Kami Burns’ Blog

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

well i’m happy to report that our first full week of events was quite a success! we had 90 people at tuesday night’s “en vivo” (which doesn’t pack out our huge new building quite as well as we used to pack out the upstairs room where we hosted en vivo before), and about the same number of people for thursday lunch! our leadership and discipleship groups kicked off on thursday night, and we’re finally all getting our feet under us and ready to start getting people involved in small groups and making plans for our fall retreat later in the semester.

tuesday night en vivo! plenty of room for everyone to spread out...or to invite ALL of their friends!

some supporters donated an awesome new ping-pong table! it kept people around long after en vivo ended on tuesday.

we're so excited about en vivo!

…and i’m so excited for these 2 girls this year. both are student leaders as you can tell by our matching shirts promoting our first en vivo series! they are 2 of the girls that most make me smile when i see them, and i can’t help but get excited when i think about the parts they are going to play at el pozo over the next few years. they are both learning and growing so much…both are slowly but surely finding their identity in who God says they are. they constantly remind me of the miracles God is working in students’ lives. one of them wrote me a few nights ago to ask for a bible verse that would comfort her in a particular situation…this same girl, like so many students, was finding “comfort” in many of the other unhealthy things that a college town has to offer when we first met. i was humbled to see how God has used el pozo to show students a different way of life, to connect them with people who can bring her closer to him by showing them grace and truth.

the next day, she told me, “kami, that bible verse saved my life.” granted, she may just be a little dramatic, much like her dear campus minister, but i do think what el pozo is doing is saving lives. i think about how different these students’ lives will be because of jesus, i think about the men these girls will marry and how different their marriages and families will be from the ones they’ve seen before, and how their children will hear of the love jesus has for them from the day they are born. we don’t always get to see the fruits of el pozo’s work, but we’ve seen God work miracles in these 2 girls, and i know that so much more is still in store for them.

please pray for these girls and the work God is doing in them! pray for our intern justyn who is still raising support in the US! pray for our intern debora who is already here but still waiting for a big potential supporter in germany. pray for clay and amanda, who are transitioning back to the US this weekend (clay is driving out friday-sunday, amanda and sawyer fly out on tuesday). pray for our first “i heart cholula” service day of the semester coming up this friday, and pray that our beautiful building dries out before tomorrow night (a hailstorm clogged up our gutters causing some flooding yesterday) so we can fill up this building with students again! thank you for your prayers and for giving to make all of this possible.

much love – kami

fall semester has officially begun at el pozo! many students have been back in school for a week, many more start back today, but el pozo has officially kicked off our semester and we’re going strong!

last thursday we opened the doors to our building formerly known as the pole barn for the first time and we filled it up for our kickoff party! it was a wonderful time…some highlights would be our awesome new exchange students bringing so many of their new friends, a girl coming by herself after having been once before a year ago and jumping right in to the community, and entire athletic teams coming to eat with us after practice because all the food scholarships to eat in the dining hall were delayed a week! it was awesome to see so many new faces at el pozo, or in the case of many of those athletes, familiar faces but only outside of el pozo’s walls.

at the beginning of tuesday lunch...it got even more full!

tomorrow night we’ll host our first “en vivo” bible study of the semester. i’ll be giving a talk on what it means to love God…it’s a great chance to introduce who we are, what el pozo is all about, and why we do all of this: because we have a God who loves us and wants the whole world to know it. keep us in your prayers and pray that we fill this building up from wall to wall! stay tuned for more stories…i’m excited about what God is going in the lives of so many of our students and i can’t wait to tell you more about them!

ready for tuesday night...just missing the people!

much love – kami

sing along with me out there, all you closet high school musical fans! takes me right back to winshape camp 5 years ago. hopefully you’re all singing with troy and gabriella for the rest of your workday.

but i’m just thinking about what a group effort el pozo really is. the staff works together in all of our different strength areas to make the ministry run, but each of us has a network of support behind that makes each of our ministries and therefore our entire ministry possible. and you know this, because you’re reading this, so you’re obviously part of my network in some way.

a really cool example of this in recent el pozo history is summerscope. this year, summerscope was much smaller, but the people that came were all very near and dear to us at el pozo. matt and angie stryker are former el pozo staff members, part of the foundation that this ministry was built on, and incredible supporters to the ministry now. one of their supporting churches, hay street united methodist church in fayetteville, nc, has continued to be a huge part of el pozo by supporting financially and coming down to puebla at least once a year, to be a part of summerscope and to help with projects around the house, especially the new building out back i’ve been writing about.

because summerscope was smaller this year, there was less money available for the projects we urgently need to accomplish in order to have our tuesday night events in our much larger back building (formerly known as the pole barn) by this fall. but MY home church, bethany christian church in carrollton, georgia, generously donated the money to build a stage in the back building.

that’s what paul was talking about in 1 corinthians 3 when he said that he had planted a seed, apollos had watered it, and God gave the increase. el pozo is the people that give money and send up prayers, those of us who live in puebla and do day-to-day ministry activities, the students that are ministered to, but God definitely is giving the increase.

enjoy some pictures from last week’s summerscope. thanks so much to bethany christian church for giving money for the stage, hay street umc and the strykers for building it, and God for giving the increase. see my last blog post for ways you can help us finish this building by the fall! if you don’t see it in the pictures (e.g. closets), it still needs money to make it happen! thanks for being a part of el pozo.

building the stage!

all done!

sawyer testing it out with angie!

thanks strykers and hay street!

if you want to help finish this building, just let me know! you can give some money or come down and swing a hammer. but God’s giving the increase! give a one-time gift online via check or credit card at THIS LINK to account number 81105 for the building. or if you want to be an ongoing part of el pozo, sign up to contribute monthly on the same page. the puebla link is on the right-hand side of the page. and of course, let me know if you have any questions!

thanks for everything! and i’ll be in the states for a little while this summer, so let me know if you want to meet up and hear even more stories from south of the border. much love – kami

barns! for your spanish words of the day, it’s granero if it’s for storing grain and establo if it’s for animals. growing up in whitesburg, i was quite familiar with barns. when i was a little girl, there was an old wooden barn in the pasture in front of our house, but not anymore…because we upgraded to the POLE BARN! the pole barn’s provided me lots of entertainment over the years…whether i was digging around in old stuff that used to be in my great-grandparents’ house, having a sleepover with my cousins in the loft, or diving down in the people-sized holes that round hay bales make when they’re stacked up 3 high with my friends from college. still to this day, i almost always make a trip or two to the pole barn when i’m in whitesburg.

but obviously, you don’t follow my blog to read about life in whitesburg…even though now that i think about it, that would make for quite an interesting blog. as i type this, i may or may not be listening to “gone country” by alan jackson (courtney was needing a country music fix so we’re cycling through the 15 country songs i have on my ipod), but i’m writing to tell yall about a different pole barn. i know as well as anybody that you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl…and when you take 5 georgians and 3 tennesseans out of the united states and down to mexico, we not only share jesus with university students here in puebla, but we put some johnny cash or pat green on the ministry playlist from time to time as well. they’ve heard us talk about chick-fil-a until they’re blue in the face. i for one have been known to judge the content of someone’s character by what they think about sweet tea. and even though our campus ministry is called “la casa verde’ (the green house) by most of our students, because it is in fact housed in a very green, very mexican house, as of last summer there’s a nice big POLE BARN out back that would make steve burns proud.

before the pole barn was built by last year’s summerscope team, we had a “lona”, a big canvas tent-esque thing that covered the back yard area where we do our meals on tuesday nights and thursday lunches. but as of last spring, our events had outgrown the lona, and we had to do something over the summer, because come august, the students who had been sitting out in the yard during lunch or dinner would be soaked by the inevitable daily downpours of rainy season. the pole barn has been a wonderful blessing…and since last june, so many improvements have been made. now there are windows to keep the rain from blowing in, the concrete floor’s been leveled out, and we’ve stained and painted to make it look a little bit less like a barn and more like a building especially designed for campus ministry!

pole barn, with its (slightly leaky) canvas roof...i'm not so sure how steve burns would feel about that

and now, a year later, all the students get to sit under the pole barn’s roof during meals, even though the field of dreams philosophy is true. we built it, and the people keep coming, and it’s still a tight squeeze on a good day! but these are problems we like having as campus ministers…and we’re really excited about the next step for our pole barn. this year, we’ve still been doing our tuesday night bible studies, which we call “en vivo”, upstairs in our campus house, but we’re working hard to get them out back in the pole barn! we know that being in a bigger space will help us get our tuesday night attendance over the 100-person mark if it means people won’t be standing on the staircase peering in instead of seated comfortably!

students enjoying dinner in the pole barn after EN VIVO!

but there are a few more improvements we have to make on the pole barn before we can use it on tuesday nights! we just had carpet squares donated from some friends in the states that came down to puebla with our group of students who went to the border to build a house with casas por cristo (thanks to mr. jimmy mcdade for getting the carpet from lagrange, georgia to del rio, texas!). having a comfortable floor for us to sit on is a BIG obstacle that we’re glad to have overcome! but, we have to waterproof and enclose the building before we can put down the carpet…which means it won’t be a pole barn anymore, but i have a sneaking feeling we’ll still call it that. we’ve looked at the cost breakdown of what’s left before we can call the back building project DONE…(in priority order)

1) $5,500 – replacing the old canvas “lona” roof that we’re still using from pre-pole barn days with a real roof
2) $1,000 – building a stage and closet storage for our nice new sound equipment!
3) $2,000 – putting up walls and windows on the exterior of the building (so no one runs off with our nice new sound equipment!)
4) $700 – tiling and cementing around the edges of the building
5) $400 – putting in a bar for serving food at events

so as you can see, the end is very much in sight for this building project! with $11,000 we could finish the building well…would you pray that we can make this happen this summer? due to mexico’s not-so-shiny reputation as an unsafe place to be, it looks as if participation in summerscope this year will be way down…last year we had 47 people here and this year we’re looking at more like 10. this means many less hands, but also much less money to do all that we had hoped on the building during summerscope. we know that God has big plans for this building and its use here at el pozo…we want to have it ready to host students by the hundreds this fall!

standing room only on a tuesday night at el pozo!

please pray for us as we work hard to raise this money and SOON! i know that someone out there will hear God clearly say, “i can give toward a roof for that building” or “our church can donate the money for a stage”. honestly, though, it’s hard to know who to ask. most people that love el pozo (aka – people who read this blog) are supporting staff members or this ministry on a regular basis, and although the easy thing to do is turn to the people who we know love us time and time again, we’re all trying to maintain (or increase) our ministry’s ongoing support as well! it’s time to get creative….we’re even asking churches and friends in the community here in puebla, many of whom are missions or missionaries themselves!

so join with us in this…we need lots of prayer to make the pole barn ready to host a tuesday night “en vivo” by the time rainy august gets here! pray hard with us, and if you think you could be part of this building project financially, then just let us know! and if you want to come down here and swing a hammer, do that too. this is a good old-fashioned barn-raising and we need all the help we can get! and this isn’t a barn where we’ll be storing up grain like the rich fool in luke 12…it’s a barn that will bring people in for the purpose of sending them out changed and ready to change the world.

much love from puebla – kami

i hope you’re not expecting a tribute to keith burns, the great man that he is. you’ll have to stay tuned for that…no, today i’m writing because my dad got on to me last night about being long overdue for a blog update. it should be noted that he yelled it across the room while my mom and i were on skype, but instead of retaliating in the moment with my quick wit that he would like to think i inherited from him, i decided to take his advice and write an update while also giving a little tongue in cheek credit where it is due.

so if you’re like my father and are curious as to what i have been doing since late february, let me assure you that i have been doing and doing and doing. clay dubbed this month “march madness”, which i think is such a clever title! i love the alliteration. we’ve had tons of visitors from such far-reaching places as auburn, alabama, georgia tech ccf, and atlanta christian college, along with el pozo hasbeens of years gone by. events such as “28 hours of el pozo” and a girls night crowded our schedule, but the most exciting event of all during march was our annual trip to the beach!

manly time at the beach

the girls' starting lineup for flamingo futbol!

this year’s beach retreat was awesome! 5 students and heath all spoke, which was a big change from our usual guest speakers (who are coincidentally almost always from chile). something that was quite normal was that the guys once again beat the girls in flamingo futbol (due to questionable ethics on the field if you ask me…but i might be biased as the girls co-head coach). we made new friends, as one guy who had come to el pozo for the first time just 3 days before decided to tag along and dive headfirst into the community. i got sunburned, perpetuating my mexi nickname, kami sunburns.

listening to the message!

retreats are such a great opportunity for our community…getting out of the usual routine of homework, jobs, sports, and responsibility in puebla and being all together in an isolated little beach town 3 hours away (or more if your bus overheats) means exponential growth for el pozo! new friends, deeper friendships, sharing a bed with someone you normally don’t even talk to…a retreat breaks down all sorts of barriers.

the whole group!

so that was that…almost a month ago now! but we’ve stayed busy. a group from auburn came down during their spring break to serve our community by making some improvements around the house. 2 ccf interns and our friend garrett came down to visit during THEIR spring break and see what el pozo’s all about. our dear mentor perry came to spend a few days teaching and encouraging us as a staff. and march ended with a bang with 28 hours of fun at el pozo on thursday and friday, which for me had a 29th and 30th hour as pozomotion, our flag football team, played a game after an exhausting month and an intentionally exhausting event.

the cure for stress - jumping on a trampoline

now we’re into our international cycle, a 3 week event where we hear from our sister ministries in spain and chile on tuesday nights at en vivo! hooray for the spanish-speaking world. it’s a great chance for our students to realize they’re part of something much bigger than the 4 walls of our green house in mexico, and even bigger than globalscope which is in 6 different countries…they’re a part of the kingdom of God, and if it takes hours of fighting with technology for them to get that, then i guess that’s what we’ll do.

april isn’t quite as hectic…i mean, i’m not even writing any more tuesday night talks because our friends in chile and spain are sharing the workload! so maybe it won’t be quite as long before you hear from me again. and if it is, i’m sure my wonderful dad will yell at me via skype from his post at his computer where i always thought he was just watching youtube videos, but was apparently waiting for an email that said i was actually doing something with my life. so here you go, daddy. love you, and much love to everyone else as well – kami

ps – want to pray for us? pray for our new students, for a strong finish to the semester, for our students who are in not so good relationships, for support for myself and my teammates, for students who are thinking about making a decision about jesus, for our spring break trip to ciudad acuña with casas por cristo, and make sure and thank God for all the people that are behind this great thing called el pozo through support, prayer, and encouragement. love!

i may have mentioned this before, but i really love mondays. i’m also by nature a morning person, and i enjoy things like the start of a new school year, getting a nice fresh notebook for the year thanks to UDLA giving them away, buying my favorite moleskine calendar each december, and of course, doing a little introspection around new year’s. there’s just something about a new beginning that is exciting to me.

on mondays, i start my workday with a meeting with el pozo’s wonderful interns. my time each monday morning with these 2 girls is such a great jumpstart to my week…we meet on UDLA’s campus, sitting by the lake and enjoying our cups of coffee. as students walk by, heading to class, it’s a clear reminder that THEY are our focus and that we’re here to serve them and show them the love of jesus. we share about the previous week…we talk about where we really saw God working and we share about the hard parts of our week too. we challenge each other. we pray for each other and for the students we’re ministering to. these girls are my muses for the talks that i give…as interns, they are so involved with students’ lives so they are a great barometer for knowing better how to relate to students through a spoken message, so i always make sure to give them the opportunity to input their ideas into what we’re teaching at el pozo.

from that meeting, mondays can take all sort of turns. some weeks i’m working hard on my talk for the next night’s “en vivo” bible study. some weeks i’m preparing for small groups later in the week. lots of times i’m brainstorming, writing, recording, or editing the announcement video for “en vivo” (if you’re friends with el pozo on facebook, you can watch these videos which are usually uploaded on wednesdays!)…in fact, i’m waiting on my actresses to arrive now so we can record tomorrow night’s video. later tonight, i’ll be playing in our first flag football game of the season, as pozomotion starts the campaign to defend our championship from the fall tournament. i’ve got a couple of andy stanley sermons to listen to for the 3 week “international cycle” of talks that we’ll be doing with our sister ministries in chile and spain, a chapter of a book to reread for my talk next tuesday, and a few chapters of the bible to read for leadership on thursday night.

basically, with the exception of that flag football game, mondays, like mornings, new years, and early august, are that time where people like me who get stressed out with “cosas pendientes” (a to-do list looming overhead) work way too hard so that the rest of the week/day/year/semester are much more enjoyable. you don’t always get a huge sense of accomplishment in ministry..in fact, more often than not, campus ministry is a thankless job and one where results are usually seen years and years down the road. but today i’m grateful that i can cross one thing after another off my to-do list, so that linda feels like this is her ministry as she makes her announcement video acting debut here in a couple of hours…so that tomorrow night, students will laugh and feel comfortable as they watch that announcement video…so that on wednesday, sara learns about the sermon on the mount as we read through the gospel of matthew together…so that thursday night, a group of el pozo’s leaders learn about what it means to BE the church as we study acts…and so that next tuesday, students are able to think about what great news it is that God ISN’T fair, and what implications that has for us as sinners saved by His grace.

it’s a busy time of year at el pozo, so there’s plenty on that to-do list i mentioned…we’re well into the semester, yet planning for and dreaming about things like our upcoming beach retreat on march 11-13, our spring break trips with casas por cristo and possibly other mexico missions the 3rd week in april, all the visitors we’ll be hosting (from auburn christian fellowship coming down here on their spring break to a handful of people coming to check out el pozo as a potential for their futures), and even the summer (summerscope, our annual mission trip where we host people like you for a week – june 12-18, the globalscope puebla golf classic – july 8 in atlanta and july 9 in nashville).

so there’s no time to have a true case of the mondays, because el pozo world is crazy right now. but it’s crazy in the best kind of way…and don’t worry, because even amidst all this busyness, we’re still finding time to be ministers to university students. keep not only all these events but also the wonderful students who each event is designed to serve in your prayers.

Amanda and I at Pozomida...don't I look so Mexican?

3 of my favorite girls, Abi, Linda, and Nery...love them!

making headlines: pozomotion - champions of the fall 2010 tournament

well, this little gap in my monday schedule has come to an end…it’s time to make some movie magic! here’s to great mondays for everyone. thanks oh so much for your prayers and your partnership, and stay tuned for the next blog entry – i can promise pictures of me giving a pozomida talk last thursday from the roof of our pole barn and a cool story or two.

much love – kami