So, Victor spoke to the group as a whole and then, at about 11:30 p.m. we divided into two groups. I spoke alone with the girls and Victor with the guys. It was a wonderful, intimate, fun, blessed time! We hit our pillows at 3:00 a.m. with grateful hearts for the opportunity the Lord had given us to share with such a great group of young people who are truly seeking to live in a way that honors the Lord in midst of a society that seems bent on offending Him at every turn. It is also always a great privilege to be able to minister together as husband and wife.

Me (Julie) sharing with the girls around the campfire at about midnight!

It is not very often that you can plant a seed and receive an almost instantaneous crop! However, the next morning at church, the youth leader approached me, herself a young woman, saying that several of the youth members were interested in taking place in a purity ring ceremony. I agreed to meet with them after the service that morning. As soon as church let out, the youth leader came up to me with .... 16 other young people, both girls and guys, who want to participate in a promise ring ceremony at our church! Praise the Lord! I immediately got our senior pastor and we shared with him what the Lord was doing in these young people's lives.

So, this coming Sunday, March 14, 2010, these nearly 20 individuals will present themselves before our congregation, publicly declaring and signing their commitment to live sexually pure lives. Our pastors will then place their purity rings on their fingers! Praise God!

Please keep this group of young people in your prayers as they declare war on Satan and his lies regarding God's plan for sexuality! May they stand strong in the Lord! If you feel so led, at least four of the youth came up to me after church and expressed their lack of finances in order to purchase a ring for the ceremony. While the rings need not be expensive or elaborate, I encouraged them to buy a ring with some silver or gold in order to symbolize the purity of their promise and also a ring of some value in order to make it something of worth and valuable to them, just as they are of great value to the Lord. So, if you feel led to help purchase one or more purity rings for these young people, many of whose families are not yet believers or are just starting to walk with the Lord, please email me at: fishersofmenmexico@gmail.com or mail a donation marked "purity rings" to Fishers of Men, 1039 Compton Ct., Toledo, OH 43615.

Thank you for the seeds that you have planted through your prayers, giving and participation in Fishers of Men! Thank you for the seeds that you have enabled us to plant! We thank the Lord for the harvest that He has provided! May the seeds planted in each one of our own lives continue to bear more and more fruit for the honor and glory of the One and Only Jesus Christ!

"But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." Matthew 13:23

"A Little Video" by Ashleigh

I wondered if I should post again about the crusade or not. It is still so all consuming in my mind and heart. I know that there was two other posts about the crusade but it seems to be the one thing weighing on my heart today. So, you all will just have to bear me as I share a little bit more.

I will admit that I have been a skeptic in the past. Not that the crusades were ineffective or unimportant. But I always wondered about the long term strength that is brought. This is purely based out of a very western American perspective. If we evangelize anyone we fully expect for there to be only a few people who truly start to follow the Lord. When groups of children pray to receive Christ it's a given that only a percentage will actually grow. It's different down here and I was foolish to think that because the western culture has hardened its heart to God that this was the norm. My eyes have been opened.

Last fall FOM did a crusade to Michoacan last fall in October and we found out that the missionary who is there full time called a nearby seminary asking for help because there were 340 people who wanted Bible studies. When was the last time that happened in the US? There are many, many stories just like that. Full of hearts who have been captured by God.

I wanted to remember this crusade as my first crusade. (Technically, I have gone on one other one but it was three weeks after getting here and I was very sick. So, I don't count that one). I put together a little video of the crusade and that was the main thing that persuaded me to to post again about the crusade. So, here it is. To view it in full screen (which I recommend) click on the little box on the bottom far right that has the four arrows pointing to the corners. Enjoy!

Seven Words to Describe an EMMC...by Lucy

Tonight we sat with Victor and Julie to talk about the EMMC from which we just returned yesterday. Julie asked each of us to describe in one word a Fishers of Men Evangelical Medical Mission Crusade. These are the words that came to mind...awesome, humbling, challenging, rewarding, team, indescribable, and life-changing (I cheated by hyphenating two words!). I struggled today to decide what to write about and came to the conclusion to let the pictures speak.

Mark's first time helping with a baptism of one of our team members.

Moses and Dr. Escamia lead a gang member to Christ.

A young girl prays to receive Christ as her Savior.

Yes, that's me doing something besides holding a camera!

The sunset over the Pacific Ocean

Victor sharing his testimony with a gang member.

Waiting for new glasses!

Emy swings Mia around in arms of love.

A family prays to receive Christ after receiving other services.

Moses, the local pastor, and Victor pray with a gang member to receive Christ.

Mark and Dr. Escamia pray for healing.

Joanna does some face painting during the children's ministry.

The clowns...Aaron, Mark, and Mia

Victor shares with those on the "outside," and brings more gang members into the Body of Christ!

Mark has the kids pretend to ride a roller coaster with him.

Aaron got to go pick coconuts to share with everyone.

Free pancakes, anyone?

Ariel works on a boy's teeth.

Ashleigh worked hard helping to prepare food for 35-50 hungry people every day.

A beautiful child of God!

Teresa helped by taking blood pressure, pulse, and weight.

Can you find Emy in this picture?

Toothbrushes for everyone!

Haircuts help to offer a fresh new start.

Another beautiful child of God.

Dr. Escamia gives a checkup.

Ariel and a happy patient

The doctors pray before the work begins.

There are so many stories to tell. My mind is still processing everything we experienced. Watching Mark, Aaron, and Joanna serve in all the ways they did was amazing for me as a wife and mom. Emy and Teresa jumped right in despite the language barrier, and we were truly part of an amazing team. We worked together to serve God's people and we give Him all the glory for the transformation of lives that took place during this last week. I know that my own life will never be the same.

And we, who with unveiled faces, all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
--2 Corinthians 3:18--