But people, sometimes they’re the only way to just get the info out there.

So, the second week of February we were in Oaxaca. I wrote about that here.

The week or so after we got back, I began having bimonthly get-togethers with the sisters. We meet and eat cake and exchange burdens and ask for advice. We have a mini study on a woman in Bible and go home with our hearts full of God and sisterly affection. It is one of those things that goes 100% against my introvert grain, a major stepping out of my comfort zone. But, as usual, the most uncomfortable things often become one of the greatest blessings. I’m grateful David nudged me patiently into this space and for the Lord opening my heart and willingness to step out as Whittier says with stark beauty:

“Nothing before, nothing behind;
The steps of faith
Fall on the seeming void, and find 
The Rock beneath.”

David has similar discipleship meetings with the men when he is home. Minus the cake.

We had visitors at the beginning of March and David took them down to Chiapas, then the kids and I joined them for a week of teaching meetings in Villahermosa, about an hour and 45 away. There is a local couple working hard to see a group established there and it’s a joy to help them when able. A couple weeks later, we were back with another set of visitors. Aside from the nightly gospel meetings, we also held 3 open air meetings and drove around announcing the gospel and inviting from a loudspeaker in our van, which resulted in several joining us at the regular meetings. There were so many kids around at the open air, we went in one morning and had a children’s meeting on a covered street corner. Our visitors and colaborers came home with us for another week and were able to visit Carmen and Zapata as well. It has been a very joyous time to see the Lord working, souls saved, some restored, others reconnected in all three of these places.

After a couple days at home, just enough time to throw in some laundry and take a couple deep breaths, we came an hour east to the island of Carmen. We are currently here helping the assembly with a week of nightly gospel meetings. This of course means lots of packing text and invitation bags and door to door work.

The good thing is that we homeschool, so despite the groans, WW2 and division and Shakespeare and The Sea Around Us, pencils and lots of erasers, have followed us hither and yon, over hill and dale.

I can’t tell you how often the Lord’s words have filled my soul this last month. Harvest is ready. Laborers are few. Lord, we are so miniscule. The need is so great.

I also can’t tell you how often I have again lamented the scourge of Lupus. When you’re prohibited from feeling sunlight on your skin, it makes any sort of daytime outside work (like distributing literature) impossible.

But the Lord is so kind, so gentle to us his children. I happen to be ink drinking Susie, a biography of Susannah Spurgeon, Charles’ wife. Historians suspect she suffered from severe endometriosis. In severe pain, all accompanying travel and even meeting attendance ceased. While her involvement in some ways was seriously limited, the Lord opened other enormous doors for her sphere of service. Truly any branch abiding in the Vine will find the Vine abiding in it, tending and aiding in the development of gorgeous orbs of fruit for His own worthy glorification.

Boomeranging wildly off that last paragraph and because this is a newsy sort of post, here are the family current book reads:

D: Preaching and Preachers, Lloyd Jones; P: Susie, Rhodes and From Time Immemorial, Peters; F: The Seventeenth Swap (and probably like 7 others); M: Old Yeller; David to the kids: Mossflower, Jaques; Me to the kids: just finished Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry and Cheaper by the Dozen (certain parts omitted!), started King of the Mound today.

We be an eclectic bunch.

Beginning Sunday night, we will be holding a week of gospel meetings in our palapa (thatched roof, outdoor patio). The plan is to personally invite every single family in the village. Please pray. We need it.

We continue with our monthly magazine Bálsamo, which is geared towards believers, and is sent electronically throughout much of Latin America. We do have plans to begin publishing it in a physical format for those with no or limited access to internet here in Mexico.

Also, it is brutally hot, so despite world-wide consensus, the Yucatán on spring break is definitely unadvisable.