San Vicente Trip

9 Students from the campus, including myself, traveled down south to a city called San Vicente this weekend. We arrived Thursday night, and stayed until Sunday afternoon.

On Friday night we had a youth outreach, with John Greer as the main event. He did an awesome BMX (biking) show for the kids on some ramps we set up. The kids were totally stoked about that. After doing that for a while, he stopped to share his testimony with all of them, and then did some more riding.

At the end I got a chance to get up and share my testimony and the Gospel with all the kids there and pray for them. It was really awesome, there was a group of kids there that didn't know Christ and had been coming to a first offender's group because they got caught with drugs. I felt like God really used John and I to clearly share the Gospel with them.

That day the rest of the team went out to a labor camp to try and identify what indigenous groups there were living there. Once they were identified by using tape recorders they would get them gospel recordings of their language on tapes and bring them back to the labor camps. They were able to find 5 people that spoke indigenous languages, and we were able to get them tapes of the gospel in their dialects. There are over 290 languages spoken in Mexico, of different dialects and indigenous languages, its taken decades to get gospel recordings done for them all.

We met with a group on Saturday from New Tribes mission that is starting a church plant amongst the Trique. Their language is extremely difficult because it's tonal. This team has been learning the Trique language and culture for 4 years, and they still haven't even started the church. It takes a lot of dedication to learn their language and culture before you can really communicate the gospel to them well. We prayed for their team, and met up with a Trique family and enjoyed a meal with them.

There are so many indigenous groups of people in Mexico that don't have the Bible, or even a written form of their language. Thankfully people have taken the time to write the Trique language, and translate the Bible. The problem is there is hardly any Trique people that can read. So the challenge is to start a church and pass on the words of God through oral presentation. This team from New Tribes is dedicated, and is willing to spend the rest of their lives to reach the Trique's with the Gospel.

I was incredibly moved and challenged by their passion and dedication to Christ, and their love for the Trique. May God stir many more hearts to to go and reach the unreached, to seek and save that which is lost.

In Christ's love,
~Paul