Preparing to Leave Again

Preparing again

For those of you who aren't familiar with what we have been up to nor what we are going to be up to let me introduce ourselves.
We are Lane and Sheri Elliott, along with our kids Alexis 9, Jemma 7 and Noah 5. We lived in Paraguay as Missionaries for the last 2 years or so and now we are back here in Canada. Our plan was to stay longer, but God had other plans.
Now we are preparing to leave once again. We are committed to serving as Missionaries in Latin America and we believe God is calling us to serve in Norther Mexico in a city called Hermosillo.
Hermosillo is a city of about a million people. There is already an existing church that we are going to join. There is a Canadian Missionary family there already as well. This family is from our area of Western Canada and they have 3 children who are about the same age as our children.
Vision-
Our desire is to partner with the believers in the church that we are going to be attending with the goal of going into the poor areas of the city in order to serve. We desire to demonstrate the love of Jesus to the people of society that are often overlooked.
We see plainly all throughout scripture that God cares deeply for the poor of the world and how He warns against the exploitation of them. When Jesus walked the earth, He most often ministered to the poor and most often it was the poor who responded to Him. God loves to use the poor, and the weak and the broken to accomplish His purposes, it is a pattern in scripture.
We would love to see a church full of ex-adicts, ex- prostitutes, ex-whatevers. It is a big dream, but we serve a big God. We believe God still wants to change lives and He chooses to use broken vessels like us to do it.
We are supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus, living here on the earth to do what He did while He walked the earth. Simply said, we should be characterized by love, by reaching out and touching the broken hearted just like Jesus did.
We believe that when we reach out and touch and love in practical ways, that people will respond to that love. Once they do, then we can share with them the best news of all, that Jesus loves them and having died for their sins, wants to enter into a loving relationship with them.

That is pretty much it. We covet your prayers as we perpare to leave for Mexico by the turn of the new year. We will do our best to continue to update this blog regularily and hopefully we will be able to add video soon as well. Alternatively, you can see pictures of our time in Paraguay and soon, of our time in Mexico at www.flickr.com/photos/elliottspics