Heath and Karen NealCampus Ministers in Puebla, Mexico

Another school year has come and gone.  Lots of new faces are now part of the community.  Lots of old faces are graduating and saying goodbye. We’ve had our last bible study and devo lunch, we hosted another End of the Year Banquet, Debora (an intern) got married, we ate lots of hotcakes during finals week, we said goodbye to another group of great exchange students, Heath gave his last talk EVER at El Pozo, we attended a lot of thesis presentations, and we have spent a lot of quality time talking, laughing, eating and just hanging out.  We have reflected a lot on this semester since it is our last semester here in Mexico.  (if you didn’t know, we are moving back this summer!  More on future plans in the next update.)  We thank God for His faithfulness in our lives and His work that is being done at El Pozo.

Heath and his leadership guys: Miguel, Armando, Beto

This has been another incredible year of God changing and growing our students into His disciples. We have really tried to emphasize to our students God’s calling of being His disciples and going and making disciples. Here are a few examples of our students obeying God’s calling.

Armando is working as an intern this summer with Casas por Cristo building houses for those who don’t have one in Juarez, Mexico.

Beto is raising money to be an intern at El Pozo next year and give more of himself to the ministry and students in Puebla, Mexico.

Nidia accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior and was baptized on Sunday at Mosaico, the church that was started alongside of El Pozo.

Ana Laura just graduated with her second degree and is moving from the El Pozo community to the Mosaico community where she is involved and serving every week.

Please pray for our students this summer as some are working, some are studying, some are traveling, and some are trying to figure out life.  Pray for them to seek God’s guidance and wisdom. Also, please pray for the staff of El Pozo as everyone is getting ready for summer events to begin. Pray for rest, pray for quality time with students, pray for growth in our personal relationships with God, pray for the planning of a new school year. Pray for the transition as the many of us are leaving Mexico and some are raising support to stay longer or join the team.

Thank you so much for making this school year incredible.  Thank you for praying for us and for our students.  Thank you for your financial contributions that make it possible for El Pozo to exist.  Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

One of the big things that we try and teach our students is the importance of serving and the giving of time, energy, resources and gifts to others. We had 2 amazing opportunities to have our students serve during spring break.

This is the second year that we have worked locally with an orphanage.  This year was great because an amazing group from Georgia, ‘Never Alone’, came down for their spring break to host a vacation bible school for the kids.  It was really neat to see some of our students partner with this group, primarily high school students, to work with the local orphanage.  As with all kids, the kids at the orphanage are just wanting people to love them, hug them, play with them and get to know them, and that’s what we did.  The group did everything from tie-dying shirts to arts and crafts to playing games to going to a water park to throwing a huge birthday party to just spending time and talking with the kids.    They are truly a special group of kids that will steal your heart the moment you see them.  A bonus to us taking care of the kids for the week was that the house moms were able to get a much needed break during the days. These ladies work so hard everyday taking care of all the kids that it was special to give them a little time for themselves.

This year was no different than the past 4 years where we have taken a group of students to work with Casas por Cristo building a house for a family that doesn’t have one.   El Pozo loaded up 22 students and drove 2 days to arrive at the border of Mexico where they built a house in 3 days.  I have heard story after story from our students on the impact that the trip made in their lives and how next year they are going to have 40 students go and build 2 houses.  We have one student who is applying to intern with Casas por Cristo this summer and another who wants to take a trip up this summer and work with another team building a house and ministering to the families.  One of our team members asked the Casas por Cristo leader if she loved building houses.  She said that no, she didn’t always love building the house, but she loved the cause, she loved getting to know the families, she loved the gift they give them, she loved making a difference in someone’s life and she loved sharing God’s love.  That’s really what serving is all about.  We don’t always love the task at hand.  But it’s what comes from the task… it’s the conversations, the building of relationships, the joy in helping others, the obedience to God’s calling. And that is exactly what our students are learning.

Time.  There is never enough of it.  We are constantly busy, running from one thing to the next.  There are always mouths to feed, floors to sweep, kids who have homework, dishes to wash, diapers to change, dogs to walk, grass to cut and the list is a mile long.  Often times we are in such a hurry that we don’t see God in the present, in the here and now.  I am participating in the Joy Dare, where you write out 3 things you are thankful for each day and at the end of the year you have created 1,000 gifts of Thanksgiving.  The most recent chapter in the book, One Thousand Gifts (http://onethousandgifts.com/), Ann Voscamp says,  “life is dessert – too brief to hurry.”

If you know anything about me, you know that I LOVE dessert (thanks mom!).  My mom and I have been known to skip a meal and just eat dessert, that’s how much we love it. Dessert is just too special to be rushed.  You can’t just scarf it down, you must eat it slowly.  Savor it, experience it, taste each bite. That’s how we need to live life. We need to slow down, savor it, taste life and experience it.  Wherever we are in life, we need to be all there… living, seeing and experiencing God.  When we slow down we are able to see the gifts God has given us on a daily basis.

We just returned from a retreat where I was able to put this into practice.  (If any of you have been a part of the planning and running of a retreat, you know that there is a ton to do and the weekend is super busy.)  I tried not to be constantly in a hurry, but enjoy where I was and the time that God had given me over the weekend.  Time to see God work.  Time to love on students.  Time to share life.   Here are some of my gifts from the weekend…

water slides & rope swings, students loving on Reese, soreness from playing, Heath taking care of Reese so I could go to a session, staff that loves these students, ability to ‘work it out’, hot air balloons, EVERYONE helping with Reese all weekend which freed up some of my time to hang out and have conversations, Moi & Andrea’s talent in music, flamingo football and competition, trampolines, Rada’s baptism, real conversations amongst students, laughter, laid back attitudes, great location, hot dogs, warm water, new friendships built, Juanita’s (our speaker) love of El Pozo and her wisdom, kickball with Reese, God’s presence

The other weekend I ran a biathlon.  This should not be confused with a triathlon that is running, swimming and biking.  It was a run-bike-run affair.  I’ll be quite honest; I wasn’t looking forward to it.  I signed up to do it because my friend Hector wanted to do it.  I decided I should probably train a little for it, so I started running everyday.  In the past I had liked running, but here, at 7000 ft., I don’t like running.  I hate it.  It’s a chore.  It hurts. I can’t breath.  But I did it everyday in preparation for the big event.

The big day came and I was excited but nervous as well.  I simply wanted to finish without walking or keeling over on the side of the road.  The first part of running, 4km (2.5ish miles) I wasn’t too worried about.  The biking, 30km (18ish miles), I figured I could do as well, because I love to bike and you can rest on the downhills.  The final part scared me.  How was I going to be able to run another 4 km after running and biking before?  Well, I did it.  I was dead tired and thought, at moments, I would not be able to make it to the finish line, but I did, in only 2:11:50.  (My goal had been under 2:30)

I think ministry is often like a biathlon.  We prepare with students, doing the running every day.  Sharing life with them.  Talking about Jesus and his love for them.  Loving on them.  Accepting them.  Not judging them for the mistakes they make.  This is all the training we put in leading up to that big day, that big event of them finally getting it and deciding to follow Jesus.  A spiritual life is not easy, breezy all the time.  There are ups and downs, hills to run up and bike down.  It feels like you aren’t going to make it sometimes and it gets really had at other times.  But the satisfaction at the end is worth the effort.

My friend Hector and I did this race together.  And I realized yesterday that we have been training together for a spiritual life for him all along.  The hanging out and talking about life and girls (for him of course), the playing squash and living a life of example for him to see, all of this has been training for him.  Now he hasn’t decided to get baptized yet, but I know he has started the race of life with Jesus.  He’s in that first part of running, but he’s there.  For everyone the race will be run/biked differently.  I watched a lot of people pass me by during our biathlon, but we were all on the same path with the same goal in mind.  That’s where we want these students to be in the spiritual lives, their journeys with Jesus, as well.

On the same day as the biathlon, we were also able to celebrate the journey and LIFE of Carlos.  A few weeks ago, Carlos and I were talking and he said that he was really impacted by a talk I gave last semester.  He said something in it, something I don’t remember saying and wasn’t on the topic of the talk, made him realize he had to pursue a relationship with God.  Well, he was baptized  in a freezing cold river outside of Puebla and  I had the extreme honor and privilege of doing his baptism.  I guess I have two main thoughts on this:

1. God works through of us when we least expect it.  (Using words I didn’t even know I had spoken.  Words that weren’t what I was trying to teach.)
2. I did get to do that triathlon since the baptism was the same day, after the biathlon.  Maybe I didn’t swim 3 miles, but it sure was worth the effort of getting wet.

We love you guys.  Thanks for believing in the work God is doing here and in us. Thanks for celebrating with us and please continue to pray for the college students in Puebla, Mexico.

Heath (for the Neal’s)

If case you didn’t know, Mexico does not celebrate Thanksgiving.  However, we have started a great tradition of providing Thanksgiving for our students each year.  We do the whole nine yards…  2 days of cooking, lots of food, turkey hands, and of course a time for our students to reflect and share what they are truly thankful for and how God has blessed them.  As Heath and I have reflected over the last year, here are just a few things that we are praising God for every day.

WE ARE THANKFUL FOR…

The birth and health of our amazing daughter Reese… she has truly changed our lives

Our families that love us and support us and the calling God has given us

The new building at El Pozo that is now completed and provides us the space for God to work & move in incredible ways

All of the incredible people that have worked at El Pozo over the years & have become our home away from home & family.  They have seen us laugh, cry, hurt, frustrated, celebrated victories with us & have loved us unconditionally

What we have learned about ourselves and God over the past 4 years of living in another country

All of our amazing supporters who pray for us, for El Pozo, for the students here in Puebla, Mexico and who make it possible for us to live, work, and share God’s love on a daily basis… you guys are AMAZING

Living in a place that is fairly Americanized… Costco, Wal-Mart, Chili’s, bowling alley, mall, Starbucks, Christmas trees, Starbucks, movies & TV in English

Each and every one of the students that walk through our door looking for a place to be accepted and experience a life changing love poured upon them

All our Gringo friends here in Mexico that help provide us with a life outside of ministry and a little taste of home

SummerScope, our summer Mission trip that we host each year, which brings down people that we have been able to build great relationships with over the years

For Skype and being able to talk to and SEE those who don’t live near us

For the opportunity to live in a beautiful country with beautiful people and being able to learn a new language

For 230 students showing up to celebrate Thanksgiving with us this year and for God providing a miracle by allowing us to not run out of food until the very last person (we only planned for 120ish)

God is so Good and we are so Blessed!

Before moving to Mexico, I had never broken a bone.  I consider myself pretty lucky but, to be perfectly honest, I’m not a risk taker.  I don’t dive in sports.  I don’t free climb without ropes.  I always drive with my seatbelt on.  So it was pretty easy to say, “I have never broken a bone,” until I move to Mexico, that is.   In the last two years, I have broken two fingers and cracked a rib, all playing flag football.  The thing is, I didn’t dive or do anything crazy, it just happened.  The fingers got jammed catching the ball and had hairline fractures.  The cracked rib, which happened last week and still hurts, was courtesy of a defender trying to knock down a pass.  (I caught it and ran for a first down before realizing my pain and falling to the ground.)

As I was remembering my injuries, and feeling my current one, I was reminded that we see a lot of injuries in ministry.  Not so much in the physical manner, although I can think of one student in particular who recently had an unlucky year: emergency appendectomy and getting run over by a taxi, the injuries we see are more on the emotional level.  It can be someone dealing with a break-up or being mistreated in a relationship, physically or emotionally.  It could be someone struggling with an addiction.  I’ve seen addictions of alcohol, drugs, sex, power, pornography, and the list goes on.  It could be someone struggling with their sexuality: deciding to not have sex or not, struggling with homosexuality or abuse.  It could be someone struggling with their faith, faith in God or faith in people.  There are so many different injuries I’ve seen over the years.  I’ve even had to discuss the topic of divorce in college ministry.

And then we as campus ministers deal with emotional injuries as well.  You meet with someone, talk to them, pour into them, see them heading in the right direction almost ready to make that commitment to follow Jesus and then a 360 degree turn and they want no more.  Or worse, they get to the edge and stay there forever.  Right at the cusp of making the decision, they keep waiting and waiting and waiting but never get off the fence and commit their lives completely to God.  Or worse even still, you see the ones who commit to follow Jesus.  They are growing.  You see the potential in their lives, but something changes and they go back to their old lifestyle of not following Him.

We live in a world full of injuries.  If we don’t experience injury in our life, then we either aren’t really living because we protecting ourselves in a bubble or we are lying to ourselves.  Life will come with emotional injuries more often than physical ones, but we have to believe they will heal the same as the physical ones do.  In Psalm147 the author of the psalm starts out by saying how great it is to praise God, to sing praises to him.  He says how fitting it is because, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”  He continues by saying, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”  I think the author must have looked around and seen the injuries of his friends and family and his own personal ones as well, but remembered not the pain of them, but the power of God.

If you ask me what my most important job as campus minister is, I would tell you it is simply to share this point: “Great is our Lord and mighty in power, He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”  More important than any event we do or any talk we give is to listen like a doctor to the patient describing their injury and prescribe to them the healing power of a Great and Gracious God.

Thank you for helping provide us with a doctor’s office of sorts for the students here in Puebla, Mexico.  Know that your support of us goes to this.  All the meals you help pay for, all the labor you give on trips down here, all the prayer you give for El Pozo gives us the opportunity to build relationships with students here who are injured and in need of a Great Physician.

Grace and Peace be to you all in the name of Jesus our Lord and Savior,

Heath Neal

New Family Picture

I have now mastered my first retreat as a mom!  This is a very different role than being a campus minister without children on a retreat.  Gone are the days of participating in all the events, playing games during free time, making s’mores at the campfire and staying up all night and talking with students.  (But don’t be fooled… that doesn’t mean that I actually slept on a retreat.  For those of you who don’t know, I am a really bad sleeper and Reese was sleeping in the same room as us and she is incredibly noisy, moving all night in her bed and just making tons of noises with her mouth.)

Let me share with you some of the GREAT things about being a mom on a retreat.

1.  People are drawn to you!  There is just something about babies and Mexicans wanting to hang out with them and love all over them. I didn’t know the majority of the students who came on the retreat with us before we left.  Luckily for me, Reese worked her magic and pulled them to us creating instant conversation.  I know now every person that went with us and have started to make some new friends… all thanks to Reese and her incredible cuteness!

2. I get to observe!  Since I can’t participate in everything that is going on, I was able to sit back and watch.  I saw friendships being formed.  I saw people who had never stepped foot inside of El Pozo instantly become part of the community.  I heard great conversations take place about the talks that were given and how they apply to their lives. I heard of people getting up at 6 am to hike up the mountain so they could be in God’s beauty.  I saw people going to lunch together after we arrived back at El Pozo who didn’t even know each other before the weekend.  I saw my incredible team talking, laughing, playing, and ministering to every person that attended the retreat.

3.  I was able to focus my time on a few people!  Since Reese and I were ‘attached’ every 2 hours I was able to focus my time and energy on a couple of people and have more intentional conversations.  I didn’t get to know everyone very well, but did get to listen, talk, and share with a girl who has been very homesick, a student who is older and most of her friends have graduated, and a guy who heard about El Pozo and our retreat from a friend of a friend of his girlfriend (who didn’t come on the retreat).

Thank you all so much for your constant prayers for the students in Puebla, Mexico and for El Pozo.  Here are some specific things that are happening soon that we would love your prayers on:

*It’s the middle of the semester!  This means that students are really busy and have to ‘pick and choose’ what they want to do.  Also, pray for energy as we are all a little tired right now.

*We are having a girls night in a 2 weeks where we hope the girls basketball team will be able to participate.

* Yo amo Cholula (our monthly service project)… we only have 2 left for the semester

* Reese is doing great and growing more and more everyday.  Please continue to pray for us as we are still figuring out this new parent thing and trying to develop some type of routine in her life as well as ours.

NEW semester, NEW building, NEW people, NEW babies… everything is NEW

As I walk into our NEW Pole Barn (our building out back), I am so grateful for the amount of time and energy that went into finishing it this summer. For the past 2 years we have been in the process of completing it and it is now done and so wonderful to see it full of students and being used in some way everyday. And we now have space to bring back the beloved ping pong table. In case you don’t know, a lot of great minsitry happens while people are playing ping pong.

This picture was taken by one of our students of our new building/stage

Heath playing a little ping pong

One of the great things about the start of a NEW semester is all the NEW faces of people that I don’t know.  We have had a lot of our students graduate over the past year as well as many of our regulars not returning to UDLA this semester.  So, we have the wonderful problem of having tons and tons of NEW faces. What a great opportunity this is for our ministry to grow!  We have a NEW wave of theatre majors, several NEW people from the basketball teams as well as lots of freshman, who of course are NEW.  These students are already getting really involved in our ministry: they are helping out with our praise band, they have attended our monthly community service event, they are making connections with some of the more regular students, they are setting up tennis dates and lunches, they are inviting their friends, and are loving on Reese!!

Pam, one of the basketball players, hanging out with Reese

You can be praying with us over the next few weeks as we are getting ready to take a Retreat up to the mountains.  Retreats are such a great time for growth and a time where students really begin to feel like they are apart of the community!  As we are continuing to work out all the details, please be praying for the community of El Pozo and for our students as they are deciding if they are going to go.  Also, pray for Lukas Fortunato (former campus minister in Chile) as he is preparing all the talks for the week.  Pray for our staff as we are experiencing lots of transition right now and are building NEW relationships!

Reese is here and doing great!  She decided to enter this world on Wednesday, July 27 and now is getting spoiled rotten by all of her grandparents.  I’m sorry that it has taken a little over a week to update everyone, but life has been a little bit crazy.  Thank you all so much for all of your prayers over the last few months.  Below is the brief account of our delivery…

I had already decided that Reese was not going to come on her own and we were going to have to induce so that the grandparents who were all traveling down to see her would actually be able to see her!  Well, I started to make all these plans of when the grandparents arrived on Saturday what we would do until we would induce on August 3.  God apparently thought this was funny that I would plan all this and decided that little Reese would indeed come early!  (at least I had FINALLY packed my hospital back) Here’s the play by play of just how quick it was from not having a baby to holding our sweet little girl in our arms.

Tuesday, July 26, 11:00 PM: heading home after playing games with Nate and Erin… I’m feeling great!

Wednesday, July 27, 1:30 AM: My water breaks, but I’m not having any more contractions than I’ve been having and they aren’t very painful

12:00 PM: We head to the doctor to get checked and see how far along we actually are.  (Nathan and Erin just finished their appointment)  The doctor told me that yes indeed we were going to have a baby today and that I was 3 cm dialated.  But since my contractions were still 10-12 minutes apart and they weren’t very painful and I had already been in ‘labor’ for nearly 12 hours, it was time to take a little pill and get these contractions going.

1:00 PM: We leave the hospital and head for home where I am advised to labor for 4-5 hours then when the contractions are a couple of minutes apart and painful to head on back.

1:30 PM: We are at home and my contractions are every 2 minutes and are lasting about 1 1/2-2 minutes.

2:00 PM: We are now back at the hospital and I’m wheeled straight up to the labor room (thankfully Erin came with us to the hospital and is with me) while Heath is getting us checked in.

2:35ish PM: I am dialated to about 6 cm and Heath is instructed to go get changed b/c this baby is coming.

2: 45ish PM: I am now dialated to 7.5 cm and am asked if I want an epidural.  I ask how long they think until I have the baby and the nurse honestly says within the next 30 minutes, so I decide that I can make it and am going to do it all natural.

3:30-3:40 PM: Reese Olaya Neal is born weighing 7 lbs 6 oz, measuring 19 inches long.  Reese was healthy, I was healthy, Heath was a very proud new dad who, of course, shed a few tears.

Needless to say that everything happened very quickly which I am thankful for.  Unfortunately all of our family was arriving within the next few days so no one was actually here for the birth, but they are definitively getting in their snuggle time now.  We are very blessed to have such an amazing team that we work with and for all of Nathan and Erin’s help (they were the only one’s in town) before everyone else returned from the states.  Reese is sleeping well, eating well, and hardly ever cries, so we are very very blessed.  Here are just a few of the many, many pictures we have taken.  Stay tuned for lots more in the near future and keep on praying for our adjustment to having a little one in the house.

We are under 1 month away to becoming a family of 3!  I must say that I am very excited but at the same time have no clue what to expect and the planner inside of me is not a big fan of the uncertainty.  I was talking to my teammates a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t really put it into words because I”m not really stressed or worried or anxious, but I am something… I just can’t come up with the right word, so we are calling it huitlacoche!  I know that most of you have clue what this is or probably even how to say it and that’s why this word is so perfect.  It literally translates into ‘corn smut’.  It is the fungas that grows inside the corn husk and then mexicans make this very unusual dish out of that that lots of people really LOVE to eat (I’m not one of those people, but that should be no shocker), doesn’t it sound appetizing??  Anyways, huitlachoche is the perfect word, because it’s pretty hard to explain what it is, what it looks like, how it tastes and I really have no clue why anyone would think to eat it.  But that’s how I feel… I just can’t explain it or put it into words.

Just a few days ago we went in for our monthly checkup and everything is looking good for both me and the baby!  We are just under a month away and she is already pretty big weighing a little under 6 1/2 lbs!  And she is head down, so yay.  I’m always a little anxious right before we go to the doctor because for the last 3 months her head has been measuring very very big.  And well, it’s still quite large and her poor legs are so short (I guess she is going to be built like a Cooper and like her poor mom who is all torso with really no legs).  Her head is measuring a due date of July 14, where her legs are measuring a due date for August 16, but the doctor doesn’t seem to be worried about this at all.  And based on her weight and everything it’s realistically looking like she will enter this world around the last few days of July and first few days of August… right in time for all the family coming down!  We go back to the doctor in a week and I’ll have my first non-stress test which I’m really not even sure what this is, but I do know that it means we are getting pretty close.  I honestly still feel really good which I am praising God for.  I can tell that I’m starting to slow down, but all in all I am still going and doing pretty much everything just a little slower and I sit down quite a bit more.

I guess the last real thing to share with everyone is her name.  Lots of you probably already know the name, but if we haven’t seen you, then you probably don’t know it, so here it is… Reese Olaya Neal.  Now everyone keeps asking us what it means which I had never really put much thought into… I just liked the name, but I do know what it means NOW.  Reese means enthusiastic and Olaya means well spoken but we picked this name because of our dear friend Stephanie.  Steph’s was our first friend in Mexico, she has taught us Spanish on numerous occasions, and holds a very special place in both of our hearts. Well, Stephanie’s first name is Olaya and I LOVE her name. I think it’s just beautiful!  So, we decided that since Reese is going to be American and Mexican that she needed a Mexican name as well.

Over the next few weeks we will be doing a little bit of work around the Casa Verde but mainly we will be preparing for our new addition.  We would love prayers on continual health for me and Reese and the adjustment to having a child!!  We will definitely keep you guys up to date on when Reese decides to join us.

Much Love, Heath and Karen