Hey all! Here’s our update for July, but a quick look at the past few months. I have added photos of some of the things we’ve been up to since our last update.
Lots of things have been going on. Calvary Oaxaca turned 3 at the beginning of the year. We had a great time celebrating at a local park/lake. It has been such a blessing to see the people who attend the church grow in their walks with the Lord. We’ve had some of the same people since the very beginning of the church and lots of new people too. They all have hearts to serve Jesus and have come alongside us in amazing ways.
In the past months, we have celebrated Dia de Los Niños, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and other things. It’s always fun to have a reason to have a potluck and hang out together. And we had a baptism and a baby dedication! The men’s ministry just finished their study for the time and will start back up soon. The ladies finished the book of James (an amazing book of the bible) and are now doing Kay Smith’s book on Philippians.
In June, Hurricane Agatha hit the coast of Oaxaca pretty hard. We were able to buy bags of essentials like beans, rice, flour, etc., to take to two towns. Thank you to those who donated to this specifically because we were able to take a team of 9 people and hand out over 150 bags, plus tons of donated clothes. This was the first official mission trip for Calvary Oaxaca and Allison’s first short-term trip plus driving for that amount of time. (Jon and the boys were unable to go because of a commitment.) What a blessing it was to meet so many people who were so happy to just be loved and prayed for.
Last weekend we had the huge honor of having Pastor Dan Finfrock come to Oaxaca to teach two days of the Inductive Bible Study class that he wrote. He travels all over the world to teach this awesome class, so it was a huge blessing to have him come to Oaxaca. An added bonus was that his translator was a young lady we met during our time in Rosarito, Andrea.
The biggest news is that Jon is now teaching in Spanish!!! We lost our translators over the past couple of months, and Jon really felt that this was God’s way of stretching him to take this next step. So this is also our biggest prayer request: that the Lord would continue to help Jon in this area.
That’s a quick version of what we’ve been up to lately. There’s also so much more we could share. Oh, that boys both finished 9th grade and are super excited (sarcasm) to start 10th grade soon. They are doing well, playing video games with friends online. Please pray for their Spanish to improve and for them to have a strong desire to learn and speak it more.
We have three teams coming up over the next few months, and our dear friend Frank who will be helping us for a few months, can’t wait! It’s always such a blessing to show our friends from other parts of the world all that God is doing here.
We will be in the states later this year to welcome our first grandbaby…a girl! Please keep Austin and McKenna in your prayers as they prepare to become parents. And send any and all grandma and grandpa name ideas to us. Haha!
Thank you for keeping us in your prayers…we sure feel them all the time. We are so grateful for all of you who are on this journey with us in prayer and financially as we serve the Lord here in Oaxaca!
Jon, Allison, Jonny, Noah Brechtel