Dalhousie Church - Day 3
Today was jam packed with tons of opportunities for evangelism and ministry. After breakfast, we started our morning with a devotional lead by Colton, Jeremy, and Dane. They reminded us how to not just pray, but to act on our prayers by using our God given gifts on the missions field. This was coupled with evangelism preparation before driving to Progresso Mexico. The preparation was insightful as we were given the context as to what we were going into. This week is carnival, which we learned is a time where sin loves to grasp people’s lives as they believe they can sin knowingly and then be forgiven as it's during Easter. We readied our hearts and minds for what was to come. In Progreso we started a with a street scavenger hunt (which we won). This exposed us to the culture by the beach and taught us more about the beach town (they have the world’s largest pier). Right after, we jumped straight into beach evangelism. Beach evangelism was super cool because we had the opportunity to share the message that “Jesús te ama” which means Jesus loves you, hand out water bottles, bracelets, tracts and Spanish or English Bibles. Here are some of our highlights from this portion:
“At the beach we handed out Bibles, tracts, bracelets, and water to random people. We had some cool conversations with people and we learned a lot about different perspectives and attitudes towards Jesus and alternate viewpoints/faith” - Anna
”The beach was really cool because you got to see how thankful the people were for the stuff you are gave them. One group that stuck out to me was a group of three - 20 year olds who spoke a bit of English. They were really welcoming when it came to talking about faith, even though they didn’t really have any. I was in a group with Joanne and when she asked these people (in Spanish) what they thought would happen if they died today, they all didn’t know. This was really sad because if you didn’t know what would happen you probably would be scared of dying. Also another conversation we had with a different group was interesting. The people we talked to were a family of 3 and didn’t really have a belief, but they were very interested in what we had to say about our beliefs. That is one thing that stuck out to me because it seems like the people here in Mexico are more open about hearing other beliefs and in Calgary they seem to be stuck on what they believe in, and aren’t open for discussion”- Delaney
Following beach evangelism, we enjoyed lunch at Jonathan’s (the Mexican CampQuest Director) restaurant. Very yummy! We drove back and prepared Valentine candy bags for the orphanage where we are going to tomorrow. We enjoyed our daily siesta time, and jumped right back into the ministry work.
This evening we went across the street from the free local hospital’s emergency department and set up a Stampede style breakfast. It was so special to serve those related to someone in the hospital, struggling themselves, or even random locals. Each of us had a role serving the food and going across the street with a translator to give out food and pray for those outside the hospital. There were lots of powerful God moments here from connecting with translators or the locals. This time of prayer and service was awesome! A couple of examples of prayer requests were for brothers in the hospital, a sister in labour, grandparents' struggles and more. The translators were also so incredible and ended up becoming close friends by the end of the service time. A story that stood out is:
“When serving, we learned a lot about our faith and increased in our comfort and confidence when sharing Jesus with others. Praying out loud for people was a new experience for some that strengthened our confidence in our faith and helped it seem less daunting when we dived right in. There were many cool stories about being able to pray for people going through hard times and being able to get to know them, serve them, and love them. It really helped to see things a different way, and it was so neat how receptive they were to prayer and us telling them about Jesus. One of the people I met was waiting outside the hospital where his daughter was being treated. He was really worried about her, so he asked me to pray specifically for her. He was so grateful to be able to have me pray for him and his daughter and for the food. So many neat encounters and experiences” -Anna
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