Kami Burns’ Blog

at el pozo, one of the things we love most is watching students move closer to God. we have a fairly nerdy system in place called “the assimilation plan” which helps us track students’ spiritual progress, as much as something like that can be measured. we celebrate when strangers become friends of el pozo, when our friends become known by this community and our staff, when those who are known let their guards down and become comfortable here, when the comfortable begin to grow in their faiths, when growing believers take ownership of el pozo, and seeing those who have led here move on to lead in the local church once their college years are through. here are some stories of el pozo students who are growing in different ways, but in one direction…

israel is a guy who’s FAMOUS at el pozo for bringing tons of friends here. he has more talent with people than just about anyone i know. multiple times he has brought people here that he’s met earlier that day. as far as i know, he’s not paying, bribing, or tricking them, and last week his friend jeff showed up for the first time! israel had introduced me to jeff once before, and when we first met, jeff couldn’t wrap his mind around what it was that we did here. he asked me question after question – free food? why? people live in this house? WHAT IS THIS PLACE? …and now he knows, because jeff came to pozomida last thursday and ate a warm meal, made some new friends, and heard a short talk about God’s love (our theme during the month of february). today i’m praying that jeff’s just as excited about being our friend as we are about being his, and that we’ll see him back here soon.

laura and jeff, both first timers at pozomida last week!

courtney and i got to be friends with a girl named pamela last semester. she was dating a friend of ours and we’d end up traveling with her to UDLAP football games or hanging out with her on the weekends. pamela’s fun, outgoing, and knows EVERYONE on campus, and she started coming occasionally to some events at el pozo last semester. i have loved watching her become an el pozo regular this semester. she’s here on tuesdays and thursdays with tons of friends, and we’re seeing her slowly but surely make el pozo hers instead of just being “courtney and kami’s friend”. today i’m praying that pam will be here tuesday night and that during our talks about love, that something will click and that she’ll know the love God has for her.

pamela and i meeting a famous mexican soccer player at mcdonald's!

jp is a hilarious guy who studies actuarial science. he started coming to pozomida 2 years ago, and has since brought dozens and dozens of friends to el pozo. every thursday he rounds up everyone he can find and brings them over here…or at least he did, until this semester. now he has class during pozomida and can’t come…but luckily, erick and victor, 2 of his best friends, have taken over his role of inviting and herding the actuaries over here on thursdays. on thursday afternoons after lunch, it’s fun to sit down with them and talk about movies, music, books, and life. they haven’t professed any huge leaps of faith during their time at el pozo, but i’m at least glad to know that they are comfortable here and invite their friends to come share in what we have here and hear the message that we teach. today i’m praying that erick and victor will be changed by what they’ve found here, even if i never personally get to see the fruit.

erick and victor about to win our game at pozomida 2 weeks ago!

two very tangible steps of growth were seen this past sunday afternoon, when we celebrated 2 baptisms together with mosaico, the new CMF church plant here in cholula! carlos is a paramedic on campus who got connected with mosaico through el pozo, and tania is a student who came to el pozo with friends, got more involved by playing flag football with our teams, started reading the bible with courtney, and decided to give her life to Jesus (despite opposition from her family) this weekend. today i’m praying for tania to grow more and more in her faith after taking this awesome step!

tania brought her friend tiny to en vivo last week, and he wants to learn more about what it means to follow jesus! (ps - it

tania’s baptism was extra special because she asked her friend beto to baptize her alongside of courtney because of the role he’s played in her walk with jesus. beto became a christian here at el pozo, was baptized last year, and he’s now a key player in el pozo’s student leadership group, so to see that he’s got a ministry of his own already is every pastor’s dream! today i’m praying for beto as he tries to figure out the next step in his life…he finished school in december and i hope and pray that no matter where he ends up next, that he finds a church and continues to minister like he has here at el pozo as a leader.

beto's in the middle and tania's on the right, with our good friend hector on the far left...beto's a great friend to both of them!

and so many el pozo alumni have been crucial in starting mosaico, a new christian community here in cholula. CMF missionaries todd and tonja hancock moved here in august and alongside el pozo alumni have planted a church. to see a church grow out of this campus ministry is beyond rewarding, and to see mosaico reaching people that el pozo ordinarily wouldn’t or couldn’t is such a blessing. we believe in the power of the local church to change our world, and seeing mosaico grow from idea to conception to birth to a baby church has been a learning experience for me, and i’m just sitting in the audience! today i’m praying for mosaico to continue growing deeper and wider and to keep impacting lives here in cholula.

a sunday morning of worship at mosaico christian community (meeting in the el pozo pole barn)!

God’s creation is growing here, with spring aaaalmost upon us, and his people are too. thanks for constantly feeding el pozo with your prayers and support, and stay tuned to see even more growing as college students in mexico keep taking steps closer to God.

much love – kami

happy new year! school starts today at UDLA and at several other local universities, and i’m excited to be back to a “normal” routine. tomorrow night, we’ll have our first en vivo bible study of the year, and i can’t wait to see all the students who are still trickling back into town after a few weeks of vacation.

i’ve been back in puebla since december 26, however, and the last few days, although out of the ordinary, were not a normal vacation. for a week, el pozo hosted a group from georgia tech christian campus fellowship, the ministry where courtney and i (along with many ex-el pozo staff) were involved during our college years. for the last 2 years, we’ve welcomed a group from auburn christian fellowship down to puebla on their spring break, and it was awesome to have some fellow yellow jackets here for a few days, even though at this point i’m too old to have known the vast majority of current ccf students. in the last several years, georgia tech ccf has taken a special interest in compassion ministry, serving not only in relief situations but also working intentionally and consistently with homelessness and poverty within atlanta.

"putting out the vibe"...apparently quite a techie thing to do?!

seven tech students and one legendary staff member named neal baker came to puebla to work with some great friends of el pozo’s who work with an organization called living water international. this organization provides clean water to people all over the world, while partnering with these needy communities to not only instill proper health and hygiene habits which become possible with access to water, but also to communicate the message of “living water”, which as christians we believe is jesus christ. our ministry, called el pozo (spanish for “the well”), is named after the same “living water” story we find in the gospel of john, chapter 4.

a partially completed springbox! eugenio, on the right, was the brains behind the operation.

the people of la trinidad, the village where we worked were so grateful for the gift of clean water…something that those of us from the united states take for granted. in mexico, we can’t drink tap water…i’ve learned to always make sure we have bottled water in our house before i go for a run (after having to quench my thirst with warm boxed milk just one time i learned my lesson), but that’s a luxury i have by living in a city and earning a quite livable wage. in small rural towns, there aren’t always stores that sell water, and even when there are, there isn’t always money to pay for it.

many people of the town use donkeys to haul several gallons of water from the well at a time back to their homes (that's what the blue buckets on his sides are for). impressed by his strength, i asked to take a picture with him.

so alongside some skilled masons, the georgia tech group, some el pozo staff and students, and the living water group worked hard to create what we call a “springbox” in english. in la trinidad, drilling a conventional well isn’t a possibility (there’s just not much water as you can probably tell by how dry everything looks in our pictures), so we built a stone well around a natural spring that will hold clean water for the people of the town. i’m grateful to have been able to help provide water for these humble and grateful people in la trinidad, but just like at el pozo, my hope and prayer is that they find living water in jesus christ.

our group with the completed well!

leaving our mark on the finished product. for centuries to come, people will be wondering why we felt it necessary to write "el pozo" on el pozo...but you and i will know.

much love – kami

i’m pleased to report that for the first time in recent history, we at el pozo have had the scheduling luxury to celebrate christmas AFTER thanksgiving as a ministry. and it turns out that we’re WAY better at celebrating christmas after an appropriate thanksgiving spread.

i wrote in my last update that we would be having a christmas party with the children and staff from a local children’s home that we work with throughout the year. we’ve had a christmas party with them for the last few years and it’s been so much fun…the kids from the home write letters and el pozo students take the letters and help bring christmas to these kids. we normally go out to the orphanage one evening, hang out with the kids, and give them the gifts, but this year we decided to invite them to OUR house for a big dinner, games, a piñata, and the encore performance of the first annual el pozo christmas pageant.

yes, that’s right…a dream of mine has come true. last april, i wanted to do a “pastorela”, or a christmas pageant, at thursday lunch instead of giving a 5 minute talk. my brave teammates talked me down and said we should think about doing a christmas pageant in a more seasonally relevant time, but i always loved christmas pageants and plays at church growing up and i really wanted el pozo to have one.

so, come christmastime, we did! and by we, i actually mean that heath wrote an amazing script that elsa and debora turned into a broadway-caliber theatrical production on a budget of right about $0 and on a week’s notice. my role last tuesday night during the pastorela was to sit in the crowd and laugh and cry and love every second of watching our students act out the christmas story during our last en vivo of the year.

from where i’m standing, i think the biggest leap of faith we have to take as christians is to believe that God really did become a baby named Jesus, live a perfect life while teaching us that the kingdom of God is at hand, die on a cross, and defeat death on the third day. by God’s grace i believe that story to be quite true, and my prayer is that the room full of students who participated in the pageant or watched and heard this story being told by their friends can begin to believe the same thing.

to the kids from the orphanage, you couldn’t convince them otherwise. they each love God with their entire heart and i know that their lives were a testimony and a blessing to the students who spent time with them on friday evening. they come from an entirely different economic and educational background than your average el pozo student but they gave from the abundance of their love to our students who all too often come up short in that department. playing games with college students, eating dinner with them, and being a wonderful audience for the encore pageant performance is fantastic for those kids, but i think el pozo and our students are far more blessed by events such as these.

our friend lizzet hancock (daughter of cmf missionaries todd and tonja) giving a gift to her new friend!

so that’s how we celebrated christmas as a community this year. call it childish, but i can think of about a million worse things to be called. christmas is way better with kids around, anyways…and i hope that this christmas, el pozo’s students can have a childlike faith and can believe, maybe even for the first time, that a Savior has been born unto us, and he is the Messiah, the Lord.

merry christmas from mexico!
much love – kami

mexico is a country with lots of influence from the united states. it’s nearly impossible for 2 countries to touch without having some sort of impact on each other, whether we’re talking about culture, immigration, or trade. i can go buy a pig’s head in the cholula market and then walk to starbucks for a peppermint mocha. many days my lunch decision comes down to the little lady selling tacos from a basket or subway. i can buy groceries at costco or from a roadside stand.

el pozo, however, is every day becoming more and more mexican. despite having american parents, this ministry is no longer defined by its staff but much more so by the students it serves. our mission statement specifically mentions being culturally relevant. despite the fact that every UDLA student has to pass an incredibly difficult test of english as a foreign language, we teach, worship, and minister in spanish because we want el pozo to be by mexicans, for mexicans.

but one day a year, we are unashamedly “gringos” and share with our students a tradition that means so much to those of us who grew up in the united states. thanksgiving has yet to cross the rio bravo (or as you might know it, the rio grande) and become a part of mexican culture, but it’s become an anticipated ministry event at el pozo. last year we had about 200 people eating thanksgiving lunch with us, 50 of whom came from a local orphanage whom we serve as a local ministry opportunity for our students. this year, however, we decided to separate the 2 events and focus on thanksgiving with our students and have a christmas party with the kids from the orphanage (this upcoming friday!). so we planned for 120-150 people and as usual, cooked all day on wednesday and thursday to make sure this mega thanksgiving feast was ready.

this is what we thought it would look like

so the students started to arrive. and they didn’t stop. we started serving food at 2:15pm, and at 3:15pm the line was still 40 people long. portions had to get smaller (but shouldn’t they always on thanksgiving?) but every single one of the 230 people that showed up to celebrate thanksgiving with el pozo ate turkey, dressing, green beans, mixed vegetables, and pineapple casserole and washed it down with some sweet tea (unless they opted for the agua de jamaica, a mexican drink made from hibiscus flowers).

and this is what it did look like

elsa stood up to ask God to bless the food and to tell our students how thankful we are for this year we’ve had at el pozo. we’re thankful that we’ve not only made it through drastic staff changes, a building project, another year of a struggling economy which for so many has meant a struggling support base, the graduation of a strong generation of student leaders, and a not-so-stellar year for mexico, but we have thrived. our ministry is growing. it is reaching people who have no relationship with God and no concept of the love and grace that is theirs through jesus christ. God is using the least likely of suspects to further His kingdom here in cholula, from the el pozo staff to the new students who weren’t looking for God but have found Him in a green house right next to campus.

as i was carrying casseroles from our kitchen out to the serving line, each time i pushed my way through the crowd, tears would come to my eyes because in the quietness of the kitchen the weight of the miracle that was happening out in the new building would hit me. not only a huge ministry event, not only the food going much further than it should have (loaves and fish, anyone?), but the individuals that were represented by each of the 230 plates of food.

baruk, a freshman, said, “i’m thankful for the staff here. they’ve accepted me just as i am since the beginning.” luis thanked baruk for inviting him to el pozo, and said “i guess i’m still new here, but i feel like i belong because i’ve been accepted and loved.” and i’m thankful for those 2 and their 228 friends who brought me to tears on thursday by showing their gratitude for el pozo.

luis is in the black shirt and baruk is to his right, with more of their freshman friends gaby, sammy, and andres

and i too am grateful for el pozo. i’m grateful to have a job that i not only love, but one where i can see God working every single day. i’d be crazy to doubt His love or His power…it would be like doubting the blue sky or the huge mountains i see each day. i’m grateful for the incredible staff i am privileged to work with and for the people that have come before us. for friends and family that love me beyond belief and across thousands of miles and from right here in puebla. for the end of a semester and for dreaming big for the next one. for being able to spend my favorite holiday at work and for it not to have mattered one bit.

and i’m grateful for you. thanks for reading and for caring and for praying and supporting and for making el pozo what it is.

much love – kami

ps – for more pictures and even video of thursday’s craziness, check out “el pozo” on facebook or become a fan of “Globalscope-Mexico”.

and with thanksgiving over and as you can see by the coffee cup in my hand...christmas is here!

Valeria’s a model and she’s getting married next summer. Irma’s 18 and just moved to Puebla from Tijuana. Tania is in her 9th semester of architecture and loves playing flag football and cheering on the 49ers, and in her first semester she would wear cat ears and a tail when she went to class. Anaid’s most prized possession as a mechanical engineer are her work boots. Monica and Linda hated each other before starting college because of the basketball rivalries between El Salvador and Guatemala, where they’re from, but now they are roommates and have bonded over being far from home.

Not many things would get all these girls in the same place on a Saturday night, but this weekend, El Pozo had a pajama party and invited all the girls in the ministry, and those girls I mentioned above and many more were so excited to be a part of it! On Saturday evening, we drove across town to the Hancocks’ home (Todd and Tonja are church planters with CMF and moved here this fall from Mexico City and lent us their house for the weekend) and when we got there, we all stuffed our faces full of carne asada, guacamole, and the world’s most delicious flour tortillas (no tea and crumpets at this girls night!). Our friend Juanita Del Angel came to visit us from Pachuca where she and her husband Jorge serve as pastors of a church. Juanita shared with us about learning to appreciate how we are different from one another and how we can still love each other and learn from each other, which was a lesson these girls needed to learn. Too often, girls can form cliques, talk badly about each other to hide their own insecurities, or best case scenario just avoid each other, but this weekend barriers were broken down and new friendships were formed.

I think the kingdom of heaven should look a lot like girls night…the girl wearing cat ears will be hanging out with the model, the basketball player from Guatemala will be laughing with the funny girl who doesn’t leave the house without makeup and heels, and we’ll all be chowing down on carne asada. I’m grateful for the girls who form such a big part of this ministry, for the chance to invest in their lives now, and for the women of Christ that they are becoming.

4 of my favorite girls...and reese's very first girls night!

being girly!

Today join me in praying for the girls of El Pozo…that they will know their identity as God’s daughters and will choose to live that way as well! I love these girls so much and am so grateful that a big part of my job is being able to mentor girls during such a decisive time of their lives.

Much love – Kami

i am terrible at remembering jokes. i have a pretty vast collection of anti-UGA jokes and that’s about it. in mexican culture, there’s a style of joke which i’d compare to a knock-knock joke in english, that has the same format every time, so i’ve managed to remember 3 or 4 of those. it basically goes like this…”act 1 – ____, act 2 – ____, act 3 – ______. what’s the name of the play?” we’re not talking about the highest level of humor here, but they are jokes that i can remember. i will spare you the less funny translated version, but suffice it to say that my favorite joke involves the beginning of “circle of life” from the lion king which you will find below for your viewing pleasure. i’ve told it probably a dozen times at el pozo, including the last two weeks at en vivo and i’m actually scheduled to tell it again tomorrow night during heath’s talk during which i’m sure the students will laugh hysterically as usual.

when we first started talking about creating an event to build community with all the first and second year students that are new to el pozo, we couldn’t come up with a name. we googled every campus ministry we could think of, but fresh party, freshman throwdown, or other more churchy-sounding names just didn’t translate into el pozo lingo the way we liked. elsa came up with the name “lunada” for our monthly worship event, but she was drawing a blank when it came to coming up with a name for this event. we thought about calling up our friend cody spencer, who so eloquently crafted “miercomida”, pozomida’s ancestor whose name combined the spanish words for wednesday and lunch.

but last week, after much contemplation, we decided to name this new monday-night event after my favorite joke…”primer acto” (act 1) is making it’s debut at el pozo tonight (monday) and we’re so excited to see how it goes! this semester we’ve had tons of new students get involved, and the idea of having another opportunity to share the gospel with them each week and get them growing in their relationships with God and with each other makes me start dreaming big about el pozo’s future, when these new people are a core group of leaders who have been sharing their lives and their walks with jesus for years.

last thursday at lunch, i was talking to one of the girls who has been coming to el pozo this semester, and just out of curiosity, i asked her what year she was in school and she said, “2nd….so i’m still young enough for primer acto!”. yesterday i ran into a girl on campus as i was walking to the university’s musical (to see many of this year’s new students who study theater and dance) and she said, “you’ll have to tell me about the musical tomorrow night at primer acto!”. students are looking forward to this night, to bringing their friends and to building relationships with other people who are new to college and to el pozo.

haru and irma, 2nd and 1st year basketball players from UDLA who LOVE el pozo

theater and dance kids who started coming to el pozo thanks to our awesome exchange students!

say a prayer for primer acto tonight, for the (hopefully) numerous students who will be part of it, and the staff that is leading the event…we’re still being propelled forward by the energy of last weekend’s retreat, and i think so many of the young new faces at el pozo will be staying around for years to come because we’ll be getting one more encounter with them each week! pray that it becomes an event that fosters not only community but spiritual growth among our youngest students and that they realize through this event that el pozo is a home for them.

much love – kami

normally monday mornings i’m feeling pretty well-rested after a sunday of church, a big meal, and watching football, but today i’m exhausted in the best possible way…because we just got back from our ministry’s trip to la malinche, one of the 4 big mountains that we get to see every day living here in cholula.

la malinche and the cabins at the park where we stayed

40 students, along with our staff, interns, and world class retreat speaker jeremy lawler, on loan from georgia tech ccf, left cholula on friday afternoon. last week, i was pretty bummed because several of the students who i have been most excited about this semester were realizing they weren’t going to be able to go. the UDLA basketball teams have been so involved with our ministry this semester and had games all weekend. theater and dance kids have been filling up our thursday lunch events, but because of the play they have this upcoming weekend, they had rehearsals scheduled for this past weekend. my penny-pinching instincts as el pozo’s new finance person started flaring up when i thought about us losing money for having rented too many cabins, not being able to fill up our charter bus, etc.

i didn’t have many responsibilities for planning the retreat thanks to courtney, elsa, and rada who had taken care of everything, but on friday, one of my jobs was to sign people in and take their money. suddenly, a group of 4 girls showed up and said they wanted to go. i had only ever seen one of them before. another girl who had decided to go even though she doesn’t know many people asked if she could bring a friend. people came out of the woodwork and filled our trip right up.

new friends to el pozo!

retreats exist for one main purpose in campus ministry – to build community. and community was definitely built this weekend. each session we had with worship and a talk, i looked around and saw students sitting with other people they didn’t come with, people who they had never spoken to before this weekend. our leaders reached out to new people. our exchange students made new friends and connected their friends to a community that will last long past when they head back to the states in december.

when we came back yesterday, students hung around el pozo for the rest of the day. no one wanted the weekend to end…they even invited friends who hadn’t gone on the trip to come to el pozo and hang out with the new friends they’d made. when i finally got on my computer to catch up on email, i had several new friend requests on facebook – people i’d met from the weekend. ali is a girl who’d come with several of her roommates (all of whom had been dragged by one roommate who came to el pozo for the first time last week). she seemed distant at first when they arrived on friday, but she and i had talked a good bit at the campfire on saturday night, so i wasn’t surprised to see her friend request. i clicked accept, and when i saw her profile for the first time, i was reminded why we go through all the stress and exhaustion of a retreat…

“this was the most amazing weekend ever. i learned a lot of new things, and made me change a lot about the way i used to think, so i’m glad that God gave me this chance…”

worth it? i think so. each time i yawn today i’ll thank God for ali and for the 39 other students like her who had an amazing weekend. i’m excited to see the story that God is writing in these students’ lives and how the next chapter of el pozo’s story was written this weekend on a trip to la malinche.

keep your eye on el pozo’s facebook page for pictures of the whole weekend, and keep these students in your prayers as we follow up with them this week, getting them involved in our events, small groups, and service. thanks for praying for el pozo and for the retreat and know that God is at work here in cholula in big ways.

now for another cup of coffee. much love – kami

at en vivo each week at el pozo, we pass around a “luchador mask”, the masks that wrestlers wear here in mexico. inside the luchador mask are pencils and little pieces of paper for students to write down their prayer requests. “luchar” means “to wrestle” en español, so we ask students to write down the things they are “wrestling with”. we tell them each week that they can write whatever they want, that they can write their name if they want or they don’t have to, but that they can be sure that our staff will be praying for them. and that we do.

we get all sorts of prayer requests. last year we were asked to pray that the UDLAP aztecas football team would win the national championship…and they did! i hope God didn’t have to turn his head away from other, bigger world issues for too long to make that one happen! we pray for sick people, for tests, for homesickness, for traveling mercies, and for the students to grow closer to God.

each week ever since we started passing around the prayer mask, we have gotten a request from one of our student leaders. she has been dating a guy for 6 years who isn’t a christian. he comes to our ministry as well, and is a gifted athlete, a natural leader, and fascinated with the concepts of personal growth and leadership. what he’s been missing all along is faith in jesus.

so each week, when we read those little folded up pieces of paper, we find a note written in the same handwriting…pray that he can have faith in God, that he will encounter God, that God will work in his heart. i’m pretty close to this girl…she’s broken up with him before because she wants to marry a christian man, but she knows she loves him. my heart has ached for her…she’s asked me to join with her in praying that God will either change his heart or take him away from her. (i added “or give her the strength to let him go”) and so that’s what she and i and our staff have prayed, that seemingly against all odds, that God would work a miracle in this guy’s life.

so on tuesday night, an emotional night for our community as we said goodbye to the mcdades, imagine the tears that came into my eyes when he walked into the kitchen as we’re washing dishes and said, “kami and courtney, be here on sunday night at 7pm.” i said, “sure….but why?” and my dear friend said, “i’m getting baptized!”

so that’s what happened last night…i can’t imagine a better way to send nathan and erin back to the states than by God showing us all that el pozo is his, and that he is working in the hearts of these students, and by celebrating the new life in jesus christ of one of our students.

giving his confession of faith!

getting dunked!

dead to sin, alive in christ

tomorrow’s prayer mask just won’t be the same without abi asking for prayer for pako…but i’ll definitely be thanking God for answering this prayer of abi’s and of our community. today, i’m praying big prayers for el pozo, for the students and the community, because if i had any doubt, last night i was reminded that God DOES answer our prayers. join with me…pray for our upcoming retreat (not this upcoming weekend but the next), for our students, and for God to do big things through this community as we reach the halfway point of the semester and begin a new chapter of el pozo’s story as we said “hasta luego” to the mcdades today. el pozo has momentum right now…and we want to keep it up! thank you for your prayers, your support, and your love of el pozo!

much love – kami

in campus ministry, we are constantly saying hello to new students. freshmen, transfers, and exchange students are constantly arriving to the university, and new faces are just as constantly showing up around el pozo. the beginning of the semester brings us a new wave of people, but not a week goes by that we’re not giving out our famous brownies to people who come to el pozo for the first time.

but we’re also often saying goodbye. this semester has been exceptionally tough in that department because on top of saying goodbye to last year’s interns and exchange students, we had several students graduate, many students transfer away to other universities, and we’re going through lots of staff changes. earlier this month we said goodbye to clay and amanda, and next week we’ll be getting a new intern!

this week marks a week of “lasts” for el pozo’s very FIRST staff members, nathan and erin mcdade, who will be saying not goodbye but “hasta luego” to mexico a week from today. nathan and erin moved here in 2004 and with God’s help, built el pozo from the ground up. before names like “el pozo” and “la casa verde” were ever spoken, they were here learning spanish and the mexican culture, and meeting as many people as they could. 7 years later, el pozo is a community, la casa verde is a second home for students, and cholula has been changed because of the mcdade’s 7 years here.

tomorrow night we’ll celebrate them at en vivo…we’ll thank them and hug them and cry with them and remember the impact they’ve made on the world through serving here at el pozo. nate will be giving a talk about how we use our time, and i can’t think of any better way to invest 7 years of life than in building a ministry like this one.

one of my favorite quotes about time is from annie dillard, who said “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” campus ministry might bring entire days of cleaning, or cooking, or counseling, or talk writing, or video editing, or event planning, or leading bible studies….but in the case of nathan and erin, each of those days has added up to a life of incredible blessing for the community they serve.

we’re so grateful for nathan and erin and for all that they’ve meant to us as team leaders, as coworkers, as friends, and as family. join me and el pozo in thanking God for them this week and asking God to bless their new ministry in maryland and to continue blessing el pozo, where we’ll be reaping the fruit of their labors for many years to come.

the mcdade family!

erin, elsita, and i playing in the sprinkler at el pozo

el pozo family portrait! we are f.a.m.i.l.y. and we will always be!

much love – kami

well, my lifelong dream of hosting a talk show has come true. live from the el pozo pole barn stage, it’s monday afternoon. adjust your speakers accordingly, i don’t want anyone getting in trouble for my voice screaming in their office. stay tuned for more video updates, which i promise will be more interesting than this pilot episode which is essentially just me learning how to make them. i hope for musical guests, celebrity interviews, and maybe even justin timberlake, so get excited!

credits: producer, director, host – me
creeper at the window – courtney

click here to watch the video!

and, since (almost) everyone loves babies, here are some pictures of me with various babies and also other people!

israel, me, baby reese neal, andrea, and rodrigo at en vivo!

me, elsa mcdade, sawyer cooper, and erin rocking out during tuesday night worship! college students don't sing and dance like they do.

the most random family portrait of all time...me, sawyer, and memo, our great friend from flag football before free lunch on thursday. i'm tempted to send out christmas cards.

much love from puebla – kami