That your faith might rest not on human wisdom...

We made it to Mexico!!!  We left Louisiana on Monday, stayed the night in Laredo Texas, met our community leaders at the border, and followed them to General Cepeda Tuesday!

We have spent the past few days focusing on unpacking, organizing, and just learning the rhythm of life here in the mission house.  It is incredible how different simple tasks like cooking, shopping and doing laundry can be.  It is wonderful, and tough, and will take a little adjusting.  The kids are having a blast, and I can see where living in a house where the majority of the house is an outside courtyard gives the kids hours of sunshine and fresh air every day is going to be such a blessing!!  We are loving living life in community, and are so thankful for our community leaders, they have been doing so much hand holding guiding us through these first few weeks here.

We met with the parish priests this week, and are really excited to hear about their vision for how we can work together over the next year.  We are looking forward to diving in to ministry, and once the rest of our team arrives from the States over the next week or so, we will start setting out our schedule, and figuring out the shape of the ministry the Lord is calling us to.

For me (Maria) personally this first week in the field has not look at all like I had envisioned it looking.  I had expected to arrive here, work hard, get settled in quickly, and learn my way around town in the first few days.  Instead, I spent the week sitting back and watching Josh do most of the work while I focused on not lifting too much and letting my rib heal.  It has been so humbling to have to rely on Josh and the team members around me and watch them to do the work I had envisioned doing myself.  On top of physically having to slow down, not knowing the language is also reminding me of how much I have to learn.  This leaves me feeling like I currently have so little to give to the people of General.

With all that being said, I feel like the Lord keeps showing me over and over again in scripture the past few weeks that it is in weakness that He gets to show His strength and His glory.  Today we heard Paul in  1 Corinthians 2  "I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling, and my messages and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of Spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God."  Any good that we are able to do here will definitely be on the strength of the Lord and not on our own strength!!  As far as persuasive words, I am at a total loss!!  The other day I made a trip to the bakery to pick up some bread.  In a broken conversation with Sarah, the baker, I think I told her that we would be back in May after the baby is born, but I may have just told her I wanted our bread baked with extra mayo.  I can't really be sure.

This is the part where we trust the Lord, that He will guide us, teach us, give us His words so that He can do His work here, and not what we think He should be doing.  This might be the best way for me to get out of the Lord's way so He can work.  Because I promise you, anything that I can do here, will be done on the Lord's strength and not my own, and thank the Lord for that!!  The people of General Cepeda need the Lord, not me anyway.

Please pray for my mom this Thursday as she goes in for her rescheduled surgery.   Also praise God that Josh's father is back home in Buffalo and is recovering so well!   We were able to talk to both of them today and it is a blessing to hear both of them in high spirits.