Family Makes Things So Much Better!

I am sitting in a little cafe with my brothers Pearce and Ike, and my mommy and it is so wonderful...They are leaving tomorrow and I am heading back to Porvenir for class...sigh. We have been staying in a beach house that is owned by the pastor of the local church in Porvenir. It has been so nice, and we have spent some time on the beach, some out in the market place, and some time at church and the Ventana compound. I have been able to show them the places we like to hang out, and introduce them to my Mexican National friends. Its just been awesome!
Jason was the person to tell me that my family came...he knocked on my door and said "Two things..do you think your mom can give me and my sister a ride to Ensenada? Oh, and they're here by the way." I yelled at him and told him he was a brat (totally kidding by the way) and then ran out to meet them. I gave them all huge, big, long hugs and we have been having a blast ever since. Thats just a little, short update before they leave. Love you all!

Hellllllooooooo

Hey all...I'm just sitting here in Ensenada struggling to keep my internet connection up...its a bummer when it just crashes every few minutes...but its a sacrifice I have to be willing to make...bah.

So I just got done with our service time at Casa Gabriel and it was so amazing, as usual. I hung out with one girl named Rosa. She has three sisters who all have the same progressive disease, so the older one is bedridden, and the others are all in wheelchairs and in different stages. They are all four so precious and sweet. They love to laugh. The cool thing is that they are completely cognitive! They can understand everything you say and answer you with a nod or shake of the head. Rosa, being the youngest (nine years old) can still move her arms a little, so she sort of bekons to where she wants to go. She kept laughing and pretending to role her wheelchair away. I would pretend to cry and say "Nooo, mi amiga! Donde vas?" And she would role back laughing and smiling super big... Her sister Ellie is so sweet, she is the second oldest, and she just sat there and watched me play with her sister and she would smile and laugh as best she could...her older sister cannot make any noises and her waist is completely turned around, its really weird and I don't know how it works...The third oldest sister, Sonia, loves to sing (she just makes some noises in the back of her throat, and then laughs; its absolutely beautiful!) and today Liz, my fellow Venatnera, and I sang songs with the four of them, and Sonia joined in while Rosa did the hand motions she could handle. It was super sweet! These kids just keep growing on me, and I am so excited for the next time we get to go and visit them!
I have started to volunteer a few hours a week at the local orphanage...and it is so much fun. I go every Thursday to help clean and work with the little babies if needed, and then every Friday a group of us goes and puts on a program for the older children there, who are between five to seven years old. They are absolutlely adorable...and I get to take my Mom and brothers there with me if they want to go, and then they can experience the cuteness of them all....
We had our second youth group come down the week after we got back from Culiacan, and they were super awesome! We have four other churches coming down starting in the middle of this month, and we are super pumped for that. We love it when the youth groups come down because we get to work out in the community with a bunch of high school students and remember what it was like for us when we were on our missions trips when we were the same age. Its funny cause we all feel so much older than we did in high school...but we really aren't. Its so silly:)
Anyways...thats whats up..I'll tell you about my awesome time with my family in my next post! Please keep them in your prayers as they travel down here...its always scary the first time!
Love,
Mikaela

God's Peace is Transcendant

Oh man...its so awesome how God manifests himself in such cool ways...He has filled my life with just peace and a desire to know him more. Every time something comes up to make me feel anxious or sad or disappointed or confused, I just go straight to the Word. He has placed that desire on my heart more than it has ever been before.
Culiacan really changed me, and my outlook on a lot of things that have happened in my life. He is the Divine Dictator of every event, and he doesn't leave any of his children alone. My heart was really heavy for all the people who made the decision for Christ in the camps there in Culiacan...I know that they don't have pastors or churches or bible study leaders or anything like that, and I was worried about how their relationships with Christ would grow...But thats just silly of me because their Father is the Creator of this world..he clothes the lillies and feeds the sparrows...how could he ever leave his children alone? He loves them just as much as he loves you and me, and he will provide for their needs. Isn't that AWESOME! How great of a God do we have?
He has been showing me this in my own life as well...I look back to when I first found out my dad was sick, to April 21st when he went home to God, to that fateful day at Mt. Hermon where I first heard about Ventana, to that day when I had all 8,200 dollars raised after three weeks of working and recieving donations...wow! God obviously loves me since he pulled everything together perfectly so I could come to Ventana and learn more about him and draw closer to him and the plan that he has for my life. In the same way, he loves every single person that is on this earth today. That is a really amazing concept...that he can be intricately involved in billions of peoples lives..at the exact same time! WOW! Haha.
I just wanted to share that with you all...its just something God has been reminding me of as I walk through each day. I would love prayer as I try to decide what to do this summer...I have a job opportunity in Santa Cruz, and would love to take it, but also need to pray about just coming home this summer as well. Please pray for wisdom and clarity for me as I work through that. And my Mom and brothers are coming down to visit me on March 6th to 8th...please pray that they can get here safely and that God really ordains this time for us to catch up and really be able to talk about our lives and everything that has been going on.
You guys are all awesome and such big blessings to my life.
Love,
Mikaela Alexander

Seeing God in Culiacan

These past two weeks have been some of the most difficult but sweetest days of my life. We had so many funny adventures, some that were not so funny, and some that just bring tears to my eyes when I think about it. These two weeks consisted of over sixty mosquito bites, finding a lizard in my room, getting stuck in the shower for half an hour because the water ran out, finding pieces of chicken (i.e. its foot and heart) in the sink, barely eating because the food hurt my stomach, praying without ceasing against spiritual attack, having to communicate in my broken Spanish, loving on hundreds of children who are growing up in the camps, being broken before God consistently every day, and giving up my fears and insecurities to him every time they surfaced. It’s been awesome!

Not that I was always in that mind set…it was a really hard time. I missed my family, especially Dad, more than usual and it made things difficult. God really spoke to me about some of my anxieties and I was "forced" to let go of them little by little. There were many people (by the second week, we had 83 team members from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico) that were with us to help with the outreach to the camps, and most of them were Spanish speakers. My team of Ventana students and I all felt insufficient in our Spanish, and it was hard to take a back seat when we were out in the camps. Since we couldn’t actually be evangelizing with our words, we had to rely solely on our actions to relay the love of Christ, which meant holding the supplies, cleaning up tons of messes, and smiling welcomingly at all the people in the camps; thats pretty much it besides praying for people when they asked us to, even though we did it in English. But it turned out to be a beautiful thing, watching God work through even us English speakers. Even though we felt useless most of the time, we learned how to be servants, and that's all God asks of us in this life: to be servants and do exactly what he tells us to do, no matter how unglorious.

The schedule of a normal day went like this: wake up at 6:40, devos with Ventana at 7:00, breakfast at 8:00, devos with all the people at 9:00, clean cars and organize everything after devos, lunch at 1:30, prayer at 3:15, leave for camps at 3:30, come back to base camp at 9:00 or 9:30.

The camps are full of Indigenous migrant workers. They are hired for a certain amount of months to come and harvest certain crops such as tomatoes, peppers, corn, etc. Most people who are hired bring their families with them and they all live in a little room that is right next to another little room. They are like long houses with tin walls separating the rooms within the big building. Some of the camps had bigger rooms, and some had smaller ones. They had no running water in the bathrooms or their cuartos (rooms). Most families were made up of young men and women and their two or three children. Many of the mothers were as young as fourteen. Noah, a nineteen year old boy that was part of our team, grew up in the camps and he said that sometimes girls will get married when they are twelve or thirteen. I was shocked.

There are over three hundred different dialects spoken in Mexico, and part of our ministry was to go around to each cuarto and diagnose that specific family’s dialect. We had maps, tape recorders, and other devices that helped us do this. We then wrote down their name and dialect and burned them a CD or cassette with a message on it in their own language. These tapes have been so successful in leading people into a life with Christ. We had children’s programs while teams were out diagnosing. During that, we would sing songs, tell Bible stories, and play games. Some teams would do skits, and some would show movies…it was really fun just to be able to play and laugh with children who often don’t get enough love at home because of the stressful situations their parents are in (working all day every day so they can provide for their families). Then, we would invite the whole camp to come and watch a movie about Jesus and how he can change their lives. After the movie was finished, one of the Spanish speakers from our team would go up and give a short invitation, inviting people to give their lives over to God. Hundreds of people responded. I know it’s not always a good idea to look at the statistics…but after the first week there had been 665 decisions made for Christ. Many people that were working on Proyecto Culiacan with us Ventaneros are staying there for a whole month. We just got to stay for two weeks, but they were life changing. Please keep these people in prayer since they are still out, fighting for the Lord and bringing souls to him each day. Even one of our own Ventana students, Shannon, felt called by God to stay for the rest of the month. God worked things out for her that should have been much harder…and we left her there and will see her in two weeks. We miss her, but are trusting that God knew what he was doing when he told her to stay. We are so excited to hear about what God is doing and is going to do in her life.

I met so many sweet children, so many innocent sons and daughters of God….they were all so precious. Many of them were dirty, some didn’t have proper clothes. But they were just children, so excited to hear and see new things. Here is a very special story that my friend Jason told me; it just really touched my heart. Jason said that he was at a camp with his team one night, and he felt the Holy Spirit prompt him to talk to a young boy. The boy said his name was Arturo, and that he was twelve years old. Even though Jason has very limited Spanish, Noah (who speaks Spanish, English, and an Indian dialect) helped translate for them. Arturo said he had no father, and his mother left him and his two younger siblings so she could go and live with another man. Arturo had to take his younger siblings to live with his uncle and aunt. They sent him to work in the fields to help pay for their support. He is living all alone in a camp with a bunch of strangers for the next few months, going out to work in the fields every day, having to worry about his family and if they are being provided for. Jason prayed over him, with Noah and another man named Chucho. Arturo said he felt so much better, and he made a decision for Christ. It was the sweetest and saddest story. So many of the people there had stories like that, and no one to listen to them. They were just thirsting for God. We just reaped the harvest that God had been preparing. I wish I could tell you about all the special children I met, and all the people I got to pray for, and all the miraculous stories that took place; I wish I could tell you what it felt like to see the Holy Spirit move through the crowd, drawing people to him. But this is already a really long entry. I can’t wait to tell you all more about this amazing trip and how God moved and showed himself to me…but it will have to wait till I can talk to you face to face. J

Thank you for your love and support and I just want to let you all know that I love you! And God loves you…more than you know…yay!
Love,
Mikaela

Two days....

Hey...here's just a quick update.
We are leaving Sunday at three thirty in the morning...killer :) We fly out of Tijuana and land in Culiacan later that morning. We start our program right away. We will be with about sixty other Mexican nationals. We will have two to three hours of prayer and worship each day, then two hours to prepare and hopefully relax. We will go to the different camps/assignments at around four in the afternoon since we can't do an outreach with the people until they are back form working in the fields.
We were all given evangecubes....if you don't know what that is its a block that has all different pictures on it depicting the life of Jesus. Its pretty interesting and it sounds really/looks really cheesy...but apparently it has been used all over the world, successfully bringing whole groups of people to Christ. Its really cool. This is going to be a really big evangelism time for us...its nerve wracking since we don't speak spanish very well....but God will use us somehow :)
We have spent this whole week praying and fasting and worshipping and listening to the Holy Spirit...its been so awesome. I've never felt so at peace. I mean, its and expected thing after spending about three to four hours in prayer everday, and have anywhere from one to two hours a day set aside for quiet time with the Lord. Today we drove out to this cemetary which sounds really creepy but its not. Mexican cemetaries are not as creepy as U.S. ones. They are really bright and cheerful...more flowers than graves. It also has the most amazing view of the mountains that surround Porvenir. It was such a beautiful and peaceful time. I just sat there in the warm sun with the wind blowing and it was really special. I am confidant that God is going to use our team to do some awesome spreadage of the Truth! (if spreadage is a word...hopefully you know what I mean :))
I'll write again in two weeks. Thanks!
Mikaela

Getting Prepared for Culiacan

Hey everybody!
I just got done with my second visit to Casa de Gabriel, the orphanage for handicapped children. It was a very intense day today. We stayed and helped to feed the children their meals. The majority of them cannot feed themselves. The staff there is made up mostly of single mothers who came from very bad domestic situations, and they are awesome, caring women, but there is so few of them that it was super awesome for them to be able to pass off some of their responsibilities to us gringos (white people). And I sure acted like a clueless white person today. I helped a lady feed a girl (whose name I cannot remember unfortunately) who cannot swallow her food. How in the world does that work? I don't really know. I held her head while the lady continuously caught the food the girl spit out and shovelled it back in. The poor girl was trying so hard to get it down, but it was such a hard thing. The food was all blended together, so it was as smooth as possible, but she had to open her throat and just let it slide down, and she would choke on it most of the times. The nurse asked me if I wanted to try it, but I couldn't even get the spoon in her mouth. It was so scary for me. I almost cried, but no one else was so I held it in. Then, the same nurse asked me to come with her to change another girl's diaper named Gabbi. I was just learning how to, so I stood to the side. Gabbi is seven I think. She cannot speak, cannot walk, and cannot sit up on her own. She just sits there and stares at you while chewing on her shaking hand. She was a sweet heart! I am excited for when we can go again. We will be taking the youth groups there every week we have one down. So we will be there alot in about three weeks.
We are having a preparation week for Culiacan. Most of our classes have been shortened and switched around so we can have ample time to pray and fast and focus on the Word. Our hearts have to be prepared for the service we will be called to do. Us students have been told that we won't really know what we are doing until like three minutes before we do it. We will be told by the directors and then we go. No matter what it is. We will be working with about 60 other Mexican nationals from the churches in the surrounding areas and us Ventaneros might not even room together during these next two weeks. It will be a trying and spiritually testing time, but we are excited for our time there, spreading the love of Christ through actions and words. We will be showing the Jesus Film to the Indigenous people as well a few nights a week. The people we are serving are all Indigenous, so they don't speak spanish mostly, its a totally different dialect. The languege barrier will be another thing to worry about for us Ventaneros.
Another huge prayer request as we go is for us girls. The men in Culiacan are known to be very crass and crude. Me and Michalene have to wear shawls on our heads because of our lighter hair color. Us girls are all wearing shirts that are two sizes too big, and long loose skirts with socks that cover our ankles. We are trying to look as unappealing and droopy as possible :) so i might not want to post any pictures from that time...you all might be suprised at my unappealing looks :) Just kidding. I am so excited to go out and be able to see how I can serve Gods people. Just pray that I can have a servants heart and that I'm willing to do everything with an attitude of humility and thanksgiving. We are under continuous spiritual attack, as a group and idividually. We are all on edge, so please pray that we can draw together as a team and be supportive and encouraging to each other. We need to have one mind--to serve God's people, and through that, serve God himself. But its difficult, especially in a high stress situation like this one.
Thank you all so much for your support. Please continue to pray for safety, and for all of us to be courageous in the name of Jesus Christ!
Much love,
Mikaela

Second Week!!!

Hey all! Our second week in Mexico has come to a close. And it has been a full one! We just said goodbye to our first Camp Ventana youth group. About eighteen people in all came down to Porvenir for a weekend of service and it was AWESOME! We worked hard in the community painting, cleaning, digging, and replacing the roof on the girl's trailer. Actually...WE didn't since I was the "Picture Lady" as the students called me. I took all the pictures and made a slide show that was shown today before they left. I loved it...but yesterday was filled with tons of technological difficulties and it was one of the most stressful times of my life. But everything turned out well and I sent the youth pastor away happy with a copy of the movie and all the pictures in his hands. Whoo!

We started classes last week and they are going really well! Again, they are going to be challenging but only because the teachers are trying to get us to develop our own opinions on things based off of what we read in the Bible instead of just spoon feeding us their thoughts. Its exactly what I need at this point in my relationship with Christ. This week I am writing a paper on salvation and why I believe what I believe using Biblical references. I know what I believe, but I have to find the verses that support that belief...its the best homework EVER!

We have experienced several church services with the church that we are partnered with in Porvenir and its absolutely amazing! Church is so different in Mexico...there are children on the side dancing and twirling flags during worship, people pray out loud and all at the same time so that they are not worried about impressing the people around them with their clever and righteous words :) Its such a new thing to me, but I am getting used to it. And I always have one of the worship songs stuck in my head especially my favorite one "Te Doy Gloria" (I Give You Glory) It is a really catchy tune with awesome meaning.

We are leaving for our two week trip to Culiacan in about..two weeks. I can't believe that we are actually going! Its going to be such a huge impact upon my life...and I am going to be stretched by all the things that we are going to be doing. Again, I would love it if you would be in prayer for this--that our team would be strong together and that Satan would not be able to find a foothold. Doug warned us that there is going to be some intense spiritual battle.

I love you all! I hope things are going well with everyone!
Mikaela