Dear Friends:

Under a blue sky about a dozen years ago, Mike and I were out walking on the savannah.  I turned to him and said, "I'm having a hard time seeing God at work in the Clinic.  What do you see Him doing?"  On his face, I read both disappointment and patience. "God does so much around us every day, Gerard," he replied. "Just put on your glasses and look."

"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19a) The sunrise, though it happens each day as I walk on the savannah, is God at work doing a "new thing." Dawn is comforting in its familiarity, yet each marks the start of a new day.

I have seen God work on snakebite victims before, but today He is working on Letricia's snake bite.  His anti-venom stops her bleeding.  Our blue towel supplies for surgery and deliveries were low.  he moved Joann to send us more now.  I have seen Him heal other fractures, but today He is working on Dante's elbow, restoring function.  Donors have felt His call in the past: this time Charles is giving so Eliazer can access cancer care.  Carla's seizures and Tamika's Hiv are controlled.  Sameria's baby, born prematurely, lives.  People pray for me; Kent's e-mail says he is praying for me today.  The list of ways that God cares for us and our patients is endless.

Mike was right, ov course. "Putting on the glasses" has filled me with a deep sense of gratitude.  As I prepare to leave the Clinic, I thank God for letting me witness daily His capacity to heal and for pulling miracles from impending tragedy.

It has been a pleasure working with you, being your hands in Honduras.  Thanks for your continued prayers.  By the grace of God and a far-flung network of people contributing in ways small and large, the Clinic doors remain open.  I encourage you to continue to make it so.

May it praise God,

Gerard

Contact the BWM at sbeaman@mcsp.org for more information

Dear friends,

“So where were you…during the quake?” (Mar 20th)  We always ask.  We have to know, to compare notes, to process this event we share in common.  I was two hours away from my family, in Tlaxiaco, teaching a seminar on what simple church means for a church planter in southern Mexico, working among Indian people.  In Tlaxiaco, Alejandro and Sayra lead a team of Mexican missionaries committed to reaching unreached groups of Mixtecos in Oaxaca and Guerrero.  As new members come onto the team, he leads them through three months of training before placing them in nearby Mixteco communities for a six month practicum and then a long term placement in an unreached people group where they will learn the language and call people to Christ.  We told you about Ruth (Mar 2011), whom we helped to mentor, now on the team.

My job that week was to help the new team members rethink the message they take to Indian people, whether that message is given in actions or words.  The question for the week was: “What does it mean to communicate the Good News to Indian people in southern Mexico? Can we leave behind our own cultural norms so that these people can respond to Christ without having to adopt all our cultural practices?  Can we lay hands on their leaders so that they can baptize their own people, serve them the Lord’s Supper and reproduce their own congregations?

There were seven missionary trainees in the class, but let me tell you about one, Tina.  Like Ruth, she is Mixtec, but her family moved to Baja California when she was young in order to work in the fields there as harvesters and she never learned to speak her native tongue.  Her next door neighbor, a missionary to this diaspora of Indigenous people, brought her to Christ and discipled her right into missions.  On a short term trip to Morocco, she heard God’s distinct call, not to that part of the world but back to her own people in southern Mexico.  So here she is, asking God to use her to reach the unreached.

She has already been reaching out to her mother.  Gradually, her mother has left behind her fear of evil spirits, learning to call on God for protection and guidance.  She has stopped setting up an alter for the dead on the Day of the Dead, stopped tying red ribbons around the limbs of her newly sprouted plants and newly hatched chickens to ward off the spirits.  She is beginning to trust in Christ.  So Tina knows this is a long road, teaching her people to trust in Christ.  I am thrilled to be a part of Tina’s journey, helping her think about how the Mixtecs can come to Christ, not as latinos, but as Mixtecs.  Very few Mixtecos ever hear such a message of Good News because the dominant culture around them has little regard for their customs or language.

People all over the world knew about our 7.4 quake within minutes.  Thankfully, it had little impact on our lives. Yet how long will it take the world to feel the impact of these Mexican missionaries…Tina, Ruth, Mariano, Josafat, Mauricio, Cruz, and Ivonne…who have committed to turning the world upside down, one indigenous church at a time?

Please pray for God’s blessing on our up-coming mentoring trips:  Robert will be traveling to Panama for two weeks at the end of April, visiting Einer and Girlesa, fellow missionaries, who live among the Wounnan people there.  They want to explore organic forms of leadership training that suit this non-Western people group that they themselves can reproduce naturally.  Then, at the end of May, I travel to Chile to teach the one-week church planting course again, this time for students of the School of Frontier Missions of YWAM.

Thank you, and blessings, Anne and RobertThiessen

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