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.