Archive for April, 2023
Catching up on an Amazing Visit from WRBC
Posted by stephenb5jones in Uncategorized on April 11, 2023
In June of 2022 we were blessed to have a team of supporters from our home church in White Rock, NM come to spend a week with us. We believe that it is very important for visitors to spend time learning about the culture, history, and realities of life before they can really begin to serve those around them. Cultural understanding is complicated and takes months, years even, to really begin to function intimately in another culture, but it starts by learning and listening and observing. With this in mind, we received this group of 6 people into our home and neighborhood with the intention of helping them understand what it is that we do, and what others who serve God here do. This new depth of understanding makes them better ambassadors for us and for missions in general.
We visited Monte Alban to help them understand the massive breadth of the indigenous cultures that have resided here for centuries. To see their architecture and learn a little about their customs and beliefs helped the team understand the descendants of these ancient peoples who live here today.
A group of the visitors helped sing in our church on Sunday morning with the praise team from our local church. Our pastors designed the service around songs that are commonly known in both Spanish and English. Our visitors were warmly received, and we shared a meal in common-which Christians have been doing since the very first groups met to listen to Jesus himself speak.
We had the privilege of visiting the nearby town of Mitla and touring the Wycliffe/SIL grounds. One of the Bible translators shared with the team the long, complicated process of translating the Bible into a new language. The years of language acquisition and cultural understanding that come after the years of university studies, which then leads to years of working with native speakers to be able to translate concepts as well as words from the original Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek into a language which may or may not even have a written form yet. We got to meet some of the people devoted to making audio Bibles for a group of 5000 people who currently have no access to the scriptures in their native language. It was eye-opening and encouraging for our team.
We visited the local Baptist Seminary to see how things are done here as they prepare servants with the learning they need to be better pastors, missionaries, teachers, etc. Of course there we discovered that the director of the seminary had gone to the same seminary at more or less the same time that our previous pastor (who was one of our visitors) had attended! What a small world it is at times.
The team was able to visit our downtown location where we do outreach to women in prostitution and see the beautiful Zocolo and the largest market place in the state. One of our visitors commented that he hoped our local friend who accompanied us that day didn’t leave us there because he was afraid he would never find his way out!
The team was able to briefly meet several of the girls working at Amanacer and of course purchase some jewelry!
We were blessed with local friends who cooked for us and translated for the team during the week. When we were out and about we ate at many typical restaurants, from the small local places to the larger, fancier places. The team had the chance to try many traditional foods such as tlayudas, memelas, mole (pronouned mow·lay), chapulines (grasshoppers), and so many more.
We went south of the city a little bit to visit the land near the hospitals where we hope one day to put an albergue (similar to a Ronald McDonald house), and did some tourist shopping there where the original barro negro is made.
We visited our local community of San Andres Huayapam to see the beautiful murals, the traditional streets and buildings, and try the local drink of Tejate, made from all natural ingredients, one of which is the flower from a tree grown locally.
We managed to pack a lot into a short time, but we believe that the time spent on-the-ground here and the time the team spent reading and responding to articles as part of their preparation for the trip was well worth the money and time investment so that they could better understand what life and ministry here looks like. We look forward to the possibility of other similar trips in the future with new groups and eventually we hope to be able to bring some of these people back to do real work on the ground (not something that is made up to make Americans feel good about themselves, which, unfortunately, many short term missions trips have become). Feel free to contact us if you’d like to come visit and learn more about what we do!
Catching Up-Outreach to Women
Posted by stephenb5jones in Uncategorized on April 8, 2023
As many of you already know, I (Bev) am involved with a ministry here in town that focuses on vulnerable women. Girasol (Sunflower) ministry focuses on women involved in prostitution. Click below if you would like to visit our website for Girasol https://girasolproject.wordpress.com/
Our team of volunteers visits a small place that we rent on a street in the red light district 2-3 times each week. We invite the girls to come eat with us, play games, talk, rest, paint their nails, etc. Our goal is to get to know the girls and befriend them. They share their stories with us and occasionally we are able to share Jesus with them. Over the years we have walked alongside several women who became pregnant. With emotional support, connection to a local Christian birthing center, help to get to doctor’s visits, and some baby showers, we encourage the women during this process. We have held Zumba classes, had doctor’s and nurses visit, and had a beautician come to do hair treatments and cuts. Sometimes we do manualidades (crafts) and we celebrate their birthdays at the end of every month with cake and small gifts. We try to celebrate holidays like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Christmas with special events.
Note: Please forgive my horrible attempt to cover faces and eyes. I don’t have a good program to do this, but the privacy of those we work with is very important to us, so I have done the best I can.
As a spin-off ministry, we have a ministry that provides employment and classes for women. At Amanacer (dawn) the women learn how to bead jewelry and participate in a daily Bible study. Child care is provided free of charge for up to 2 children. Once a week they have life skills classes on topics such as nutrition and cooking, cake decorating, how to cut hair, financial management, Healing Hearts (trauma healing), etc.
They also go through the Jobs for Life Curriculum https://jobsforlife.org/ with myself and my partner Jazmin. In this class they learn practical skills for finding a job such as filling out an application, introduction to computers, behavior expectations on the job, and other important skills. Many of the classes incorporate Bible stories which we analyze to understand ethical behaviors (or non-ethical ones!) and how those lessons apply to our lives and our jobs. The students work throughout the 6 month program on a plan for the future where they determine career oriented goals and plan how they can overcome obstacles to achieve their goals. We have invited guests who come to share about their careers from time to time, and we even went on a field trip with one of the students to a bakery as she has dreams of starting her own bakery someday. The first class of 4 students graduated from the program in August of 2022 and we had a big graduation celebration. All but one of the girls continues on in the employment portion of the program.
We have seen 3 girls leave the streets downtown over the last several years. One who has opened her own small business in a nearby city, one who went through our last Amanacer class and has also opened her own small business in another city, and one who volunteered at a drug and alcohol rehab after leaving downtown. These victories are few and far between, but we trust that the Lord is using us to bless these women for a better future for themselves and their children.
Still Catching Up! Our trip to San Miguel El Grande, April 2022.
Posted by stephenb5jones in Uncategorized on April 8, 2023
Once again we are trying to catch up on the blog a little! Semana Santa (Holy Week) here is a pretty big deal and most people are on vacation for either one or 2 weeks, so this gives me some “down time” to catch up on some projects.
In April of 2022 we had a chance to visit Pastora Dalila in San Miguel El Grande, about a 2 hour drive from our home. Or at least it would have been that long if the car had not decided to have a crisis. To make that long story short we decided to leave the car in a city about 45 minutes from where we were going with some believers who promised to take care of it while we visitied Dalila. We then took a taxi to and from her home and the car limped back to the city on our return. We discovered while we were there that there are very few mechanics in this part of the state that work on automatic transmissions. We also were reminded that God provides for all our needs. Virtually the only family Dalila knew in the city was where we left the car. Taxis run constantly between cities. The car made it back to our mechanic who was able to find and fix the problem. God is good all the time!
We went with 2 sisters from the Ellos te Necesitan team, Macrina and Evangelina.
In our brief, 2 day visit, we were able to visit the church that Dalila pastors and see the home she is living in. At the time, she was still having to use an outhouse as their was no functioning bathroom inside her home or the church. What a blessing it was to sit and talk with her, to hear her heart as to both the significant challenges she had had over the previous year as well as the ways that God was working with and through her. As we walked through town, we learned about the older building style used here, which reminded me a lot of the building style used long ago in the Colorado mountains near where I grew up.
We visited nearby towns and enjoyed the incredible architecture, art and ambiance there.
We were blessed to stay with a local family. We learned about their work and life in this community. The husband of the family nearly died of COVID and the family shared their difficulties from not being able to find oxygen, which meant that the family members literally kept him breathing by manually fanning him for 2-3 hours before someone found and delivered oxygen. Their community refused to allow them to stay in their home while he was sick, so they had to find another place in a nearby city to live for several weeks. The husband is working with others to translate the Bible into his native language, Mixteca, which he is fluent in. The very first indigenous language scriptures in the state of Oaxaca were translated here, and he shared with us memories of those first translators that came and lived and worked in their community. He was at the time of our visit, an elected community official, and often had to be creative as he did his job since protestants often conflict with Catholic rituals and requirements in these communities.
We learned that in their community, when a person dies, the community members come to the house with things to help the surviving family, much like we do. However there are some significant differences. The items they bring may be a chicken or a goat or some lumber or other tangible objects that they have access to. There is a person from the community government who is required to stay with the family during the several days after the death to make a list of exactly who brings what. It is expected that the family will repay or replace the “donation” at some point in the future, so careful notation is needed. It may take years for the family to repay these “gifts”. As is customary everywhere here, there is no embalming, so funerals do take place within 1-2 days.
The family generously gave up one of their bedrooms for us. Unfortunately, because of our general size (in comparison to theirs) we weren’t able to share the bed, so I (Bev) slept on the concrete floor! I had a sleeping bag underneath me and I actually did get a little sleep, but it wasn’t the best night’s sleep ever! On the other hand, they had an indoor toilet, so that was a super blessing for those middle-of-the-night trips.
They have a beautiful place which is along the “main” 2 lane highway, but they also had all sorts of lovely animals and some crops growing in their fields. It was idyllic in so many ways!
The mom in the family was super sweet and cooked such excellent meals for us! She had a large, detached kitchen where she cooked over wood flames. It amazes me what she was able to do in that kitchen!
Visiting Mexican missionaries is a special joy for us. A road trip with beautiful scenery, spending time with other believers, learning about their way of life, listening to the missionaries as they share the hard, painful, joyous, challenging, sweet things of their lives, praying for them, supporting and strengthening them when we can. What a joy this trip was!
Barefoot missionaries 