Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, 12th-14th October 2011

Wednesday, 12^th Oct we left the beach at Chachalacas, Veracruz where we had been resting as a team. We got to Oaxaca in 9 hours where we slept overnight in the home of the pastors there. In the morning we split up according to what we felt the Lord was saying to us individually. 7 of us left the larger team and went to the town of  Noxchitzlan, Oaxaca, about an hour away.

This town has been my favourite part of this Latin American journey so far! We arrived to find out we were staying in the church grounds, which also had a school and they were building a missions base there. They have 24/7 prayer there where they take different shifts of about 2 or 3 people at a time and pray throughout the day and night! We had noticed that as soon as we entered the gates in our vehicles we felt a significant atmosphere shift to peace. 24/7 prayer had to be the reason why! We popped up our camper, “Shalom” for the girls and the boys were given a room to sleep in with a bed and couch… so happy for them, as mostly they have been sleeping in their cars or tents. It was freezing cold there after having been hot at the beach. We layered up and went to visit a friend of Maria’s (team leader, from Mexico originally). We went there to pray over the family and as we visited we were fed a 3 course meal! It turns out they own a catering business. We were so happy to eat a real 3 course meal, and it was healthy good food as well! We prayed over the 2 Grandparents, their children and their 2 grandsons. Speaking prophetic words over them we later found out that they were spot on and exactly what they had been going through. We were so blessed to be able to visit and pour out in the supernatural as well as get fed in the natural! Maria’s friend then took us to see some of the sights of Oaxaca City – we big churches, beautiful architecture, we found ourselves in the middle of some kind of parade (“Arriba!), we had hot chocolate from Mayan times and I was able to finally buy a phone for Central America.

Thursday, we all piled into Overflow and drove up the steep mountains to a little community about an hour away. We visited the church there – 5 families who have come to know Jesus over the last 10 years. They have experienced a lot of persecution from their community. They were kicked out and had to travel to appeal to the government so they would be allowed back to their homes. They are still persecuted and we could not go door to door as we normally do. A couple of years ago some Canadians visited and had to leave the town in a hurry. We still had an amazing time, praying for the families there and leading a church service that night. Before we even headed down to the church, we were at a pastors house and prayed for one of their mother’s who was blind in one eye. We prayed over her, asking Jesus to come do what He loves to do and declaring her healing. We then tested it out - Maria asked her how many fingers she was holding up, “two, five”, yes Jesus! Then one of the boys had her following his finger with her eye, and finally Maria asked her to name the colours on her top. Thank you Jesus for pouring out your healing power!

That night Maria, Taylor and I led worship – we translated a couple of songs into Spanish, and went for it… Personally I felt like it was hard lead the people into the presence of God. It felt hard and different I guess because it was a different culture. Also the keyboard didn’t have a pedal… if you play keys you’ll understand! But it turned out awesome. While we were preparing, one of the guys encouraged me to just go with the Holy Spirit and leave the Spanish if I felt let to, and just sing whatever He led me to in English. So we were there trying to break through in worship in Spanish, and we kind of came to a standstill… Maria confirmed to me to just sing whatever in English. So I started to sing the chorus of “I Just Want You” (Planetshakers). We ended up translating it on the spot to Spanish and the Holy Spirit came in greater presence and power. We ditched the original plan of “worshipping for ½ hour” and Maria sharing her testimony, and just kept worshipping instead. His sweet presence was there so thick and so sweet that we just could not stop worshipping. Maria called forth everyone who was sick to be prayed for. One of the significant testimonies out of that time was a young couple with a baby whose marriage was restored, forgiveness was released and they wept and hugged each other as the Lord did his work in their hearts of reconciliation. Breck did an awesome job of driving us home in the darkness down the mountain trails, following only the GPS’s blue line of the way we had come previously. It’s quite funny because a lot of the time, the roads we are on are just not even on the GPS – it just says the direction we are travelling and shows the terrain!

Friday, we had a sleep in, then met up with a local missionary (Marie) to visit some of her people. First we visited the mother of one of Maria’s friends, where we prayed over the mother, her husband, the grandmother (great –grandmother age) and another of the mother’s friends. The friend and the grandmother both gave their lives to Jesus!

Marie took us to another mountain village, where we went house to house and prayed for people. Some of them were believers already, others were not. We prayed for many people, including a woman who had had a stroke and was paralysed the whole of her left side. Her left arm and hand was curled up and she could not talk, however was able to understand us. We bent down and greeted her one by one – as I took her hand, she lifted mine up and kissed it. I think she thought I was Mexican. Myself and a couple of the other women knelt by her bed and loved on her. I tried to ignore the smell and the bits of dried up skin all over the bed. As I looked into her eyes and stroked her hair I could feel Jesus’ intense love for his daughter. We found out that the people around her all thought it was God’s judgement on her that she was sick. This mindset mainly comes from the particular religion that prevails around Mexico. They had also been to the witchdoctor in the past in regards to her healing. We spent a bit of time with her and her husband, just loving on her… I know Jesus would have done something in her heart, and pray that she would know complete healing in Jesus’ name! Most of all, that she and her husband would know such a deeper intimacy with Him than they ever have before. It makes me think of the elderly men and women in our own hometowns and cities in the west. Who takes the time to go visit them? In these villages out here and even in Africa, I have seen the sick and elderly stay in their homes while relatives look after them. In the west, they go into nursing homes… While some do get visits by family on a regular basis, many do not. What does love look like to them? How can we love on them? You don’t have to be extra specially talented or amazing to go and love on someone :) Listen to their stories. Share with them, love on them.

We were running at least an hour late to get back to the church, however had to stop one last time to pray over the family at the place we had eaten lunch. We also prayed over our translator who had been translating for us from Spanish to Mixtteco. He has a strong prophetic anointing and is going to see the fire of God spread all over his village and the villages around. He mentioned to us that he couldn’t hear properly in one of his ears. We didn’t know that! So we prayed and Jesus healed his ear! We asked him if anything was different, he stopped, checked, and a look of absolute amazement spread over his face! He said, “It’s normal!” and burst into tears, grabbing each of us one by one into a fierce hug. He then grabbed his wife who was also in tears, and they laughed and wept joyfully in celebration of what Jesus did for them!

We then drove back to the church, dropping Marie (missionary) off on the way so she could take a bus back and catch a bible college class. She has been there for 10 years and is so faithful – having just seen real breakthrough and release in the last couple of years. I want to encourage any of you who have been ploughing for years, to keep ploughing, continue to make JESUS and INTIMACY with HIM your first and primary goal and time taker… Listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit. He will lead and guide you, obey what He says and you will see Him pour out!

- Serena

http://adventureswjc.blogspot.com

Mexico wrestling outreach

Missions is life Mexico

mexico quadbiking the dunes

On the Road- Mexico

We have about one week left before we cross into Guatamala. Our journey in Mexico has been amazing and full of miracles, salvation, and divine encounters. Our team is becoming more and more of a family and learning to live together. It seems we have been on the road so long already and is hard to think that we are still only at the beginning of this Mission's journey. God is so faithful and is always stretching our faith more to beleive in Him when we reach past the end point of our own capacity.

Luchadores por Cristo VIDEO

Two Villages Touched by the Finger of God

Actopan, MexicoThursday, October 6, 2011.
Two Villages Touched by the Finger of God

From Mexico City our Iris Latin America team drove two days to Actopan in Veracruz, with some major run-ins with the police along the way who wanted to pull our caravan over on numerous occasions and take our money. Even with these kinds of inconveniences, we set our faces like flint toward our destiny to bring God’s love, glory and revival throughout all of Central and South America.

.

We arrived in Actopan on the day of a major fiesta celebrating Saint Francis of Assisi. Although we were tired from maneuvering our RVs and pop-up trailers down narrow gravel roads and setting them up in our hosts’ covered patio area, we wanted to join in the festivities…of course, we celebrate Jesus and the freedom that He brings, so in this very vein Jesse, Breck, Taylor, Ben, Rose, Liz and I went to the center of town where we saw a crazy crowd of people chasing and being chased by a hand crafted bull carried by joyous Mexicans. As if that wasn’t enough of a spectacle, the bull had fireworks attached to it and sparks were shooting out onto all the people who were being chased by this bull. So what does the only group of white people do in a situation like this? Start chasing the bull, of course! The Mexicans went crazy and started cheering us on. At the first chance that we had, we grabbed a hold of the bull ourselves, put it on our shoulders and began chasing the crowd. They loved it, cheered us on and each of us guys had a chance to take the bull and chase people. On top of this, people were lighting fireworks all around us and the fireworks themselves were chasing people, which is pretty dangerous I must admit….so dangerous that Taylor ended up getting his finger burnt by one of them.

.

The Village of Chicuasen

The first full day that we spent in the Actopan area we visited two separate villages. The first village that we went to was the village of Chicuasen. Our team went door to door inviting people to a meeting we were to hold at 1pm. We visited people’s homes, prayed for the sick, and even led many to Christ before the service even started. One Mexican from the local church and I went to pray for a man that was completely blind in one eye and could barely see out of the other eye. After we had prayed three times for him, he began to see out of the blind eye, enough to follow my hand as I moved it, and then could see perfectly out of the other eye. What an amazing miracle! As the people gathered for the service at Paco’s house, our team played games with the children in the front yard. They were all so full of joy! Then we started our service off with a special treat. The men on our team have been so heavily influenced by Nacho Libre and Mexican wrestling that we have all bought luchador masks. We performed a sweet drama about a wrestler (played by myself) whose tag-team partner is Jesus Christ (played by Ted). Three other luchadors came in to wrestle me; sin (played by Ben), sickness (played by Taylor) and the religious spirit (played by Breck). I kept being overcome by these wrestlers all the while Jesus is sticking out His hand for me to tag Him and let Him fight for me. Finally, after getting beat up pretty badly, I slapped Jesus’ hand and he beat up and overcame sin, sickness and the religious spirit. The courtyard was packed with adults and children who loved our skit. I explained the more of the meaning behind the skit. Then Jesse explained the gospel even further. Nearly everyone present raised their hands to make a first-time decision to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which was about 50 people altogether. Then we had prayer for the sick. Many were healed.

.

The Village of Coyolillo

After ministering in the first village, we drove another 40 minutes to a second village called Coyolillo where we heard that the villagers there were black. Come to find out upon arrival, they just had darker skin than in other villages. We also noticed that many of them had blue or green eyes. We had heard that there were witch doctors in the village and we could definitely feel a spiritual heaviness as we took the same approach as in the previous village by going door to door, praying for the sick and inviting everyone to a meeting that we were to hold at 7pm at the Salon Social. The team that I was on prayed for a man’s back and leg to be healed. He was completely healed and ended up coming to the meeting. At the meeting there was a time of worship followed by our luchador drama, which we are perfecting as time goes by. This time Rowan played the part of Jesus. Again, the skit went over well. The people loved it. Breck preached the gospel afterwards, Gillian gave a testimony of healing and Jesse gave an altar call where about 15 people entered into a personal relationship with Christ. Tons more came forward for healing, too. The service continued on into the night as the Holy Spirit was poured out in that place. As we all sat around the dinner table that evening to share a meal together, I pondered the day’s events and knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt that two villages had been touched by the finger of God.

.

Christian Jung