Not all who wander are lost...: Been a long time

Hey all, sorry for such a long time between posts, but between not having reliable internet and working with a short term high school team for the last week I haven't had many chances to update things. To go back a bit, on Sunday the 13th I went with Paul, my leader, to La Presa, my first church for their grand opening of their new church building. It was great to see and just awesome to see the huge smile on Pastor Ignacio's face (also one of my Mexican dads). A few young people from the church and the two spearheaders working there as well as myself performed a skit about not wearing masks and pretending to be someone we are not which seemed to go over very well. After the skit I spent a bit of time explaining it and talking about how we no longer need to pretend to be someone if we know that we are loved by the creator of the world. It was a really neat time to see people I hadn't seen in three years as it seemed like all of La Presa showed up even those that hadn't been to church in forever. I would ask for prayer that the church would continue to grow and God would use them to bring his good news to La Presa. All last week I worked with a team of 23 high schoolers from the New England area who came with a program of Gordon-Conwell seminary with their mentors who are seminary students and a seminary professor. I had a great week working with them and getting to know some of their leaders. A couple of them really challenged me a lot and gave me a lot to think about as far as my future and perhaps full time ministry. It is a thought that still scares me, but I feel like God might be pulling me there. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed working with the high schoolers and it was great to see them in spite of language and cultural barriers interacting with the youth at the church we were working at. We spent most of our time doing street preaching in their neighborhood, in the center of the city and by a dump just to the north of their church. We went to the Alameda (sort of a central park) and to Bellas Artes (a big Kennedy center sort of thing) one day to sing some songs and do some skits and I was amazed by the crowd of 50 or so that gathered to watch the skits. Afterwards I was shouting translations of what the seminary professor was preaching and then gave a little message myself when he was done and many people prayed with us which was really cool. The next day we went to visit a landfill where a lot of people live to collect various things to sell. We played a lot of soccer with the kids and presented some songs, skits and told some stories to them. It was a good time, but very eye opening. Afterwards we took a tour of the dump and met a few people who lived there and its just really sad to realize that people live like that. During the week I also celebrated my 23rd birthday and two of the other leaders (one mexican, one from the US) blindfolded me and took me on the metro where they got a bunch of people to sing happy birthday to me before getting me in a taxi, still blindfolded and taking me to Garibaldi which is the most famous plaza for mariachis. They took off my blindfold as the mariachis began to sing the mexican birthday song which was really sweet. On Sunday we went to the church we had been working with (one I have also been working with this summer), they generally have 4 hour services with about 2 hours of singing. It was a really neat service for the kids as most of them had never been to anything like that and it was cool how the church sang a lot of songs bilingually so that they could understand. I translated several testimonies and a message which was cool and just had a great time. I am actually leaving tomorrow to go on their camping trip and share a message there too. i will be there on thursday, friday and leave early saturday morning to make a clown show in La Presa before leaving for Guadalajara to go to a wedding on Sunday, driving back late sunday night to be able to go to the pyramids with the summer team monday morning. It should be a busy but good week. Today I spent most of my day trying to get my visa at the Brasilian embassy. After getting lost trying to get there I waited in line two hours before being told as the first words something about a bank deposit slip which I didn't have, I thought I could pay with cash ($130, all other countries pay $20) but Brasil has a program of reciprocation where they do to your people what you do to theirs which I actually think is a a good policy. I ran to the bank and ran back to get there 15 minutes before closing and find that they had closed early. It was kinda a bummer, but gave me an appreciation for the process most people have to go through to get to the US. Hope that update wasn't too long, but to end I just want to give praise to God for all He has been doing in and through me and continue to ask for prayer for guidance for the future. Much love and God bless.

i'll post more pics later, when I have time, but you can see the ones i have by clicking below
You can see more La Presa pics by clicking here
Or more pics from this past week's team clicking here

paul to the left and my pastor in the middle