ash spewing out of the volcano last wednesday (picture from televisa)

May the glory of the LORD endure forever;
may the LORD rejoice in his works—
he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

I will sing to the LORD all my life;
I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
May my meditation be pleasing to him,
as I rejoice in the LORD.

–Psalm 104:31-35

a normal view of the volcano from cholula

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of

beauty instead of ashes,

the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.

–Isaiah 61:1-3

i’ve heard many people translate the name of this fantastic organization as “houses for christ”, but that’s actually not quite accurate. “por” and “para” are 2 similar words that trip up us non-native spanish speakers. if they were houses FOR christ, it would be “casas para cristo”. casas POR cristo, however, would be best translated “houses BY christ”, and based on el pozo’s experience in ciudad acuña, coahuila, méxico, last week, i’d say that’s a pretty good name for what happened.

i headed up this trip for the first time, and suffice it to say that it was a stressful experience to plan the trip, both logistically and financially. we knew from the get-go that if this trip was going to happen, that we’d have to work hard to raise lots of pesos and dollars, and follow a very strict budget. since that had gone well so far, i spent the week leading up to the trip not praying for money, but for the students who would be going on the trip…that God would do a great work in and through their hearts and lives.

on thursday evening before spring break, i was finally feeling okay. we’d just heard that we’d got in 8000 more pesos, which would put us right at our fundraising goal. 2 hours later, the van rental company called to let me know that they didn’t have vans for us to take. i quickly went through the 7 stages of grief and then opened up the yellow pages. elsa and rada helped me call every van rental company in the tri-state area, to no avail. sent out S.O.S. emails asking for prayers and/or contacts and my friend abbey told me about our friend julio’s contact with a bus company. granted, i wanted vans, but beggars can’t be choosers with 36 hours to go till the long-awaited cross-country road trip.

fast forward to friday afternoon – after prayers for wisdom but still well on my way to a nervous breakdown or a stomach ulcer, i handed over an incredibly large sum of cash with a rubber band around it to 3 college kids, one of whom was supposedly the son of the owner of a bus company, who would supposedly be sending a bus to pick us up and take us to acuña the next morning. in said wad of cash was about $600 USD than we had. dave ramsey would have been offended, but i told God that i know He’s rich and now would be a great time to flaunt His wealth…and i continued to worry myself sick.

while on the emotional edge, i got this email friday night that helped me reign in my stress and refocus on the REAL meaning of the trip – “one of those students is going to be changed by the experience …..it is worth it …take a deep breath ….go ahead and yell if u want ….dont let the devil win …..he wants u pissed and stressed ..shoot him a bird and say not me dude — God is in charge and u are not.”

um, hello. i’d managed to forget the ONE thing i’d been praying for all week. satan knows how to get me…i’m a planner, i like to do the things that i do very well, and let’s just call it what it is – i’m a control freak. but this trip wasn’t POR kami, it wasn’t by or because of my efforts to raise money, to cut budget corners, to plan every last detail. this trip and this casa was POR cristo and i needed to remember that.

and once i did, i had, as always, one of the most simultaneously fulfilling and exhausting weeks of my life. i know jesus was there building that house with us. our friend david said he knew jesus was there, because just when he was telling jesus that he couldn’t keep working in the heat, a cool breeze blew. i knew he was there when i saw olivia’s tears of frustration and emotional exhaustion as she kept on working, knowing that she was being the hands and feet of the jesus whose death and resurrection we remembered last week. i heard him talking in so many different conversations on our REALLY nice bus (which DID show up and was a huge blessing…thanks julio and your friends that i didn’t think looked very trustworthy). and i felt his arm around me when he told me that everything was going to be just fine.

day one!

i LOVE mexico, and i want you to know that this country is being changed from the inside out. from the mountains of central mexico to the banks of the rio grande, from my comfortable bed here in puebla to the hard church floor in acuña, from the college students i spent a week with to the humble family to whom we handed house keys on wednesday evening, the people of this country are worth every prayer you utter and every dollar you send, because Jesus Christ is alive and He’s not only building houses here, He’s changing students’ (and at least one campus minister’s) lives.

day three!

dad, mom, middle brother, and el pozo student armando!

david quiñones from casas por cristo said it this way - “i love it when el pozo comes up here, because i love working alongside mexicans. i know this country is full of people who can love and serve, we don’t have to wait to get that from other countries.” by being part of el pozo, you’re investing in the very people that i pray will eliminate the phrase “missionary to mexico” from our vocabulary.

david from casas, with el pozo student beto and david jr. who worked and hung out with us all week!

thanks for being a part of the kingdom of God south of the border.

zuri and i with our new friends!

much love – kami

it's not the shore, but ixmiquilpan's still beautiful

juanita - retreat speaker extraordinaire

students soaking up juanita and her wisdom, humor, and joy

the water park was so much fun!

sand is an unnecessary ingredient for a spring retreat

i am 0-2 as a womens flamingo soccer team coach (0-1 as a player)...and the girls are 0-7.

don't tell anyone, but irma's one of my favorite students

wonder why i do what i do? see above.

a few of my favorite people...it was a great weekend!

thanks for praying for an amazing weekend! basically to sum things up, juanita talked about getting to know God, trusting Him, and obeying Him, and students’ hearts were touched. her talks paired up perfectly with rada’s baptism and provided for tons of conversations about faith and life. pray that those talks don’t stop any time soon and that this retreat has been a spur for the 35 students who were a part of it. pray for students like samany who want to be baptized, like laura who i pray will be an incredible leader at el pozo, and like tote, daniela, and mitzi who are standing on the fringe of the el pozo community but could dive right in and make waves for the kingdom. pray that this week is not a post-retreat high, but a step on the walk with jesus for these students.

much love! kami

this upcoming weekend, el pozo is taking a trip to beautiful ixmiquilpan, hidalgo! we’re excited to get out of puebla for a couple of days, soak up the hidalgo sun, build deeper relationships with our students (and hopefully meet some new ones!) and learn from our good friend juanita del angel (of girls’ night fame). please keep us in your prayers as we make last minute preparations and create all sorts of hype over the next few days. our trip last semester was HUGE for el pozo, and we’re praying once again for an amazing group of students, for late-night talks about faith and life, for lots of fun, and for people to realize that there’s something awesome happening here at el pozo, and that something is jesus’ love.

where you'll find me saturday afternoon!

and at age 25, 4 years after graduating college, i am pleased to announce that i STILL am a faithful observer of spring break. this spring break, the first week of april, i’m heading up a cross-country road trip to ciudad acuña, where el pozo will be building a house with casas por cristo. this will be el pozo’s 5th house with casas and this trip has become THE event of the spring for this community. almost everything we do during the spring is building up to this trip…we’ve had poker tournaments that do double duty as community fun events and fundraisers, people all over puebla are wearing blue bracelets promoting the cause, and we pray each week at en vivo for this trip. it’s a daunting task…each year we have to raise about $10,000 united states dollars to make this house and trip happen, but it is DEFINITELY worth every penny and peso raised. no one who’s been on the trip can deny that it really does change your life, and i’m always up for people’s lives getting changed. experiencing the joy of providing a home for a needy family sandwiched by long days in a van with people you may or may not have known before results in an unforgettable experience. for the next month, pray for us as we are raising this money, making trip plans, and most importantly, pray for each of the students who are considering going.

my (and el pozo's) first casas trip in 2008!

so as you can see, i may have quite possibly missed the point of travel writing, because my travels have yet to happen. sorry! but i write now to ask for your prayer for both of these trips. i believe from my own experiences and what i see in scripture that God so often works in our lives when we’re traveling.

donald miller says it like this, and i hope the same for each student on these upcoming trips:

“And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”

and today i pray the same for you too! much love – kami

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

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 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

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!

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

Click here to view the embedded video.

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