Hospitality is a routine part of being a missionary. At least, we hope it is because we always seem to have guests!
Yesterday (Monday), we received Christina from San Miguel de Allende (in the gray sweatshirt). She’s a high school senior (I think) and her parents are homeschooling her and her two teenaged siblings using an English-based curriculum. We’ve had her brother, David, here a couple of times in the past couple months. Their dad is a pastor of a church plant in that city. She’s here until Thursday morning. She needed some special guidance and tutoring from Beth, so she’s staying several days to get her studies on track.
Last evening, we also received Amanda (in the green sweatshirt) from Guanajuato along with her 7 year-old adopted daughter. Amanda has recently decided that she will need to homeschool her daughter (in English) due to the challenges faced in using the schools in their area (it’s true everywhere really). Because her daughter is also an American and perhaps also because her daughter is black, the racist and anti-American attitudes expressed in the schools here would be dangerous and painful for her daughter. So, she’s here learning more about how to homeschool and talking with Beth about many different aspects of homeschooling. She’s also here until Thursday morning.
So what’s up with Thursday morning? You just had to ask. When Christina’s father came and dropped her off here yesterday, he invited us to join their church in an outreach event in the mountains about an hour outside of San Miguel de Allende in that state of Guanajuato on Thursday. Each year their group of believers goes up to an unreached indigenous group, part of the Chichimec people, on January 6th (Day of the Kings). They bring gifts for the children and will be doing a puppet show and a few other activities while clearly presenting the Gospel. This year they are taking 1,000 gifts! Wow!
So, we decided to accept the invitation and take the family to observe and participate in whatever way we can. It should be an exciting opportunity to have a small part in this event. Beth’s mom decided she wanted to go, and Amanda said that she’d like to go too! So, we’ll take two cars and make a long day of it. We’ll have to leave by about 6:30 a.m. and I suspect we won’t be home until late as it’s about 3 hours from here.
I hope we can take some pictures (if that’s allowed) to share with you later in the week. I read up on this ethnic group and they have quite an interesting history. If you’d like to learn about the Chichimec people, here are a couple links: http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/guanajuato.html and http://pnglanguages.org/mexico/nombres/10bi-chichimeca.htm.
I believe we’ll be heading to the green #6 area on the map below (for reference, we live below that green area, just below the word “Querétaro” about where the purple shading is located):
Please pray for this event to be successful in both sharing the Gospel of grace through faith and that the Holy Spirit may draw some souls to salvation even that very day. Pray for the safety of the believers (including our family) who will be traveling out there. May God use us for His glory!
Knowing Your ABCDs 