Ladies Meet in Los Yoses

Living in Los Yoses has given us an opportunity to reach out to our neighbors.  Annette has baked sweets for special occasions, and we have distributed them to those living close to us.  We have worked with language school missionaries in reaching out to our community by prayerwalking, knocking on doors and even showing a Christian movie.  Some have said that we would not be able to reach the people of our area because of their traditions, wealth and heritage.  Even the security measures work against us because most people drive into their garage through an electric gate and are almost never "in the street".        

                  We think that it is true... WE can´t reach our neighbors

                               in our own power, but Christ can!

One thing that has always amazed us in Latin America is the ease at which women will gather together and talk, drink coffee or do projects of some type.  Their nationality does not seem to matter, nor does the socioeconomic class from which they come.  The truth is women like to get together!  The frustrating thing is that men are not always willing to get together with people they don´t already know.  Men enjoy getting together with friends or compadres, but are rather slow to warm up to the idea of meeting new people.  We could go into many reasons for this and maybe analyze the inner workings of the male species, but suffice it to say; men are different.

Our experience has borne this out over the years.  In new church plants women are usually easier to reach than the men.  Our traditional church experience is just about the same.  If you look at the average crowd in a worship service, you will generally see more women than men.  Most of the traditional churches we have worked with started with work among women and children.  This is not necesarily true in every situation, but we can only speak from our own experience.

Annette has been organizing and getting some of the ladies in the community together with some of our language missionaries.  The idea is for the missionaries to practice their Spanish, make contacts with nationals and be able to share their faith.  It is also an attempt for us to get to know the community and get into the lives of people.  Recently six ladies from the community met at our house where they were able to get to know each other better, learn a recipe that Rebecca taught and even hear the language missionaries share a part of their journey.  Is the work easy?  No, but as we have said on numerous occasions:  
                                                                        Church Planting is Messy!

Our prayer is that one day we can see the hand of the Lord touch the lives of all that live in this small community of Los Yoses.

Don´t give up,

Mike and Annette