Sunday, June 3, 2012

3 June 2012 Update.

Greetings to all of you out there.  We want to remind you of our next Tuesday night training event.  The training will begin at 6:00 pm.  All you need is a computer with some type of speakers to listen and participate.  Terry Lassiter, our big boss, will be leading the training this week.  Other than being a Baylor fan, he's a wonderful guy and will teach us much.  Click HERE to register.

Another good week in the books here in southern Mexico.  Haylee has finished 9th grade and Jackson has finished 7th grade with flying colors.  Their grades this semester were excellent (as always)!  They are looking forward to a few lazy weeks before they head to Mississippi for several weeks with friends and family.  Jeff's mom will be coming to Oaxaca on Wednesday so it will be a lot of fun having her here.  

Jeff and Liesa were able to travel to some new villages this week to gather information for the future.  Southern Mexico has a large number of people groups that we need to explore.  We must get out to the communities and find out if there is a need for our USA partners to begin work.  In a very simple explanation,  our objective is to search for communities where the population of believers is less than 2% of the total population and there is no church-planting effort among them.  There are several of these people groups in southern Mexico.  The good news is there are a large number of believers here.  We can learn so much from the Mexican believers and we can work together to take the Gospel where it is not.

We have three summer missionaries who will begin work this week.  J and E are from the USA.  Z is from Mexico.  These students will be working in the village of S.B.Y. to be 'Jesus With Skin On' among the people, to encourage the small group of believers, and to conduct research so we can determine the best ways to communicate the Gospel.  We must understand world-view and culture before we can begin to effectively make disciples.

We are making plans for Vision Trips from churches in Texas, Virginia, and Tennessee during the next few weeks.  We are excited about a possible future partnership with a church from our hometown of Oxford, MS.  And, we have several exciting projects coming up over the next year involving students.  So, things are going well down here.

We do ask for prayer from each of you.  We always want to be doing exactly what the Father desires.  Serving as missionaries doesn't make us 'super-spiritual' or even more committed to Jesus than each of you.  It is merely by the grace of God that we are here.  Most of you would make much better missionaries than us.  Working for a large mission organization certainly has many benefits, but there are challenges that sometimes overshadow the benefits.  We are trying to be very careful to not become dependent on anyone other than our Lord.  The Father is so good to provide everything we need each moment of each day.  We know that your prayers are such a huge part of what happens to us each day.

Please join us in praying for:
  • The Right Places.  Pray that the Father would guide our travels to the communities where He wants us to work.
  • The Right People.  Pray that the Father would allow us to continue to build relationships with Mexican believers.  Pray that we will have humble hearts that can learn from our Mexican brothers and sisters.
  • The Right Things.  Pray that our time will be spent doing things that make an eternal impact.  Pray for our USA partners to have humble hearts that will listen first and speak later.  We need USA partners who will make a commitment to learn culture before launching plans.  Pray for USA partners with humble hearts and love for these precious people.
Thank You for praying.  You are all loved more than you know....

Jeff, Liesa, Haylee, and Jackson

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