2015: Perfect in Weakness (what God taught me this year)

Over the last quarter-century, I have acquired a mastery of maintaining a perpetual dichotomy of knowledge and belief; in my mind knowing a Truth while my heart clings to leftover fragments of a Lie. God – in his mercy – is very gently persistent in cleaning these lies out of my heart while the truth trickles down and brings healing. Sometimes God moves a little more forcefully to help emphasize a point and bring me to a deeper level of believing his truth. This year’s short-term mission trip to Monterrey, Mexico was a definite time of growth for me in the area of relying on God’s strength rather than my own; a time of relishing my weakness because it brings him greater glory than my strength ever would. Leadership, language and evangelism are all areas that I have come to view as areas of natural or spiritual gifting in my life; yet in all of them I found myself without the resources I had come to rely upon. In this sudden place of “lack,” I came to find – yet again – that Christ is sufficient and that to solely rely on him in weakness leads to greater fruit trying to operate from a place of self-sufficiency and “strength.”

Leadership and I have had a long and erratic history, but I’ve come to understand that it is something God is using me in. After years of lifegroup and homegroup leadership, I have even come to view myself as a leader. In 2013 and 2014, I had the privilege of leading our short-term trips to Mexico (with tremendous amounts of the administrative work done by Pastor Rodger). This year, however, we began to implement a more universal system of organization for our trips in order to make them more uniform and create a higher standard of excellence. The amount of time and focus required to make the Mexico trip what it needed to be was more than I had to spare (O! bitter admission for my pride). I was not the only one who saw the need though, and it was suggested that Justin lead the team this year. This suggestion was perfect for a host of reasons ranging from logistical benefits for this trip to future vision for the UTSA church plant. Justin’s leadership style – though precisely what was needed for the trip – is very different from mine and learning to work with and under it in the preparation process was extremely good for me. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Justin; his leadership is a large part of what allowed for a larger team and beautifully successful trip. It was difficult to admit to myself that my leadership style and experience were not sufficient, however. God used this to begin to prepare my heart for the trip; forcing me to depend on him for security rather than on my control over a situation or group.

Languages fascinate me and Spanish has been in my life since early elementary. I discovered that language acquisition came more naturally to me than it did to my peers in high school and then chose it as my minor at A&M. I studied Spanish in school, spent a summer learning by immersion in Monterrey and continued studying after graduation by working through the Rosetta Stone program. Yet for all of my learning, I had a pretty difficult time getting by in Monterrey during the trip. The things I wanted to say refused to come out of my mouth and the things that others would say to me refused to get through to my brain. This was particularly difficult during our time at UANL – the campus where English was not taught – as I was my group’s “translator.” Fortunately, we met someone who had moved to Monterrey from San Antonio and we were able to converse in English. However, my understanding of Spanish and being seen as “the gringo who (mostly) understands Spanish” had become quite the source of pride for me it turns out. And the difficulty I had with it just served to put me on yet another level of depending on God instead of my ability to communicate.

Initially (and naturally) terrifying for me, evangelism was always something I felt convicted about, but avoided in my early Christian life. Through Fellowship’s Outreach Class, however, I discovered the beauty and joy of sharing the gospel. I came to love it and view it as the central purpose of my being alive. And, after taking the class and being a trainer and doing a solid month of non-stop outreach in Mexico in 2011, I became pretty comfortable with it. Sharing my faith became natural and easy. This year’s trip to Mexico bore more immediate fruit than all of the past trips I have been on combined. We saw 15 people give their lives to Christ during our trip. It seemed like every time I looked up, I saw people praying together or sharing the gospel. It was so beautiful. And I was struggling with evangelism. Every time I tried to share the gospel, the story and the words and what metaphors to use and what questions to ask got so jumbled in my head that I ended up just stumbling through the basics of it every time. I had a student in the church ask me to share the gospel with his friend, then about halfway through he took over and preached the good news beautifully and his friend accepted Christ. It was so amazing to see this student realizing that he was equipped to share with his friend and lead him to Christ, but it still stung a little that he learned it at the expense of my pride. But through this God taught me to depend on the power of gospel itself and not my ability to present it.

So, the recurring theme in my life for this STM was the beauty of humble dependence on Christ. Though it was a discomfiting lesson for my ego to re-learn, there is nothing more joyous than total reliance on God. We are made to operate from that place of broken dependence because we are made to be close to God and to bring him glory. If my own strength is sufficient, my tendency (sad as it is) is to rely on that, to walk “on my own” and not to lean on God’s everlasting arms. As much as I do not like the thought of my weaknesses, they are a blessing he has given to me to keep me in intimate fellowship with him and to let his glory shine through me. True joy can only be found when we are functioning the way we are designed to function – in the context of relying on Christ. So I will join Paul in boasting in my weakness, and doing so gladly for they avail me more and more beautifully then my strength ever has or ever could.

Day 9: The breaking of the fellowship

Because Lord of the Rings.

Pues mijos, the last day went about as expected: church was good, but sad; lunch was delicious, but sad; our send-off at the airport was powerful, but sad. Something you should know: you can't love and serve people properly without giving them a part of your heart. This is beautiful and as it should be. However, when they leave your life; it hurts. This too is beautiful and as it should be.

Never withhold your heart from someone you are ministering to because they'll leave someday and hurt you. We're made to feel it when people leave. Think of how Paul writes to the churches he's helped plant (go read something like Philippians if you're having trouble thinking of where to start).

Suffice to say: God is good and hurt is ok and community is beautiful.

Glad to be back!

Day 8: Good to the last drop

Since I stayed up late last night, I decided to get up early this morning and go for a run. It was raining. I love running in the rain (apart from having wet socks, there are few things in the world that make me sad in the way that wet socks make me sad). Running in the rain - in a way akin to trail running - takes me back to the root of why I started running in the first place: it's fun.

Speaking of fun, we went to Casa Hogar today and sang and danced and played with kids. Cuteness overload. Such much. And yes, I am talking about how cute it is when I dance (...the spanish word you're looking for is mentira). This was the first time IGC (Iglesia Gran Comisión) has worked with Casa Hogar and they're hoping to have future opportunities to do so. I don't know why - I guarantee it's not due to our great holiness - but God's been good about timing our being here with the start of things. After dancing, we painted stars and an ark and a desert and heaven in the kids' room. We got paint all over ourselves (and when i say "ourselves," i do mean "each other"). My shirt has handprints and hearts and streaks and smiley faces all over it (vandalism!)...it's beautiful.

"We had our spaceship. but then it left." said Cammy

"My grandmother is my second favorite person, after Jesus." said Kaylen

"The old man dabbled in the dark arts of the calculus." said Craig

"I want to say a sentence of my favorite book." said Monica

"Aha! You've become self aware!" said Sheryl

"No, don't poke 'em in the panza!" said Sam
 
Tonight the church had a concert/rally at the hotel that they meet in on Sundays. The worship band dressed up super swanky and did an amazing job rocking out. A guy connected to the church shared some amazing and intense stories about his life and encouraged everyone not to waste their time and go all-in for following God. Afterwards, Mallory and Kelsie led one of our new friends through the gospel and she gave her life to Jesus! So, that as just really amazing. God showing off and reminding us that evangelism does happen in seasons, but he moves beyond that and we should always be ready (2 Timothy 4:2)

Currently, as the quote stream above might imply, we're exhausted and saying weird things in the hotel lobby as we hang out; trying to squeeze the last few drops out of our tiempo here. I'm gonna go party with my people. Have a great morning!

Day 7: before the cool done run out, i'll be giving it my bestest

Sometimes when you party all night in Mexico, it's hard to muster the conviction to update a blog. But, y'all are worth it. As is the decompression time - there's something lovely about sitting by yourself in the stillness of the world when the rational people have all gone to sleep.

Today was our last day for official, scheduled evangelism (i.e. it should be happening everywhere). We headed back to the Tec campus (i, with some doubt as to whether it might be better to stay at la uni since the...fishing...had been so successful). Sheryl and I teamed up (#classic - just like back in '09 y'all (in case you were wondering, the "#" was pronounced "poundsign" in my mind)), but were feeling a bit off, so we prayed for a while before we got started (always do that, btw, when evangelizing). We ended up talking to the first girl we met, Daniela, for over an hour and a half. We talked about everything ever, mostly languages though (which i just loved). Sheryl made a slick transition into the gospel and we poked at spiritual things for a bit before she had to leave for class. Then we met a friend of Javier's, tried to meet some cats, and went to lunch.

After lunch, we had plans to meet up with a guy Cammy and Kelsie had met before lunch. On the way to meet him, we met a girl who stopped to tie her shoe near us and she came with us to platicar. We all sat and talked through culture and religion and language and life in general. Then, Javier joined us and we played "ninja" and chilled before we went to meet back with the group. We saw Julio, the friendly atheist, today. Sheryl and I met him in 2011 and he was all kinds of open to talking with us. Today, he said "I think your God wanted me to see you," and though he said it jokingly, I agree. It's crazy that he'd still be in Monterrey, much less in school, much less that we would see him. I hope some fruit comes of it.

Have you ever made deep, prolonged eye-contact with a deer as it slowly steals a granola bar from your mouth? Kaylen has.

We had about an hour and a half to rest after the outreach: I got to have really good conversations with Cammy and Sheryl about missions, then with Craig and Javier about life and stuff, and I even got a short nap to recharge before tonight. That was good because tonight was Party Night (part one).

Hang on, there's a bag of Doritos that is upside-down on the shelf across from where I'm typing in the hotel lobby and it is really hurting my soul.

Ok, crisis averted. Right, parties: we had two parties tonight, one for North Monterrey (UANL) and one for South Monterrey (ITESM). Half our team (myself included) went with Mario to the North Party at Julio's house and half (myself not included) went to the South Party at the Handal's house. Our party was hopping, yo - we had a good turnout from the church and from our new contacts. Julio preached the gospel to everyone and then we prayed and ate. Carne asada. It was so, so good. Somehow, both of our vegetarians ended up at the party were all the food was meat, but they did a great job!

About 3 minutes after we started eating, it started raining (did i mention we were outside? no? sorry, we were). It was warm, delicious rain, but not conducive to an outdoor party, so our hosts moved us under the patio and then they set up some tarps and we partied on - slightly soggy, but very undeterred. We talked and ate and laughed and played "pterodactyl" (well, a few of us did. everyone else stared in confusion as we tried to sing to jason mraz as pterodactyls. have you ever seen a pterodactyl singing to jason mraz? it's pterrifying, i assure you).

Tomorrow is playing with kids and painting and Party Night (part two), pray for healthy team conflict management and for our contacts to continue to make good connections with the church!

God's really good friends (all the time), take some time and enjoy the blessings he's given you.

Day 6: Standard Deviation

Today we did all the things!

After the harvestization we saw yesterday, we went back to the Uni today for our outreach, and God continued to do crazy work. Cammy and I teamed up today (Cammy is the lead sister from my homegroup, as Sheryl said, "she just loves everyone so well"). We ran the gamut of people one might encounter doing outreach: an atheist, a believer, a person of peace and a salvation. Yea, I said that - a salvation. That's the best one, so I'mma talk about that one first: We saw a guy sitting by himself in front of a facultad, so we started talking to him. He was waiting for his novia, but he was still in highschool. We dug into the gospel: our separation from God, our brokenness as humans, our inability to earn God's love by going to church or doing good works and the beauty of Christ's sacrifice for our sake. He said he felt separated from God and prayed to give his heart to God - it was so beautiful guys, I, like, literally, can't even.

For those of you who remember (because i operate under the assumption that everyone reads my blogs, (whoa, is that a link?) since i'm famous), we have a history of meeting persons of peace in bathrooms. So, today, Cammy met a girl named Cecilia, who is involved in a Christian church here. She was super sweet and spoke some English and opened up to us about her life. It was super encouraging for us both.

We ate lunch with Sophia (who is just...too cute), the daughter of the family I lived with in 2011. She's 7 now, the first thing she said to me today was: "my mom and I prayed for a girl today because she was sad." At lunch she told me, "I do karate now!" So, lunch was adorable.

After our outreach today, we played on Craig's slackline and then went to get tacos de trompo at a restaurant Mario knows. It was superrico. So, so good. Remind me to talk later about how awesome Mario is.

Tonight we contacted all the people we met on Facebook and hung out and dyed our hair blue and Kaylen opened her life up and shared her testimony with us. Her vulnerability was really encouraging and took the team to a place of deeper unity. Now we're hanging out, enjoying that we're all weird and stuff.

I've pretty firmly decided that everyone ever is really weird. "Normal" being defined as the average personality of everyone, with a dash of cultural values thrown in. But nobody actually fits that, so everyone is weird. But, we're allowed and expected to have a small amount of quirkiness, so long as we don't deviate too far from the norms. But, people do. We're all really, really weird (Shia Surprise! See, that's weird). The thing that is hard is that we don't want to admit it. So, we show our acceptable weirdness - our carefully chosen quirks - and hope people don't see past that. That's one thing that I love about the church; we find our identity in Christ and can be comfortable with being the goofballs God made us to be. So, we let more of it show...and we're accepted and loved anyway. So, we can create a culture where people get to be themselves and we get to know them more. And, the more we know people, the more we love them. And the more we love them, the more they let us know them.

So, pray for our parties tomorrow, that the connections will happen, that the right people will come, etc...

Day 5: Plentiful

So, it turns out (for those of you who didn't know), that God sometimes does the best things when you feel the weakest. It makes it abundantly clear to all involved that he is the one doing the work; our role and blessing is to be a tool in his hand.

Today was pretty hard on me. I feel discouraged, empty and a bit out of place. I also feel loved, blessed and excited about what God is doing through us here. It's an odd dichotomy, but maybe that's what ministry is; feeling weak and being used mightily.

We went today to la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL or "La Uni"). La Uni has 175,000 students (yea, i said that). They are spread across 7 campuses, but the majority attend the main campus (the others are major-specific, like the medical school) in San Nicolas, a part of Monterrey. This campus is gigantic, y'all; it holds 13 facultades (departments), each of which is so large it has its own mascot (owls, bears, elephants, unicorns, beavers...) that expresses something about the character of its students. Students at La Uni are not required to take an English exam like the students at El Tec, so dramatically fewer students know or want to speak English.

We grouped up based on language proficiency and evangelism experience. I was in a team with Craig and Mallory, which was absolutely delightful. We prayed and dove into campus, we talked to a couple of guys in a row with whom it was just plain difficult to get into the gospel. We shook it off, prayed for them and then talked through the gospel with a mecatronica student (i don't know what major that is either) who was not very interested and a philosophy student who was very interested, but unsure of what he believed. We left Alejandro (philosophy) with a solid understanding of the gospel and a challenge to ask God if He exists and see what happens. As we left, all of his friends who had been keeping their distance crowded around him to ask what the gringos had been talking about (quien sabe, maybe he walked them through the gospel too!). By this point, my brain was very tired of speaking Spanish and my heart was very tired of trying to do small talk and lead conversations. We were walking up a staircase when we heard a voice behind us speaking English, so we turned around and followed the voice and met Ingrid - an incredibly friendly girl from San Antonio who lives in Monterrey now. Mallory jumped right into making a connection with her and she showed us around her facultad and introduced us to all her friends as they passed. She had to leave before to long for a test, and we had to go to lunch, but we're planning to meet up with her Friday.

We walked to our meeting point, and ran into Kaylen and Monica just in time to join on the tail end of them leading a young man to know Christ; which was a beautiful moment guys - I don't know how to express it fully. When we compared notes, we found out that there had been 4 other salvations that morning! That's an amazing thing for us. We usually see people get connected to the church and start following Christ after a few months, but it's been rare for us to find fruit that ripe.

Our afternoon was marked by a strange encounter with campus security. We asked un chavo on campus if we could talk with him about God and life and stuff, but he said he had a test he had to go to. Uncharacteristically, I felt the impulse to pray for him and asked him if we could. After we prayed, we gave him our information and started to walk away. As we walked past, a security guard called to us and said (en español): "Hey, come here... what are you guys doing here?" after which ensued a conversation started with me trying to make sure we weren't in trouble and ended with the gospel. This guard - Raul - showed us pictures of his grandchildren and then his prayer book. He took us to talk with a couple of students he knew (though they didn't have enough time) we talked through what it meant to really be a Christian. As Mallory described it, we were each "checking to make sure the other actually understood the gospel." We left to meet back up with the group after encouraging Raul to get involved in a church and giving him our church's info.

While standing around waiting for the team to assemble, Julio saw someone he knew and waved him over to talk with us. Within 2 minutes, Julio got us started into the gospel. I was struggling with the Spanish, but he jumped in and started preaching some fantastic gospel to the guy. It was amazing to see passion and truth flowing in Spanish as he led his friend through the gospel and he gave his heart to Jesus. 

Needless to say, we were all pretty beat after the day, so we went back to the hotel and started organizing our contacts for the church to do follow-up on. We had giant pizzas and practiced more dancing, then had a worship night and jam session.

I really struggled with the gospel today. My words were awkward and choppy and sometimes just didn't make any sense. I could see the people I was talking to getting confused or bored. But God worked so mightily today. It was humbling and beautiful. He is so, so good friends. If you haven't talked through the gospel lately, even with another believer, I really recommend it. It's good for the soul.

Please pray that we would be able to make strong connections and that people would be able to get connected to the church here...

Day 4: Elijah Complex, anybody?

As I'm typing this, Mario is regaling us with hilarious stories from his life. There are so many good story-tellers in this church; they become so animated and include (or make up) all the crucial details to make the story absolutely perfect. We just. can't. stop. laughing. Story-telling is an art that I only started developing in 2011 in Mexico (before then i always said i didn't have any good stories, thank you, Henry). And, as Christians, a large part of our identity is to be story-tellers, to set up our Ebenezers and be faithful to give God glory for the things he has done by telling the stories.

We went to the Tec campus today (ITESM) to meet students, make connections and share the gospel. Several of the members of the church here joined us throughout the day, which gave us fantastic opportunities to get to know them better and to compare methods for evangelism. We arrived, prayed, paired up and headed out. I went with Jason today, which was really encouraging. Jason is crazy-smart, a bit quiet (at first) and super passionate about the gospel. We had a few good conversations, but the most interesting was with a guy who had a Judeo-Christian concept of God, but was universalist and believed in re-incarnation. It was fascinating and we got to dive pretty deep into the gospel. He also had the best understanding of the flaws of churches that I've heard outside the Church, and better than some I've heard inside the Church. Our stories were the tame ones though; some of ours met students here who had friends in our church in College Station, for example.

One interesting facet of this year's trip is we've already met and spent time with and encouraged three Mexican students who were solid believers in other churches that were going hard after God. Three is the total number of solid believers that I've met in Monterrey (apart from our church) in total in the past 6 years. And that's from today. I firmly believe that God is stirring something in Monterrey, that people are turning to him with renewed sincerity and passion. It was overwhelming to see the city from Obispado, to think how large the Task is, but we are a small part of God's plan for this city. God is always at work and at work in places we wouldn't believe, through people and events that we'd never predict, with results far better than anything we can imagine. It's the most humbling and the most beautiful Truth of ministry. God is requete good at blowing my mind and I love it. Read Habakkuk 1:5. It's like that.

So, shorter post today, but no shortage of powerful work being done here. We're getting into the meat of our trip, please be praying for us tomorrow as we are out on campus. My little introverted heart gets pretty worn out after talking to people all day, but there is not a single thing I'd rather be doing or a place I'd rather be doing it.

Day 3: Feeling flat tired

Happy Benito Juárez Day everyone! Today is a national holiday here in México, so there's no school. We took today to do some sightseeing and play some fútbol with the church here and any friends the wanted to invite.

I'm a very vision-oriented person. Because of this, there's always a part of my mind that aks:

"Why are we doing all this sight-seeing, souvenir-shopping and general time-wasting? If we aren't going to be out changing lives, why are we even here?" Then I pause and look around at what is happening. Here's what I see: fellowship, discipleship, team-building, vision-casting. In our "just-for-fun" hangouts, I've had (i'm not even going into the conversations i've overheard) discussions with the believers here about atheism, homosexuality, creationism, persecution, dating, marriage, scripture, family... I teared up today as someone I had just met began to talk to me about one of the Hard Things that is defining their life. If that isn't life change, folks, I don't know what is. Our team is far from "super-Christians." We are insecure, prideful, broken, scared, selfish, immature, depressed, shy and all-around screwed up. We have conflict, we wrestle with boundaries, many of us feel like we shouldn't even be here. But God has called us here. The Thing that we've done right is this: we listened to God's call (isn't that all he's ever really asked of us? to hear and obey?). But, by being here, we are being given a level of respect from our brothers and sisters here (even those more mature than us) that is unspeakable humbling. They watch us, they ask us questions, and they listen to our answers. And God speaks through us when we listen and obey.

So. That was an unplanned diatribe. Right, today:

We woke up and ate breakfast (yum) and loaded into our van to meet up with the church at *wait for it...* the HEB parking lot (yea, it's here too). Then we all drove to Las Grutas de Garcia, which are beautiful caverns near Monterrey. I've been to caves before, but not since I've been..all spurchul ("spiritual"). It was amazing to see the intricacy and patterns that exist. It felt so ethereal - like we were in a different world. It was glorious. When we sang a worship song in the naturally-lit underground chapel with our voices echoing through the chamber, it made my heart smile. (also, props to Ana for singing for us and to the Mustard Underground for taking a picture together...underground).

Upon returning to our van after our spelunking adventure, we encountered something of a...complication. We had (mostly) fixed the ground-scraping problem by removing our tow-hitch. However, now our tire was flat. Muy, muy flat. Mario flagged down a truck and they refilled the tire, which lasted long enough for us to drive to a gas station, where we refilled the tire, which lasted long enough for us to drive to a gas station, where we refilled the tire. Justin had the idea to use gum to patch the tire (Keanu Reeves would be proud), which lasted long enough to get us into the city and get the tire fixed.

We had dinner at a mall (the food courts have glorious tacos and stuff, y'all), then went to play some fútbol with the church. It was glorious! I watched and played with kids, which was exactly what my heart needed. After the games, we came back to the hotel and cleaned up, then played cards, ate pizza and talked about Jesus. And I got all humbled and stuff because of shoes, but in a good way!

I am super tired and we're getting out on campus tomorrow, so....que descansen :)