Greetings from Mexico! Photos, prayer requests and ways you can help are at the end :)
Last year I shared with you all the two things that God was calling me to do, things I felt were too big and impossible for me to do, which was exactly right. BUT after saying yes to God almost exactly a year ago and working on them WITH HIM I have watched Him make the impossible possible as He and I are in the final stages of both! Here is an update on how one of those two things is going: the pregnancy center in Mexico. An update about the Children’s book will follow in a few days…weeks? Not sure… but for now:
I arrived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico October 2020 and hit the ground running. There was a lot of painting and remodeling work to be done but we were able to get the majority of it completed before I went back to the states for Christmas. God provided the workers and funds we needed every step of the way!
Brilla Life is the ministry (family) I am partnering with here and the team of people is absolutely incredible (I am still with H.I.M. where donations can be made)! There are mainly four of us; Alicia Revell (also from Aiken), Ben and Susie Argil, and myself. Alicia, Ben and Susie have been offering classes (art, English, guitar, and more) to the community for months, as well as doing a village outreach every other week. These classes are such a precious time for the students to hear about the gospel and about how loved they are by God. There is so much more I could say about this but I will leave it for another newsletter! If you would like to know more about Brilla Life you can click this link: https://www.brillalifeministry.org/
Currently I have been scouring the internet and running around town from store to store to furnish the center. It is a LOT of decisions and the way things are done here is different than in the states and of course everything is in Spanish, but God is always right there to help.
When God originally called me to this project, He gave me a specific: 4 months. I wasn’t’ sure then what it would mean but now I do. We are hoping to host an open house for churches in late March, at that point it will have been exactly 4 months that I have been physically in Mexico working on getting the center up and running. God is in the details guys!
So after the open house we hope to have a time of meeting with those interested in volunteering to share the vision of the center. (This also means I will need to take a good chunk of time to sit down and write out a ton of administrative things…which will all need to be translated…please be praying for that phase of this journey!) Depending how things go with covid and the furnishing/open house process, we are hoping to have a “soft” opening to the community in April!
I honestly am so blown away by the goodness of God and how He has been pulling all the pieces together for this. I cry almost every time I enter the door to the center
and see the space God has given for it. Even when I first went in and there was trash everywhere and walls in need of paint, I thought it was one the most beautiful things I had ever seen and just sobbed. He is in this, and when it is open He will be using it to bring life and light to this area known as “the heart of darkness”. I feel so honored that He would ask me to be a part of this work and it has been such a joy to lay down my life at His feet so my hands are free to pick this up this beautiful gift! I pray every minute of this work will be WITH God and pleasing to Him so it will be for His glory.
Nehemiah 6:16 (after the completion of the wall) “When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.”
Donations:
There are still a few items we need to get for the center. If you are interested in helping out with some of those, this link will take you to that list and will give options for donations. Thank you to all who have already donated, God is multiplying each one! https://katie23504.wixsite.com/mysite/donate
Pray Requests (your prayers are so important to us! They are the foundation for this work!):
1. Pray for full time volunteers for the center and people who have it on their hearts to take over this work in their community. Doctors, nurses, midwives, counselors, ect...
2. Please pray our steps and decisions to be directed by God as we plan to open.
3. Please pray for the moms in the community that will be coming to the center when it is open.
4. Pray for my Spanish to keep improving (I study about an hour or more everyday and have been seeing improvement!)
Thank you all for being a part of this work and journeying with us!!! You are a huge blessing and daily encouragement!! You bring us JOY!
