The Mission Diaries

It was sometime in late Fall of 1988. The Mexico City Church was approaching the end of its first full calendar year, having been planted in October of 1987. The original mission team members, plus a few of the new small group leaders who had been converted during that first year, were all gathered at a very special restaurant for a very special celebration. The restaurant was La Hacienda de los Morales. The occasion was the celebration of the young church’s 100th baptism. There was something unusual about the celebration, though: at that point in time we had only seen about 90 people baptized! Nevertheless, the evangelist and leadership group decided that this should be a celebration of faith, not of sight! And so we celebrated that 100th baptism, a few weeks before it actually happened!

Such was the spirit of the Mexico City mission. As we have said in a previous post, the Mexico City Church was planted by a group of missionaries who were deeply convinced about God’s vision for that city. One of our favorite scriptures was Proverbs 29: 18 “Where there is no vision, the people perish”. We didn’t have the Message Bible in those days, but I like the way it renders this passage:

If people can’t see what God is doing,
they stumble all over themselves;
But when they attend to what he reveals,
they are most blessed.

As we approach the beginning of a new year, actually of a new decade, let us try to capture not an abstract vision for our lives, or one that is the product of our own ambitions or imagination. Rather, let us focus on what God is doing and attend to what He is trying to teach us.

May you be richly blessed in 2010!

J De Anda

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While most of us here in the U.S. spent Thanksgiving weekend with family and friends, eating and then shopping, a group of members from the singles and campus ministries of the Orange County Church of Christ spent the whole week as missionaries. Led by youth ministry leaders Dan and Candice Roditi, the group of eight spent the week in Monterrey, Mexico, helping the local church with various ministry and benevolence projects.

In 2008 the Roditi and Mier families had gone on a mission trip to help the Monterrey Church begin its Family Ministry. The ministry now numbers about 90 people (parents and teens). This year the trip was more focused on several benevolent projects. Earlier this year a group of disciples from the Dallas Church had taken up a collection to help two local sisters, Minerva and Mari, who lived in shacks. The Orange County group spent time helping to build the two new homes for the two sisters. In the picture below you can see a couple of brothers fixing the roof, and in the second picture you can see the whole group with some local disciples after working on the front of the house (seen in the background, right).

The mission group also spent time evangelizing on campus and helping with some Bible studies with the local singles ministry. About their experience with the Monterrey Church, Dan Roditi reports that “we went there to serve them,…we ourselves felt served and encouraged. We were moved by their gratitude and contentment when they have so much less than we do.”

J De Anda

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The 2009 International Leadership Conference, entitled “The Mission”, will be held in the city of Miami, Florida, during the dates of September 23-26, 2010. Please go to www.icocconference.org for details and the invitation video.

J De Anda

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