Hope all is well with you, been a while since my last blog. Well let me keep you up on what’s been going on down here. Josef and I are living in the state of Guerrero, in Mexico. In a little village called Arroyo Grande. It’s been quite challenging being down here to say the least. Times of sorrows and grief, yet times of joy and peace. But I thank God for the trials for as the word of God says he uses them to refine us, as gold is refined. It’s nothing like it was living in Rosarito. It’s a lot more primitive here. God has been much gracious to me in helping me deal with the change. Josef did a lot better than me dealing with the change. So how do people live here? Well everyone here, for the exception of Josef and I, eat 3 full meals a day, 2 meals a day is more than plenty for us.
People here have a custom of eating out every night for dinner. The big thing for dinner is “enchiladas”, you can get 10 for a dollar. They are tiny though. There are no restaurants in our town like in the US, people just set up some tables and chairs outside in their front yard and cook for you outside, those are the restaurants here, you can eat for about a dollar to 2 dollars per adult at these restaurants. Tortillas are almost a necessity for them here. They hand make their tortillas, or go buy freshly made ones for each meal. They normally cook their tortillas outside on the fire on a homemade skillet thing made out of mud. Some one in the town kills a cow or pig or goat every other day or so, and every one buys it from him. Right now there’s men who go fishing and bring fish to sell here about three times a week, they get here at 7am, kinda early for me but this week I went for it, got a good deal, a dozen fish for $4US dollars. With chickens it’s a daily thing, there is a chicken lady that comes to your house and brings you freshly killed chicken for a whopping $7US dollars a chicken. Expensive. Josef and I don’t go the fresh route it’s too expensive, since we go out to the city a few times a week we just buy frozen meat and poultry there, but limit our selves to eating either meat or chicken or fish once a week, to keep our costs down. We have had to get really creative in figuring out ways to eat beans and tortillas and rice. Maybe I can send you all some recipes if you like, to help you save money on food cost. Here you can get freshly made cheese and milk, since people have cows. Josef recently planted beans and tomatoes, they are looking good so far. We are hoping that will help us save some money, we want to plant onions too and chilies, corn would be nice too. We have some room to plant where we are at but we are just borrowing a house that was empty and don’t know how long we can use it for. We are also considering having a little farm in this land we just inherited from my grandpa, but we would need to build a well and that can get costly, maybe even build a little hut out of mud. But it’s in the Lords hands, he will guide us. We don’t know how long we will be here, so before we do anything we need to wait on the leading of the Lord. Most people hand wash their clothes and air dry them since it’s so hot here, it’s a desert. The house we are living in has a washer, when it wants to work it’s great, but when it doesn’t I have to do it the old fashioned way and wash by hand, jeans are tough for me they get really heavy when they are wet, especially Josef’s. We don’t have running water like in the US. We have to pump water from a well. From the well it pumps it to this huge cement tub (that needs to be cleaned and scrubbed at least twice a week or else it gets these twirling worms, I think they turn into Mosquito’s), from the cement tub we use another pump to pump it up to this big black tank that’s on the top of our house and from there it goes to our sink and toilet. They are electrical pumps not manual, saves us lots of work. It was tough on me at first, seemed like a lot of work for me, but after much praying I have gotten used to it and it is no longer a burden. So don’t take for granted the water that you get, it’s so easy in America, you don’t have to sweat at all to get water like down here, and I am sure it’s so much worse in other parts in the world compared to here. Bucket showers for most people, including us. We don’t have hot water either, it wasn’t bad till recently now it’s on the cold side, but we bear, just got to work out showers when it’s the warmest time in the day and it’s not so bad. Oh yeah, trash, we have to burn our trash in our back yard, no trash man that comes and takes it for you. Another luxury of America. Same with gas, no gas just comes from pipes, we have to buy a tank of gas that plugs into our stove, it lasts about a month.
Bugs, Bugs, Bugs!!! That’s one of our problems especially now there’s lots of these bugs that suck your blood and make you itch they leave me welts, kind of like Mosquito’s but not. They like to get me really bad, they don’t bite Josef much and if they do he doesn’t get welts, which is good. Some of these bugs carry Dengue, it’s a really bad sickness. Josef’s problem was with wasps, they were constantly in the house swarming around him and building nests in our house. It’s better now though. We had a tarantula creep into our house, Josef ended up killing it, it was big and creepy looking, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, you can see a picture of Josef and the tarantula on the right slide show. John (a friend that came and stayed with us for a while) killed a few Alacranes. They’re like scorpions they are deadly if not taken care of immediately. Bats like to hang outside our front door, there’s two of them that sleep there. Twice already they have came in our house and one just about came in a short while ago. There’s also snakes, in our property, since being here our neighbor that lives in the same land we do has killed now about 5 snakes outside our house. There’s still a few we haven’t been able to catch.
Now the good things. It is really nice down here, hills, trees, horses, cows, donkeys, goats, rivers, country type. You can also see pics of our surroundings on the right on the slide show. Food is not bad, weather is nice right now it does get really hot though here. But the best of all is being able to live in the midst of a people who don’t know Christ, and being able to preach the blessed gospel to them. We had a great opportunity to have a booth at yearly fiesta for the town we live in. It has been the first time anyone has ever done this here before. It brought fear to some people in the town, they were saying things like it is for sure the last days and that Jesus is coming back, because never has anyone done this before. We gave out free gospel literature and bibles for those who came up, we had some great witnesses it was very fruitful. The people here have been really nice to us, we have this really nice lady that invites us a lot to her house to cook for us, she feeds us well. She said something just birthed in her heart to want to care for us since meeting us. She reminds me of the woman who took care of Elijah the prophet, though she had almost nothing to eat herself she gave her all to cook for this man of God, you can read the story in 1Kings. And this lady has been like this to us, lately she has been struggling hard with finances but still is having us over. She is still unconverted, not wanting to forsake all to follow Christ, I just trust in the Lord that as the seed of the Gospel has been planted and we keep watering it that he would give the increase. She has a daughter too that has been a great blessing to us, and we have been preaching the word to her also and have seen the Spirit of the Lord convict her and bring her to tears over her sin. Please keep them in your prayers that God would bring salvation to that home. The lady has a boyfriend whom she’s lived with for many years and they have children that are all grown up now. He not so long ago left to the US to get into the drug smuggling business. We preached to him a few times before he left and he decided to leave anyways, it broke our hearts to see him follow the path of destruction. But to our great surprise, he has been really scared to take on that job and has not been able to work doing that, he started washing cars instead. I have talked to him a few times on the phone, since he has been up there. Please pray for him, that the hand of the Lord would continue to be heavy upon him and that he would repent of all his sins, as Jesus commands, and that he would follow Christ having putting all his faith in Him. This is a couple who came to see the Jesus Film when we showed it here in our town, so it’s a blessing to see how the Lord used that movie so that we could meet these people.
We have had some opposition here from some people, in the beginning some of the townspeople were making up lies about us, so that people would not go to see the movie we were showing. Gone through some heartbreaking experiences with false brethren. We had this relationship with a local pastor he seemed so humble and seemed to love the Lord, but ended up being a wolf in sheep’s clothing a habitual liar and hypocrite. It is so sad that this man is what has been representing Christianity for many years to these people. We tried talking to him about his life of sin to no avail. Since parting ways with him he has gotten deeper into his life of lies and is now slandering us and lying about us. Please pray that God would have mercy on this man and that he would repent and truly serve Christ.
Since being here we have showed the Jesus Film to this town and other surrounding towns. We also showed a movie called “Luz Del Mundo” here in this town. It has been a great blessing to see the fruit of this, many times as laborers of the Lord we don’t see fruits when we pour out our hearts to people and our time, but God has allowed us to see some fruit from this. We show the movie and preach the Gospel. We recently visited an old man that can barely see and hear, but he went to see the Jesus Film in our town and memorized some of it and holds on to that since he can’t read the bible. It has had that effect on a few of the older people and on the children.
People in this town are lawless. Kind of like wild cowboys. Its do as you will here, there’s hardly any consequences. They just found a dead man down the road we live on less than 10 minutes away. Don’t know the details yet, somepeople say he was hanged, others say he was shot in the forehead, now they are saying they just found another body too. People here don’t think twice about taking someones life, it’s really sad, the men here carry guns when they go out. I don’t think there has been a day that I don’t hear gunshots, even machine guns! They just like to shoot in the air for fun at home or at parties. A lot of the men here are drug traffickers. We have had some good witnesses with some of them, just a few days ago I was able to preach a little to about 6 of the main mobsters from this town. It was my first time meeting them. I look forward to talking to them further, the mens wives have agreed to have us over once a week for bible studies at one of their houses. These women are broken, they get treated badly by these men, please pray for their protection and salvation. They have a lot of inner wounds, but God can heal them and save their souls. They are starting to see their depravity and need for a Savior, please keep them in prayer that they would repent and believe the Gospel.
For years since being converted I have had a great desire to preach the gospel in Prisons. After much prayer, the Lord has answered that desire of mine in such a special way. I thank God for giving me a husband that has the same burdens and desires as I do and encourages me to preach where God leads. For about 2 months we have been preaching there, Josef preaches I interpret. We go about 2 times a week sometimes 3. On Sundays is our time where we preach in this room for 2 hours. And Wed. and Sat. are visiting hours, that’s where we go to spend one on one time with the men that are being ministered to, and build relationships with them, exhort them deeper with the Word of God, pray for them, cast demons out, etc. It’s a lot like what we were doing in the Rehab center in Tijuana. Here it’s not like the US prisons, here the inmates are all loose on the yard, and you can go up to any of them and talk to them, you have free range to go anywhere, the basketball courts, their work area, their rooms where they sleep, they all sleep in one big room with these cheap hand made bunk beds, some sleep on the floor till they build a bed which it takes weeks for them to be able to get beds. Please pray for the men that God would set them free in the inner man, though the outer man is in bonds. Some of the men we are spending one on one time with are murderers, kidnappers of adults, thief’s, drug traffickers and the list goes on. Some are in there for car accidents, here in Mexico if you get into a car accident and don’t have money to pay the injured you go to jail, that’s really sad, especially if it’s not your fault. We were able to meet a lady who’s son is in there and she heard us talking to someone about the Lord and she invited us to her home to come and give her a bible study. She has been wanting to live for God and needed guidance. We went last week, it was really far where she lives in the middle of no where, about an hour from our house. Josef taught her about the message of Reconciliation through what Jesus did on the Cross.
Many of you know the Lord has done something different here in Mexico that we didn’t do in the US as far as ministry, and that is reaching the little ones. Again we see the hand of the Lord in this here. For over a month now we have had weekly bible studies for the kids. We bring some speakers, play music, teach the kids songs, and sing. It’s different than the way we did it in Tijuana. Here kids just want to learn the bible they don’t care if they get clothes or treats, we don’t even do that, in fact I only gave them cookies once as a surprise. The kids here seem to be much more hungry for the Word than the adults. They are learning and putting into practice what they learn. I do a lesson from the Word of God, then they color biblical pictures, then I spend one on one time with them, that’s when they seem to get the more convicted over their sins, when I personally address their sins and how they need to repent and put their faith in Christ. I believe some of the older kids are at an age where they do understand and can be born again. As a result of these childrens meetings, now our house is filled with kids, they don’t bother me, I quite like it. They come up with all kinds of questions about religious things as they are here, like “who made God?” “What do you mean He always existed?” “How is that possible?” “Is it wrong to do this or that?” They like to come over and help me clean the yard, it’s so helpful we have a huge yard, and they help me burn the leaves, one of the little girls is like an Indian she has a special talent on starting fires to burn trash. One little girl comes over almost everyday and spends time here, she’s really sad her brother died not to long ago and you can see the sadness in her eyes. She’s been a lot more cheerful though, I can’t even see that sad look in her eyes that often anymore. Because of our childrens study it seems like the Catholic Church wasn’t so happy that their kids were coming to our study, so they decided to do a kid study of their own, but wanting to bait the kids in with candy. Really sad, because they are not doing it out of love. I know this because I heard the teacher herself express how she really doesn’t want to teach them. It seems like it’s this religious burden, something they have to do and not love. I really love these kids and they need someone to teach them the truth in the love of Christ. Please keep all these things in prayer. We need your prayers. This was a long blog, I will try to blog more often so it doesn’t get this long next time. Pray that God would strengthen us, that we would not grow weary, that we would be faithful to the Lord in all we do, and that Him who died would be glorified!
For new pictures you can also view them here: http://s403.photobucket.com/albums/pp114/Missions2Mexico/
Blessings to all,
Lina Urban
www.puregospeltruth.com
