Hey, all! Sorry for the delay on the updates. I guess you should be getting used to it by now. : ) Yes, we arrived safely back from the missionary retreat last week. We had a great, relaxing time hanging out with other missionaries from all over the country. Including kids, I believe the final count was 58 people. Hope you enjoy the group picture. The works represented were Guadalajara, León, Morelia, Lázaro Cárdenas, and two places in Mexico City. The missionaries from Guadalajara have volunteered to host next year's retreat, so I'm sure it will be another good one.
As far as happenings with the church, we had our first ever official service project this past Saturday. Normally in December, we have another one of our convivios, which we use as an opportunity to have all of our cell groups get together and also to invite friends and family who may not feel comfortable coming to a cell group or to our times on Sundays. Well, this year we decided to focus more on how we could help others who may be in need during this holiday season. For the month of November, we asked church members to bring different food staples every week, such as beans and rice and boxed milk. With the food they provided, along with some more things we bought with the money we would normally have used for the convivio, we were able to put together 50 bags of food. In each bag, we also put in a New Testament, a brochure about who we are as a church and a personal note from one of our church members. On Saturday, we all loaded up on a bus and headed to a town about 45 minutes outside of town called Indaparapeo. Sam and Ann had been in contact with a lady out there and had gone out earlier in the week to let people know we would be there handing out the bags, or 'despensas' as they are called here. When we arrived around 11 am, there was already a crowd gathered there waiting for us, mainly made up of older women and children.
We started out with a get to know you game and then two of our youth did a sketch, which was directed by Summer. (That's Leo and Larisita in the picture with the crowd looking on) We followed that with some activities for the kids and then had a short word time to let the people know that we were there to share the love of God with them.
We'd also charged our church members to go around and talk to people and get any prayer requests they may have, so that we could be in prayer for them. After that, we handed out the despensas and said a blessing or a prayer over each person who received a bag. We told them over and over again that we were doing this not to receive the glory, but to give God the glory for all that he had done for us. It was a really neat time and everyone was blessed. 
Here are a couple of pictures of the despensas being handed out. The first one is Esmerandi, Rosa's daughter (in the white sweater), and Morelia handing one of the ladies a despensa, with Sam looking on. The second is Gerardo handing out a few items to the people who didn't get an entire bag. We had more people that we had bags, so we had to divide some of them up.
We followed up the event on Sunday by dividing up into prayer groups and praying for the requests that were given the day before. We were also able to have a meal together as a church family and thank the Lord once again for the amazing blessings he has given us. Overall, our first service project was a huge success and I think we all look forward to doing more things like this in the future.
