Semana Santa (Holy Week)

Don't let the name fool you...Yes, the week preceding Easter, Holy Week, is a huge holiday in Mexico. Schools are out during this week and next. Many people are off of work from Thursday on through the weekend. San Carlos is one of the popular destinations for many Mexicans, coming even from hundreds of miles away. For those of you who have had the opportunity to be out here in San Carlos, you will remember a quaint, quiet little town, and even wondering why they bothered to make a nice four-lane road through town with an extra "local traffic" lane going each direction in addition.

Well, one might argue that its for Semana Santa. The population grows from a modest 5,000 to probably well over 50,000. And what once took about 10 minutes to drive (from on end of San Carlos to the other) now took about half and hour, if you're lucking, and in many cases, one hour. The atmosphere is that of a carnival on steroids - car on car, person on person; the main street and the beaches are absolutely packed with people.

Unfortunately, the name is about the only part of this celebration that has anything to do with Easter. I suppose it isn't a lot different in Canada and the US when it comes to Christmas (for a lot of people). Here in San Carlos, its an excuse to get out, meet new people, an unfortunately, let the cerveza flow freely. I spent part of Friday night, walking down the street, snapping some pictures. There aren't many situations where I'm not comfortable but walking down that street, in the midst of the drunkenness, being just about the only gringo out there, I didn't feel very safe.

It's quite the contrast from this morning's 6:00am sunrise service that the English church had this morning, beneath the cross on the hill, just behind the mission center. From the apparent "happiness" and hopelessness in the streets this weekend to the incredible joy of knowing that the cross and the grave are both empty.

Friday night on main street, San Carlos.

A sea of people - main street, San Carlos.

Saturday afternoon on the beach.

Chaos and Blessing

Life continues to be a blur out here - it's hard to believe that it's already March 20! This week we had two teams out here, one being a youth group from Flagstaff, AZ and the other was a homeschool group from Bozeman MT. We've been running in many different directions trying to keep the crazy from turning into chaos!

It has been good but Tuesday was one of those days that started chaotic but God had His hand in all of it. Right after lunch I took one of the teams out to the city of Empalme to distribute food hampers, clothes, and a trailer full of household articles that we had received from someone who had passed away recently here in San Carlos.

We arrived at the church of a pastor (the same pastor who is planning to run camps out of his church this summer) who was going to lead us to a different, more needy part of the city. But sure enough he wasn't here. So, after a number of phone calls, we finally got a hold of him (and as it turned out, we, the North Americans were late and he had been waiting for us before). A number of phone calls later (with my Spanish being severely put to the test) we finally got on the same page and he met us at the church a little while later. He took us lead us to a very poor part of Empalme and connected us with the pastor of a small church there.

Once there, we broke up into groups of four and five and wandered the streets, finding places to distribute food hampers and inviting them to a central place where we would later hand out the clothes and other stuff we had.

My group ended up taking a long time; by the time we returned all the clothes had been given away. Because we were out of time, we decided, with the pastor of the church there, to just give the trailer full of stuff to him to give away to the community at a later date - giving him a neat opportunity to connect with the surround community. As we moved all the stuff into their church, we noticed that the roof over their church was only half done. The structure was about a 25 by 50 foot building. The pastor told us how they had been raising money for some time to finish it. They had $300 saved and needed about $1000 to finish it. Another man who was also from Flagstaff (and spending some time in San Carlos) who had joined us for the day decided to give that church the money they needed to finish their roof. As we were telling him this, he was overwhelmed with all that we were able to do for him, from the stuff given to the money to finish their house. It was neat to see God at work even when we didn't always know what was going on. It was a great end to a somewhat chaotic day!

9 hours of peace...

One group out, two groups in. The team from this week left just this morning around 8:30am and the next group is coming in later this afternoon followed by another team that is coming in tomorrow evening. I'm tired from the last week and somehow Art and Brenda have been keeping up this pace for more than the past two months. God gives us strength and energy as we need it.

The team that just left was from the youth group from Art and Brenda's church in Montana. The week was full of many different kinds of ministry opportunities including:

• painting a classroom in a church in Guaymas


• distributing food hampers


• distributing clothes


• painting a school in a local native village

With each of these came opportunities for the team to build relationships with the people and share the gospel message through drama and more.

Perhaps the opportunity that had the most impact on the team was the roof we replaced on a lady's "house" in Guaymas. Monday afternoon, as the group was doing the painting at the church, some of the team members along with a couple members of the church went out into the surrounding community and distributed some food hampers. In one of the houses that they visited lived a woman with two boys, one junior high aged and one high school aged. They noticed not only the condition of the house (which wouldn't have passed for a garden shed in Canada) but the fact that there were some large holes in the roof.

The team decided to take it upon themselves to raise the money and repair the roof. It was humbling to see as there was one point, as we were working on the house, the older boy came out of the house with a look of pride on his face, at the vast improvement that was being done to his house. It was especially humbling because even with the new, reinforced roof, their "house" was still something far beyond anything we would consider livable. Then you look around in the surrounding community and the amount of need is overwhelming.

The house before repair.

And after.

This woman and her boys had not been connected with the church that we were working out of but the connecting had been made and our prayers are that she will find here way to that congregation and hear about God's love because of the hand of love that was extended to her and her family through the team.

Alive and well! (...mostly)

Well, the journey did come to an end, with four solid tires and no more blowouts or other setbacks. We arrived in San Carlos Thursday evening at about 10:00pm tired but glad to have arrived.

The weekend was great and fairly full with meetings between my dad and I, a local missionary who is from BC and a pastor from a local Spanish church in Empalme (just past Guaymas). My dad came out with the purpose of meeting with this pastor who has expressed a lot of interest in running day camp style summer camps in their church, fashioning them after Children's Camps International's successful models (the ministry that my dad is a part of - check them out at www.childrenscampsinternational.com) This pastor, Pastor Ulysses, oversees two other congregations (non-denominational) and has a passion not only for outreach in his community but for children.

The meetings were exciting, seeing the possibilities of ministry out here unfold. God has already been doing a lot of work in this area particularly through an organization called Parters in Christ, bringing a real sense of unity among the churches and pastors in the Guaymas/Empalme area. A couple of weeks ago the churches held some meetings together with Transformation Ministries (of the US) and saw many people make commitments through that weekend. Pastor Ulysses alone is going to have 30 people baptized into his church as a result of those meetings. But the question on many people's minds has been, what now? What can these churches do now to continue in unity, with a common purpose and that's were the possibility of running children's camps has captivated Pastor Ulysses.

This picture is of the meeting that we had with leadership of pastor Ulysses' church and the two other congregations he oversees where the idea of running day camps this summer is being presented. It will be exciting to see how this all unfolds!

For myself, I'm doing alright - I've been sick with a throat/head cold over the past couple of days and am still waiting to see the light. It has been hard adjusting to life back here but good at the same time. It's good to see people that I haven't seen for a while but at the same time I'm missing family and friends back at home. Your prayers are appreciated!