Dear Friends:
This past month, we decided that an element we were missing from our Saturday meetings with students and their parents was worship. Emiliano León, Pastor of our Spanish congregation La Luz en Santa Fe, came and led a great time of worship with our families! He is going to develop a worship team from students in our program. Right now, we are busy raising funds to buy a basic sound system for this. It looks like we can get by with about $1,500 for the equipment we need. If you would like to help pay for that, we would love to add in your contributions.
It was really fun working with the families this last month as we introduced the topic of “Descubriendo mi propósito” (Discovering my purpose). Angel Gonzalez led the lesson for parents, Raymundo Minjares for high school, Emiliano León for Jr. High, Daniel Espinoza for elementary, and our whole team leading the college students. It was great to see our teachers creatively demonstrating the lesson for the students and parents, and interest seemed to be high!
While they were doing all that teaching, we had other volunteers, led by Cecilia Gonzalez, preparing tables of used clothing that had been donated. As soon as the teaching was completed, parents went and picked through the clothing, and we literally gave away hundreds of pounds of clothing!
Can you believe it? It is already time to plan our annual Christmas Fiesta in Palomas! This month we will be taking pictures of younger siblings of students in our program. Then, we will be looking for people who wish to provide a gift for them for the Fiesta! Also, sponsors, it is time to start shopping for your sponsored student! We would like to take many of the gifts to Palomas next month, as it is much easier if we can deliver presents there in the November trip, since there is so much going on in December with preparing the Fiesta.
We also held a meeting with the Pastors of the different churches represented, and started planning for our Christmas Fiesta, which will be on December 9 this year. Each church is planning to take a part in making the Fiesta successful, with activities, presentations, games, and a meal. Of course, we will be handing out the Christmas presents all of you sponsors provide as well! If you haven’t yet been to Palomas to meet your student, our December trip is a great time to do it! If you would like to come with us this month, Emiliano will be leaving from the church this coming Friday afternoon, October 13, and returning to Santa Fe Saturday evening, October 14.
This month, as we continue discovering our God-given purpose in life, we will focus on Romans 12:1-2 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice — the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is.
This is as important for us today as it is for them. As we see individuals and whole churches embracing unbiblical beliefs about culture in general and sexuality in particular, it is timely for us to remember that God sets the standards for our lives, and not us. If we really want to fulfill our God-given purpose in life, we must identify with God’s standards. It is instructive to look at the life of Paul as he faced the culture of his day.
As Christians, today we have become the outsiders. If we follow Biblical beliefs, our culture scorns us. It seeks to conform us to human “wisdom” rather than God’s standards. Think about how Paul dealt with his culture. He was writing to the church in Philippi while he was in jail in Rome, and he wrote: Phil 1:19-23 For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. NKJV
He wasn’t going along with the culture. He was calling out sin. He was calling out all those people who thought they were “religious” but were filled with attitudes and conduct that opposed God’s standards. He was calling out all those who had chosen to follow their own ideas of good and bad, right and wrong, and who had made themselves more important than God. He was calling out all of those who had made other things their gods, like money and power. So, they told him they were going to kill him. He said, “that’s all right, I’m already dead. I am crucified with Christ, so I am already dead. I am in Christ! To die is gain! I will live in Him forever!”
So, they said, “if that won’t work to shut you up, we will leave you alive and make you suffer.” He said, “that’s all right, to live is Christ! I know how to live in both comfort and hardship, with a full stomach and starving, I can do it all because Christ lives in me! (Philip. 4:12-13).
They couldn’t win with Paul. He was going to preach God’s standards and the power of Christ to forgive and transform as long as he was alive, and when his physical body was killed, he would be united Christ in eternity!
I pray we could all be as single-minded as Paul. When we are seeking to fulfill the purposes for which God put us on this earth, to bring Him glory and to expand His kingdom, in spite of how our culture wants to destroy our testimony, we will be living in the power of God that can lead others to salvation. May we stand firm!
Blessings,
Jim and Pat