Sanders Party of Five

I hope everyone is having a good Thanksgiving weekend! We were able to have Thanksgiving dinner with a group of about 30 people at To Every Tribe. We dearly miss our friends and family back home, but our surrogate family here was great to celebrate the many things for which we can be thankful.

Last Friday I returned from a 12 day trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. The trip was very successful in all the ways that we can quantify it. The most amazing thing was to see each of the things that we prayed for before and during the trip answered by God. He is definitely a great and merciful God.

We also were made very aware that anything we are planning to do in this village is not starting with us or our ministry. God has been at work in these people for 27 years through Bible translators. I’ll include a note from Will Young, one of the student’s at the CPCP, that explains what happened:

On Monday, November 7, as our team crossed into Reynosa, Mexico on our way to Oaxaca, we were praying. When we returned on Friday, November 18, we were still praying. We had been praying about this trip as a community at the Center for Pioneer Church Planting for weeks, even months before we left. All of us were keenly aware of our own weakness and incapability to meet any of the goals we would set out to accomplish. So we all, as a community – staff, students, wives/fiances, and families – prayed. And you also were praying with us, and so I would like to share with you a little bit about how God has answered not just our prayers, but yours as well.

We prayed that God would protect us and provide for us on the road to and from Oaxaca. The Lord answered by bringing us through customs, facilitating picking up the medicine for the clinic, shielding us from evil men, giving us food and shelter, and keeping our sinful attitudes in check. We did experience some car trouble, but the Lord allowed us to break down on a stretch of highway where a mechanic found work by driving back and forth looking for vehicles that had pulled over, and in less than 5 minutes after we stopped he was under the car fixing it!

We prayed that God would be preparing hearts and opening doors in the village where we going to do the clinic. The Lord answered by introducing us to a couple who have been working with the people group of this village indirectly (they had not been allowed to live there by the village leadership) since 1984! They had labored on translating the Scriptures into this people group’s language, and this past February their New Testament was completed! We also had the honor of meeting a believing family who have been living in a neighboring village, who have persevered there in the face of consistent, unwavering persecution, but who have no inclination of leaving. Our great God whom we serve, has been answering this prayer we prayed since before I was born!

We prayed that God would bless the clinic as a means to be a blessing and connect with this village. The Lord answered by allowing us to treat every person who came to the clinic, and even giving us a chance to go into the village school to examine the children’s teeth.  Although the first day started slow, we ended up treating around 200 people. We also found out that there was a dentist in a neighboring village that the people were afraid of because her treatments were painful and not very well done so they did not want to come to our clinic, but when word got around that the people we treated had not felt pain and were pleased with the work we did many more people came. On the last evening of the clinic, we did have one tense situation, but the Lord brought resolution and even used it as an opportunity for the gospel to be proclaimed.

We prayed that God would open up doors for us to go back and one day to send a church planting team there. The Lord answered in the form of a formal letter from the leadership of the village, with three pages of signatures from villagers requesting us to come back next year to do another clinic! There have even been conversations about having someone come to their village to teach English!

Oh how great and powerful and awesome our God is! Not only does he hear our prayers, but he answers them in ways we could never have asked or even imagined! But if there is one principle thing that I have learned from this experience, it is that we must pray fervently for everything and we cannot take anything for granted! We desperately need our Father who formed us, sustains us, provides for us everything we need and gives us gifts that are greater than anything we could request of him! So let us pray without ceasing and for all things. Pray also that the the gospel of Christ would be proclaimed and that the kingdom of God would go forward with power in Oaxaca, and that God would send out workers into his harvest!

Thank you so much for your prayers and for those who were able to talk to Kandy or sent her messages, notes, or cards. We are praying for you guys as well.

Here are some pictures from the trip. There aren’t many from the actual village because we didn’t want to make them feel exploited, but there are many of the trip in and back out, as well as some of the other places we were able to visit.

Use this link if you can’t see the flash album below.