Today, I’m in reflection mode as I think about the last few days—and the days leading up to them.
This past weekend we hosted our 4th Partners’ Meeting for the Guadalajara Multiple Church Planting Project. We’ve hosted four such meetings since our mission effort began here 10 years ago—in 1999, 2002, 2005 and 2008. The general idea of these events are to invite representatives, church leaders, ministers, etc. from the U.S. churches that partner with our mission to spend a long weekend with us—seeing, experiencing, discussing, and evaluating with us the ongoing mission partnership we share in our region.
This year we hosted 26 representatives from eight Churches of Christ in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Washington. We chose the theme “The Story Continues…” and tried to facilitate the presentations of multiple perspectives of the ongoing story in which we find ourselves. This year was unique because we invited a couple of missionary families who are living a similar vision in Mexico City to join us in the telling of the story. All and all there were 41 adults—seven missionary families and the stateside partners.
We started off on Friday night with a Noche Mexicana eating tacos, listening to Mariachi music, and allowing everyone to get acquainted with one another. Saturday morning was spent with presentations, stories, videos, break out sessions and group discussion related to “Telling Our Story” from the perspective of the missionary families. We especially focused on telling and trying to interpret what has happened since our last meeting in 2005. Saturday afternoon and evening was spent in smaller groups as the partners went with missionary families to their homes and/or the homes of Mexican Christians—a taste of Mexican family life and culture. On Sunday we spent several hours at a park with the fellowship of Mexican house churches. Five groups were represented as we spent time in worship, food, fun and fellowship. After eating, we invited people to stand and tell a story of God working in their lives. It was cool to hear the stories of both Mexican and U.S. Christians. On Sunday evening, the missionaries and U.S. partners met for a wrap-up session where we asked the partners to reflect honestly on and share their perspective of the story—to give us feedback on what they had seen and thought. Monday morning was spent shopping in a tourist area of the city—everyone boarded planes and were gone from Guadalajara by mid-afternoon.
The weekend was full. I was overloaded with multiple conversations, ideas and feelings.
Today I’m tired. I sense the need to reflect and collect my thoughts—to discern God’s word in this weekend—to seek clarity.
I sense it was an important weekend.
Today, I’m thinking of the story recorded in Luke 8:19-21. I want to live as “family” with Jesus. I want to clearly hear God’s word. I want to put it into practice.
Posted by chaddsch 
