Rancho de Sus Ninos

Hola!

We've been away for the past week in Mexico on a missions trip where we stayed at Rancho de Sus Ninos. We had an awesome, life changing time so we thought we'd fill you in on some of what happened....

We arrived at Rancho last Saturday, early afternoon after a really really long drive. We left Redding at about 2AM and arrived at about 2PM, the whole journey we rode in a bus. We were all really tired but excited about what the week ahead had in store. We were graciously given the rest of Saturday off to adjust to our new surroundings, apart from we had to be at dinner and we had a welcome talk we attended.

Sunday morning we had a church service which was great. The worship was amazing, the band were incredibly gifted musicians. Izzy was one of our team that was painting and painted a beautiful picture of a bird with various aspects of God's character in it's wings, reflecting Malachi 4:2. The service was a great introduction to the week ahead.

Sunday night we went and ministered in a small local church. To my surprise I was given the task of leading the kid's ministry. After a short time of panic, I thought through what would be good to accomplish during the time with the children and found some helpful and gifted people to fulfill this. We decided to get the kids active in hearing from God and to finish the session off by doing a picture for someone special to them and drawing what they thought God wanted to say to that person. The time went really well, loads of the kids came up with amazing and creative pictures and really seemed to engage with what was going on, even though we had to do the session through a translator.

Having gone on a trip to Uganda a few years ago I thought Mexico would be a kind of step up in terms of quality of living than Africa. Obviously not on a par with the US and UK but somewhere in between. I was shocked, Much of what we saw in Mexico was below the standard of living that we saw in Uganda which really took me by surprise. It was incredibly dry, the landscape was very dusty and most peoples houses were just bits of wood stuck together, nothing nearly as big as the garages we put our cars in. I guess I was ignorant to how Mexican people live.

The rest of the week followed a nice pattern of services with the Bible collage students in the morning, a couple hours of manual work where we helped install a water pipe, sewage pipe and lay foundations for a playground; and then in the afternoon we would go out to various places in the local area and talk to people and invite them to events that were being held. We got to play with the kids who go to school at the Ranch on a couple of days too which was awesome. All of the kids that stay at the Ranch are orphans and it was a pleasure to be able to spend time with them, in my case it was giving them various balloon animals and shapes that we made. The love of God was so evident in their eyes. Even though the world may have forgotten about these kids and these people, God certainly hasn't, it was so humbling to spend time with them. I must say I am in awe of the work that Jimmy and Genea Horner are doing in Tecate, Mexico. It truly was a privilege to be able to partner with the work they are doing.

The group we were with was great too. There was about 57 of us I think, many of whom we had never met or seen around school but by the end we were like a family. It was great to spend the week with them and getting to know them, it was such a great group that was led amazingly by Ben Armstrong, one of the Revival group Pastors at our school of ministry. I could go on and on about what we did, what we saw, but I'm going to leave it there for now. Maybe we'll fill in some details as the weeks go by. I must tell you about the Friday night we had. Friday nights are there healing service, so in the main hall they have a worship and prayer service and some of the class rooms off of the main hall serve as healing rooms where as people are called they head into one of the classrooms to be prayer for. Needless to say, Jesus got some of what He paid for and many people got healed or set free from things that had them in bondage. Absolutely awesome time, such a blessing to be able to serve them at this service. We also got to see a brand new centre they're about to open which is going to be a healing home. It's for people that are terminally ill and doctors have given up hope. They will be able to stay at the home and be cared for and ministered to by the staff there. Such an awesome thing to be doing.

We really hope this wasn't our last time at Rancho de Sus Ninos. It's a very long way from home but we hope one day we'll be back. We were so touched and moved by the staff, children, and students. May God bless them exceedingly abundantly above all they ask or think.

Until our next post, Byeeeeeeeeeeeeee! or Adios!