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Thiessen Newsletter August 2007 |
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Dear friends,
We're back in Oaxaca, the school year has started, and the busy summer slides into a busy fall. We just celebrated our seventeenth anniversary, started our fourth school year, and are well past the fifteen year marker in Mexico. This year we will focus on supporting the church start here in the city, supporting a church planting team in Tlaxiaco ( a market town two hours away, much like Tlapa and Ometepec), mentoring in a local network of kingdom workers, and the school.
We spent the summer in North Carolina, Texas and Florida. (I had started the summer a week earlier than the rest of the family by traveling to Ontario for my father's funeral. He died May 25th).
Winston-Salem was our first stop, spending time with three churches and many friends who support us. This is also where Phil comes from, and so we were able to describe opportunities for apprenticeships to those who know of his.
After the long drive to west Texas, we met friends at the convention of the Brethren churches there. This is Jill's home, so again, apprenticeship stuff was central. We visited a couple of other churches there, and also visited with Anne's sister, near Houston,
Anne's parents moved to central Florida a couple of years ago, and this was our first chance to visit them. A relaxed week there, and it was back to NC for repacking and final goodbyes.
Long stretches in the van gave Anne and me opportunities to think aloud about where we are at, and where we see ourselves going (where God is leading). We reflected on our original entry into the Mixtec world of Guerrero, how that has evolved, and how our time in Oaxaca has gone. We can see that for at least the next couple of years the spheres listed above are good places to pour our energy. Many factors change, but the central theme of being part of seeing churches form through discipling, reproduction, and providing learning situations for the North American church, including apprenticeships, remain the same.
I'm just getting back from a meeting with some new friends. Loreto, Nancy, and I met for coffee in the town square. They described their vision of starting churches that reproduce, and that led into a long dialogue about what that means and how that might happen, and the things that keep that from happening. Towards the end Loreto stopped, exclaiming, "I never realized that if we want to see churches reproduce, our actions at every step must be reproducible!" Mentoring is often that simple: waking each other up to the simple dynamics of what God wants to do through us. These are the moments that reassure me we are in the right spot.
As we have before, and often do out of your hearing (reading), we thank God for his faithfulness to us through you all. Many of you have supported us from the beginning (1988 for me!) and others have come into our life along the way. Each one of you is at the centre of a unique chapter in our own story, and we are richer in every sense because of that. Thank you.
Robert and Anne.
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