Todo en Matachi es muy grande!

The phrase of the week was "Todo en Matachi es muy grande!"  Everything in Matachi is very big!!  In reality, nothing is... it's a tiny town of 3,000 with one paved road and 45 minutes from the nearest decent sized town.  It started as a joke but ended up challenging us to view the world with God's eyes.  Matachi is a small, nothing town but, Lord willing, great things will come from this town.  The week has really been wonderful and I'm blessed to have been here.  I look forward to returning to teach in the future.

Luciano, a student from Argentina.  As I had hoped, we befriended a rancher and rode his horse this afternoon.

Susie, a family friend and my translator, Luciano, and I after eating sweet and sour chicken.  Susie and I cooked the food that night and used skewers for chopsticks.  A great evening.

Teaching the Arabic script to the students.  I taught about 18 hours in four days; class topics ranged from communicating gospel truths through stories, the Arabic alphabet, and discipleship issues.

Thanks for your prayers and support!

Mexico to the 10/40

I'm in Matachi, Chihuahua, Mexico, for the week teaching a course on evangelism at Instituto de Movilizacion Misionera.  I have five students going through a two-year residential program before heading to the field, somewhere in the 10/40 window, for a minimum of two years. 

I spent Sunday in Chihuahua, the capital city, with the students, the director, and a long-time family friend (also my interpreter) who works for the missions organization that founded the school.  We attended 2 church services hoping to meet prospective students.  The first church service, at the most missions minded Methodist church in Mexico, lasted two hours.  "Es normal," I thought, we're in Mexico, church lasts longer.  I had no idea what we were in store for: a 3.5 church service that started at noon at one of the largest protestant churches in Chihuahua, including a 90 minute praise and worship session and a show and tell for a 6th grade Sunday school class.  We were hoping to sneak out right after the director spoke but the pastor asked us to stay to speak to people after the service. 

We drove the three hours to Matachi last night and passed by the largest Mennonite community in North America.  Apparently, during the 1920s a mass exodus of Mennonites from Canada arrived in Mexico.  The Mexican government assured that they would be left alone.  This is one of the most bizarre things I have ever encountered!  To think of a group of 80,000 Mexican-passport holding Mennonites living in the middle of Chihuahua, complete with beards and long dresses.

Classes began this morning.  A Mexican pastor who planned on teaching about church history didn't show up today so I might have to teach the entire six hours a day for the rest of the week.  I have a lot of prep work to finish but I'm looking forward to it.   I'm reading My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok and Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God's Unfailing Love by Jerry Bridges and I hope to finish both by the end of the week. I'm also planning on befriending  a rancher and riding some horses.  We'll see how that goes.

Missions as Fasting

"...I've always thought of missions as a fasting of many of the blessings in life.  When we normally fast - we abstain from food - something so seemingly essential to life - to remind us of what is even more essential - our relationship with Christ.  We fast because there is urgency of some other matter - more urgent than eating.  In missions, we fast the blessings of family, friends, and all the blessings and opportunities of life in the US - because there is something even more essential to life - our relationship to Christ whom we follow and seek to make known.  And we fast these blessings - because there is something more urgent than even our family and friends - the Gospel going to the perishing among the 2.5 billion who have little or no chance to hear the Gospel."

-Michael Oh