The Workers Are Few

(Pictured are some of the Migrant Workers from Southern Mexico, as they listen to a gospel presentation)

The dusting of snow falling on the evergreens that surround our house just west of Sundre Alberta is a big change from the desert where I have been the past 2 plus weeks. This past Wednesday Sheri and the kids picked me up from the Calgary Airport. It was so good to see them again!

Just before I left for Mexico I got a call from Greg Neufeld, my teammate in Mexico. He told me he would be coming up to Calgary to see his dad who had been hospitalized and wondered if I could delay my departure by one day so that we might travel back to Mexico together. What an unexpected blessing of God to be able to spend 3 days together getting caught up and also planning ahead! Greg’s dad has recovered and is back at home again thankfully!

My time in Mexico was profitable. It was good to be reunited with many friends from the church and to see how the various ministries had advanced in our absence. It gives me such joy and fulfillment knowing that people in the church have continued running the Soup Kitchen and the Drop in Centre and have continued to reach out these last 5 months while we have been in Canada!

One opportunity that God opened up for us just before we left for home assignment last year was to bring the gospel to various vineyards around the Hermosillo region of our state of Sonora. We have an open door into 6 different vineyards that harvest grapes and oranges mainly. Each vineyard will have as many as 1200 workers (mainly young men) at the height of the harvest. Many of these young men come from areas in Southern Mexico that are considered to be “unreached” by the gospel message. While I was there I was able to get a team together from our church to go out to one particular vineyard and present the gospel via a Christian movie and preaching. This team continues to go out to this vineyard each week, presenting the truth of the gospel.

Pray that I will be able to motivate other evangelical churches in the city to go out to the other 5 vineyards! When you think about it, we have an open door to reach as many as 7000 young men with the good news of Jesus Christ and currently we are only reaching about 1000. Matthew 9:37-38 has become more real to me than ever! “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’”

Boy is that ever true! We certainly need more people to step up and get the message out to these other vineyards! I think about the wording “harvest field” and that is exactly what these young men are doing! They are working in the harvest fields! I think they will have a pretty good understanding of Jesus’s teaching about the vine and the branches!

Thank you for your prayers, we need you! Pray for more workers in the harvest fields! I will be back in Mexico for 3 weeks starting near the end of February.

The Ministries of Urban Hope

The Rigors of Home Assignment

Home Assignment (Furlough) is a strange thing. It dawned on me as we entered into Sheri’s parents place, that neither they nor my parents probably are going to get back up to our house (my mom hasn’t seen it yet) which is 3.5 hours north of where they live. The reason – we are constantly coming down to where they are! We have been doing quite a bit of traveling the last little while, at least it feels that way!

Moving forward, each weekend till December is booked with various speaking engagements or conferences. It can begin to take a toll on family. As I walked into Sheri’s parents’ house last night, I realized that most people don’t live this way. Most of them stay put generally. It is nice however, that we are allowed flexibility in that Sheri and the kids don’t always have to come with me as I travel to different churches from Regina to Langley BC. I hope I am not coming across as whining……………………….. many missionaries I know have to travel from the east coast, to the west coast……………………………of both Canada and the US! So by comparison, we have it pretty easy.

The picture of the kids is just them getting back to their Canadian roots! It was during a stop this summer while camping in the Rocky Mountains!

Well, just thought I would let you all know what has been happening in our lives lately. We are working on a new prayer card and will get that out soon. The next few weeks look like this. Saskatoon, Didsbury, Regina, Langley BC. Pray for us! Thankful to have you on our team.

Lane and Sheri and the kids

Happy to be Settled

It has been a while since I have updated the blog so I thought it would be a good idea to do so. We are finally settled in a house just 3 kms south of our church in the evergreen studded pristine wilderness west of Sundre Alberta! That sounded good didn’t it? It looks good too! We are loving the peace and tranquility that this setting offers. Often Sheri will just step outside and take a minute to smell the pines and drink it in. I think it is medicine to her!

The kids love this area as well. There is enough grass out here for a full size football field! Lots of room for them to run and for our Maltese Poodle to run as well! This really is a nice change for us after the rigors of life in Hermosillo. We love the ministry there and look forward to going back, but we are also looking forward to our remaining time here too! We are not taking for granted the quietness that surrounds us!

I have updated our picture website with new pictures of our trip back from Mexico and some camping and catching up time with family etc. It is a joy to see family and friends again, we have many to see still! Just click on the slideshows at the top of the blog to go to our picture website to see the larger version of the pictures.

The Picture is of our front yard as the moon is rising.

back from Chihuahua and leaving again!

It was a real good week in Chihuahua, thank you to all of you who prayed for us! I think we blessed the little church that we partnered with and I know they blessed us! At the height of the Kids club, there were 62 kids! Some Mom's came on the last day and indicated they were going to keep coming to church so please pray that it happens! That is the kind of fruit that God loves to see!
As for our family, we are in the throws of packing up and preparing to leave Hermosillo. We hope to leave tomorrow or Thursday and then arrive in Alberta a week later (hoping to take a night or 2 in Yellowstone National Park).
Please pray for saftey and a good trip back to Alberta. Sheri and the kids and I are excited to get going but sad to be leaving as well. We need your prayers, transition is never an easy time for a family!
God bless you and thank you for your prayers! We will be in touch once we get back to Alberta!

Off to Chihuahua City

Today I (Lane) am packing up for a trip out to Chihuahua City tomorrow with some of the Church Youth group. We are heading out for a missions trip (partnering with another Church in Chihuahua City to put on a kids club and be an encouragement to this new Church). The plan is to leave tomorrow morning bright and early (6am) Pacific Time and arrive there by about 6pm. We will be coming back on the 8th. Please pray for safety on the highways and that we would be a blessing to this fairly new church that we are going to be partnering with. We will be praying for a good number of kids to come to the VBS we will be doing there.

Pray also for Sheri and the kids. Sheri has a big task in front of her as she is packing up for our Home Assignment that we will be taking once I get back from Chihuahua. Her health still isn't wonderful and with this extra stress of me leaving she could sure use your prayers!

Thank you for standing with us! We covet your prayers!

Harvest Time!

(Some of the 250 Migrant Workers from Southern Mexico
exploring Gods word in their new Bibles)

God is at work! We are excited to be able to be involved with what He is doing here in Nothern Mexico, and in the South as well! What do I mean? Read on!

It was about a year ago that God put the plight of the unreached indiginous tribes of the world on our hearts. We prayed and did some investigating. It turns out that in this part of the world, and in Mexico specifically, many of the unreached groups live south of Mexico City. We found this info on the Joshua Project Website - to have a look yourself go to http://www.joshuaproject.net/ There is a really cool application that reads "Download KMZ file" on their website. It loads Google Earth and shows the reached and unreached people groups of the world by little different colored dots. Get the program free by clicking here http://www.joshuaproject.net/great-commision-maps.php If the link doesn't work just copy it and paste it into your internet browser.

Ok, fast forward to about a month ago. I got an invite to a local vineyard by a Christian friend from church who caters food to many different vineyards in the area. He provides food for the workers in the vineyard. These are private vineyards but since they contract him to provide the food, he knows the owners personally and therefore I was able to go in and see the operation.

It turns out that right now there are about 700 workers harvesting the grapes and the majority of them come from south of Mexico City! Many of them speak different tribal languages as well as Spanish. If you listen you can hear other languages being spoken. We didn't realize it but the "unreached tribal groups" are right here in our backyard! So we have been out to this one vineyard 3 times so far and last night we gave away 200 bibles! Some of the men and youth from our church came along with me and did a great job at handing out the bibles and explaining basic things about the bibles. As well one of the leaders in our church who is gifted in evangelism presented the gospel message and many people responded!
It is amazing to have 250 people who perhaps have never been in a Christian church and never had the gospel message explained to them sit there attentively for over 2 hours! One of the things that I am very excited about is the enthusiasm that the church people are showing for this ministry!
I mentioned that my friend caters to many different vineyards in the area. I just got off the phone with him and he wants to know how we can plan to reach the other vineyards as well! One of the vineyards has about 1200 workers!
Please pray for us! We are going to be praying and planning as we consider how to reach these people who are hungry for God's word! We will be returning from Canada in December and at that time we hope to begin at some of these different vineyards.
All of this is for God's glory, we want to get His word out into the hands of the people who need it trusting that "It will not return to me empty" Isaiah 55:11 There are 2 harvests happening. One is of grapes, and one is much more important that grapes! The human heart!