Serving Christ in México
One of the harder beliefs to accept, especially for our modern world, is the exclusivity of Jesus Christ – the claim that Jesus is the only way to salvation. In general, people are hesitant to single out just one correct way of doing things, which is fine if we are talking about how to make pancake batter, but decidedly not fine if your diseased body needs a very specific medication.
Continue reading “Jesus Was In The Boat”
It’s been over two years since we moved to the Santa Bárbara neighbourhood and if you have been reading our updates you know it has been an up-and-down journey. That is still the case, but we can see progress, opportunities, and certainly God’s goodness.
So here is a little bit of what’s happening:
Continue reading “What’s Happening?”
When learning language it often happens that you go months, perhaps years, being oblivious to certain words or phrases. You can be so focused on understanding what a person is saying that your brain just skips over a word you don’t know and it never registers in your mind. Or maybe it is a phrase you learned but you haven’t yet heard it used in a real-life context, and so the phrase is merely theoretical.
Continue reading “Bread for the Scare”
Time and again the Scriptures call us to remember, to call to mind what God has done in the past. Just yesterday we crossed over the five-year threshold of our time here in Mexico, and I thought it would be good to take time to remember what God has done in those five years – good for ourselves and, I pray, good for you dear reader.
Continue reading “Five Years and A Day”
As I stood in the doorway, ready to leave, my wife asked me: “Are you bringing Jonatan to the rehab place today?” “That’s the plan,” I replied “but we’ll see what happens.”
My wife smiled a knowing grin.
Continue reading “A Friday in March”
Any reader of the Bible knows the experience of reading through the book of Leviticus. Compared with the flowing narratives and fascinating character studies of Genesis and the first half of Exodus, Leviticus reads slow and sluggish.
Continue reading “How to Be Clean”
She was always smiling. That’s what I’ll remember about her.
She lived just down the street from our ministry centre so it didn’t take me long to meet her and strike up a conversation. After that, I would see every week, usually several times a week. I’d smile back at her and wave, or stop by her doorway to talk a bit.
Continue reading “Ode to Ofelia”
Life in this sin-broken world is not always pretty. Dirt gets in our eyes, under our fingernails and behind our ears. Dust settles on every surface and collects in our lungs. Germs and bugs and viruses attack our immune system. Our muscles ache and stomachs vomit. Bread moulds and meat rots. Mice live in our walls and cockroaches in our cupboards.
Continue reading “Dust and Dirt and Dung”
Into the Field
Mission in Mexico is a relatively new missions endeavour. My family and I have been on the field for a mere four years and our current ministry in the Santa Barbara neighbourhood was started less than two years ago. Much of our work is focused on sowing the seed – outreach and evangelism. If a metaphor is useful, we’ve just stepped into a field of dry, crumbly dirt, dotted by weeds and rocks (kind of like the actual fields we see around here). Taking a handful of seed, we scatter it about, not knowing what will happen to it.
Continue reading “Sowing the Seed”
I’m not sure where I got this book, but I’m always interested in books about life in Bible times, so after sitting on my shelf for years, I finally freed it from collecting dust and gave it a read. It is a long, detailed, well-written book about Jewish life in the time of Jesus. I really enjoyed it, although it took time and discipline to get through because of its length. There are probably better, more accessible books out there on this particular subject, but this was a book I already had in my library, and all in all, it was a worthwhile read.
Continue reading “10 Books I Read This Year – 2023”
