March/April 2016 - Keneutanautsa - …So run, that ye may obtain. 1 Corinthians 9:24b

March/April 2016

…So run, that ye may obtain.  1 Corinthians 9:24b

It’s a given. Every single true believer in Jesus Christ is in the race. We’ve been selected, exhorted, trained and disciplined to run legitimately, with self-control and patience, enduring to the finish in order to obtain the prize of God’s upward call to be with and be like Christ Jesus in all His glory. The prize is not exclusive; it’s offered to every single certified athlete who finishes the race.

For the past two months, the work in Tepic and the surrounding Huichol villages has been chock-full of the reality of the selection process, training, discipline, and the endurance of some very motivated athletes in this marathon.

“Keneutanautsa” is the Huichol word for “Run!” That was the theme of this year’s Huichol youth campthat was patterned after the upcoming 2016 Olympics. We laughed out loud as we reflected on the disaster it would be if the Olympics were held in the Sierra Madre:  On your mark, get set, Keneutanautsa! Six syllables! This helps explain the difficulty of the Huichol Old Testament (OT) translation process. The nine mother-tongue-translators (MTTs) are modeling amazing discipline and perseverance on this project. The goal is in sight.

We made the decision early on, that in spite of very limited resources and the very rustic facilities we have available for hosting our camp, we would not limit admission. Every single person who wanted to come was welcome. The logistics of getting everyone to camp are overwhelming. We expected around 100 Huichol campers; 147 came, along with 20 Huichol volunteer cooks, an army of outstanding IBBM-Tepic youth staff, a few observers from other states who wanted to learn by experience how to go about organizing a successful youth camp, and a team of well-prepared Huichol teachers for a grand total of 222.

We wrote the curriculum in Spanish, and the OT MTTs translated it into Huichol. The IBBM youth staff organized and carried out corresponding extreme games, music, and related activities. The campers learned what God’s Word says about becoming one of His athletes (like Timothy), the race that believers are to run (not like Demas, but like John Mark who, though he deviated from the track, got back in line for a winning finish) and the prize He has prepared for all who finish the race (like the incorruptible one Paul received).

The day after camp was over, Good Friday, Pastor Refugio and the believers from the church at La Bendición hosted a big baptismal celebration.  Eighteen new team members who have recently joined in this race proved their willingness to run legitimately. Several of those 18 are from Tutuyekuamama, a very remote village that the La Bendición teammates have been painstakingly evangelizing and training. (Salvador’s story is here.)

The following week, nine diligent, disciplined, self-controlled, and patient Huichol students finished a big lap around the track, completing five years of the Theological Education by Extension (TEE) course. Pastors Martín and Nacho from IBBM-Tepic have also run with endurance as dedicated and exemplary coaches. The student graduates have already branched out to a half-dozen other Huichol villages to hand off the torch they’ve been passed, teaching other racers who are anxious to join the relay and run, as well.

Pastor Hilario from Los Aires has taken on the job of “trainer” for the relatively new little village church at Mojarras. He travels on foot for hours from Los Aires to reach the village, and he has worked with them in establishing their own local church. They have diligently dug the foundation, made their own adobe blocks by hand, and raised the walls for their new meeting place. The team members from IBBM-Tepic came alongside to help to finish it off before the rainy season hits, giving them a missions offering to buy the metal roofing materials and pay for transporting it as far as a truck can go toward the “uttermost parts of the earth”. From there, the heavy pile of 3¢ x 6¢ metal sheets had to be hand-carried for hours to the village. Diligence and endurance in the race are easy concepts for them to understand.

There is, no doubt, a great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, as well as many teammates still here cheering on and enabling the runners of this amazing squad. May we all run well, the race that is set before us, with our eyes fixed on the Goal as we press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.  …So run, that ye may obtain.  1 Corinthians 9:24b

May/June 2011 “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:”

May/June 2011

“And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:”  2 Corinthians 9:8

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it is..."   No such thing as Mission Impossible; God’s all-sufficient grace has proven to be always more than enough for every good work.

15^th Huichol Old Testament translation Workshop - Mother-tongue-translators (MTTs), diligently committed to the project, have worked in their respective remote mountain villages to finish nearly 90% of the Huichol Old Testament in first-draft form. They all faithfully attend workshops in Tepic along with the trained linguist consultants for the purpose of team-checking the drafts. 10 % has been printed for community testing. A back-translation, consultant check and final proofreading are still necessary steps before publication. The team has a long way to go before this virtually impossible job is done. They met in Tepic the first 2 weeks of May to continue reviewing God’s work in history through the Genesis patriarchs and begin reviewing Job. The task is formidable, but there’s no such thing as a Mission Impossible.

José Lopez returns to the Sierra Madre – June 3 was a day of practically impossible historic significance! José López finished a week of teaching Theology Education by Extension (ETE) to students in the remote village of Los Aires. Remember…we prayed after his excruciating surgery last year for his leg to heal for this very purpose? UIM pilot, David Wolf, airlifted him to the Tierra Blanca strip; José hiked 45 minutes to Los Aires, then we picked him up at Tierra Blanca a week later. Though we had our doubts that José would ever again return to the Sierra Madre villages, there is no such thing as a Mission Impossible.         

Discipleship trip to Mojarras - Román, an MTT, and 9 other Huichol believers from La Quemada followed their nearly impossible Divine calling to hike 6 hours with musical instruments in hand to the village of Mojarras (They got lost on the way which added another hour to the trek.) for the purpose of fellowshipping, teaching and encouraging in their Christian walk, the brothers and sisters of that very remote village. (The young people who came to the seemingly impossible first ever Huichol camp in Tepic in April returned to their villages with a spark that has reignited the thirst for God’s Word.) Emilia, another MTT (another impossible feat… for a Huichol woman), discipled several of them in her recent “mission” trip to Los Aires.  

Just before Román left Mojarras to return home to La Quemada, one of the brothers who had been happily photographing events of the “fellowship meeting” with his newly-purchased, second-hand digital camera, agreed to pass the pictures from the memory card of his camera to Román’s OT translation laptop, Maricuxi.    (I sure would have loved to have seen those pix!) Of course, Román was incredulous and horrified when the alarms sounded that an invading virus was detected…from a CAMERA memory card, no less. Another valuable cyber lesson learned, but alas, too late. This was a very costly and time-consuming setback, but thanks to Kaspersky, Panda, Wycliffe tech support and mostly God’s all-sufficient grace in all things, it was not a Mission Impossible. 

IBBM-Tepic Baptisms - Ten new believers from the Iglesia Bíblica Bautista Misericordia – Tepic (IBBM) gladly identified themselves publically as followers of Christ. We planned an all-day church-wide outing to a campground near Tepic to celebrate with them their determination to place their faith in the All-sufficient One who promises to fulfill in them this Mission Impossible. 

IBBM-Tepic OANSA - The Tepic OANSA (AWANA) Club observed the end of the 2010-2011 term with the annual visit from Sparky on Awards Day. The kids were excited to receive the medals they have been working hard to earn all year long; and we leaders are elated to know that each award represents the hiding of God’s Word in the tender hearts of the children with whom we have been working. Then we exerted one last effort for the year to prepare the OANSA Fair on the following Saturday afternoon when each clubber got to spend his or her hard-earned OANSA pesos on games, prizes, ice cream, cotton candy and other treats.  

Four exemplary clubbers have fulfilled all the requirements for becoming brand new leaders-in-training. All 4 started out as Cubbies and have completed all of the OANSA manuals. They are now working to complete a 16-week discipleship class and a year of internship hoping to achieve the privilege of serving in the OANSA club as official club leaders at the end of next year! Developing future church leadership is a Mission Impossible, humanly speaking; no such thing for the Supreme Commander… There’s always more than enough grace for every good work.