Dear Friends:
There is so much going on in this world! We live in a country torn by division, we see a world around us with priorities opposed to God, we find ourselves pulled by many forces, many of them not of God, and we constantly wonder where it will all end up? Recently I was talking to some young people who stated they never wanted to have children because they would be bringing them into such a bad world. What a sorry state of affairs! Only we Christians hold the answer, and I pray constantly that God will fill us up like the Apostle Paul with fire and passion to do what we can to restore His purposes in this world. I am reading the book of Jonah this week in my daily devotions. I was thinking this morning about that amazing large fish that swallowed Jonah whole! A fish so large that Jonah was able to survive in it while God sent the fish on a mission to deliver Jonah to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. What an amazing miracle! Of course, the Book of Jonah follows right after Joel, Amos, and Obadiah, where God stresses the importance of obedience and the terrible results of disobedience, and then we see God’s amazing Grace in Jonah!
Joel 2:13 Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.
Lord, help us live lives pleasing to you, passionate to see the next generation saved, passionate to see your Kingdom come, passionate to be involved in bringing healing to our Land!
I think of this all the time with our girls at Casa, and with the kids of Palomas. We need to make an eternal difference in their lives, leading by example, helping them to develop a solid foundation in our Lord! This needs to be our hearts’ cry as we minister to all of these kids!
Ana, our Assistant Director, is doing better, but still on almost constant home dialysis. She may get a machine next month which would perform the dialysis at night and free her up to have a more normal life during the daytime. She and her mother Lucy are pursuing the possibility that they are a close enough match that Lucy could give her a kidney.
Betty is busy as ever, and passionate about bringing a greater commitment to the Lord in the lives of our girls and others in Palomas. Please pray for her as she is starting a weekly Bible study for our girls and others involved in our Alas program.
We are busy trying to get passports for our 4 high school Seniors, then we must try to get them visas to come to the US and enroll in the intensive English program at the El Paso Community College.
We are busy developing a brochure about Casa for you to pass out among friends and your churches to try to raise additional support for this mission. We should have it ready soon! Thanks to Alice Keyes for all your hard work on this!
We are still having problems getting our website, the new Alas website, and our facebook account all up to date and coordinated. Please pray for Abraham and Raquel as they tackle these problems.
Raymundo’s grandfather is doing better after his stroke, but still paralyzed on one side and confined to a wheel chair much of the time.
We really need a new dryer and a new washing machine at Casa, we also really need to get metal roofing to complete roofing of the building, as our old roof that is not covered by metal is now 18 years old!
As you can see, there is a lot to pray about, and a lot to do! We invite you to join us at Casa the second Saturday of each month!
For the month of March, we invited a new youth group from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua to share with our students the importance of friendship. The youth group separated our students by school and prepared a presentation suitable for each one group. They based their teaching on Jonathan and David’s friendship. Who remembers this story? How many of you have a strong friendship like the one David and Jonathan had?
1 Samuel 18:1- 4 Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. 2 From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. 3 And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. 4 Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.
We want to give explicit examples to our students of what they should expect from a friendship. The youth group did a dynamic drama with our high school students to show them the values a good friend should have. Each student was a given a paper with a different value written on it. Then they had to decide whether the word they had was a good or bad value. After they all separated the values within two groups they reflected on each one of them. The emphasis of the dynamic was to teach our students what values to look for in a friend. Some of these values were respect, responsibility, trust, honesty, loyalty, and love among many more. They also got to reflect on the negative values that they should run away from. Some of those were jealousy, hate, disobedient, disrespect.
We believe that is important for our students and everyone to learn about the meaning of friendship. Nowadays, it is easy to get involved with the wrong crowds when looking for new friendships. We need to show them that they need to be aware; vigilant as they go through life deciding who should be part of their lives. More importantly, it is imperative to teach our students that there is a friend without flaws. Someone that will never fail us and that loves us unconditionally. This friend is God!
This upcoming month we will be taking pictures of all of our current and prospective students. We are getting ready for the next school year, which is just around the corner. We pray that God will continue supporting this ministry.
May you all have a blessed month!
Blessings,
Bere, Jim and Pat