Resources & Updates

YPM Day 1

Howdy all!

We have officially finished our first work day here in Leona Vicario! For our work project, we are helping paint YPM’s university. This morning we gathered all of our supplies, broke into teams, and started painting the ceiling of the campus. After lots of laughs, sweat, (and lots of spilled paint), we finished our first day, and began working on VBS prep!

Yesterday, we had a wonderful day exploring Quintana Roo and learning about the culture and communities around us. We started the morning with breakfast, then drove into Puerto Morales and visited All Peoples Church. The service was a powerful experience, and with both the worship and the sermons being in Spanish and English, it was a beautiful reminder of the power of being rooted in Christ regardless of what city we are in! After the service, we got lunch and smoothies, then spent the afternoon visiting local shops and the beach. We finished the night with a group devotional studying Micah 6:8, our unifying verse for the week, teaching what God requires of us: to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. 

We are so blessed to be welcomed with open arms by our hosts, Wilian and Erly. We couldn’t be more excited for the work that God has in store for us. Thank you so much for your continued faithfulness in partnering with our students in prayer!

Vaya Con Dios!

YPM Day 2-3

Hi All!

We are officially half-way done with our 3rd work day here at YPM! Yesterday, we finished painting the ceilings, the classrooms, and the outside walls of the University. After finishing our project for the day, we gathered together and played card games until dinner. We had a wonderful meal of fish and rice, and then proceeded to have our first evening of VBS!

VBS was an amazing sight of the community coming together to learn about Jesus! We had around 30 kids, and some of their parents came stayed for the entire time as well. We started with the story of the Good Samaritan, teaching the kids that God calls us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. We had the students act out the story, and the community loved it! After teaching the story, we all sang “Mi Dio es Tan Grande” (My God is so big) and then played Luz Roja, Luz Verde (Red light, Green light) and Tiburones y Peces (Sharks and Minnows). We had a wide range of ages show up, and had lots of laughs and lots of fun!

After VBS, we all went into town and got ice cream and played basketball with the locals! It was such a cool experience to walk through the streets of the neighborhood, past the homes of the people who attend YPM’s university, the families of the kids who came to VBS, and many who receive their clean water from YPM’s water plant right across from where we are staying. It is a joy to see the ways that God is working through this community, and we are so grateful to have these opportunities to serve and love our neighbors here.

Today, we began working on painting YPM’s water plant, which an amazing ministry that Wilian and Erly utilize to provide the community with clean water and share the gospel! We scraped rust off of the gates and big doors, and started painting them with new, fresh coats of paint. Our students and our team here is working hard!

This trip has been so impactful and has been an amazing reminder of God’s global providence. Thank you all for continuing to pray for us as we continue to work and serve the Lord!!

Vaya con Dios!

YPM Day 5

Buenas tardes a todo!

Today we finished our work at the water plant! Our team continued to remove rust and paint the doors and big gates to the plant, and in the last half-hour of our work day, everyone pitched in and all worked on the same gate, finding spaces next to and above and under and around each other to make sure every spot was scrubbed and painted and touched up. Our students and volunteers worked hard and worked together to get the job done- and by this afternoon, our work at the university and the water plant were entirely done! We've been taking our time in the meantime this afternoon for a much needed siesta. 

This evening, we are looking forward to our last night of VBS. Our VBS on Wednesday night was unfortunately rained out (we had thunder storms roll through from the afternoon- on), and we are missing the kids we met on Tuesday! We're hoping the thunder that we've heard in the distance throughout the daytoday stays away so that we can enjoy lots of fun games and playtime with the kids in the community tonight. It's been a joy seeing our own students smile and play and be silly at VBS, and even in the midst of the language barrier have conversations and laughs with the kids. 

Tonight's VBS skit is the parable of the Prodigal Son, which we went over in our team devo last night. All week long we've been focusing on Micah 6:8, and digging deeper into what it really means for us to do what God requires of us to do- to seek justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. The story of the Prodigal Son is such a beautiful picture of the mercy that God shows to us as a Good Father to His beloved children, and last we talked about what it looks like and feels like to really know that we are loved by our Heavenly Father. And when we know that we are loved, that we are the recipients of God's mercy through Christ Jesus, His beloved Son, we are called to share that love out! To show others the same kind of mercy, and to long for mercy for those around us. 

We have an amazing team of students and adults on this trip, and it has been beautiful to see the ways that God has been using us, each in our own special ways, to serve others because of Christ's love for us and His mission for His disciples. God has been answering prayers and has been actively working in and through our team, drawing hearts closer to Him. Thank you for partnering with us in those prayers! 

Wilian, Erly, Claudio, Adrian, and others have been incredible hosts and co-laborers throughout our time here. It's been a gift to get to know them and work and play alongside them! (Watching Wilian play basketball and Sharks and Minnows with our students and our VBS kids was a big highlight for me!) As we move out of our work day and into our final day here in Leona Vicario, we are all starting to get to that place in the week where you feel glad to have settled in- happy to be here with the people you are with- but also sad knowing that our time here is coming to a close (at least for now). Continue to pray for us as we enjoy the favor of the Lord with this special, specific, and purposeful fellowship of believers. 

Gracias a Dios por todo!

YPM Days 6-7

Thank your continued prayers for our team! On Thursday, we officially finished our work project for the week and completed painting the water plant. That night, we had our final evening of VBS, and we had a great turnout of kids and parents! (35ish kids and 8ish parents and older siblings) We got to play some really fun games, like "Pato Pato Ganzo" and "Tiburones y Peces". Preston and Erly told the kids the story of the Prodigal Son, which our students acted out, and at the end we sang Mi Dios es tan Grande (My God is so Big!) together (some of the kids joined in with us!) we finished the night in prayer for all of the kids and families who joined us. A definite highlight of the evening was when some of the little girls decided that we all needed to get our hair styled right in the middle of our Sharks and Minnows game. At one point, all of the girls on our team were sitting in the middle of the basketball court, each of us with at least two girls doing our hair (some of us with different styles at the same time)- it made everyone laugh and it ended up being a really sweet way for our girls to connect with the girls from the neighborhood. We were so thankful to have another evening of VBS! 

After VBS, we finished our night talking about the third part of our Micah 6:8 verse of the week, seeking justice. Kara led us in worship with Graves Into Gardens and God I Look to You, two songs that echoed what we learned about God's ultimate plan for rescue, redemption, and restoration from the garden to the grave and throughout all the days until we are restored fully to our Heavenly Father. It was so special to see our team uniting together and making a joyful noise for the Lord!

The next morning, we woke up early to get ready for our day exploring the Yucatán! We planned out a trek to Chichen Itza and Ik Kil, a well-known and beautiful cenoté here in the area. We got to know so much about Chichen Itza, the history of the land, and the Mayan culture from our guide Jorge. It was amazing for so many of us to see a place we've known about and heard about in person for the first time. We left from Chichen Itza with Wilian and Erly for Ik Kil, and spent the rest of the afternoon swimming, jumping, and laughing together in the cenoté. It was an end-of-the-trip experience that our returners on this trip and our first-timers were really looking forward to and it absolutely lived up to the hype We all could have stayed for hours! 

Once we were home for the night, we had some time to reflect as a team on our trip, looking back on the work we contributed to here at YPM and the ways that we saw God move and work in our own hearts, in our team, through our hosts and our neighbors, and through the many experiences we've shared together. We've shared laughs, tears, stories, and lots of special moments with each other throughout our time this week- and God has been so, so good. Praise God from whom all blessings flow for the way He has used all of us and the people we got to spend time with, even for a brief time, to be bearers of His grace, His love, and His mercy to those around us. 

Before we left this morning, Wilian gave us a book to write in. It was filled with pages upon pages of notes from people, detailing the past work completed at YPM's university, at the water plant, and in and amongst the community over the last 20 years. Our team was able to add this week to their book, and each of our students and volunteers wrote their own special notes to Erly and Wilian, thanking them for all that they have done for us and for many as stewards of what they have, what they can do, and what they long to do for others to build God's Kingdom here. We are so grateful to have gotten to partner with them this week, and we look forward to continuing to partner with them in their work as we go out from the Yucatán today. I'm reminded of the end of Acts 2, where it talks about the Holy Spirit moving through the fellowship of believers- "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." (Acts 2:46-47)

We've seen and experienced so much of the joy of the Lord on this trip! God has blessed this trip with uncontrollable joy and laughter!!!

As we depart today and head back to our own homes, please pray for us as we go- that the Holy Spirit would go before us, fall behind us, and surround us on all sides with protection and grace. We ask that you continue to pray that we would have opportunities to share what God has done on this trip with our families and friends! That we would have boldness to give testimony to God's faithfulness and the pure joy that we have all experienced on this trip. That our students would long for holy justice and restoration -- That God will continue to bless the work of Wilian, Erly, and our master craftsman, Claudio, as they continue their work as faithful stewards day after day, dreaming and longing for well-watered gardens and flowing streams of righteousness. 

God is so good! And he has brought us all uncontainable joy! Thank you for being a part of our endless laughter. 

Gracias a Dios por todo este semana.