Fasting for wisdom

Dear Friends and Family,

We are in the midst of a very busy time here in Oaxaca and at the Rocablanca mission base. We´ve had two short-term groups come and go and two more coming this week and next. Laura continues to assist Lupe in Mexico City in her recuperation from her stroke. We have seen that God is faithful even at the last minute as He has provided for our needs and worked among us as we minister in various communities.

Angelica has her six month appt. with the gyne tomorrow and we anticipate that all will be well. She continues to feel good and enjoy immensely this new experience in her life. We can´t wait until next month when another ultrasound should tell us the gender of our child. We continue to plan for a mid-July departure for Puebla to prepare for the birth and then hopefully a quick trip to Chicago in Nov. for Dad´s wedding.

Dan has decided to participate in a 40 day fast called by various national ministries in the US. It is especially for wisdom for a number of crucial decisions that we need to make in the coming days, weeks and months. While we don´t agree with everything that this fast is about we believe that there is enough common ground that allows us to unite to see God do what He desires both in the US and around the world. You can read about it at the link below.

Thank you for your continued partnership with us through prayer, finances and visits. We continue to pray for you as well.

in Christ,

Dan & Angelica



Calling America to a 40 day Fast
May 28-July 6, 2007

Lou Engle and The Call leadership team along with many national ministries are calling America to join together in seeking God according to Joel 2:12-28.

"Now, therefore," says the LORD, "Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." 13 So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm. 14 Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him…15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; 16 gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room. 17 Let the priests, who minister to the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar; let them say, "Spare Your people, O LORD, and do not give Your heritage to reproach…Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' " 18 Then the LORD will be zealous for His land, and pity His people…28 And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. (Joel 2:12-28) http://www.ihop.org/Publisher/Article.aspx?ID=1000014470

And one more reason for this time of fasting for wisdom. We need to listen to the prophets of God however they come to us like this quote from the famous "anti-war Mom" who has given up in discouragement with the whole system. But the following quote from one of the Christian Peacemaker Team members kidnapped in Iraq last year on why he won´t testify in the trial of his supposed kidnappers. Our hope is in the freedom that Christ brings alone.

Cindy Sheehan writes:

"I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of 'right or left', but 'right and wrong,'" the diary says. Sheehan criticized "blind party loyalty" as a danger, no matter which side it involved, and said the current two-party system is "corrupt" and "rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland." Sheehan said she had sacrificed a 29-year marriage and endured threats to put all her energy into stopping the war. What she found, she wrote, was a movement "that often puts personal egos above peace and human life." But she said the most devastating conclusion she had reached "was that Casey did indeed die for nothing ... killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think". "Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives," she wrote. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most."

From James Loney of CPT:

Jim ends his statement by saying, “We want to see an end to all killing, regardless of the reason. Capital punishment is simply the legal face of the dead-end cycle of violence and retribution for violence that is destroying Iraq. We want to see something genuinely new and different, a future that begins with the power of forgiveness.”This is an example of who we are as Christians. Death – and all its attendant principalities and powers of violence cloaked in the lie of necessary evil – has no dominion over us. This is the freedom that we are offered in Christ.