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A message from the Thiessens dated Nov. 2002
Dear friends,
The cool mornings are a welcome year end change, now that the rainy
season is over and we get a few months of agreeable temperatures. We celebrated
American thanksgiving but we kind of forgot the Canadian one more than
a month ago.
The little church here hosted a Thanksgiving fiesta for about 50-60 people on Nov 10th. This is the second year. For them it too is a harvest festival, a time to be ceremonially grateful for God's rich blessings through nature. They led it all themselves, sharing with members from two other churches and guests from among their friends, family and neighbors. We ate chili sauced deep-steamed chicken, rice, beans, tortillas, and a squash desert, with enough left over to hand around. The Old Testament reading was from the Pentateuch where the harvest festivals were instituted, and the children enacted the part of the story of Ruth where she gleans in the fields of Boaz. Lamberto read from John, where Jesus tells us to remain in him, he is the vine, we are the branches. Without him we can bear no fruit. That's true at harvest, and all our activities throughout the year.
We've been visiting several families around town, and beyond. Lamberto visited his mountain town again and spoke openly with his people about Jesus. A few were interested, but for most these are disturbing ideas that they initially want nothing to do with. He is glad that one of his cousins has returned to live in the village, since he became a believer out in the big city and is now trying to lead others to Christ. We had also started to visit a family connected to the widow in our group, a half-hour out of Ometepec. That was interrupted by their going up to the north of Mexico to work as migrant laborers in the tomato fields. So we will resume those visits and studies after Easter, when they return along with another family we were working with. The woodcutter Mixtec man on the edge of town has been real busy lately, and we haven't been able to study Scripture with him for most of the month. We keep trying, since we were seeing good signs of growing faith, even a willingness to pray to his Father God in his own language.
God bless you,
Robert and Anne.
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