A Rocky Start

I must admit the beginning of August took an unfortunate turn over here in Northern Baja. My parents had been away celebrating their 25th anniversary in Mexico City while I was at home looking after my younger siblings. I remember I was just about to go to bed when my brother came over urgently with a phone in his hand. Pretty soon, I heard the news that there had been some criminal activity near the entrance of San Marino, the community in which we live. Apparently, the drug cartel was causing terror by setting cars ablaze and creating roadblocks in Tijuana and other neighboring cities.

We always knew about the huge cartel history of Mexico, but being here in person while it was going on was definitely a whole different feeling. Admittingly, for me, it was a bit scary at first because it was an experience I had never faced before. However, the Lord was with us, and He brought my parents home safely the next day. It was truly a blessing to go to church that night because, despite the terror, the church body faithfully showed up to fellowship and hear the Word of God together. It doesn’t matter what is going on in the world, the salvation message will still be preached, and I’m blessed to be a part of a church that is faithful to that call.

What Else Happened in August?

One exciting event that happened this past month was that Calvary Rosarito put on its annual church planting conference! I had attended this conference for the past 2 years, but this year I was able to be a part of the huge “behind-the-scenes” team that puts it on every year. Wow! Let me tell you, preparing to host 1,000 people at our church for a 2-day conference takes a lot of work! It was quite an exhausting week, but I was so so blessed to play a small part in running such an amazing conference. It is so awesome to see what God is doing through this church planting movement in Mexico and beyond.

Another beautiful thing to witness this month was our church’s annual beach baptisms! We do baptisms at the end of every month at Calvary Rosarito, but only once a year do we have them at the beach. So after service on the last August Sunday, the church headed down to the beach to watch 20 believers get baptized. That day, there were so many people getting baptized that 3 pairs of our pastors were baptizing each person simultaneously! I can’t tell you how incredible it was to watch one person after the other keep going forward to make that public dedication to the Lord. The weather was also great because it wasn’t scorching hot and the water was perfect!

Back to Life as Usual

It is so awesome to be a part of the work God is doing here in Rosarito. I’m still working on the church planting book with Pastor Mike Vincent, and this month I was actually able to start working on the cover design! Though I’m not doing the actual graphic designing (I definitely don’t have that gifting, haha), I had the opportunity to brainstorm some ideas to give as a guide to the design team here at our church. It was so fun to get creative, and I’m excited that another part of this book project is progressing.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read another update of mine! I really appreciate all the responses and messages from you guys. They mean a lot to me. I’m so grateful for your support and prayers for my family and me as we’re down here in Mexico. Also, so many of you wished me happy birthday this month! Thank you so much! It’s such a blessing hearing from you all💛

I’m so excited for these next few months. It’s such a blessing to have the life we do in Christ. I can’t wait to update you about what happens next!

God bless,

Lydia Boubion

Praise Reports:

• The Lord is teaching me to be content in Him alone!
• I had a great birthday!:)
• The book project is progressing more!

Prayer Requests:

• That my greatest delight would be in the Lord and His Word
• For all the people working on the church planting book, we would work with diligence and wisdom

📸More August Moments:

A Quick Recap

What a great summer it has been here in Mexico! After a fun vacation visiting my sister in Norcal for a week, I jumped into July back here in Rosarito. It was our church’s 20th anniversary, so Calvary Rosarito celebrated all month long! We put on a special event every Friday in July, such as a movie night, beach day, concert, etc. It was so amazing to reflect on how far this church has come!

The highlight of July for me, however, was definitely serving at the Connections House again. Connections House is a place/ministry that hosts missions teams in Rosarito. They host the Calvary School of Missions every July, which is the program that I went through back in 2020. It was such a blessing to be able to serve with them all again! I got to sit in on some of their classes and go with them on their outreaches for 2 weeks.

A Blessed Conversation

On one of the outreaches with the School of Missions, we put on a Family Event at a park with the church “Gracia del Calvario.” When I arrived, I didn’t really have a specific job to do to help run the event, so I just figured I’d focus on meeting some of the people in the community that came. Pretty soon, the Lord gave me the opportunity to meet an elderly man who had come with his family to the park before our team had arrived. It was only by the Lord that I was able to do this, but I ended up talking with him for a whole hour in Spanish! Though I couldn’t understand everything he was saying, I was able to grasp general ideas and keep asking questions.

To be honest, though I have grown up in the church all my life, one thing I have always struggled to figure out is evangelizing to complete strangers. I just couldn’t understand how I could talk with someone I had never met before and naturally transitioned into the gospel. I didn’t want to force it awkwardly or give them the gospel quickly in a cold way. 

As I was talking to this man at the park, however, the Lord showed me two answers to my questions and struggles. Sharing the gospel with a stranger will take time and faith. 

During my conversation, the Lord led me to first simply ask questions about his life and family. To genuinely want to listen to his story. This took time. But through it, there was a trust that was formed, and eventually, God led me to share the gospel with him, and he heard it with open ears. That was where it took faith. It takes steps of faith to ask strangers questions like, “do you know where you’ll go after you die?” But because I had stayed to listen to him for so long, he knew that I cared, and so he took the question seriously. 

It was so amazing to meet and converse with that man that day, and I know the Lord blessed that interaction in more ways than one. Praise the Lord for His guidance and grace!

What is Up Ahead

With the summer coming to an end, I’m excited to continue serving on staff full-time and edit my pastor’s book on church planting. We’re aiming to finish the final draft by December. After that, Lord willing, I will go on a vision tour to Japan for 2 weeks!

My biggest piece of news, however, is that I will be moving back to California at the end of this year! I’ll be moving to join the internship at Calvary Chapel Saving Grace in Yorba Linda. This internship prepares people who want to be sent out to do long-term cross-cultural missions. My heart is to be sent out with a church planting team to Japan one day, and so I’m very excited about this internship!

I’m also looking forward to seeing many of you again, and I want to thank all of you for taking the time to read these updates. Thank you so much for your messages and prayers; they mean so much to me. If you are interested in helping me raise enough funds to go on the Japan vision tour, there is a secure giving link at the bottom of this page that you can use. The trip costs $2,700, and I’ve had $1,000 for it so far!

Again, thank you so much for all your care and support as I’m serving here in Mexico. I’m so excited for everything yet to come. Talk to you again soon!

God bless,

Lydia Boubion

Praise Reports:

• I got to serve with the Calvary School of Missions again!
• Calvary Rosarito celebrated its 20th anniversary!
• The Lord has brought me more clarity and guidance in this next season

Prayer Requests:

• For the book project, I’m a part of
• For the Japan vision tour’s preparation and provision
• For my moving preparations in the next couple of months
• For my organization of time and priorities

Dear friends and family,

It’s been a while since I last wrote you in the Calvary School of Missions of 2020. What an incredible summer that was, where I received a calling to long-term cross-cultural missions! The Lord has done so much in my life since then, and one of the biggest updates is that He brought my family and me to live in Tijuana, Mexico! We moved last July, so we have just about been living here for one year.

I’ll give you a quick recap of what I’ve been up to during the last year! Last July through August, I was able to volunteer at a house that hosts missions teams in Rosarito. It’s called the Connections House, and it is the place that hosts the Calvary School of Missions every year during those months. It was so amazing to be involved in the School of Missions again, but differently, and to understand everything the staff does for the teams.

After the summer ended, I jumped right into a semester of bible college at CCBC Mexico in Ensenada! What a challenging but precious time in my life, where culture shock was hitting hard, but God was drawing me closer to Him than ever before. I learned so much in my classes there and enjoyed the breathtaking scenery of the hills in which the school was located. Not a morning passed where I didn’t wake up and was blown away by the natural beauty there.

Once that semester ended in December, God spoke to me very clearly that He was calling me to leave the bible college and come back down to Rosarito. So for the past 5 months, I have been a full-time staff member at Calvary Rosarito. I’ve joined the media team there and trained in videography and live streaming. Four days a week, I work at the church with my team from 8 A.M. until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. What a blessing it is to be involved in a ministry that’s a part of making an eternal impact on people’s lives! It brings me so much joy to be living the life I have in this season.

The main thing I do when I come in at church, however, is his work on a book project that the pastor of Calvary Rosarito is writing. He’s writing a book primarily for pastors who want to transform their church into a sending hub. A “sending hub” would be a church that sends out church planters to plant churches that plant churches, and so on. The Lord has allowed me to use my skills and passion for editing in this book project! And so Pastor Mike Vincent has recruited me to be the primary technical editor of his book. Currently, it is still in the writing process, and so the team on this book has just been doing content edits and suggestions. But yeah, that has been a super, super exciting thing to be a part of. I’m blown away that the Lord gave me this opportunity to use my passion in editing for His kingdom!

One last thing I want to share that I have been doing in Rosarito is attending Pastor Mike’s church planting school. I just finished my first semester at the end of May, and it was such a valuable and growing experience! In it, I learned how to prepare and present a women’s bible study every week. I also gained a lot of knowledge through the classes about the ins and outs of church planting and all the challenges and blessings that come. What a privilege it was to be a student in the school and be further prepared for the work God is calling me to one day in church planting.

As I continue on in the work God has called me to do here in Rosarito, I would love to invite you to partner in it with me. Your prayers for me and the ministry here would help so much as I continue to work with Mike on his church planting book especially. The content is so powerful and I wish to help produce it in the best and most clear way possible for the readers.

This winter I am also planning on going on a 2-week vision tour to Japan with a team and need to raise about $2,700. I would greatly appreciate any funds I can receive for this trip, and if you’re interested in financially supporting me, you can click on the secure giving link below this page. I am so excited for this trip and to see what the Lord has for me over there! Only about 1% of Japan’s entire population is Christian, and so the need for the spread of the gospel is great. My heart is to become a long-term missionary in East Asia with a church planting team, and so I’m praying about Japan.

Anyways, that wraps up today’s newsletter! Thank you so much to those of you who took the time to read it and partner with me in the work the Lord is doing. I never imagined the incredible life God has given me! He has placed me in opportunities I could never dream of experiencing.

Talk to you again soon,

Lydia Boubion

Praise Reports:

• I finished my first semester of Calvary Rosarito’s church planting school!
• My Spanish has improved a lot!
• The Lord has drawn me closer to Him than ever before over the past year.

Prayer Requests:

• That God would give me aid and wisdom as I edit Pastor Mike’s church planting book
• For the upcoming vision tour to Japan
• For the salvation of those in places unreached or restricted from the gospel