Hello from Merida, Mexico, everyone! 

Our team is currently on the bus from the airport in Merida to our hotel in Celestun. It’s 12:23AM and it’s supposed to be about a 2 hour ride, so we’ll probably get to bed at around 3AM. There are already huge praises, though! Thank you to everyone who prayed for us tonight! We actually did not get permission from Mexico’s immigration office to bring all the medication that our medical team wanted to bring with us. So we were all a bit nervous about going through customs tonight, but really by God’s grace we didn’t run into any trouble. Kathy was the only one who had her check-in luggage checked, and it was just two boxes full of Bibles. :D Praise God!

During our layover in Houston, our team was eating dinner and hanging out waiting for our flight, and we saw at least 4-5 other missions teams waiting for their flights as well.  It really felt like the Houston airport was just serving as a hub for God’s workers to pass through on their way to their respective fields. We got to spend a little bit of extended time talking to and getting to know a team from Louisiana that was headed to Nicaragua. Pastor Rick has been leading the youth group at their Baptist church for about 6 years, and he’s leading a team of about 30 high school and college students and adults to Nicaragua for this coming week. I hope you all will join me in praying for them as well. In all honesty, the biggest blessing from being at Houston was just seeing how the Holy Spirit is at work in the world through His Church. There were so many people from different parts of the states heading out to preach the Gospel and carry the Good News all over. What a blessing it is for us to be a part of that work. 

As I’m writing this right now, although it’s pretty late, our team is in really high spirits—just excited for a week of hard work. And of course as I’m saying that, half of our team is starting to pass out on the bus… I’ll hopefully post some pictures below haha :P Please pray for some supernatural strength for us tomorrow, because we’ve got a long day ahead of us! We’ll be getting up at 7:30 and then joining the church in Celestun for their morning worship and hopefully having our first day of VBS and inviting kids to the church in the afternoon from about 4-7pm. Please express our thanks to our church members who so graciously prepared lunch for us and for the grab bags. We’re so ridiculously blessed to have a church that cares for us and supports us the way that you all do. 

We love you guys! I’m not sure that I’ll be able to send e-mails every day of the week, but hopefully I’ll be able to update you all at least a few more times throughout our stay here. Please keep praying for us, too, because we definitely need it. 

Some prayer requests of the moment:

1.     Pray for God’s work to be done everywhere in the world, not just in Mexico.

2.     Pray for strength for our team even after a long day of travelling and moving luggage and minimal sleep tonight.

3.     Pray that God will allow us to be able to smoothly transition the responsibility and ownership of the ministry we’ve started here in Celestun to the youth leaders serving in this church. This may be the last time that our church comes to partner with this ministry in Celestun, so our biggest goal during our stay here through Tuesday is to empower the leaders here to take charge of this ministry.

4.     Pray that wherever we go, we would be forgotten and Christ remembered. 

Thank you all so much for your prayers and your love.

Blessings,

Pastor Chris