Thank you for your faithful prayers for our teammates Aaron & Gabrielle and their two daughters Mylee and Evie as they patiently waited for clearance to fly to Mexico. They arrived on Tuesday and had their first couple of days filled with new missionary orientation, immigration photos & paperwork, and testing out their new (used) van.

We drove up to meet them on Wednesday and we followed each other back to Puebla on Thursday morning (early, around 5am-in order to avoid traffic!) and got them settled into their temporary housing arrangement until they can find a house.

Please continue to lift them up as they will be looking for a house, getting acquainted with driving again (after a year of walking and taking buses & taxis) and finding their way around town.

Today we attended a commissioning ceremony for a new mission started by 2nd Baptist Church of Puebla, also known as Ebenezer.  When we arrived a praise band was singing and the 30 or so people there were worshiping.  Later we all introduced ourselves, then the pastor of Ebenezer gave the commissioning sermon to the new members of the new mission called The Great Commission.  In the photo below are the new pastor and his wife.

This mission is being started in a house of one of the members.  Notice how the house is unfinished and the roof is not quite complete, but these members are determined to meet anyway!

Once the services ended, the ladies served us a nice lunch of chicken, rice, bread and tortillas.

As a side note, the pastor (named Javier) of this new mission lives in a neighborhood that we are targeting to start a new church in.  This neighborhood is considered a “transitional housing complex” because the houses are very simple and small, but are affordable for those considered in the upper-low income range.

In this one complex are 9,600 houses that all virtually look the same.  When you consider that 4 people live in each house (which is a very conservative number), that is close to 40,000 people who need a church in their neighborhood to go to!!!

Please pray for open doors into this highly regulated neighborhood (i.e. no private gatherings in the public park areas, no meeting in the public schools located inside the complex, and currently no availability of store space to rent-only for sale).

Please join us in praising the Lord for the success of Hananeel’s first cell church group meeting.  There were 16 cell groups with over 200 in total attendance!  That’s more than they have on a Sunday morning between their two services.  We heard testimonies of how members invited their neighbors and how the Holy Spirit gave words to the group leaders when they were faced with tough questions.  Here are a few pics from the group we participated in.

In keeping with typical Mexican hospitality, the hostesses of our group offered sweet bread, eggs, rice and tortillas with salsa, of course!

Please pray for the pastors of Hananeel as they seek God’s direction on how to transition to cell groups as well as praying for unity among these two pastors and the congregation.

Today was supposed to mark the celebration of the Mexican army’s victory over much larger French forces in 1862 in the city of Puebla.  But thanks to the swine flu, the government has decided to cancel the Parade AND the reenactment of the Battle of Puebla this Cinco de Mayo in order to avoid further “contamination”. Boo!

We foreigners (well, most of us) think of the 5th of May as a day to binge on eat Mexican food, celebrate Mexican heritage, set off fireworks, etc. but in reality, this holiday is celebrated more like our Labor Day.  Most Poblanos (natives of Puebla) get the day off work and just want to enjoy their time relaxing and spending time with family.

So what is typically a “day of rest” for most Poblanos has turned out to be for many a “week of rest” with this past week’s government mandated closings of schools, public events, etc.  So hopefully the suspense of seeing photos of the colorful parades and costumes won’t be too much to bear until next year!!!

This past week Mexico made headline news with the alert to the world that the Swine Flu was causing thousands of illnesses and numerous deaths.  Therefore, the CDC announced also that all unessential travel to Mexico be avoided which means our team members, the Woods family, has been put on hold indefinitely.  Please pray for them as they wait in Costa Rica for the “all clear” to fly to and get settled in their new home, Mexico.

Scott & I are doing well and are not worrying one bit about this flu.  We have not altered our schedule to avoid public places or canceled our meetings with Nationals. We would like to thank you all for your prayers for our health and safety as we all need them wherever we live.  God has been faithful to allow some of our National friends to share the reason why they don’t have fear about the flu and He has also brought good out of seemingly lousy circumstances.

This week, the Mexican government mandated all churches cancel their services for Sunday (5/3). One church we know is making lemonade out of lemons. They are anticipating having 19 cell church meetings in their member’s houses! What a great idea! The two pastors of Hananeel (pronounced On-a-nel) met together earlier this week to put together the lesson, the order of service, selected songs and even provided coloring sheets and crayons for the kids’ activities. Tonight they had a meeting of all those who will be leading the groups so that they could review the lesson and ask questions.

We are praying for God to use this time to strengthen the members and allow them to see the benefit of having small group meetings in houses throughout the week and one corporate celebration meeting on Sundays.