Dearest Friends,
Please rejoice as you read my final report on our recent Mexico trip. Actually, you are reading the reports of the 4 young people who served with me. These young people were serving in a very difficult place under very difficult circumstances. They were faithful and never complained. I was very blessed by their company and challenged by their deep love for Jesus!
From Drake Cabe:
This was my first time out of the country. It was quite the adventure. My first time on an airplane was very nice, but the second ride, well it didn’t happen. That was very interesting and I thank you guys for praying us out of Houston, but when we finally arrived in Mexico it blew my expectations out of the water. I loved every second of it. I will never forget the people we worked with or the kids faces when they heard the Gospel for probably the first time. I will also never forget seeing people digging through the garbage dump. That is life changing…. especially the kids. It is heart breaking. I would’ve never imagined the amount of poverty that we saw, but we told kids about hope. I hope they listened. We also trained a team while we were there. They will impact the community around them significantly for Jesus. I am honored to have gone to these places. Thank you for praying for us.
From Billy Salinas:
When I first heard about Linda wanting to come set up a team in El Coloso, I will admit, I was a little skeptical. I knew that the ministry was going to be great because of the kids in such a rural area needed Jesus and some way to find hope and love. The thing I was skeptical about was if the people in the Getsemani Church would catch the vision of seeing the children’s hearts changed through this ministry and would come together as a real team. To my surprise, not only did we leave an incredibly strong and on fire team, but our own team, Drake, Leslie, and Kelsie and myself, grew stronger and learned from the new team of Getsemani.
I am going to tell you one story about a young man named Issac about 18 years old . This young man was always one of the first at every training. He was always asking what else he could do to help. He wanted to learn all we could teach. One afternoon we were at a park. This was especially a great day as half of the audience were adults and half were young people. I was translating for Linda so I had asked Kelsie to get my testimony, a bubble trick, ready. This was so I could do the testimony as soon as I finished translating. As I was going backstage to grab my testimony/trick from Kelsie, I looked at Kelsie and she looked a little shocked. I asked where the bubble trick was. This is when she said there was a misunderstanding with Issac . She had asked him to hold the trick for me, but since he cannot speak English, he thought she meant for him to do the bubble trick so while we were talking, he was already out in front of the stage doing the bubble trick for the children–no questions asked. The funny thing is that we had never taught him how to do the trick. He had only seen me use it once before. He had paid so much attention that time and was so eager to serve that he not only did the trick perfectly, but matched the words of his testimony to it beautifully. In that show all the kids and the adults prayed out loud to receive Christ. That day the humility and the eagerness of Issac and the entire Getsemani team erased all the skepticism that I had. They not only learned but taught me and the rest of our team humility and eagerness to serve Christ.
From Leslie Nichols:
This trip represented a lot of firsts for me, but the one I enjoyed the most was getting to meet other puppet teams for the first time, the Zihuatanejo team and the brand new Acapulco team. Teaching and learning from the other teams gave me a better view of how this ministry makes such an impact on the world, and I can’t imagine a better place to introduce a new team than El Coloso. We were reminded of the children’s needs every time we left the church, but we also got to the beginnings of healing take place there. Strengthening those who will continue this work was the greatest honor, and I know we are stronger for it too.
I ask that you keep this new team in your prayers, as they have their work cut out for them. The spiritual attacks we experienced only proves how vital this ministry is, and how important these children are. No matter what happens, God’s love is stronger, and I can’t wait to see the amazing things He will do with and through this team.
From Kelsey Lawrence:
I didn’t know what to expect when going to Mexico but what I saw was something I could never have imagined. The things I saw made me notice the little things and appreciate them such as toilet seats, getting to drink water straight out of the faucet, hot water.. the list goes on and on. Seeing kids go through the garbage just to find something of value was definitely hard for me.God definitely was at work during every little step of this trip. Seeing kids coming to Christ will always be the highlight of my trip. But seeing kids suffer with illness and suffering from poverty in their everyday life and coming to Christ is an extra boost of happiness for me. They finally have hope. Even through all the sickness I had it was definitely all worth it when I saw the kids. I will never forget this experience because it truly has impacted my life. I couldn’t thank you enough for all the prayers but please still continue to pray for both of the teams there and the children. Your prayers definitely got us through these past two weeks.
In Jesus,Linda for 3 Teams