Welcome to new co-workers!

I just want introduce you to our newest co-workers here at the Christian University of the Americas: the Tom Chapman family (photo forthcoming). Tom and his wife, Kim, and their five children just moved to Monterrey from Massachusetts to serve in our music department. Tom is the brother of Susan Bixby. Tom and Susan's parents are missionaries in Chile. (In my last post I mentioned our one of our recent graduates, Daniel Salvatierra. Daniel is from the Chapman's church in Chile.) Please pray for Tom and his family as they make the transition to Mexico, learn Spanish and begin their ministry at UCLA. And please pray that the Lord will send us more co-workers!

Summer in Review

Well, we've finally returned home after our brief, 6 week furlough. Here are some highlights from what we've been up to.

We finished out our school year the last week of May. As we mentioned in one of our last posts (here), one of the highlights of that week was our annual pastor's conference. But besides the conference we had many other things going on that week. The conference began Sunday, May 20 and ran through Wednesday the 23. On the Saturday before (May 19th) the BJU Spanish Mission Team arrived to help us for a week. Dr. Ken Casillas who led the group ministered for us as one of the keynote speakers at our Pastor's conference. The team was a great blessing. The first part of the week they held special children's classes in the mission in which we serve. Later in the week they did evangelistic work and held a youth rally in the mission led by our colleagues, Matt & Susan Bixby. God blessed and many children and young people attended and heard very clear presentations of the Gospel. Here's some photos of the team from the youth rally they held in the neighborhood of Santa Monica:


In addition to the mission team and the pastor's conference, on Wednesday of that week was UCLA's graduation day. We were blessed to see another generation of graduates finish their formal preparation at the university and be sent out to serve the Lord. It was especially a treat to have our first international graduate from the theology program, Daniel Salvatierra from Chili. Daniel is now back at his home in Chile where he is helping his pastor in his local church. Please pray for Daniel as he serves the Lord in Chile. Here's a picture of me with Daniel and his brother, Angelo who, Lord willing, will graduate next year from our theology program (click on picture for a larger version).

To add to an already busy week (conference, mission team and graduation), on Thursday Ruth flew to PA for 5 days to attend her sister, Anna's wedding. So Jonathan, Christian and I were "home alone" for a few days to finish up the week. Ruth returned on Monday (May 28), just in time for me to participate in a two (full) day strategic planning meeting for the university. Then, on Thursday we left Monterrey to begin furlough.

Although we only had about six weeks to travel in the U.S. we were able to visit nine of our thirteen supporting churches. Lord willing, we will visit our other churches within the next year. This was our first furlough experience, so we were not sure what to expect. But we can truly say that it was a wonderful experience. We were greatly blessed to visit friends and family. We really could not have asked for a more enjoyable and refreshing time, both spiritually and physically. Here's a few statistics from our trip: 46 days (6 1/2 weeks), 26 states and 8,800 miles traveled. And still it was restful and refreshing! Praise the Lord for "Prophet's chambers" made available to us to make our trip more restful! I'm not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet, and I work for a non-prophet organization, but I'm always glad to stay in a prophet's chamber. :)

One other thing. One of the highlights of the summer was attending the Whetstone Conference at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, SC. The Whetstone Conference is a pastor's/preacher's conference hosted by MCBC about every four years. This year's conference just happened to coincide with our visit to Greenville. The theme of the conference this year was "A Closer Walk with God." Ruth and I enjoyed the conference immensely and wish to thank Pastor Mark Minnick and the dear people of Mount Calvary for this wonderful ministry. I was deeply blessed and challenged.

Well, I guess that about wraps up our summary of the last two months. I will soon post a prayer request list for this next semester which begins August 6.

Furlough Itinerary

Lord willing, on Thursday we will be leaving for a few weeks of furlough. Because of the nature of our ministry, we will not take the traditional one-year-every- four-years furlough. Rather, we have to take a few weeks every few summers to visit our supporting churches. Please pray for us this summer. Pray that God will give us safety as we travel and that we will have good meetings.

Here is our itinerary for the next few weeks:

• Wednesday, June 6 - Tri-City Baptist Church, Independence, MO
• Sunday AM, June 10 - Inter-Lakes Baptist Church, Delton, MI
• Sunday PM, June 10 - FaithWay Baptist Church, Ypsilanti, MI
• Wednesday, June 13 - First Baptist Church, Troy, MI
• Sunday, June 17 - Calvary Bible Church, Columbus, OH
• Sunday, AM, June 24 - Community Baptist Church, Rochester, NH
• June 26-29 - Whetstone Conference, Mount Calvary Baptist Church, Greenville, SC
• Sunday, July 1 - Grace Memorial Baptist Church, Bedford, VA
• Sunday, July 8 - Cornerstone Baptist Church, Greenville, SC
• Wednesday, July 11 - Mount Calvary Baptist Church, Greenville, SC
• July 12 - Greenville to Mission, TX
  

Lord willing we will return home on July 18 to prepare for the new school year.

2007 Pastor's Conference

This morning we finished our Pastor's conference that began on Sunday. It was truly a wonderful conference. The theme this year was "The Preeminence of Christ in the Ministry." Session topics included "Preaching Christ from the Old Testament," "Christ-centered Ministry," "Cross-centered Ministry," "The Lordship of Christ," and "Suffering and the Christian Ministry." We were very privileged to have Dr. Ken Casillas from BJU with us this this year as well as Dr. Carl Herbster and several others.

The pastors were extremely grateful for the conference. Most of the 65 pastors who attended were from northern Mexico, but we also had a few from southern Mexico (Cancún, Oaxaca, and Veracruz).

We were also able give each pastor who attended the conference free materials (a book, SS & VBS material, and tracts). Thank you for your prayers for the conference. These conferences are one of the most important means that we have to minister to pastors already in the ministry who are perhaps not able to come take classes with us.

You can view more pictures of the conference here and download sermons from the conference (Spanish) here.

Prayer Update

Today we begin our annual pastor's conference. The conference will run through Wednesday morning. The theme of the conference this year is "The Preeminence of Christ in the Ministry." Please pray that God will bless the conference and that it will have a lasting impact on the lives and ministry of those who attend.

Also this week is the university graduation. Please pray for this event and for the young people who will be beginning the next stage of their lives and ministries.

Yesterday, the Bob Jones University summer mission team arrived. They will be with us through next Saturday, working in two of our missions and helping with the conference.

Thank you for your prayers.

New Family Pictures

At our family photo page here.

University Mission Trip

On March 15th Ruth and I will be taking a group of about 40 students on a 5 day mission trip to a small town in the state of Veracruz. The trip will include evangelistic campaigns for children and for adults as well as personal (door-to-door) evangelism and an outreach ministry to (primarily Christian) teens from the area.

We are really looking forward to this event because it opens up a number of ministry opportunities, not the least of which is with our students. Through a number of training sessions I'm able to spend time helping them to better understand the goal of missions, the content of the gospel, and the ministry of personal evangelism. The trip itself provides our students with many opportunities to grow and use their God-given gifts. The trip will be good for our family as it will give us an opportunity to get to know the students more on a personal level and will give Jonathan and Christian an opportunity to be involved in our ministry.

Our theme verse for the trip is Psalm 96:3: "Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people." Please pray for us March 15-19 as we seek to proclaim the glory of our great God in Chinampa, Veracruz.

Here are a couple of photos from our last mission trip (in 2005 to Tampico, Nuevo Leon, Mexico):

2007 Teen Rally

On Saturday, March 3, the Christian University of the Americas hosted its 5th city-wide teen rally. This rally is held each year here in Monterrey with the help of the Harvest Teen Rally team from Milton, Indiana. This is a major event for the university each year and is always an incredible blessing. This year over 3,000 people attend the rally and many accepted Christ. Praise God for the harvest on Saturday! Please pray for the Monterrey area churches that participated in the rally and that are responsible for "following up" with those who made decisions.

Here are some pictures from the rally:

Here's Christian (our son, in the red shirt) "helping" some of the university students clean the tent before set-up.

New Van!

Once again God has proven himself faithful by giving us a new (used) vehicle. As you may remember, we've been having a lot of problems with our other van. Well, the problems came to a head a couple of weeks ago and we decided that it was time to replace it.

Well, how does someone who lives in Mexico shop for a vehicle in the U.S. (where vehicles are much cheaper)? On eBay, of course! Yes sir, we bought a van on the internet! It was a new experience for us, but all went well and we are now the happy owners of a 2001 Toyota Sienna. Last weekend I took a bus up to Houston, Texas to pick it up from the dealer.

Praise the Lord for his gracious provision.

New Semester

Our spring semester is well underway now. I'm excited about the classes I am teaching this semester: Romans, Acts, Bible Doctrines 4 (ecclesiology & eschatology), and Ministerial Issues. Please pray for our ministry this semester.

This promises to be a full semester (and year). Here's a few highlights of what's coming up:

• At the beginning of March we have our annual teen rally. This will be the 5th year (I think) for the rally which is patterned after the Harvest Rally in the U.S. Each year we've had anywhere from several hundred to a two or thee thousand teens.
  
• On March 15-19 Ruth and I (along with the boys) will be taking a mission team of about 35 university students to a small town in the state of Veracruz (about 10 hours from Monterrey). We will be holding children's and adult evangelistic campaigns.
  
• In May we will be hosting our second annual pastor's conference. The theme this year will be "Christ-centered ministry."
  
• After the conference in May we will be heading to the U.S. to for a couple of months of furlough.
  

Please pray for each of these events.

Also, please pray for our work at the the mission church. The Lord seems to be blessing and we have had a number of new people and families visit the last few months. Our new pastor, Chuy Alanís, was married in December. Please pray for him and his wife, Edith, as they minister here.

Back Home

Well, after a month away from home, we've finally returned. Praise the Lord for a good trip full of many blessings.

One of the first things we did today when we arrived home was visit a taco stand for some delicious (authentic) Mexican cuisine.

Here's some stats on our trip:

28 days,
4,719 miles,
75 hours in the car,
11 states,
4 churches,
17 potty/gas stops,
1 car battery,
1 transmission.

2007 Bible Reading Schedule

"Forever, O LORD, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens." Ps. 119:89

I'd like to take a moment to recommend an excellent Bible reading schedule for 2007. It's Robert Murray M'Cheyne's schedule. I really enjoyed using it this last year and highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in reading through the Bible in a year. Here are some highlights:

• Read through the Old Testament once in the year.
• Read through the New Testament twice in the year.
  
• Read through the Psalms twice in the year.
  
• Read from four different places at one time. I especially like this feature. Rather just start in Genesis at the beginning of the year and read through to the end of the Bible, M'Cheyne's schedule has you reading from Genesis, Ezra, Matthew and Acts. This way you are constantly reading various parts of the Bible throughout the year.
• Also, the schedule is divided into two sections: private and family. You don't have to use this feature, but it makes it convenient to use the schedule for family and private devotions or to split your Bible reading into two times (for example, morning and night).

Dr. Mark Minnick of Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, SC has put together a nice one-page "edition" of M'Cheyne's schedule. A .pdf version of this schedule can be found here. This can be printed on both sides of a sheet of paper and folded in half and conveniently kept in your Bible.

Also, I'd like to recommend an excellent companion to M'Cheyne's schedule - For the Love of God by D.A. Carson (my favorite Bible scholar). Carson's daily readings follow M'Cheyen's schedule and help the reader to understand and apply the Bible as well as to follow and understand the Bible's "story-line." Carson has also written a second volume of For the Love of God.

Here are two excellent online resources related to M'Cheyne's reading schedule.

• You can receive the daily devotional from For the Love of God via e-mail. Sign up here.
  
• You can hear M'Cheyne's daily scripture reading from the English Standard Version online here. Note: This should not replace actually reading the Bible, but can be an excellent supplement to your own devotional time.
  

Christmas Blessings

God is truly good. In our last post we mentioned that we were having problems with our transmission. Two mechanics diagnosed it as "terminally ill." Originally we had planned to try to make it back to Texas where we would buy another vehicle. It has over 190,000 miles and we did not feel that it would be worth it to have a new or rebuilt transmission installed so we were just going to do our best to make it back to Texas/Mexico. But those plans changed when some friends offered to pay to have a used transmission installed here in PA. So that is what we will do, Lord willing.

On Friday I had the unique privilege of preaching in a Russian church in Denver, PA. I have, of course, spoken through a Spanish translator before, but this was my first time to do so through a Russian translator. I was also able to share a little bit about our work in Mexico. We very much enjoyed the experience and the opportunity share God's word.

Long overdue update

It's been a while since our last post. Here are some highlights of what we've been up to:

• On November 18th we were privileged to go on an all-day outing with the university's dorm students to a camp about an hour south of Monterrey. Ruth and I both spoke to the students. We count it a great privilege to get to know the students better and interact with them on a personal level.
• We celebrated Thanksgiving with a number of our "gringo" friends. We are very thankful for the team of dedicated colleagues that God has given us at UCLA.
• The first week of December we finished our normal classes for the semester in the theology program. We finished out the semester with a modular class taught by Jim West, retired missionary to Spain.
  
• On December 6th we left Monterrey for Pennsylvania to visit Ruth's parents and some of our supporting churches. It has been over three years since we visited many of our supporting churches and two-and-a-half years since we've been to Ruth's family's home. After two weeks in PA we will be returning to Texas to spend New Year's day with my parents. Lord willing we will be returning to Monterrey after the new year for the beginning of the spring semester.

Here's some prayer requests:

• Please pray for our students as they go home for the Christmas vacation.
  
• Please pray for our travel safety as we return to Monterrey. We are having some problems with the transmission on our van. Please pray that we will be able to make the 2,000 mile trip back to Mexico safely without any problems. Also, please pray that God will give us wisdom as we look for a new vehicle.
  
• Please pray for us as we begin the new semester. Each semester poses new challenges and undoubtedly this one will be no different.

SPECIAL OFFER!!! Free round-trip visit to the Christian University of the Américas!

Well, let's say a "virtual visit." If you have "Google Earth" installed on your computer and would like to see where we are located, you can click here to visit the Christian University of the Americas (via the Google Earth Community).

If you don't have Google Earth installed on your computer and would like to, click here. Google earth is a free program that you can download to your computer (broadband required). From your own desktop you can view high-resolution satellite photos of almost any place on earth. You can even find your own house, church, or favorite missionary!

If you don't want to download Google Earth, here's a screen shot of what you'd see if you did:



















If you're considering downloading Google Earth, here's another sample that may whet your appetite - a Google Earth view of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. (click on it to see a larger version):