Feb. update

Our six month time of introduction and preparation officially came to an end with 2010. After a week with the family in Puebla celebrating Christmas and a wonderful time with friends at the Rocablanca mission base helping with their Festival providing medical consultations to any of the more than 2000 attendees, it was back to Chiapas where we have been blessed since July of 2010 to have found numerous opportunities to serve. First, with our local church with medical consultations both locally and in indigenous communities. Second, sharing via their local radio station programs related to medicine and marriage. Third, preaching and teaching in their Christian Ed. program and fledgling seminary.

Dan continues to collaborate with the Yobel Center for Biblical Studies which this year adds two new professors and an additional location for courses. We have numerous visits planned by distinguished Biblical scholars from around Latin America offering intensive courses. A small book store has been launched in the capital city of Chiapas and we continue to request support to help pay some of our debts with Christian publishers in order to be able to expand our selection.

We also continue to visit the indigenous communities in and around Acteal where a horrible massacre occurred some 13 years ago. As most of those implicated in the massacre (justly or unjustly) now have been released from prison our call is to work with all parties involved toward reconciliation and forgiveness. It is not an easy task but we take heart from the story of the prophet Hosea who reminds us that despite the continuing unfaithfulness of God's people His love and mercy never fails.

As always, we invite anyone with the heart (as the indigenous here say) to come to a place like Chiapas where lessons are able to be learned in abundance precisely because it is a place of such destruction, despair, resistance, love and hope. Please pray if you feel God calling you to visit this "Holy Land" because it is only through seeking that we will find. "The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them" (Hosea 14:9).