Hey everyone.
We had a long and very fulfilling two weeks with our first short term missions team. It was a team of 21 people from Phoenix Arizona. They helped us with our first music festival and a lot of social help projects. The truth is that a lot of amazing things happened and I probably will forget to write some of them down. It exceeded all of our expectations.
Some of the highlights for me was our free hugs campaign, our social helps in two specific neighborhoods, and our music festival.
At the free hugs campaign Andy and I were interviewed by two different TV stations and the team was also written about in the newspaper. This was cool because for the rest of the trip it seemed that everywhere we went people knew who we were already. The free hugs was a success and we were able to spread the word about what the Movement is. Next we had the music festival, which was a total success for us. We figure that throughout the day we had up to 1000 people come through and watch. We used the festival to raise money to help two needy families here in Tepic and also gather names to invite people to other Movement events.
The first main social help project we did was in a needy neighborhood. In the morning we picked up trash off the street and were able to pray for people and invite them to a party we were going to have later on in the evening, where we served free hamburgers and soda. When we first arrived a young man who just got out of jail met us and started to talk to us. He was very cold towards us, and even told us that we should leave the area. By the time we left after the party, he was literally weeping saying that he had never met people like us before. I am excited to go back to his house and spend more time with him. We also helped a widow and her three children in this neighborhood, they live in a one room house with a bathroom. The room they live in is no more than 10 ft by 8ft, maybe a little smaller. We installed a ceiling fan, brought food and toys for her two sons, and gave her and her teenage daughter gift certificates to a local clothing store.
The other highlight for me was when we fed and prayed for people at the local hospital. I basically almost broke down at this event it touched me so much. Stephanie and a few of the girls from the team also had a cool moment there. They were able to pray for a family of women who were there waiting for a young mother’s baby girl to have surgery. She was only two months old and was there for an organ to be operated on that afternoon. After we prayed for this family, they all looked up and everybody was weeping. The women were so touched by the prayers for the baby and their family. Two days later we went back to the hospital to do the same thing, and they saw the young mother again. She was full of joy because her baby was doing incredibly better than the doctors had expected! As I sat and observed everything I realized that we were living what Jesus taught. I saw hungry people being fed, children being loved, and people praying for the sick and the broken hearted. It was too much to take in all at once. To me that what happened at the hospital is a summary of how the whole missions trip went, everyday was purposeful.
We want to thank everyone for praying, literally every single thing we did we saw fruit come of it.
Blessings,
Joshua and Stephanie Horvath