¿Quien?

´¿Quien?´is Spanish for ´who?´As you could guess from the title, I´m gonna share about the people and the events that I find exciting in the past week.

* Through the Spanish classes, I got to meet two people that I´d like to share with you. The first one is Mia. It´s a long story, but I got to know her because I catch on Mexican ´curious´culture: I kept asking my teacher about her until she introduced me to her. Mia has Asian appearance and she learnt Indonesian back in Uni. She came from Brisbane and she is here to teach English. Wow! I shared to her what I do here in Mexico and it turns out that she is a Christian, too. It´s exciting to meet another Christian from Australia who looks similar to me (Asian), not to mention how I could identify myself with her free spirited outlook on life. It turns out that she is thinking about doing mission work with a church here, so I invited her over to my church this Sunday and introduce her to the people here. I don´t believe in coincidences, I believe that the meeting is arranged by God to connect her to a mission org, Christians, and evangelical churches here in Mexico.

* The second person is Maricela. Maricela is the teacher in some of my classes, but I first got to know her at Global Grounds. According to her, she has been taking English classes here at Global on and off for 3 years. She is not a Christian yet. But she was asking me in the class what I´m doing here in Mexico and I answered her with my limited Spanish. Then while she was in the English class at Global last week, she asked Justin (the long-termers here) about what they do here in Global. Justin got to explain to her a bit more about God, Christianity, and what compels them to do ministry (the love of Jesus). Then this week, I asked her if I could take a private Spanish class with her and if it´s better to take it in the school or outside the school. She quickly answered that we better meet up outside the school and do an exchange study between English and Spanish. Wow! It´s an answered prayers (I´ve been praying specifically for her since I got to know her a month ago)! It opens up so much opportunity to get to know her and to share the gospel to her. Then after school today, I heard from Lluvia (Justin´s wife) that Maricela agrees to do meet up with Lluvia to learn more about Christianity while Lluvia comes back from the US in June. Please pray that the meetings would be happening and that I would use the opportunity wisely to share the gospel and for her to accepts the grace of God through Jesus.

* The third exciting thing this week is Compa (Mexico´s IFES/Perkantas). Because of my schedule, I could go to their Wednesday´s Bible Study and this Bible Study is happened to be lead by my friend whom I met through the café, Alvaro. All the Bible Study was in Spanish and I got my turn to read the passage and to answer the questions in Spanish. That was daunting and exciting at the same time! It´s very encouraging to see them studying the Bible and be faithful to what it says. The way they study the Bible is very similar to how we do it in church in Australia: they´re going through the book of the Bible and answer the questions related to the passage. Please pray for my Spanish to get better and please pray that despite my language limitations, I could still be an encouragement for the students in the Bible Study. I´ll go to the monthly Compa meeting this Friday. There´s gonna be spiritual and physical food there. I´m really excited about it, too!:) I´m gonna share the photos and the story afterwards.....

* I had an encouraging conversation at work today with one of the Christian girl who´s working with me, A. She is the only Christian in her family and she´s currently struggling, because the missios who look after her spiritually have just left to go back to the US. She felt quite lonely and unloved. We talked (in Spanish) about what it meant to have a relationship with Jesus, what it meant to be a good Christian, and from Romans 8 when Paul told the Christians there that there´s nothing that could separate us from the love of God through Jesus Christ. Please pray that she would be reminded of God´s love for her shown through His Son, JC. Please pray that she may stand strong in this difficult time and that God may have provide good Christian friends to encourage her in the faith.

* Praise items:
- Thank God for His Son, JC that through Jesus we could have hope and eternal relationships with Him.
- Thank God for his wisdom, love and sovereignty in carrying out His plan for this world. And thank Him for using imperfect people, such as us, to take part in His wonderful works and plans in this world.
- Thank God for the answered prayers, for the wonderful week, and for the people He connects me with.