Saturday we went to Mexico.

Man does God work in mysterious ways... it's amazing to me how He blesses us in the most unexpected ways. I have been going through a really difficult time in my personal life. I've had a lot of high highs and a lot of low lows these last couple of weeks, and Saturday I woke up really struggling. But I was committed to going to Mexico and I knew they needed my car. So I dragged myself out of bed and headed to the church as the sun was coming up (well not really, but it sure seemed early!) and tried to plaster a smile on my face.

Here's the thing... God has this way of bringing joy when you ask for it. That has been my prayer for so long... for joy even through the trials and hurts... and on Saturday, God brought me incredible joy.

When we got to Mexico, we got out of the cars and started talking to the kids and families that were there. It turns out that this is a place the Spanish ministry has been going for quite some time, and they have known the kids since some of them were tiny! We spent most of the day there with the kids, playing and talking...

Well everyone else was talking... I was trying... and the kids were so good about speaking slowly so I could figure out what they were saying... they were even trying to teach me more Spanish... and some of them wanted to learn some English words too!

We took some of the kids with us to the next place we went and they helped us hand things out to other families. It was so cool to see people we'd helped helping other people! Then we took them to eat tacos! The kids were so much fun!

I want to share some pictures... more than I usually post on a blog entry, but I just think that this is such a cool opportunity. Plus, two of the older girls that went with us are the ones that took most of the pictures. They were so excited to get to play with my camera and I love that the pictures are taken through their eyes!

So here are quite a few pictures from our latest trip to Mexico :)

Carla, Me and Jasmin... these are the two girls that took almost all of the pictures.
Me and some of the girls... and Moses (one of our teens)
Pastor Gabriel and two of the little boys
Me and Javier (for those of you who have asked who he is)
Some of the boys goofing around
Javier playing around with one of the boys (who then tried to do the same thing to Javi...) Dont worry, no one was hurt in the making of this photo :)
Carla and "Mango" with their POP! :)
Praying over the food... yummie tacos!
Me and "Mango"... such a great kid! I wanted to bring him home with us!
Me, Javier and Jasmin... the kids all wanted to take pictures with us
Me and Pastor Gabriel giving out toys
Javier and Pastor Gabriel with some of the kids that they've known since they were tiny!
Me and a couple of the girls who asked to take a picture with me :)
Writing on soccer balls (they all wanted us to write our names)
Me and a guy that spoke a tiny bit of English and wanted me in the picture with him.
Me and a few of the boys... they're so cool!

...I never thought I'd hear those words from one of my kids...

but before you get too sad... listen to the back story.

In Sunday School on Sunday, we were talking about Jesus coming back. This is how the conversation went:

Javier: "Think about if you're just sitting there with your friend one minute and the next minute your friend is gone and there's just a pile of clothes sitting next to you."

Teen 1: "A pile of clothes? You mean your clothes don't go with you? You go to Heaven naked? I don't want to fly into Heaven naked! I don't think I want to go to Heaven."

Diandra: "Remember that when Adam and Eve were created they were naked, but there was no shame in that until sin entered the world, and there's no sin in Heaven, so it won't be a problem."

Teen 2: "But what about on the way up? Don't you think it will be kind of cold if you have no clothes while you're flying up to Heaven? And what about people still on earth who see you as you float away naked?"

....PAUSE....

Teen 2: "I'm gonna start wearing 5 layers of clothes..."

Probably the most random conversation EVER about Heaven... and who ever thought about going without your clothes??? :)

I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise You
With all that I've gone through
The question just amazes me
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You

Maybe since my life was changed
Long before these rainy days
It's never really ever crossed my mind
To turn my back on you, oh Lord
My only shelter from the storm
But instead
I draw closer through these times

So I pray....

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

I am yours regardless of
The clouds that may loom above
Because you are much greater than my pain
You who made a way for me
Suffering your destiny
So tell me whats a little rain

So I pray....

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God Almighty
Is the Lord God Almighty
I'm forever singing
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God Almighty
Is the Lord God Almighty

I am now officially a district licensed pastor for the Anaheim District Church of the Nazarene!

We had our annual ordination service on Tuesday night and it was so exciting! I was presented with my district license, and Pastor Orlando was ordained in the church of the Nazarene.

In addition to that, we were asked to help speak at District Convention which is a HUGE deal! My dad (who is the senior pastor) did the majority of the hour long talk about multiplying churches, but then he asked Javier and I to speak about what we've done with the youth group. It was exciting and very cool to get to share what has been going on and what God's been doing. We got a lot of positive feedback. The thing that stood out the most was the fact that the GENERAL SUPERINTENDENT (which means nothing to most of you, but there are only 6 of them and they are the top of the WHOLE denomination!!!) took notice. He liked what we had to say, he was excited about what is happening at our church and he even asked both Javier and I to help in the ordination service later that night! It was an incredible blessing and really a great compliment!

Here are a few pictures from the evening:

Before the service... Javier, Pastor Orlando and David (they did NOT want to smile!):
Me and Pastor Orlando (see how I smiled!!!):
Javier and David imitating my picture... David, Me, Pastor Orlando and Javier... see they really do love me :)My dad, Pastor Orlando and David during the Ordination service:
The General Superintendent and me during the service!Javier reading during the service:
Me reading during the service:

After a spanish board meeting the other night, one of the mom's came up to me and was telling me in spanish how thankful she was for what we're doing and what is going on. At one point she said something "from the bottom of her heart".

One of my teens was standing next to me and when the mom left, he had a look of deep thought on his face. I asked him what he was thinking about and he said,

"How deep IS your heart? Like what if I'm only kind of thankful... do I say from the TOP of my heart?"

I love my job :)

The Chronicals of Narnia Part 2 is about to come out in theatres. We've decided to take our teens to see it (anytime a good family movie comes out, I really encourage the teens to check it out... so for a Christian movie we all jump on board!). So to kind of get them excited, we've been watching the first Narnia movie.

We were in the middle of the movie on Friday night and it's the part where Lucy first steps into Narnia from the wardrobe. The teens are all silent in awe, and then a voice from the corner of the room (obviously TRYING to whisper), says, "Man I wish my closet would do that!!!"

And this from one of my "cool" boys.

AND... I think he was serious!

Sometimes it takes all I have not to laugh right out loud at them!

I work with teenagers.

If you havent figured that out yet than you REALLY need to re-read my blogs :)

But the one thing that is most exciting for the teens and most difficult for the adults is when they discover... each other. By that I mean the boys discover the girls... and the girls discover the boys... and they realize that they actually aren't "icky" but rather "cute".

I hate that moment.

It would sure be nice if they all thought they were "icky" until they were 30.

But we've had some issues with teens and dating, so we have really been talking a lot about it.

Last weekend we decided to have an overnighter... well two actually. One for the boys and one for the girls. We split them up and really challenged the teens. We talked about purity and different aspects that apply to the different groups.

Both overnighters were powerful and effective (at least we think so!).

We followed those up on Wednesday night with a Purity ceremony. We bought purity rings for the teens and gave them the choice to participate. We had 31 teens that decided to commit to pure lives. The thing that ended up almost overshadowing that amazing fact was the unity.

See, a little over a year ago we merged with a Spanish speaking church. Then in January we FULLY merged our two youth groups into one. We are not two different churches meeting in one building... we are ONE church. We are still a bit bound by the language barrier among the adults, but we knew we could do one service.... AND IT WAS AMAZING!

We had everyone worshiping together in English and Spanish, and then we had both pastors, as well as Javier and I. We translated everything into both languages and it was spectacular. I think it's something we'll all remember for a long time to come. It's amazing what God can do, despite the barriers Satan tries to use! Its so cool to see such a united church body of believers that is truly diverse and yet able to worship together!


All the girls:
Pastor Orlando, Me, Javier, and Pastor Rollie (my dad)
all the boys:
Praying
Showing off their rings...

We are raising money to go to camp. It is a long process because we plan to take 50 or more teens and it costs about $300 a teen! Most of our kids cant afford it so we are doing major fundraising! Well last Sunday we had a big fundraiser spaghetti lunch. While everyone was eating we had our associate pastor, Doug, auction off our teens. It was HILARIOUS! The kids were getting into it... showing off their talents (one of them even did a choreographed dance!!!) and trying to get people to bid for them.

I just want to take this minute to say how AMAZING our congregation is! We had about 25 teens that were auctioned off and EVERY one of them was purchased!!! And none of them went for less than $50. Some went for as much as $175 or $250!!! Between that and donations and the lunch, we raised $3210.00!!!

We're well on our way towards summer camp, but we've still got a lot to raise!

Just by the name we should have known what we were getting ourselves into with this event :)

Basically we described it as paintball only without the paintballs! We filled baggies with flour and then split the teens into teams. One team guarded buckets while the other two tried to get sticks into their buckets without getting hit.

After quite a bit of playing, the teens decided it was much more fun to rip open the bags and pour the flour on each other... and on me :) I am usually the target.

So I thought I'd share just a couple of pictures from powder bomb ditch 'em:

Here are several of the teens (as well as our intern from Biola on the Right and one of our other leaders in the back)
Javier and I are usually targets... it must be because we're the youth pastors :) But this is us in the middle of the game plotting our revenge... if you can believe it, we were actually more covered than this by the end!Here is most of our group... not all of them. But as many as we could manage to get into one picture... it was a smaller group than most events we do, and several had run away to get more powder bombs by this point :)