Dear Friends:
Happy Easter! We pray that Resurrection Sunday will be a special day for you, remembering how Jesus set you free from slavery to sin, and promised your resurrection through His resurrection! What a special day it is to Remember!
Our next ministry meeting at Casa will be the weekend after Easter, April 15. We are hoping for a number of new volunteers, as we work with the kids from the scholarship program. This month is application month for all kids for the coming school year, and we will be gathering their information and taking their pictures in addition to planning for a big Family Day event on May 13. If you would like to come with us, please let us know! A van will leave the Light at Mission Viejo on Friday afternoon, April 14, and return late night April 15.
If you want to go in the van, please call Jim (505) 690-8302, or Pat (505)670-5659, or Emiliano, (505) 795-3074 and we will talk to you about it. If you are traveling separately, you may want to spend Saturday night at Casa and return at a more leisurely pace on Sunday. Several of us will be doing that, and we may hold a church service Sunday morning before we leave!
This is a ministry that encourages our volunteers to ask the Holy Spirit to open their eyes and to explore additional ways that they can help people in Palomas, and in the past, volunteers have “adopted” families, have organized teams to do home repair work, or have done other things to help solve major issues in people’s lives in Palomas. It is really meant to be a training ground where people can experience mission work and the power of the Holy Spirit close to home! So, we invite you to come and see!
For the past several months, our theme for teaching with our students and parents has been centered on Rom 8:37 in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. We will be continuing with that theme in April, as we explore how Jesus overcame the world!
He told us, John 16:33 “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
This is a great time for us to think about that. During Jesus’ 3 years of ministry as a Rabbi on this earth, the religious leaders sought to trap him, planned strategies to discredit him, and ultimately sought to kill him. That is what the world does to people who do not conform to it. We see it in politics, in military power, in religious struggles, in the workplace, in the classroom. Everywhere we look there are people who are seeking to control others, who are seeking to show they are better than others, who are seeking to win popularity contests, who are seeking riches or notoriety any way they can get them. But Jesus did not. He simply brought the message that there is a God who created us and He loves us. He has standards for us to use in charting the course of our lives. Standards and plans that will bring joy and happiness to us. He knows we will fail to live up to His standards, which essentially means we fall into the ways of the world, which work against God. These things are called sin, and they separate us from our Creator. But amazingly, God came to earth as a man. He came as the Son of the Father God. He atoned for our sins by shedding His own blood, so that blood could cleanse us of sin, restore our relationship with God.
If He had not done that, we would be unable to bridge the gap to come back to God and we would die eternally separated from our Creator. But He did! He overcame the world by proving that it could not destroy him when He rose from the dead! By rising from the dead He proved that we also can have a restored relationship with God, which can give us love, peace, and joy in the midst of trials, adversity and death. As Paul victoriously claimed, Rom 8:31-39
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:
"For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."
Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So, as we celebrate the resurrection of God’s only Son this Easter, let us remember that no matter what this life throws at us, we can find shelter, restoration, love, hope, and peace in Him! Hallelujah!
After our April meeting, we will begin seeking sponsors for kids in our scholarship program for the coming school year! We expect the number of children to increase, because we are now adding children who go to school in Deming and Columbus, but who live in impoverished families in Palomas. Please pray with us that enough sponsors will be found to provide for the increased number of children! Also, this month, our 5 graduating Seniors will be applying to college!!! PTL
Please note that our monthly support will be changing beginning in August, as follows:
Support an elementary student: $35/mo.
Support a Jr. high student: $45/mo.
Support a high school student: $55/mo.
Support a college student with full support: $100/mo. People may provide partial support and we will put sponsors together to reach full support. We have 5 new students considering college right now.
May the Lord bless you and keep you, may He make His face to shine upon you, and grant you peace!