From La Cruz to the Nayarit Mountains

September 17th- September 24th

We went to La Cruz and Nayarit Mountains in Mexico. La Cruz is about two hours south of Maztlan. We went to some day labor camps to preach the Gospel, pray for people, and play with the kids. On my team, we split the team so we could go to more then one camp, four youth gave their lives to Christ. These camps are not pretty. They have very small rooms for a family to sleep in. The work is very hard, long, and low pay. Some of the guys leave their families for eight months at a time.

Christian Jung leading worship at one of the camps in La Cruz

Children at the camp in La Cruz

This is the place we stayed in La Cruz. We spent two days here. This was a time of rest, team bonding, playing, pampering oneself and laundry. We needed the rest from all the driving. We swam in the ocean, body surfed, played in the pool, and the girls got pedicures and massages.

The Cora people were an unreached people group in the Nayarit Mountains. We were given a history lesson by a Fransican Priest named Pascual who would hike up the canyon, which is a advanced hike, once a week to befriend them and help them. He did introduce Jesus to them but they believed Jesus was the same as the sun which is one of the many things they worshiped. As a people, there faith was animism. The catholic church here is a lot different then in other areas of the world. The story that I was given by one of the missionaries that was hosting us, Jay, is that there was a rift between the catholic church and the indigenous people group of Mexico. It has to do with the person, whose name escapes me, who told the story about Guadalupe. The indigenous people were offended that the church didnt recognize it. The Pope eventually came over to mend the relations and they venerated, not sure if that is the right term, Guadalupe. The Pope gave gifts to a Cora family. We were hosted by the son of this family, Magdaleno. I believe this is pretty accurate from what we were told by the missionary. Please forgive me if I got some things wrong in the story,

Drive to the Cora village of El Congrejo in the Nayarit Mountains. The village is 5000 ft in elevation

Aurrelo singing an original song before our Jesus film outreach.

These mighty men were awesome to minister with in El Congrejo, the Cora village. I don't remember but two of there names. Raul "Rio" and Aurrelo. I miss there laughter and teasing.

These four women are the first in the Cora village of El Congrejo to give their lives to Christ.

A Cora woman we prayed with.

A Cora Child



Raul "Rio", one of our Mexican teammates who joined us to reach the Cora people, teaching the children a game to play



A Cora woman working on a handbag all day, everyday for two weeks.

Finished handbag

Cora family in the Nayarit Mountains

Christian, Maria, and Tanya making corn tortillas in a Cora families house that hosted us.

Our team going house to house inviting the Cora people to the Jesus film outreach in their own Cora language

Cora house

Volleyball is very popular in the Cora village

We provided clothes for the Cora women and their families.

We provided food and household items for each of the 40 families.

We purchase 1000 blank cd's to put the Gospel on for the indigenous people in Mexico



Breck jumping off a tree branch into the river we hiked down to from the El Congrejo village

 Forty families live in the Cora village in the Nayarit Mountains. They are related to the Aztecs. When the Spanish went to war with Mexico the Cora and many othe tribes of people headed to the mountains.

Mexican Independence Day

Pesqueira, Mexico

September 15-17

Revival is breaking forth here at our first stop in Pesqueira, Mexico. After a few hang-ups at the border in Nogales, our Iris Latin America team finally arrived late in the evening on Wednesday. We were greeted by Dany and the beautiful Christ-followers at “Centro de Fe, Esperanza y Amor” with a dinner of local-style tacos.

We hit the ground running the following morning, which we were informed was Mexican Independence Day. The inhabitants of Pesqueira come from all over Mexico and are mostly indigenous speakers of Triqui, Zapoteca and other languages. The church here goes house to house using large mp3 players with the New Testament in the over 300 languages of Mexico to determine what language each family in this area speaks. After gathering this information from each family, Dany then duplicates CDs with the gospel in their indigenous language and brings it to them so that they can hear the story of Jesus and respond. Our team collected money to purchase 1,000 blank CDs for the ministry here. After a time of worship together as a team, we accompanied the local Christ-followers in going house to house to help with the survey in five separate groups. It was an amazing time! We also prayed for many people. We led one woman to Christ right there in her courtyard. We also prayed for the sick and saw them recover. One boy we prayed for had some form of conjunctivitis and his eyes were red and watering really badly. Only five hours later we saw him at the revival meeting we held and his eyes were completely normal and had totally cleared up!

House to house praying and blessing people

God healing this boy of conjunctivittis

We planned a revival meeting for 6pm at the church that we were going to invite all of the people who we visited house to house. We were told not to expect many to attend because it was Mexican Independence Day and they would be attending the fiestas instead. Six o’clock rolled around and against all odds the church building began to fill with hundreds of the people that we had invited from the surrounding area. Some of our team gathered all of the children that came with their families to play games outside. At the revival meeting there was a time of worship. Then Jesse and myself gave some testimonies of God’s love and power. Then Jesse and Christian spoke words of knowledge about people who were feeling suicidal that very week and who had pain in their bodies. People responded to these words and we ministered the love and power of Jesus to them. After this Dany gave the gospel message. In response to the message 45 people came forward to pray and receive Jesus for the first time! The Holy Spirit party continued as they continued to bring the sick and diseased to us. Many people from our team prayed for those who came forward. I prayed for three people who were in pain. All received a healing and had no more pain. There were many more who received healing and deliverance. Yeah Jesus! It was truly Mexican Independence Day as the indigenous people of Pesqueira were set free body, soul and spirit!!!

Friday we went again to evangelize and bring people to the friday night revival meeting. The night before was so successful that the church and our team wanted to go out again. Dany, the acting pastor, told me the church more than doubled with all the salvations. This last picture is Dany, Natalie, and myself taking a fun break on a very hot day to swing. One of the Iris missionaries who is over Iris Relief and Iris Taiwan has a mandate of a third prayer, a third work, and a third fun. This was our fun. I believe this was the first time Dany swung. He looked uncomfortable doing it. He has been helping me with my spanish and I am teaching him english.

 

 

We Are Family

Part of the family in LA



Liz, Gillian & Rowan, Me, Liz, Tanya, Baby Zoe, Jesse, Melissa, Rose, Caitlan, Breck, Katherine, & Natalie



      Our team left Los Angeles on monday and went to Phoenix Arizona to pick up two more family members and meet up with another two who we were meeting in Tuscon. We were blessed by a couple that let us stay at their house in Tuscon. It was totally God that we were able to stay at this house. Jesse and Tanya, our leaders for the Latin America trip, were trying to get us in an RV park in Tuscon but were unsuccessful. Then someone from the last Iris Harvest School, which they were leaders at, contacting them at about this same time and told them about this couple that would house all of us, twenty people and five big vehicles. This house is amazingly beautiful and so is the couple, Bob and Diane. We were planning on only staying the night and leaving the next day, tuesday, to head into Mexico but we felt led by God in more than one way to stay one more day and hopefully leave wednesday morning.
      One of our vehicle was overheating from LA to Arizona and we all, in a caravan, drove from 45 to 55 mph the whole way there. A trip that should have taken us 8 hours to 14 hours. The two guys that we met up with in Tuscon had driven 16 hours straight from the Dallas area. To say the least, we were a weary bunch. Hey, but God is good. Bob and Diane were so hospitable that they had food and beds waiting for all of us. What a blessing for us all and especially me who was very cold sleeping in the tent trailer the night before in Sunland California. We are currently getting a new radiator in one of the vehicles, $540. Ouch! It's very necessary to get it done here then in Central and South America. Today, tuesday, is a day of rest, having communion with Pappa God, and getting to love and know each other. We will be having family time tonight and getting strategies on how to minister in Latin America by watching Nacho Libre :)
      Love you all! Thank you for praying for me and as God leads supporting the vision that God has put in me, financially.

Our Chariots of Fire



1982 Chevrolet RV named "Open Heaven"



Chevy Suburban 4x4 named "Overflow"

2002 Dodge Durango 4x4 named "Shekinah"



1990 Ford Econoline Van Camper/Rv named "New Wine"



1993 Cobra Tent Trailer named "Shalom"

1995 Coleman Tent Trailer "Glory"

Inside of "Glory"

Inside "New Wine"

These are the vehicles/homes for 25 Iris missionaries blazing a trail through Central and South America.