Help-Project Blog

September 29, 2016 By Jodi Bueckert Leave a Comment

We’ve Found An Agency!

We have amazing news! For the last two years, nine months of which was in Mexico, we have been volunteering with The Vineyard Church to help them establish and share their Child Sponsorship Program. After a lot of coutless hours of prayer and consideration we have decided to pursue this in a more full time capacity.

Part of this decision is finding an agency that can help us continue our work in upcoming 2017 year. While we wait for our application to be processed, we are currently working on our work and ministry Profile to be accomplished with Vineyard Ministries for the 2017 year. Writing this list has made us super excited to be back in Mexico which is our family’s second home. I’ll continue to share more about how YOU can have a role in changing the life of a child with our work in Mazatlan so stay tuned.

Thank you to everyone that is a support to us in this journey, You know who you are!

Your Support Can Forever Change The Life Of An Underprivileged Child In Mexico

September 8, 2016 By Jodi Bueckert Leave a Comment

Why? Because God Has Asked Us To

As Darryl and I and our two children prepare for our next trip to Mexico in January of 2017 to continue our work with the Vineyard Child Sponsorship program, we are continually asked why we do what we do? (actually to be totally clear, due to the marvel of technology this is a year round effort on our part, with only a portion of the year being on site in Mexico)

Why would we make the decision to work only 50% of the time here in Canada to be able to volunteer with the Vineyard Church during the year?
Why would we Leave our home in Canada for months at a time?
Why would we take our kids out of school and disrupt their lives?

Because God has asked us

I know it may not completely make sense, and believe me it doesn’t make sense at times, but either way we continue to walk along in faith. Just because we have faith doesn’t mean we aren’t afraid. We are not confident about all things, but this we do know. We serve a Big God that has called us both my name that will supply all our needs in his timing, not our own, or for the timing of the others around us.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

Isaiah 6:8

Every week we continue to work with The Child Sponsorship Program to see it’s success and it excites us to be apart of something that is very big. The Vineyard Church of Mazatlan feels extremely responsible to reach as many children ages 4 to 14 within in the sixteen community centers that they currently support.

Many of these children come from dysfunctional families, single parent homes, or extreme poverty. While the Vineyard provides support to all family members, they focus on children between the ages 4 to 14, where we have the greatest likelihood of helping the child achieve a better life for themselves and their children. They do this through their Vineyard Ministries Child Sponsorship Program. Please take a moment to check out their website to learn more.

By feeding their Mind, Body, and Spirit, The Vineyard Church is breaking the cycle of poverty that plagues these families, while showing the love of God.

The Childrens Sponsorship Program Provides:

Weekly Meals
One Pair of New Shoes Each Year
One Set of Basic School Supplies
Seasonal Party at their Center of Hope
One Chaperoned Special Trip
Weekly Bible Classes
Weekly Prayer for each child.
A Safe Place To Meet Each Week

These children are learning to become active and helpful neighbours in their own communities. Children who were first supported by The Vineyard and are now in positions of leadership with the Vineyard Church and serve the generation of children following them.

A past sponsorship child praying for the elderly

We feel grateful to be apart of such an amazing group of individuals that give time, talents to see this program run well. If you would like to know more about this program, or interested in seeing how you can support us through financial/prayerful means, we really need your financial support, and we need your prayers!

God Bless,

Darryl and Jodi

August 23, 2016 By Jodi Bueckert Leave a Comment

A Few Thank You’s!

Thanks for your overwhelming response of love, advice, and prayers as we journey along in these next few weeks. We feel very encouraged by your wisdom, and look forward to connecting with you more as we hear from God. One of the things I in particular have been feeling is that even while we feel paralyzed when it comes to the “How things will happen” we need to keep trucking. It’s been quite difficult trying to manage all that we need to do, but need to take our long to do list and just keep working on it and the answers will arrive in ways beyond we can imagine.

[Read more…] about A Few Thank You’s!

August 11, 2016 By Jodi Bueckert Leave a Comment

If Only We Could Slow Down Time.

The summer has swiftly moved along far more we would all like, but we would like to take this time to share some of the things God has been stirring in our hearts, and the direction we feel he’s asking us to go.

Darryl and I have been on a journey of refining our businesses the last few years. In particular, Darryl and I have quite honestly been really hard and impatient with ourselves. It’s taken us years to figure out that we while we are passionate about helping people through the creative services that we offer to our customers, we feel there’s more God is asking of us. We have two small businesses doing (X) and we find ourselves doing (Y) more often.

We have spent the last few years volunteering a lot of our time to various ministries so they can thrive, by supporting them through design, websites, photography, and we will continue to do that as long as we are asked. This is the (Y) I spoke of earlier, but we need financial support to help us to to continue to do this. When we help others thrive in the area of their mission we get really excited, but we want to commitment a large portion of our week to helping without the financial strain from being away from our part time businesses. Not to mention, volunteering without pay doesn’t put food in our kiddos mouths. 🙂 But we continue to trust in God’s timing while it is honestly so hard.

So what are we working now?

1. We are actively working on finding a Canadian agency that can help us in the role of issuing tax receipts for donors. We’ve experienced generous hearts towards our volunteer work, and we thank you again. Once we find the right one, we hit the pavement oh to speak and the real work begins.

2. We are going to back to the basics: Last week we sat down, with no distractions, and no kids in the house (thanks to those who took our kids for a few days), to start to write out our purpose, our values, and our missions statement. This is extremely tough to do, and we would love your prayers as we work through this. Sort of like wearing high heels in Deep mud. 🙂

3. We are still in the process of inviting families to vacation in Mazatlan, while being able to partner and experience a bit of what makes The Vineyard tick. This is a soft landing to showing adults, and kids how they can help in another country. If you are at all interested in seeing Mazatlan, or learning a little bit more about The Vineyard Church, we’d love to grab a coffee with you.

4. We need guidance, patience, and support in this great task in front of us. I’m asking for prayer to bring the right people into our lives that can help bring Gods plans to reality.

5. Our calendars are really full and bursting at the seams. Please prayer for items to get done, and patience as we push through our long list of commitments and items.

Thanks for your support, you have no idea how grateful we are for each one of you that walks along side of us.

Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.
Colossians 3:1-2 NLT

Love, Darryl, Jodi, Emily and Ben.

July 19, 2016 By Jodi Bueckert Leave a Comment

An Opportunity To Vacation With Purpose.

If you are planning on Vacationing next year and if you are looking to explore volunteering with your family we would like to invite you to come spend some time in Mazatlan with us this coming winter.

The theme of this particular week is directed towards “Vacation With Purpose” providing individuals and families a soft landing towards showing their children another part of the world where kindness is needed. Years ago both Darryl and I had a lot of fears taking our children to another country to volunteer. Darryl’s parents were a huge help with this four years ago when our family joined them in Mazatlan for two weeks on vacation. Months leading up to that trip we felt a great nudge, and calling to spend some extended time in Mazatlan.

This is the scoop!

We are putting together a group for February 6-13, 2017 so consider yourself invited whether I know you personally or not. For that week we will be feeding and eating with the poor, playing games with kids, and there will be plenty of time to swim in the ocean, eat great food, and enjoy beautiful Mazatlan!

We are having a casual information afternoon at our house this Sunday July 24th 2-5 pm. We don’t need commitments to join the group in February, we would just love to have you! Email me at jodibueckert@icloud.com if you’d like more information, and I hope to see a few of you there!

June 28, 2016 By Jodi Bueckert Leave a Comment

Will We Trade Our Dreams For His, Or Are We Caught In the Middle?

Its been almost 3 months since we’ve been home since working along side The Vineyard Church of Mazatlan. We had an amazing, busy, and full-filling time. With all honestly this post should have been written well over two months ago so I apologize. Wanna know my reason? L.I.F.E.

Life is busy, work is going well, and the kids are in their last days before school is out. Our minds lean to Mazatlan every day. Not a day goes by that we do not think about this amazing city that we call our second home.

A few weeks ago on Facebook I shared that I picked up some jicama at our local produce market. For those who haven’t tried it, it is a fruit native to Mexico. It’s known for its sweet, crunchy texture, and completely full of fiber, and vitamins.

As I held the fruit in my hand, small tears came down my cheeks (probably because it was highly over priced) because this produce reminds me so much of our second home in Mazatlan, the people, and our calling there. In that moment I felt homesick and God willing we look forward to returning.

We’ve really struggled this year after returning. How to do life here in Langley and Partner with the Vinyard Church at the same time. We are babies at this still. We feel a calling for our lives to be intermixed with Mazatlan and sometime we don’t know which way is up, and which way is down.

We vacationed in Mazatlan almost 3 years ago on a journey that we will never regret. Prior to that vacation I felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to Search “Living in Mazatlan” on the internet. The search engine brought me to a Remax website. As I scanned the pages, from no where tears flooded my face. I immediately sensed God asking us to Take Care of The People of Mazatlan. What did that mean?

During this vacation time in 2012, we intermixed with a few days of experiencing The Vineyard Church and what their mission is all about, while enjoying the beach together as a family. I’m not going to lie. Vacationing and experiencing missions at the same time was tricky, but a good nudge in the right direction for our family. We were the family that never went on vacation, and this was the first time we experienced this. Our children were moulded, and exposed to more of Gods heart for the least. We came back from that trip forever changed, and eager for more of his leading.

After that trip, we felt leadings, visions, and dreams that we honestly felt like they were our own at the time. If you know us really well, the Bueckerts are constantly creating ideas, and dreaming up plans. This was different because the plans were too big for us, and sadly we’ve left them at the door till now. I’ll share in another post some of those plans, but for now we feel they need to taken to God in prayer a bit more.

I’ll leave you with this song, and I appreciate the time you took to read this.

God Bless,

Darryl, Jodi, Emily and Ben.

Casting Crowns: Somewhere In the Middle.

Somewhere between the hot and the cold
Somewhere between the new and the old
Somewhere between who I am and who I used to be
Somewhere in the middle, You’ll find me

Somewhere between the wrong and the right
Somewhere between the darkness and the light
Somewhere between who I was and who You’re making me
Somewhere in the middle, You’ll find me

Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control

Fearless warriors in a picket fence, reckless abandon wrapped in common sense
Deep water faith in the shallow end and we are caught in the middle
With eyes wide open to the differences, the God we want and the God who is
But will we trade our dreams for His or, are we caught in the middle?
Are we caught in the middle?

Somewhere between my heart and my hands
Somewhere between my faith and my plans
Somewhere between the safety of the boat and the crashing waves

Somewhere between a whisper and a roar
Somewhere between the altar and the door
Somewhere between contented peace and always wanting more
Somewhere in the middle You’ll find me

Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control

Lord, I feel You in this place and I know You’re by my side
Loving me even on these nights when I’m caught in the middle