I am not yet what I'm going to be

I John 3:2 Beloved, now are we the sons of God and it does not yet appear what we shall be.....
This verse has been on my mind today. As many of you know, I have been working hard to shed the pounds once again. I topped out at 300 lbs, which is a lotttttttt, even for a 6'2" man. I have started eating more sensibly (i.e. no large pepperoni pizzas and family order bread sticks for supper) and have thrown myself into exercising. I am now up to running 4 miles a day, walking another 2, along with pushups, situps, jumpropes, and other sundry exercises. Thank the good Lord I have lost a little more than 55 lbs.! Everybody that knows me can't believe the change. They compliment me all the time. I tried on some pants I use to wear today, and they slid to the ground! I have a lot to feel good about in myself. However there remains a sobering thought, I'm still fat. Everybody that knows me can see the change, they laughingly call me skinny. Yet, to a stranger, I'm just another fat guy. I still have a ways to go, and without a picture they have no way of understanding the change. I'm just wondering how much this is like our christian lives. God has completely turned my world upside down and I am not the man I used to be. I have patience that I never had, a desire to serve God that wasn't there before. Every day I can see more evidence of change. I just need a reminder from time to time that I'm not perfect yet. Those that know me can see what God has done. After 28 years of being a christian, I hope my light shines enough for a stranger to see a difference. Still, I am reminded how important it is to maintain that testimony. It does not yet appear what I will be............ He's still working on me............. I'm looking forward to the day when God carries me from this life to perfection. Until then my prayer is that I continue to strive so that every man can see what God has done, and is yet doing in me. When I fail before men, God help me to repent openly and carry on for His honor and glory.

Two new additions

I made mention a few weeks back of our growth from within. We had both babies together at the church for the first time this Sunday. Kristian Obregon and Melanie Reyes will help keep things interesting for years to come!

Here are a couple of pictures of the families. We are really trying to focus on our young adults in the church these days. We are four hours from our closest Free Will Baptist neighbour in the U.S. and we are located at the furthest extremities of our borders. If we are going to grow as a church, and if we are to serve as a mother to other churches, it is of the utmost importance that we develop leadership from within.

We thank God for the young families in our church. Pray with us that we grow together in the grace and knowledge of God.

Building a duplex on the Campus of Seminario Biblico La Cruz

I'm priviliged to attend our seminary in Mexico two days a week. We have classes of the morning and the students that live on campus have chores of an afternoon. Lately their chore has been the construction of two apartments for married students.

This is very important because the attendance has increased and their literally is nowhere to put the married couples.

It's pretty hard work but we were blessed today. Many times in constructing a church or home in Mexico we mix the cement by hand, but we have a trompo, or mixer, on campus, and were able to accomplish much today. Here are some pictures of the work.

I'll post another blog with some pictures of the students another day.

There's a snake in church!

Things were interesting at Primera Iglesia Bautista Libre this evening! I was getting ready for service and went into the sanctuary to turn the lights on. I turned them on on the stage and started to walk to the back where the rest of the switches are. I had only taken one step when I saw a 2 to 2 1/2 foot snake at my feet.

I immediately jumped back on stage with heart pounding. I stared at it for a minute to make sure I had actually seen it. There it was, black with a mottled yellow back. So I went back to the closet to get a trash can and broom to capture the snake and get it out of the sanctuary.

Surprise! When I came back, it was gone! I scoured the church for 45 minutes from front to back and could not find it anywhere. I can only guess it squeezed through a crack in the door or something. However I still had to notify the people for safety, and how they laughed. A few people were kind of scared to sit there, but most of them just made jokes about my imagination. :)

The Bible introduces satan in the form of a serpent in Genesis. As I came home this evening I couldn't help but draw the parallels in my mind.

I never imagined I would find a snake in the church so I wasn't watching for it. How often do we think of the possibility of demonic presences slipping among the pews of the church? Yet the Bible tells us that satan is always going about looking for an opportunity to devour. How many times have we stepped into danger because we never thought to watch?

It becomes increasingly difficult to convince the world in which we live that the devil exists. The people could laugh at me because there was no evidence of the snake. How many in the world or even in church laugh because they can't see the evil influence of darkness? Yet there he is, hating God, hating the church, hating us, until at last his judgement comes at the end of time.

Is there a snake in church? Sure. But "greater is He that is in us that he that is in the world"

Our Soldier

Here is a picture of a young man from our church, B. J. Crawford. He graduated high school this past summer and joined the marines. He has been in San Diego a few months and got to come home for the first time this week. His dad is a gringo and speaks only english while his mom is hispanic and bilingual. B.J. only speaks english but understands some Spanish. He gave his testimony to both the english and spanish services, providing me with the opportunity to translate for him in the spanish service.

Pray for B.J. while he is in the service. He is returning to San Diego for about a month and then will be stationed in Florida to work as an airplane mechanic.

Heart Monitor

La Primera Iglesia Bautista Libre de Weslaco is building from within! A young couple from our church gave birth to their first son, Kristian Obregon Monday. Next week another young couple from our church will have their second child. I'll try to get pictures up when they present their babies before the church.
Kristian was born at 32 weeks, which while not terribly premature was still earlier than the doctors would like. He was immediately whisked out of the birthing room to NICU. They gave him oxygen for the first day, but decided he didn't need it by today. They are just observing him to make sure he can maintain his temperature, but by all accounts he seems to be doing well. He weighed 4 lb. 10.9 oz and was 16.7 inches long.
He gave the doctors quite a scare yesterday. They had him hooked up to all kinds of monitors to make sure all was well. Suddenly the alarmed sound that it had lost his heartbeat. They fell into quite a scurry to reach his bed with fears of the worst. However, upon arriving they discovered that he had removed his heart monitor patch and was swinging it around in his tiny little hand. I told his parents to get ready, he's going to be a handful!
This set me to thinking. That baby gave no thought to what he was doing or how important it was to monitor his heart. He just happened to get it caught on his hand. How many christians walk through life without ever giving a thought to how important it is to monitor our hearts?
The Bible tells us that our heart is deceitful, it further says that the Bible is a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of our heart. We have a spiritual life that is wrapped up in a physical body, so that the christian is always pulled in two directions, the world and heaven. Would to God that we continue to monitor our hearts!

Primera Iglesia Bautista Libre

Here is the church building itself. It is unique as we sit on the Frontage Road of Highway 83 (the only main highway that connects the Valley) in Weslaco a town of 30,000 part of the one million people that live in the Valley. I am fairly certain we are the only log cabin church in such a location! :)
Anyway, the church was founded in 1981 with Bro. James Munsey as pastor. After he passed away in 2001 Jeff Cates took the position. He left last year to start a new mission church in Canyon, Texas, and the church called me to be its pastor.
It is fairly unique in our denomination as we function as a bilingual church. It is primarily spanish, as some 85 % of the Valley speaks Spanish in the home. However, the children grow up with English in the school and use it the majority of the time. (Actually the languages are fairly mixed with components of both used in just about every sentence) So to minister to the adults we have Spanish with some English to retain the youth. Also during the winter we gain around 20 additional "winter Texan" families that only speak English.
So 9:00 on Sunday mornings there is an English service followed by Sunday School classes for both languages and then a Spanish service at 11:00. The Sunday night and Wednesday services are usually in Spanish but depending on the crowd I do preach bilingually a decent percent of those services. (That took some getting used to. :) )
There is a great need for Hispanic churches among our denomination and especially in Texas. We have the second largest population of Hispanics with only 4 churches to minister to them, and 2 of those are pastored by the same man. Here in the Valley with around 1 million people, we have 1 church. Pray that the Lord send us workers and that we wisely train the workers that we have.

Overcoming the natural thought process or spirit vs. the flesh

It has been truly interesting learning a new language and ministering among a different culture. It is amazing how differently various groups of people can view the same events. One of the things that really makes me laugh is what happens when you think in one language and try to communicate in another.
For example, sometime back I saw a sign on a building that said "auto serv". The first thought that crossed my mind was that it was some kind of garage. However in spanish "auto" means self. The owner was trying to convey that it was a self service gas station. (Yeah the gas pump should have given it away, but nobody accused me of being smart)
I was talking to a little girl on the church van the other day. Her parents and baby brother and sister only speak spanish, but this little 5 year old girl is thoroughly bilingual. I asked her how old her brother and sister were. She responded "she has 2 and he has 3". She was speaking in English but thinking in Spanish. That's how they tell you how old they are.
I'm going through the same process in reverse. I'm listening to spanish preaching tapes and radio and reading spanish books, whatever I can do to train my mind to think in a new language.
Anyway, this all set me to thinking. How often does a christian, who is by definition a new creation, live his new spiritual life still thinking like the old fleshly man? The Bible tells us that the flesh cannot understand the things of the spirit. We have to learn to think in a new way.
Somebody attacks us and we immediately want to fight back. That's a christian that has yet to learn to think like a new spiritual man. We struggle with putting God first, (the ten commandments tell us that God is a jealous God) we have not yet learned to think like the new man.
We'll never be perfect as long as we live here, but we are in a growing process. I truly believe we'll be a lot less frustrated when we set aside the way we used to think when we belonged to the world, and begin to see things through the eyes of the Spirit.

Earlier this spring we took a group of our Winter Texans on a trip to Monterrey. Monterrey is the third largest city in Mexico and very modern. It is beautifully situated at the feet of the Sierra Madre mountain range and has a great need of the gospel. We currently have 3 churches in Monterrey. The one that is pictured is pastored by Bro. Santiago Regelato and is located in the Monte Cristal subdivision of Benito Juarez. They are a growing congregation but still have need of many things, not the least of which is a roof for their building! Also they lack pews and have set up concrete blocks and boards for the congregation to sit on.
Also pictured is the famous Cola de Caballo waterfalls (horsetail falls) and the chapel at our Youth Camp in El Uro.

Scenes from Monterrey

Earlier this spring we took a group of Winter Texans from our church on a trip to Monterrey. Monterrey is the third largest city in Mexico and very modern. It is beautifully situated in the middle of the Sierra Madre mountain range. It also has a great need of the gospel. We currently have 3 churches in Monterrey. The one pictured here is pastored by Bro. Santiago (James). It is a mission church in the Monte Cristal subdivision of Benito Juarez. They have a growing congregation but still have needs of several things, not the least of which is a roof for their building! Also they lack pews and have set up some concrete blocks and 2x4s to seat the people.
Also pictured is their famous waterfall, Cola de Caballo (Horse Tail Falls) and the chapel at our Youth Camp at El Uro.