Puebla, Mexico

Mexico Ministry Musings

July 2010

An odd sight, this.  It’s not so often you see a city of some three million people in silence.  Like a cemetery.  No hustle, no bustle.  Streets empty.  Shops closed.  What makes for a scenario like this?  A felled politician?  A natural disaster?  No, it’s Mexico’s soccer team’s turn to play in the World Cup.  The silence is compounded by the end of the 90 minute game due to their loss to Uruguay. 

Last week I taught Pastoral Ethics at the Bible Institute and had to give the students an hour and a half break to watch last week’s game against France.   They weren’t going to pay attention to the class anyway.  Mexico won that game, and you could hear the collective shouts from houses all around for each of the two goals they got, not to mention all the near misses.  The Secretary of Public Education even announced that all the schools should have a TV and allow the students to watch the Mexico games of the World cup during school hours.  !!!  Like many countries, Mexicans are very passionate about their sports, among other things.

A great many people are passionate about religion as well.  In three weeks I will be teaching Church History at the school, and you might think that pilgrimages, like the Crusades in the middle ages, are a thing of the past, but not here.   Pilgrimages are a huge industry here, primarily being to particular shrines to the Virgin Mary, and for similar reasons that they have been done historically – to ask for a special favor, or to chalk up more points in your spiritual bank account so that when God brings out that big balance scale, you have more points on the “good works” side than on the “sins” side.  I really enjoy the History class because it helps our pastors to see where some of these ideas came from that are still alive and thriving in our culture.  It also helps them to answer some basic questions that people often have for us, like why the protestant Bible doesn’t always include the deuterocanonical books, just what happened in the  Reformation, and why Protestants don’t recognize the Pope as the head of the church.  I find that most church members here (neither Catholic nor Protestant) are up to speed on these topics and it helps clear up a lot of misunderstandings when talking with their neighbors. 

And, this is the only class where we go on a field trip!   Puebla is such a great old city with over four centuries of history.  There’s all sorts of great stuff here.  In the class the students are introduced to monasticism, such an integral part of the history of the church, along with it’s accompanying asceticism which is still a very strong part of cultural ideas here about a relationship with God – the idea that suffering is useful in and of itself.  It doesn’t have to be collateral suffering from obeying God on some issue, like Corrie ten Boom ending up in the concentration camp for hiding Jews.  Suffering you provoke yourself (like self-flagellation) is thought to be useful in God’s economy– which is why we still get people who do parts of their pilgrimages on their knees, or running.  We visit an ex-convent turned museum, the Ex-convent of Santa Monica.  (Santa Monica, by the way, was St. Augustine’s mom, and there was a big fight to get her to be the patron saint of the convent.  The then director thought it was inappropriate to name a convent after someone who wasn’t a virgin!)  So in this museum we get to see how the nuns lived in centuries past, and some of their ascetic practices like sleeping on wooden beds with nothing to cushion them, and even attaching barbed wire around their waist, arms, legs and neck so they would be suffering even while sleeping.  Weird as it sounds, these things filter down into daily life and religious thought of how to please God.  So lots of fodder there for pastoral applications.

THANKS SO MUCH for your prayers!  Sophie turned four months old on the 16th  and I can’t believe how quickly it has gone by.  She is a charming, easy-going baby, and has us wrapped around her little finger cooing and smiling.  She is still a little baby nonetheless and requires loads of extra time.  A month after she was born I was back to teaching Sunday school, Bible study and discipleship classes.  It has only been until this month of June and next month July that I have had condensed courses at the Bible school.  It’s been hard getting my prep time in.  So please keep up those prayers, especially over the next several weeks.  I have two weeks left to prep for history (and do all the grading for Ethics), but one of those weeks we are hosting a discipleship training seminar (July 5-9) and I am head shopper, organizer and chef for this.  When we did this last November it was 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. or later days for me.  The week following that (12-16) is my History course, so I could use lots of prayer for just plain old stamina, energy and not to get sick.  We have houseguests right now, and of 6 people in the house, I am the only one that is not sick yet!

Also for prayer, the week after that next course in July, the National Administrative Board of the church meets and the decision will be finalized as to whether or not Arnulfo will be appointed as Director of the Bible school.  Together with that, would be the decision of if we still live here in the parsonage or need to move to the Bible school campus.  (That would be three moves in four years; I’m not in such a big hurry for that.)  But there are very strong advantages AND disadvantages to all of these things, which causes me quite a bit of stress.  So please be praying with us that God’s will would be very clear.  When you’re sure about things like that, it helps a lot when you’re going through the “disadvantages” part!  I’ll let you know as soon as I know.

Thank you for supporting us and allowing us to be here to serve the Mexican church in these ways.  May His kingdom be extended as we all do the part assigned to us.   Blessings on you as you are faithful to Him as well!

Love in Christ, Nicky, Arnulfo, Amanda, and Daniela Sofia

Bob Gray has put together a website in Spanish for the Association of Wesleyan schools if you would like to see it -- www.teamwesley.org You can also see more about Bob and Susie and their family at their website at http://grays.teamwesley.org . And of course, the website for pics and stuff for us here is at my mom's site, lorasunset.com.

Global Partners also has a great site that describes missionary projects all over the world, including Mexico: http://www.gp-latinamerica.org

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