It feels appropriate that the 100th post on this blog should be the one before us: news and philosophical rabbit holes. But first, let’s celebrate. 100. It’s taken me a few years to get here (my very first post here was in 2019) which makes it even sweeter. Thank you to each of you who have faithfully read all 100 and for each one who has sent in likes and comments and private messages; they have been a huge encouragement along the way. Many posts have been an outpouring of a broken heart, others the overflow of gratitude and still others have been the product of forced typing, filling a psychological if not emotional vacuum. Your presence and willed sharing of our lives through each of these situations is one of the most healing things the Lord has given us.

My last post found us on our way to Oaxaca for a month. We have been home now for a few weeks. The kids lived afternoons in our little kiddy pool to escape the heat until a tropical storm blew by leaving us lots of delicious rain and cooler temperatures after months and months of dryness. Three of them have had interesting medical scares this month–one ended up in emergency with what appears to be some pre-fainting dehydration-induced episode, one had a bad fall straining ligaments and leaving their head and shoulders at a weird angle until a random chiropractor in Carmen came to the rescue and got us straightened out and one was stung by a baby (thankfully!!!!!) scorpion. The littlest has gotten by with a fever, which we can definitely deal with. Our washing machine is out of commission so we are drowning in laundry but we are finishing school this week so all is good. I’ve just finished planning our Charlotte Mason exam week where the kids basically get to demonstrate everything they’ve learned and the skills they’ve improved in almost 20 subjects/categories. The feast is wide and abundant…now to find out how much they actually ate. The end of the school year is exciting but also nerve-wracking. I somehow now have to decide on all our books for next year and I get to face the fact (again) that we are and forever will be behind on math.

The believers in Oaxaca kindly received us and their invited friends and family each Sunday and Tuesday to Friday for a full month. Prior to most week night meetings we also had a study with the believers going through The Mortification of Sin by John Owen, which they absolutely loved. They were reading Screwtape Letters on their own and it was fascinating to hear the connections they made between the two books. The average Mexican reads 1/2 a book a year; somehow we imagine that getting saved will automatically turn people into readers, reading their Bibles daily and looking for help in commentaries and other resources. As with anything relative to the Christian life, we have realized that even this must be taught and modeled.

One of the believers was baptized, a few unsaved attended the meetings and a new family started to come as well. Our goal for the month’s visit was simple yet profound. We wanted to equip and encourage them to continue to meet on their own, at least on Sundays, despite their shyness, despite their relative newness, despite their solitude. But that is clearly a work of the Holy Spirit– no amount of human reasoning or cajoling will do the heart work of conviction that believers must gather to collectively worship and be fed. So we prayed and prayed and had the studies and meetings and visits and answered so, so many wonderful questions and stuffed ourselves with coffee and pan dulce and prayed some more. After meeting the night before we left, one of the brothers looked up from his coffee. “Brother David, we were talking and we have decided that in all our weakness, we are going to trust in the Lord that He will help us to meet every Sunday.”

David and I both felt emotional. Answered prayer. Believers who willingly are feeling the weight of seeing a church established, believers who, cognizant of their weakness, are willing to run to God, believers who are sacrificing their time and resources to study and prepare and teach, to invite and visit, to prepare meals and refreshments. This is the work of the Holy Spirit and Him alone. We worship the Godhead, our hearts bowed in humility, that He would willingly be co-laborer with sinful, fallen man. May God work in His immense power in Magdalena Apasco that an assembly will be established there for His honor and eternal glory.

I feel compelled to add a note here. There are some who teach that men cannot teach or have responsibility in a new work unless they are members of a local church. We fundamentally beg to differ. Logically and historically, this is senseless. There was no local church in the gospels when the Lord sent the disciples out to preach. The believers post Pentecost saw churches established when they traveled home without having been an official church member. Men like Luther left the Catholic Church and saw assemblies established without an antecedent of membership in a biblical gathering. The idea that a man, saved, baptized and just as filled with the Holy Ghost as you and I cannot work to see an assembly formed in his home because he’s never broken bread is only promoted by people desirous of power and control. Thank God for men all through history who have quietly labored to see a small group won to Christ with no affiliation to a denomination, missionary or organization, but rather have simply acted on the truth they have learned from the Scriptures.

Since getting back home, the van hit 400,000 km and we have focused more intently on the town of Atasta, which is only about a half hour away. We now hold regular meetings there each Sunday and Wednesday; before we would agree on a day that worked for everyone each week to have a study around their table. This is a huge step. It is much different to have set days and times, to have a pulpit and the chairs set facing the front. This family left a pentecostal church and initially just wanted studies to understand God’s Word better. The father of the family had the idea that he would learn from David to then go and teach the pentecostals in a more biblical fashion. With time though we have sensed a shift towards wanting to see something established in their home and therefore the more formal meetings as well. The men have begun helping with singing and prayers and psalm readings and we are working with them to schedule times for visits to invite more to come, although they do this to some extent already. We are going through the book of the Acts with them, again with the purpose of working towards the formation of another assembly. On Sundays we have a teaching meeting followed by Sunday School, then most weeks they invite us for a meal. Today they fried fresh mojarra and shrimp, served up with tortillas and salsa mexicana. I know nothing of frying fish (hello Midwest, America) so offered to help with dicing the tomatoes and onions–typing even now, 8 hours later, my fingertips are burning with the residue of habaneros. Not sure what that does to your stomach lining but gastritis notwithstanding, they continue to be the chile of choice all across the south.

Last week we were also with the group that meets near Mérida, Yucatán. There are two couples saved and baptized; their children are now all grown and some even with their own children, but none of them are believers. They attend the meetings and bring their little ones and so we pray that these 8 young adults would trust Christ. How we would love to see a church formalized in that town as well! Those men also faithfully preach the word each Sunday evening.

Elections were held here in Mexico recently as well. Without getting political, we simply ask for your prayers for this country and for continued safety and freedom in the gospel.

David is reading the Body of Divinity (Thomas Watson) with the kids and since I recently finished the Discarded Image (C.S. Lewis), we are living in the joy of the Prime Mover, referenced in both works: that immoveable, transcendent God of the universe who is the initiator of all action and movement. To trace each ceaseless labor, each swirling need, each chaotic event back and back and back past the noise of this time and space to the fixed and permanent throne of God is to find rest, a daily sabbath. And, to bask in the rushing flow of His love pouring out from His perpetual self, moves us on to deeper love, carrying us ever forward. Rest and the impetus to continue to labor found in the same incomprehensibly wonderful being: maybe that is a little bit of what Christ meant when He said to His disciples “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”