Week 1: Greetings from Oaxaca!

Hola from Oaxaca, Mexico!  I am happy to say that I have been in Oaxaca for a week now and have completed orientation!  I arrived in Oaxaca late on Monday night on June 1st, and we began orientation the next day.  Since many people in Oaxaca and the surrounding villages are illiterate, our focus is to share Bible stories with people.  So, we practiced storying segments where we shared Bible stories with one another and incorporated worship and discussion time to use when teaching in the villages.  However, "storying" as they call it (where a person tells a Bible story and then asks questions about it) can be used to share with anyone that we meet.  (For example, I shared a Bible story in Spanish to some locals in the market).  The people here in Oaxaca are generally friendly and helpful.  The girls have been staying in a house in the city during orientation week.  We've learned how to use the bus system, use pesos, and take out the trash (which is a little harder than you think).  To expound on that last one, the "trash man" drives down the street and rings a distinct bell.  At this moment, everyone drops what they are doing and runs down the street to bring him all of your trash.  He usually comes two-three times a week, but we never know what time or what day that might be!  Anyways, there are many students that are serving in Oaxaca this summer and below is a picture of all of us at Hierve El Agua.  

Hierve El Agua is a spring or springs of water that come out of the mountains.  In the above picture we are standing in one of the pools of water (which is on top of a mountain) with the more mountains behind us!  It was breathtaking.  The students in the above picture make up four different teams.  There is a Sports Ministry Team, an English as a Second Language Team, a Zapotec Village Team, and a Chontal Village Team.  I happen to be on the Chontal team!  Below is a picture of my two teammates!

In the picture on the left is Brittany, and on the right is Anna Beth!  We will be traveling to a village that we will call San Caliente where this people group live.  We will be working with an established church of about 20-30 members to encourage, teach, and reach out to the nearby community.  We will be teaching English at market places, teaching Bible stories to different families, and building relationships with the people in the village.  This village is about six hours away from the city of Oaxaca, so we will actually leave on June 8th and stay in a home until June 15th in the village.  We will return to Oaxaca on June 15th to rest, stock up on supplies, and debrief for two-three days and then head back to the village!  We will have a translator with us called J.  However, the girls and I have been learning as much Spanish as possible so we won't have to be as dependent on our translator.  We are excited to embark on this journey and are excited for village life!  We do have some specific prayer requests!

1.  Please pray for the people of the village that their hearts would be open to hearing the Gospel and that we would be able to build many relationships in our time there!

2.  Pray that God would open our ears to hear and understand Spanish and give us ability to speak back!

3.  The house we are staying at in the village does not have running water and is quite a "rustic" home. Sharing a home with two girls is already tough with the normal conveniences! Therefore, please pray that the enemy would not use the lack of conveniences as a means to divide up our team.

4.  Also, please pray for our translator, J, as he has to put up with three crazy Americans all week! ;)

I'm so excited to see what God is going to do through us this next week!  Thank you for your prayers and encouragement!  In the meantime, enjoy this beautiful picture of the mountains here in Oaxaca! :)