Taco Juan

**(Due to the fact that this is not our personal story, we've changed some names)**

We may have mentioned Juan before, he's the owner of our favorite taco restaurant the Rancho.  He's been coming to our church since sometime before JP and I returned from the USA last year.

The other night, we went to the Rancho with some friends after JP preached at their church.  In a rare moment of non-busyness in the restaurant, Juan told us his story.

Our good friends, Luis and Sandy, had been going to the Rancho for some time when they invited JP and I (who, at the time, were engaged - circa 2008).  We immediately recognized the world's best taco upon eating there, and have been regular customers ever since.  Luis and Sandy had shared a bit with Juan about salvation in Christ.  He was interested in spirituality and was open to hearing what they had to say.  JP and I also talked a little with him about Christ.

Juan has a sister who lives in Canada, and she accepted Christ.  Because her town doesn't have a church service in Spanish, she looked for sermons online and found a Mexican church that offered live-streamed services every Sunday, so she began to tune in regularly.  Juan went to visit his sister in Canada, and she also told him about Christ, and encouraged him to attend a Christian church.

In 2011, our church, Horizonte Queretaro, got a new pastor.  He and his wife moved up from another city, and we took them to the Rancho.  They were hooked, and went frequently.  They, too, began sharing with Juan about salvation in Christ.

One day, Juan's sister came to Queretaro to visit.  She was in the restaurant talking with him about attending the church she tuned into online, which happened to be here in Queretaro, when suddenly that pastor walked into the Rancho!  It was Kike (KEE-kay), the pastor of Horizonte Queretaro, who was by that time a friend of Juan's.  Juan found all this to be too much of a "coincidence," and decided to go to church.  He began attending Horizonte regularly, then accepted Christ!  He now uses his restaurant as a way to point others to Christ as much as possible.

We had heard bits and pieces of Juan's story, but it was amazing to hear him tell how God orchestrated everything to bring him to where he is today!

(Just a side note: since me and another girl listening that night are from the United States, Juan piped up that he had spent some time in the US too.  "But it's in a place where hardly anyone from here (Queretaro) knows of - Portland Oregon."  Couldn't be closer to home for JP and I.  Literally!)

JP going after the "trompo" of BBQ  pork at the Rancho

My FAVORITE dish, BBQ pork and cheese taco

Going to "Edgar"

JP and I have been going to a particular economical "home cookin's" restaurant since probably before we started dating.  The place has a name, but we just call it "Edgar," because that's the owner's name.  Edgar and his wife, Monica, make the BEST healthy-ish Mexican food ever!  They've had so much business over the years that they now have three locations, and also provide the food to feed the illegal immigrants housed at Immigration every day (that's a whole nother blog topic...)

Shortly after we returned from the US in June, we noticed that Monica was wearing a scarf over her head all the time, and had lost a lot of weight.  Then we found out that she had cancer and was going through chemo.  We prayed with her and Edgar before she went to her operation in Mexico City.  They believe in God, but have always been taught that you can get to heaven by being good and partaking the sacraments.  They were wary of "salvation by grace."

Yesterday, we went back to Edgar after about a month of not going.  Monica had her hair in a cute curly girly style, and her operation had been a success, she is cancer free!  We thanked God with her that He cured her.  We also mentioned that we are going to be starting a Bible study with business owners in mind, and we'd like to invite her and Edgar.  Monica was VERY interested in this.  She said she knew it was good to read the Bible, but she just doesn't know how to understand it.  This is the same thing that Guadalupe, the storage unit administrator who accepted Christ with us, had said.  So the we're thinking the focus of the study first should be about how to and why read the Bible. 

Please pray that we may soon have a place to meet (like the living room of our house, or someone else's house) for this important study for business owners!  And thank God with us that Monica's cancer is GONE!  :)

Linguistics, Coffee, and Christ

Last week, JP and I had the opportunity to help out our friends Phil and Sandy, who also work with International Teams, with a new aspect of their cafe ministry to college students.  They run a super cool coffee shop - RenovArte - right in front of the Arts buildings of the main campus of Queretaro State University.  This university has around 25,000 students studying at several campuses in Queretaro. Phil and Sandy were asked to "sponsor" the Mexican Association of Applied Linguistics seminar at the Linguistics campus on the outskirts of town (not the campus their cafe is near), as 500 students and staff from around Mexico, and even some from other countries, would be coming to the campus for three days, and surely they would want coffee.  "Sponsoring" an event like this doesn't mean donating a service, just being there and selling your goods.  So this was a great opportunity for them.  So, since they couldn't leave their main campus cafe understaffed, JP and I, and three other girls, went to help out.

Ere (a student at the Linguistics campus, also works evenings at RenovArte), Sandy, Phil, and Jessica

The event went from 8am to 8pm for three days, and A LOT of seminar attendees were dragging by the first evening because there was just so much going on.  Espresso was very popular!  The students could choose one of 5 classes being offered during a block of time (I wish I could've gone to some of them!), or opt to skip a class block.  Several of RenovArte's regular customers who were at the seminars stopped by, as well as many people from outside of Queretaro.  However, those who study all the time at the Linguistics campus were very interested in having a RenovArte branch at their campus, so that could be a future plan!

Most importantly, we were able to chat with some of the students who were on lunch break, or had opted to skip a class block.  JP talked with one teacher who had survived cancer, about Eternal Life in Christ.  Several people, upon learning Phil was originally from Australia, asked why he had moved to Mexico, and he was able to share his desire to see the youth of Mexico know Christ.  Some of the Queretano students showed interest in stopping by the RenovArte location at the main university campus to talk more.  And that's what the ministry is about - sharing faith in Christ with students in a way that they know He is relevant in their lives.

 

JP and Phil serving customers

 

Phil and Jessica making paninni sandwiches

It was a tiring few days, but also a lot of fun!  This event may have been a step in the direction of opening up a second RenovArte - at the Linguistics campus - and building relationships with more young people.  JP and I were glad to be a part of it!

 

Enjoying coffees before disassembling the cafe

I was also excited to be able to try out my beginner's Portuguese with a girl who came to the seminars from Brazil!  I could understand her just fine, so maybe I'm doing better than I thought!  heehee! 

Neighbors Not Top 10

Thankfully, none of our current neighbors are NOT "not top 10" quality, but, such was not the case in 2008- 2010...


The house that JP and I lived in when we first got married was pretty much perfect!  (How many newlyweds can say that?!)  Perfect size, brand new kitchen, centrally located...  "pretty much" perfect.  Our house shared a wall with Kevin's family's house.  Kevin turned 15 when we moved in.  It was at his 15th birthday party (part of which was being held on our front porch when we came home at 11pm one night) that his dad gave him the car keys, and told him exactly which store to go to where they wouldn't ask for ID to buy more beer for everyone.   Not surprisingly, Kevin quit school after 9th grade.  Since he didn't have to go to school anymore, he stayed up late, but also got up early - we could tell because he had really really great sub-woofers on his stereo system.  You could feel those things from 6 am some days, and lots of time until well into the wee hours of the morning the next day.  After a particularly bad fight between Kevin and his dad in our back parking area, JP and I began to look for another house.  Then one day, they moved out.  And that was that.

Until today.

JP and I were walking home this evening, and who did we run into?  Kevin.  Apparently, he goes to the high school down the street from where currently live.  He is also working at a department store, and has plans to get an engineering degree from the state tech school.  The 10 minutes that we spent talking to Kevin was like talking to a different person.  Sure, he's 20 and just finishing high school, but he's going to get a high school diploma.  He has constructive plans for the future that don't include getting high and upgrading the sub-woofers.  (Well, maybe he still wants to upgrade those...)  JP and Kevin are going out to lunch soon.  We really hope that we can share more about Christ's love with him.  We really do care about him, even though it's so easy to list all the "not top 10" stunts he's pulled in the past.  And we know that God wants Kevin to be His child.  That's something we might just be able to help with! 

A "Chance" Encounter

The other day, JP and I were walking near our house, and passed a small café that we had passed many times in the past few months.  JP stopped and said that we should go in and see what kind of stuff they have on their menu.  We had just eaten, so I didn't particularly want to stop, but we did.  The café owner was there, and he let us see a menu.  He also mentioned that this was the last day the café would be open - business hadn't been good, so he was closing down that evening.  We lamented that the café would  no longer be around to try the food.  The owner asked us what we did for a living, and we said we were missionaries.  Instantly, his face lit up, and he asked us to please sit down because he wanted to talk with us for a while.  The owner told us that he had heard a few times recently about Christ, in a different way than many people in Mexico will talk about Him (usually it's all about doing good things and saying the right prayers to be able to hopefully go to heaven).  He had heard from somewhere else that "religion" didn't necessarily mean saying rote prayers and following the same ritual in hopes of being good enough to go to heaven.  We assured him that NO ONE can ever be good enough to go to heaven by their own actions - it's only  because of Christ's sacrifice and a relationship with Him that we can spend eternity with God!  We were in the café for quite a while, enjoying Italian sodas, and talking about the owner's spiritual questions.  He mentioned more than once that "fate" had brought us to his café that day.  We prayed for his new business venture in construction, and gave him our contact info, and times/place of our church service at Horizonte.  When we left, he hadn't made a decision to follow Christ, but we could almost see the wheels turning in his head, thinking about all we had talked about. 

It's amazing how God directs our paths to those who are open to hearing about Him!  Nothing is just by chance! 

Cafes are VERY popular in Queretaro!  So much so, that many open and never get off to a good start because the café market is so saturated.  So, like the owner that we talked to, some new cafes barely get off the ground before they are forced to close their doors. 

Storage...

What do YOU think of when you hear the term "storage unit?" 
This is what I thought of:

JP and I *may* have watched a *few* seas, er, episodes of this show while in the US...  heehee!

That's what I thought of when thinking of a "storage unit."

And then we called up the lady who's in charge of the storage unit that we still have here in Queretaro.  A simple call to make sure we were up to date on the payment, turned into an invitation for us.  The lady who runs the storage unit facility where we had our stuff stored during our time in the States asked if we could come out some day to talk to her about Jesus.  Wait, WHAT?! 

A quick background on our storage unit: we left our friend Luis in charge of "paying the lady" for us each month.  He is super busy, so he had a guy who works for him - Nacho - go out and make the payment.  The "Lady" got to know Luis and Nacho, and somehow a conversation got started over the course of several months about how they are Christians, and we - the people who's stuff is in the storage unit - are missionaries.  She started asking them about Christ.  And of course they shared with her.  So when we called up the other day about the payments, she asked if we could come and talk with her about questions she has about Jesus/the Bible/etc.  Um, YES!  Unfortunately, they storage units are outside of Queretaro, and there is no public transportation that will take us there.  But, we're going to be borrowing a car to go out there because this is pretty important!  How many times do you get someone you hardly know asking if you can come talk to them about Jesus?!  We'll definitely be making a way to take this opportunity!

Side note: I want to know how some of those storage units in California stay so clean inside...  Ours is well-packaged boxes and some furniture, and after a year and a half, there's a good half inch of dust on EVERYTHING!  Brandi NEVER ends up dirty while looking through a unit, and I was filthy after opening the two boxes that had my essential kitchen stuff in!  haha!

"Lucky You, You Live In Queretaro!"

This is what several announcements around our city say to all the Queretanos (people from Queretaro) that pass by.  We're lucky because we live here.  A quick glimpse around our city will tell you that,  we ARE pretty lucky to live here!  People from other states are moving in at a rate of approximately 140 people PER DAY to live in Queretaro.  Why?  We're the second safest city in the country (behind Merida which is near Cancun), and safety is a huge issue in Mexico these days.  We're the second cleanest city (behind Aguascalientes, a few hours north of us).  We have 8 (if I'm not mistaken) large industrial areas to provide jobs, and foreign companies are moving into Queretaro, making even more jobs.  The cost of housing seems quite economical to people coming from Mexico City (think Californians thinking $300 grand is a bargain home in Oregon).  The climate is pretty much amazing.  So there's a lot going for our city of now over 2 million.

 

Highway sign on the road between San Luis Potosi and Queretaro in the state of Guanajuato.

 

But... there's always a but.  If you take more than a cursory look at our lovely city, you'll begin to see what's really here.  People are hurting.  People have no hope.  People want to do whatever they can to get ahead, especially at the expense of others. 
80 percent of people in Queretaro drink more than one alcoholic beverage daily.  If you think about it, that's not just social drinking anymore, that's at problem level.  We have the highest rate of alcoholic women in the country.  Surveys say that girls as young as 12 are getting drunk on a weekly basis.  We have the highest rate of single mothers in the country as well.

Something is happening in Queretaro, and it's most notable among women.  I've seen women stopped in the street "road-raging" (screaming, hitting each other, keying the other's car...) with other women.  The other day, I was crossing the street and a bus *may* have cut in front of a woman driver (this happens ALL the time with the busses).  Instead of dealing with it and moving on with life like the rest of us do, she gunned the engine, drove alongside the bus, and started screaming a string words that I honestly don't think I'd ever heard a women say at the bus driver.  The other pedestrians and I were in shock.  It was a woman who waved a gun at JP and I a couple years ago when he wasn't driving fast enough on the highway.  Women are having severe anger problems.  Girls are the ones bullying others at school. 

Lucky you, you live in Queretaro. 

Lucky you, if you're a 12-year-old girl in Queretaro, you may get drunk this weekend.  Lucky you, you're more likely to be a single mom than the 12-year-old girl in any other state.  Lucky you, you may come home to an alcoholic mom.  And no dad.  Lucky you, you probably either get bullied at school, or are a bully yourself.  Or both. 

Lucky you, you live in Queretaro.

Pray for our city.  Pray for us, that we can be a beam of hope here.  Because God loves Queretanos! 

Back in Town!

Queretaro, that is!

Our first two weeks in Queretaro were filled with lots of phone calls to classified ads announcing places for rent, and driving all over our vastly larger-than-when-we-left city looking high and low for a place!  We finally decided to rent a room and bathroom until we find the perfect house to rent.  It's a big room, and there are abot 10 other similar rooms in the same area that all have the same gated entrance.  We all have our own bathroom, but share the same kitchen.  All the other renters are very nice and respectful - something that can be hard to find!  We're thankful to have found this place, and will stay here while we look for a house in the next couple months.

It  has been GREAT to see friends again here in Queretaro!!

Jessica with Karen and Pam at a crepe cafe!

We've also been able to get together with some of the people we'd been sharing Christ with before going to the States!  They are eager to meet up again, which has been encouraging!
This week, after setting into our temporary room, we were able to focus more on ministry and begin a plan for what this all will look like.  It's exciting! 
Much more to come in the nex few weeks!
We'll also be sending out an email update, and we put more details in those, since they aren't public on the internet.  Let us know if you want to receive those!

Our Stash

We just got more ministry resources!  When we invite our ministry contacts out to dinner we like to be able to give them something.  So how about a Bible!  Or a book that explains salvation by grace!  Yeah!  :)  We have a friend who gets super cheap ministry resources/Bible/etc, so we went and stocked up with her yesterday, as we were down to almost no Bibles to give away. 

JP has been sharing Christ with several of his work friends as they carpool home from the airport each day.  A couple of them have a Bible now - JP asked one guy if he'd read any of his new Bible (I believe JP recommended reading the book of John), and he said that he'd read a little bit, but his mom saw the Bible and took it with her to work to read!  So probably one of these Bibles will go to him!  :)

El Bajío

El Bajío (bah-HEE-oh) is the region of Mexico that we live in.  It includes the states of Queretaro, Guanajuato, and part of Michoacan.  This statistic was just shared with us in church on Sunday: this region - along with neighboring states of Aguascalientes and Zacatecas - is the region in LATIN AMERICA that is least evangelized.  And we live here.
 

Below is a map of Mexico with these states colored:

Queretaro is blue

Guanajuato is purple

Aguascalientes is red

Zacatecas is green

Michoacan is brown (the eastern-most part of Michoacan is considered part of the Bajio)

We've actually met a LOT of people who had never heard about salvation in Christ!  So many of the people we come in contact with (with the exception of those at our church!) believe that by being good, participating in the sacraments (baptism as a baby, eucharist, confession, confirmation, etc.), and praying to the saint of their church or city, they will be saved and go to heaven.  It has been sad to see so many people believe that, even though they don't have a relationship with Christ that they will go to heaven.  And we know that Jesus says: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."  John 14:6

God has been giving us some amazing opportunities to share the Message of Salvation with those around us (these testimonies will be in our upcoming newsletter).  Please pray that God will open the hearts of those we share with, that they will come to know Christ as their Savior.  And pray for us too, that we may have the boldness to speak the Truth to others!

View of Queretaro at night

You and You

In Mexican Spanish, we have two different ways to say the singular "you."  "Usted" (oo-STED) is the formal way, and "tu" (pronounced like "2") is informal.  Usted is used for: people who you don't know who are older than you (or over 40ish), people in authority (polititians, teachers, bosses, etc.). 
Then there's the whole thing of other spanish-speaking countries that have different rules for the use of "tu," or even don't ever use it, or use "vos," and lots of other things that we don't do in Mexico...

Anyhow, JP and I have been going out with one of his college professors to hang out and to share about Christ.  He's only like 7 years older than we are, but being JP's former college professor, he's automatically "usted."  In fact, we wouldn't dream of calling him anything else.  (That would be like going up to a college prof and being like, "hey what's hangin' dude!?" 

So, in one conversation between the teacher and JP, JP had the confidence to share with him that without Christ, he would not go to heaven.  While true, that's kind of a risky thing to say in a friendship!  But, instead of getting upset or offended, the teacher said he'd think about what JP had said and start reading the Bible that we gave him.  Then he told JP to please call him "tu" because they're now friends, not a teacher and student!  This might not sound like that big of a deal to English-speakers but it totally is!  We gained a lot of confidence with the teacher that day!