Quick Updates

On the morning of Tuesday February 7th our team piled into two vans and headed out to one of Vineyard Ministries Community Centers called Loma Bonita. In english Loma Bonita means beautiful hill. Before heading out, we stopped at Sams Club (like Costco) to shop for pantry items that would be a great blessing to the families that live in these very poor areas.

In the parking lot of Sams Club, our team all worked to organize and make up 120 food pantry bags for people needing help in this area.

Joining our team for the week was Danae the team coordinator for the Vineyard Church, Mitchell (Vineyard intern), and Oralia is one of the main leaders of the Vinyard Church.

Our team broke out into three groups.  Danae, Mitchell, and Oralia acted as the translators for the three groups which was very helpful. They were a blessing to be a part of our group for that day. We walked out in different directions to hand out a ticket for each family to bring back to the Church that morning to redeem for a bag of pantry items. The pantry items included: sunflower oil, masa flour for making tortillas, tetra pack milk, tomato sauce x2 , and spaghetti noodles.

Darryl and I had the chance to walk around to meet people, take photos of the group and to witness Gods love in action as the team gave to these families.  A special thank you to those of whom gave our team outreach funds, please know they were put to good use and your donation made a real difference towards each family on the receiving end. 

All the families came back to the church and picked up their food bags, and the families are always invited to come back on Saturday mornings  for a church service at that center. This is one way that Vineyard Ministires shows the love of  Jesus to those in this community. It is their desire to first meet their food needs and love them. The next step is to create a place at the community centers where all people can come to God for healing, forgiveness of sins, a safe haven, and to feel Gods love through the leaders and volunteers there.  

A special thank you to those of whom gave our team outreach funds, please know they were put to good use and your donation made a real difference towards each family that received a bag of groceries. 

There is part three coming of our Vacation With Purpose so stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!

Jodi, Darryl, Ben, and Emily.

It was an amazing week with our Vacation With Purpose Team here in Mazatlan a few weeks ago.  I’ll share in few posts showing you what we all got up to, where we went, and how the week turned out. Our team consisted of the following families.  The Tatums family which included Mark and Karen, plus their children Abigail and Luc. The Nickel family included Wally and Sylvia plus their children Savana and Joel. Darryl’s parents Lorraine and John joined the team which totalled the fourteen of us including  our children Emily and Ben.

Our team was here in Mazatlan from February 3rd- February 10th. Our week with them was a mix of their  families enjoying their hotel, seeing some sites of Mazatlan, coffee shops, shopping, and the main ingredient was the two days of outreach that we participated as a team.  

The first days of the week we took the team out to an area of Mazatlan known as Cerritos beach. This part of Mazatlan is known for it’s beautiful beaches, big waves and a lot less vendors. It happened that it was a long weekend so it wasn’t as quiet as normal, but it was still a wonderful time. Darryl and I do not get to spend that much time in the sun here in Mazatlan, so it was a really nice treat to spend time with them at the beach.

One day we took the family down to the main Mercado to check things out.

Both Sylvia and Karen were on the hunt for some art to hang in their homes and some really special gifts. We ended up at Etnika cafe and art Gallery. There were many beautiful things to look at and luckily my wallet stayed in my bag. We all  loved the shop so much that we ended up taking both the families back a second time to have another look!

It was a fun few days to start off the week with them. Please come back in a few days and I’ll share the outreach projects our team participated in. Thanks for popping by.

Hello from Mazatlan.

Our first few weeks have been mostly quite uneventful, a lot of settling, unpacking, a lot of meetings, and the wait for internet to our building continues. There are complications with the internet in our building which means we have had to completely adjust how we’ve been able to do ministry for these first few weeks. We are really enjoying our apartment and the surrounding area and it suits us completely. We are thankful for Gods blessings that he provides every day.

As we wait in patience for our landlord to figure out the situation I am constantly reminded that this too will pass, and this momentary set back will too. Being that we are a creative ministry, it’s important that we have internet to load web pages, load photos, home school and life. Please be praying that this situation resolves itself.

Ben and Emily have settled into their homework routine as much as one can, and luckily for Ben (our social butterfly) there are some children living in our building originally from British Columbia. The family is here on an extended vacation living aboard so the kids occasionally have the opportunity to play together. Ben has experienced a bit of stomach troubles so prayer for his little tummy would be appreciated.

We are very happy being back in our second home Mazatlan and it is amazing to see all our friends here that we have gotten to know. As always we are welcomed back and there are a lot of good things brewing and we have the opporunity to share in the next coming weeks.

God is doing amazing things in Mazatlan and we feel very privileged to be a part of it.

Thanks for reading our short update.

Jodi, Darryl, Ben and Emily.