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"I know that God brought me here to hear this.  I am in charge of teaching the youth in our church.  Just recently some of the kids told me that they feels like I ‘stone’ them with the Bible.  The section on how to teach youth in a creative way and apply Biblical truth to their lives has been a great blessing for me. " - youth leader from Ecatepec

"These sessions have been so helpful.  You gave us so many ideas and tools.  Do you think it would be possible to plan another conference just for youth leaders so we can talk about these in greater depth?" - young woman from Santiago Tianguistenco
 

THANKS for your prayers for our conference here in Toluca last week.  It far exceeded our expectations! We'd anticipated 30 to 50 people but 130 people packed the room to capacity.  Unlike other conferences we’ve given, almost all of them were actual youth leaders.

 some of the 130 youth leaders at our  workshop After the first session our friend Javier, youth pastor of the sponsoring church, said "We have a problem. I don’t know how we are going to fit everyone in this room tomorrow after all of their friends hear how good it was today."   I wish you could have seen the excitement in their faces and heard their "amens" as Tim explained how youth are ripe for the harvest and are the agents of change that the church needs to reach and mobilize in order to impact Mexico for Christ.  They reaffirmed what our research has shown:   youth leaders here have the desire and commitment, they just lack training and resources.
As you can see, we love doing this. Especially
when we know were providing what's needed

But the most fun for us was seeing Javier catch the vision of working with not just the youth of their denomination, but also their leaders.  Throughout the past two years we’ve been explaining to Javier what our ministry here is.  We’ve been trying to get his church’s small group youth group model and their well developed materials into a format so that it can be shared with and benefit others.  Javier and the others in the church have always been positive towards us but too occupied with pressing ministry demands to look at how they might help other churches. Before the conference we had a wonderful meeting with him where he shared the direction in which God is leading him.  He sees the need to readjust his priorities and put energy into planning and organization, as he put it, "building a skeleton that can support the growth God is providing."  And he made it clear that he wanted to share their model and materials with others - and desired our help to that end.

Javier Rios (in light blue shirt) sharing his
church's model of youth ministry About a year ago we had pretty much given up hope that this would ever happen, but God in his perfect timing has started things moving again. And we’re excited about the potential.

Again.... thanks
we couldn't do it without you
really!

"We will continue to rejoice, for we know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ God was glorified."
(my loose paraphrase of Philippians 1:19)