In Memory of Anita Reina

We are in California now and we are celebrating the life of Robin's mom....of our kids Grandma who passed away Tuesday, March 25th. It is a dear and precious time as we sort through pictures and share stories of memories. Thank you to everyone for your kindness, prayers, and support. We feel as though we have the greatest friends in the world and we are beyond thankful.
Many of you have asked so we thought we would post here that in lieu of flowers gifts may be made to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Central California.
Please continue to pray for us to keep an eternal perspective on all we are passing through.
Praising Jesus, Christian and Robin

Baptism of a Friend

There is no better day in the year to be baptized than on Easter Sunday. We praise God that Raymundo, a friend that Christian has been discipling, was baptized today. Christian was fortunate to be able to baptize him. Please pray for Raymundo as there are many giants facing he and his family. Please pray that he can find a job soon and continue to be a light for the Lord.

New Church

Christian recently had an opportunity to visit one of our new churches on the southside of Mexico City with the Asbury Team. The church became an official UNIFAM Church last August. He was there to visit the pastor in what he has termed the “Listening Tour.” It is vital that he build relationships with all of the pastors in UNIFAM for his new role. Please pray that there will be a willingness to be open with sharing between Christian and the pastors of UNIFAM.

Notice the proclamation on the top of the picture, "Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever."

English Class – Mex-i-Kids

Robin and Julie recently ended their time with English Classes at a local church. Many new families were introduced to the church through their English Class. Please pray for these new families as they learn more about who Jesus is and can be in their lives.
The little boy standing next to Julie was interviewed all in English. He received a nice round of applause for his interview with Julie.

Sharpening Your Inter-personal Skills & MOPS

What a joy it has been to begin working through the Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills class with our leadership team for MOPS. Almost all of the gals on our leadership team are new to leadership positions and some are new Christians. As we have been working together for two years now we have started to see some rough areas we needed to work on as a team and individually - So we decided to go through this Bible based course together and the blessings have been abundant! Today we learned about listening, not just hearing, and about communication skills - It is incredible to watch the women as their eyes light up when some part of the lesson really impacts them.
Please pray for our leadership team as we seek to grow and glorify God. MOPS is really coming to life and we are seeing new women attend every session. Please pray that women in the community will be reached for Jesus through the MOPS ministry.

Speech update

Thank you to all who prayed for us as we spoke to about 100 couples this past Saturday. Our purpose was to simply share out own marriage testimony. Fun, communication, making your spouse the second priority, and making God the top priority were the points of our talk. We pray and trust that our words will continue to plant seeds, water, cultivate, and maybe even harvest lost souls for the Jesus' Kingdom. Thanks for praying!

Prayer needed

Last week we accepted an invitation to be the guest speakers at a
couples dinner at church. Needless to say we are nervous for our
Spanish. We only want to glorify Jesus and impact these marriages for
eternity. Please pray for us for fluid speech as well as for the
hearts of those listening to the truth.

Women in Crisis

I (Robin) had the chance to meet up with a group of women from the Cuautitlan Izcalli UNIFAM church this week that are involved in a ministry for women in crisis. What an amazing impact this ministry is having. Six different women from the church volunteer their time to man phones (and meet in person) with any women wanting to talk through a problem. The service is free and confidential. Several of the women manning the phones are women who have benefited from the service. One women shared her testimony of how the ministry had changed her life by introducing her to Jesus - and how she is now liberated from depression and anxiety. It was beautiful to see women reaching out to other women in need.... Indeed, all around us are women who are in crisis - are we available to reach out to them and to bear their burdens with them?
Please pray for this ministry. Specifically pray that funds could become available for this church to hire another full time worker. There are many exciting ministries happening in the church at the moment but the Pastor is the only paid staff member and his work schedule is overwhelming.

Are Children a Burden or a Blessing?

This was the theme of our MOPS meeting this past week. A pastors wife from our sister church in a nearby town shared and the message was incredible! Are our children a blessing or a burden? Of course we want to immediately say a blessing! But is that how we really feel? Are there times when we dream about life before kids and times when our kids seem to get in the way of all we want to accomplish? Through a solid biblical understanding of the privilege of motherhood we can adjust our perspective of parenting and make adjustments in our schedules and our lives so that we are living in a way that truly indicates that we believe our children are blessings! Indeed, being a mother is one of God's high callings!

More Fruit!

Praise God for the work that has been done in the past week. Our good friends from England were here visiting and following up on the friends they made through teaching English. They were only here for 6 days, but they led 5 of their old friends to Christ. Pray for us as we have agreed to meet with them in order that they can receive discipleship.

We also praise God for 3 families who just came to the Lord west of Mexico City by another missionary. Pray for Christian as he and the ECC Committee decide how to disciple and train these people too.

Mex-i-Kids

Robin started teaching English to about 50 kids at a local church on Saturday. You can see her enthusiasm as she teaches the first lesson, "What's you name?" Our hope is that English will be used to bring many to Jesus in this area. She and Julie (pictured on the left) will co-teach this program over the next few months. Please pray that many will come to believe in Jesus and that the families of these kids will be moved by the Holy Spirit to follow Him!

Waco Team

Christian spent 2 days last week with a team from Waco, TX. After a lopsided game of soccer (US vs. Mexico) one of the members of the team gave his testimony to the street kids.

Bringing Greetings

This past Sunday evening Christian was given the opportunity to bring greetings on behalf of OMS to the UNIFAM LaLoma church as they celebrated 9 years of serving the Lord here in the Mexico City area. When we visited Mexico in 2004 to pray about coming here as missionaries, we visited this church and it was there that we both received conviction from the Lord that He was working mightily in Mexico. The church was used by God to bring us here and so it was an honor to celebrate with the church body.
Pray for Christian as he will have more and more opportunities to share in front of others. In the states public speaking is one of Christians strongest gifts....it can be done with ease, without much concern and done very well. Here however, with all being done in Spanish it is a much more humbling experience. Much more preparation, prayer and practice is required. Perhaps that is exactly how Jesus wants it.... to remove us from relying on our own strengths and gifts to relying completely on Him. Indeed we feel that there is not a day that goes by that we are not clinging to our Lord.

Waco Team

Today Christian had the opportunity to help introduce a team from Texas to leaders in the national church assembly. It is a passion of Christian's to share with visitors about how the Lord is working in Mexico. Our goal with all short term teams is that they will be compelled by the Holy Spirit to pray, give, and/or go to the field.

Please pray that this team will catch the vision of OMS in Mexico.

Update of Robin's Mom

Click on Robin's blog to read an update on her mom.

We need more Prayer Warriors!

Our field recently started a prayer blog for all of you who take prayer seriously. We believe this is our greatest need. Check out the link in the upper right hand side of this page (above our profile) to view the current prayer requests for our field.

Success on the Streets

Christian was so pleased to see what had happened on the streets. As you can see there are only 6 kids in this picture. In all there were about 10 kids that they recently visited within this particular group. You can see many other photos of this group throughout the blog. So, what is the success here? We only visited with 10 kids! This means that some of the group had left (normally there are about 20-25).
So, where did they go? The gray-haired man on the right runs a Christian rehabilitation center north of the city and near several of our churches. Nearly half of this group is now living at his rehabilitation center. We praise God that so many of them had decided to turn their lives over and start a new life. Please pray for 3 things: that the rehabilitation center can continue in spite of a lack of funds, that the street kids' decision to change will actually stick, and that this group can be wiped out and sent to the same place to find true hope!
Special thanks to the Ardmore Team for their work at the drop in center and sharing of testimonials on the streets. You definitely made a lasting impact! Who knows who will join the rehabilitation center next due to the seeds that you planted during the week.

Jonny and Julie go to a new church

Today, we went to the Tultitlan Church in order to support and make sure there was a smooth landing for Jonny and Julie Pollock, 2 missionaries that arrived in August of 2007. One of Christian's responsibilities is to help new missionaries assimilate into life and work here in Mexico. We are so pleased with how the pastor laid out the red carpet for Jonny and Julie today. Please pray for this church: for growth, solid discipleship, the new daughter church, and for a hedge of protection for the pastor's family and Jonny and Julie. Exciting things are happening in this area of town through the church and the daughter church. And we know the enemy hates to see Jesus' Kingdom expanded. We can see many coming to Christ in spite of spiritual attack.

New Position

As many of you know, we have been praying about our future here in Mexico. We have relied on many of you for prayer and support. We praise God for all your petitions on our behalf.

We heard a lot of advice over our time in Indiana and since we have been back in Mexico. Two common threads seemed to come to the forefront every time we considered scripture and this Godly counsel: Go where God can most effectively use you and glorify him....period. As of last week we decided that it would be best to remain in Mexico and to assume the leadership of the field. Our field director has recently announced his leaving on July 31, 2008. Christian has already started the transition into leadership and will start to lead the field more as these 6 months go by and then fill his vacancy on August 1st.

Christian is confident in only one thing, that he will be able to lead the field with success ONLY through the power of the Holy Spirit and in the fact that Jesus is Lord of all the work here in Mexico. And so we humbly come to you and ask for prayer. Please pray for our priorities to be kept in place in our lives (relationship with God, then family, then OMS....in that order), for wisdom as we lead the field, for our Spanish to sufficient for the communication that God wants us to have. We know that spiritual warfare is just around the corner and so we covet your prayers. ".....and so we make our goal to please Him." II Corinthians 5:9

Successful Church Planting!

At a recent ECC board meeting, which Christian a member, testimonials were given by 4 different church planting teams. Each of the teams reported that God has been working and growing the number of believers every day. Some of the activities have been non-traditional in reaching their communities for Christ, like renting a tarp so as to show movies about Christ, or partnering up with Traditional Christian Churches to help out with a lack a of funds. The geographic coverage of these three areas is amazing too. The very south of the D.F., to northwest, to the northeast is the range of these three areas. In total there are over 100 people attending these three house church areas. We praise God for the creativity he has given us as well as willing hearts to hear the message of the Gospel.

Please pray for wisdom and accountability to the plan as Christian co-leads the board in planning future church planting areas in Mexico.