Wednesday. 7pm. I'm waiting by the street for a drink I ordered from the small business at the house next door. As usual, a group of street kids comes up begging for money. In my broken Spanish I explain to them why I won't give them money. I learn their names and start playing a little game with them making them laugh by talking in strange high pitched voices. We're friends. No more than a minute later an older boy, maybe 14 years old, comes by and clearly displays his ownership of the kids. He hits them, shoves them around and demands his money for the day and then walks on by. I sit there. I do nothing but stare. I cower.

Thursday. 11:30 am. I'm in La Jungle, the busiest drug trafficking spot in Granada, sitting in front of a crack house. I talk with the people I've been building relationships with for the past month. The pastor gives a message and we hand out crackers and drinks. We are about to leave when a man walks up, early 20's, maybe 110lbs. He grabs one of the girls who I assume is a prostitute, throws her out in the street and starts yelling at her. He picks her up and grabs her by the neck and walks her down the street yelling in her face and nearly cripples her to the ground. I hold a package of crackers in my hand and let it pass. I cower.

October. A.D. 29. Jesus is teaching in the temple early in the morning when "the scribes and Pharisees bring to Him a woman caught in adultery. And as they set her in the midst they say to Him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the Law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do you say?" As though he does not hear, Jesus stoops down and writes on the ground with His finger. So when they continue asking Him, He raises himself up and says to them, "He who is without sin among you let him throw the first stone at her." Again he stoops down and writes on the ground. Then those who hear it being convicted by their conscience go out one by one beginning with the oldest down to the last one. And Jesus is left alone with the woman standing in the midst." A Savior.

      ... for it is time to seek the LORD,
       until he comes
       and showers righteousness on you.     

If I had to choose just one verse from the bible to preach on every time this would be it. Too many times I ask God questions like "How do I glorify you? How do I raise dead people? How do I heal the sick? How do I cast out demons? How do I become sinless? How do I minister to your people? How do I become righteous?" Finally I have found the answer to thousands of questions people ask every day. "Seek the Lord until he comes and showers righteousness on you."

And it is not just this verse that point to this answer. Look it up. If you don't find anything you aren't even trying because it's plastered all over the book. Forget TV, forget your job, your friends, sleep, ministry, food... everything until you have sought out the Lord and he has showered righteousness on you. I guarantee you will receive gifts from the Lord you never knew could exist.

The past two months I spent in Mexico were probably the most amazing two months of my life. God taught me more than I would have thought possible especially about the teachings of Jesus and how he taught us how to live. One of the things that stuck with me the most is living communally which is found throughout the life of Jesus and within the first few chapters of Acts. This passage from Acts 2:44-47 does a great job at summing up what the early church looked like.

All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

They lived together, they sold everything and gave to the poor, they shared everything, they made disciples. The more I learned about this the more I began to examine my life and the church of today. Sadly, the church of the 21^st century looks almost nothing like the early church and God has said that he wants me to do something about it. He has given me visions daily on how to do this and each day I get more and more excited about it.

Right now I am in the beginning stages of helping out with the building of a worldwide community that has a goal of being like the church of the first few centuries. A few committed people and I have decided to sell just about everything we own and start a new life of making disciples and living communally. We are planning on starting out in Atlanta and growing to the rest of the world. Each community will have people of all ages and everyone will live together. Some will have jobs, some will live on support but all will share everything and all will be committed to introducing people to the Savior. Once one community grows large enough, we will split up and start another one where ever in the world God leads us.

Each community will have one major ministry and many smaller ones. For example, a friend of mine wants to eventually start a community in India where his major ministry would be to rescue sex slaves and get them back up on their feet. They would have rescue teams, rehab centers, counseling, job training, discipleship and anything else necessary for getting the former slaves on their way to a "normal" life. But the community will not limit itself to that ministry. They will have feeding programs for the poor, care for the orphans and whatever opportunities God places in front of them. As a strong, unified community, they would work together in making disciples out of everyone they meet. 

The plan so far looks about like this. I return home on May 15 and I will be there for about a month or so. From there I will move to Atlanta with the few who are already committed and whoever else wants to join this movement. I will start by moving in with my friend Myles and begin planting this community and a church. Starting in the fall I will most likely commit about two years to leading trips with AIM in order to learn more about starting community and to serve the participants on the trips. During the time that I am not on trips or back home with my family I will live in the community and continue building it. Eventually there will be communities all around the world connected to each other serving God.

I am not exactly sure of my part in all this but God gave me a vision of what my role will be after the two years of leading trips with AIM. Picture a body with AIM being the heart and the community in Atlanta being the lungs and all the other communities around the world being the different body parts. In this body I would be like the veins and arteries keeping AIM and all the individual communities connected as well as getting new communities planted around the world. My dream is to have AIM send missionaries to the communities to live there and do ministry along with the people who live in the communities. I would be the person getting those trips organized and maybe even leading them. Once again, I'm not completely sure if this will be my exact role in all this but I'm sure it will be pretty close to this.

So this is my invitation to you to pray about this. Pray for the community, pray for visions and pray for perseverance. But more than any of those things I want you to pray about your part in all this. Ask God if he wants you to live in this community. And when he speaks to you, do what he says. If you have any questions please ask them. I honestly cannot wait to answer them.

Before you read this know that my thoughts are a bit scrambled right now so if some things aren't very organized don't quite make sense be ok with it. This is just the best way for me to explain the thoughts running through my head and the feelings pumping through my heart.

There is almost nothing that I hate more than goodbyes so these past few days have been pretty rough. My Nicaragua team and I spent about a week doing ministry in a little town of about 30 families called Los Quiotes (I will post a blog on that later) and after that we only had two days left here in Mexico with the rest of the teams. The two days were packed with last minute things we had to do like processing the past two months, cleaning the base, packing and other things so there wasn't much time to say goodbye. I have built some pretty strong relationships with some of the people from the other teams. After living with them for all this time it was really hard to say goodbye when we dropped them off at the airport on Monday (my team will be here until next Monday just because of cheaper flight days). When we came back to the base I walked in my room that is usually filled with all the guys and it hit me pretty hard to find all but four of the beds completely empty. Today was a lot better than the past few days but keep praying for me and my team as we go through this transition from one chapter to the next.

We head off to Nicaragua in 5 days and I'm pumped. Seth Barnes Jr. will be our ministry contact/leader down there and I can't wait to see him again. He came up here to Mexico for about 2 weeks and we got to know him and he is one awesome man of God. He told us that he wants to take a lot of time to disciple us guys which is going to rock my world. There is a lady named Heather down there right now and she is planning on taking a good chunk of time to disciple the girls which makes me pretty excited for them. God has some awesome plans for this next six months in Nicaragua and I can't wait to get a glimpse of them.

This time in Mexico has changed my life. I have built the strongest friendships, lived in the most united community and learned the most about walking in the spirit of God. It's hard to turn the page but I'm at peace with the fact that God puts us in places and with people for seasons according to His timing. If we try to change the length of the seasons things go wrong and we walk away from His will. God, you are beautiful and I love you. Only you know how thankful I am for what you did these past two months. Excite me for the next six months and let the goodbye continue on smoothly. I want to be used by you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following is a very vague and shortened version of what happened this week. It would take 100 pages to tell of all that happened but feel free to ask questions! I would love to tell more stories but for the sake of your time this is what I have for you right now.

Oh man. It has been almost a month since my last blog and I am so sorry! Things have been crazy around here especially in the past week. Adventures in Missions is an organization that is all about listening to the Holy Spirit and letting it lead all the time. Since we have been here, not a single day has followed the schedule because God has had a different plan. This past week we felt the Spirit doing some amazing things and we decided to dump the schedule all together. 

On Tuesday morning I woke up to bright lights shining in my face and my leader, Blair, saying "It's 5 am and you have five minutes to get ready and get down stairs." To be honest with you, I was pretty upset that I only got about four and a half hours of sleep that night but it only made it worse when I found that the usual many choices of cereal for breakfast were replaced with a hardboiled egg and a piece of white bread. Within a very short time we were in the vans headed off to Matamoros.

As we pulled up to the town square I was reminded of the team talk we had the night before about feeling restless and wanting to do more ministry. I figured they would drop us off and tell us to ask the Lord what he wanted us to do for ministry and do it for a few hours and then head on home but instead they told us we had an hour to have a quiet time. Confused as to why we couldn't do that at the base and freezing cold I found a nice bench next to a shoe shine man, cracked open my journal and told God how I was feeling and that I wanted to hear from Him. He spoke so many things in that hour and told me about the life he wanted me to live and how it didn't line up with the one I was living.

A short while later we loaded up in the vans and drove to a slum buried in mud from the storm the night before. We were told we had until 5 pm to do ministry and oh boy did God do some awesome things. We repaired a family's roof, prayed over a bunch of people, talked and ate with a woman and her kids for a few hours and before we knew it, it was time to go. We ended up not going to bed until about 12 am that night because we really wanted to seek out God and figure out what he wanted the rest of the week to look like.

The rest of the week looked about the same as the first day. Wake up at five, drive into town, have a bit of a quiet time, do some kind of ministry and end up in bed at around midnight. It was tiring, hard work but God did amazing things through the sacrifices of food, sleep, rest and a schedule. Not only were lives changed in the city of Matamoros but everybody on my team had a life change as well. I have learned that in the kingdom of God earthly things are not necessary and sacrifices produce great rewards.

So we've been here one week and a TON has happened. It would be impossible for me to tell you every detail so I'll just give you a rough look at what has been going on.

Thursday- Saturday were days of complete solitude. We couldn't talk or even look at eachother for the whole time. It was basically a three day quiet time and it was awesome. For me, it was filled with mind blowing learning, worship, prayer and listening.

Sunday we had a little bit of teaching time and then we rested and did some laundry.

Monday we started ministry. The schedule basically looked like this:

                7am-team exercise

                8am- breakfast

                9am-morning ministry/teaching time/team time

                Noon- lunch

                2pm-afternoon ministry/teaching time/team time

                6pm- dinner

                8pm-night secession

This is what our schedule will look like for the remaining 7 weeks here in Buenos Aires, Mexico. Each day will be a little bit different ministry wise but for the most part we will be ministering to our "adoptive" family. Saturday will be our free day where we can go into Matamoros, the US or just do whatever we want. Sunday might have teaching in the morning or evening but mostly just a day of rest.

Sorry I don't have pictures yet. I had some on my computer but I accidently shot them in RAW instead of JPEG and my computer can't read RAW. I'll try to get some pictures taken soon and I'll put a few up on here but mostly on facebook.

Please be praying for us! There are so many things I could ask you to pray for but instead of me telling you, just ask God to tell you what to pray for. I love you all and miss you already!

Wow. It seems like just yesterday I was turning in my application for the trip and saying, "Just a year till I leave!" and now I'm down to one week. All the money is raised, I've gotten all the supplies I need for the trip, I quit my job and I even cleaned my room! Now all that is left is to say goodbye to just about everyone I know and pack everything I'll need for the next 8 months into one backpack. Hah, this will be interesting.

Though I am very sad about leaving and will probably cry my eyes out for hours when I say goodbye to my family, the excitement that God has given me completely overwhelms the sadness. I know that the second I step off that plane I will be surrounded by a new family of amazing people. Let me tell you guys, I couldn't have asked for a better team. If you imagine 30 of the most amazing people you have ever met in your life and put them all together my team would look just like that! I can't get over how much they love, encourage, serve and how crazy on fire they all are for God. It truly blows my mind. I can't wait to spend two months with them in Mexico and a whole six months with eight of them in Nicaragua. God has already done some awesome things with our team and I'm so pumped to see what plans he has for the next eight months.

Please pray for my team! Once we get on the field I'll post a blog on more specific prayer requests. I'm hoping to be able to update at least once a week but we will see. And by the way, if you haven't downloaded Skype, DO IT! I want to talk to you while I'm gone!

I love you all,

Trevor