This coming Sunday, February 10, nine of us from Lincoln Berean Church will board a plane and head to Mexico City, Mexico. This week-long Engagement Trip is the first of many trips that our Global Outreach team will lead this year – we will be sending people to Kenya, South East Asia, and Guatemala to name a few. Our goal during each of these trips is to have our eyes opened to the great need in the world. In cities like Mexico City, hundreds of thousands are living in spiritual and physical poverty. Our hope is that even our small acts of love will be used by God to help people made in his image experience a sense of dignity and value. 

Mexico City itself is a massive city – by some measurements it is one of the biggest cities in the world. Over 20 million people call Mexico City home and that number is increasing each year. As the largest city in the country, it is a hub for young people looking for work and opportunity. Unfortunately, this mass movement into Mexico City also brings with it enormous risk. Young people who do not find work are thrown into horrible situations, living in dangerous neighborhoods and often numbing their pain with drugs. 

In Mexico we will engage one on one with many of these people: families living on the streets, the elderly shut into a government run retirement home, and Mexico City’s famous “street kids” – a group that is said to be as large as 20,000 children. Through an interpreter and through our actions we will aim to proclaim the hope of the gospel to these people living without hope. 

Will you join us in praying for this trip? We are praying that God would use our time in Mexico to impact those he loves that are stuck in desperate situations. With language barriers being what they are, we know much of what will need to be communicated will need to occur by God’s Spirit.  We are also praying that God would impact our hearts on this trip – that our heart would be moved by those things that move his heart. Each moment of this trip we will aim to look at our surroundings from God’s perspective and not our own. 

Engaging at Pan de Vida

We will finish our trip visiting two LBC missionaries: Ginger and Enrique Rodriguez. Ginger and Enrique work at Pan de Vida (Bread of Life) orphanage in Queretaro, Mexico. Pan de Vida is home to over 60 kids who have been pulled off the streets, out of situations similar to what we will have just experienced in Mexico City, and they are given a chance to thrive. At Pan de Vida they are surrounded by a staff that loves them, that shares the truth with them, that helps them gain an education, and that grants them the opportunity to become all that God intends for them to be.

Keep an eye on this blog and in the bulletin at our weekend services in the coming weeks to hear a bit about the outcome of our trip. Also, pray about participating in a trip yourself – it will have a bigger impact on you than you could ever imagine!