A Face Filled With Joy

This is the face of a man who has been given hope, love, safety, a future, security, dreams, and a house. When you are a builder with Homes of Hope you get to build a lot of houses so it can become a regular thing. Well the last house build that I was on really helped remind me what I came for. I got the opportunity to tell the father that the building team wanted to take him and his family grocery shopping. As I told him the look on his face made me stop and think. "This is why we do this." Not to put another notch on the hammer just to say that we have built one more house, not just to say we've been to Mexico but to help a family in need, to show the love of God to a family. I was reminded of what it means being God's hands and feet. It's a blessing and a privilege to be serving God. Building that house was worth it just to see the look on Antonio's face as he found out that he was receiving more love than he thought.

I wonder what our reaction would be if we realized how much loving we got from God on a daily basis? Just a little food for thought.

My Home Church Built a House!

I am amazingly blessed to have a church that is willing to support me and be God's hands and feet out in the world. My Dad and Mum led a team of 12 others to build a house here in Tijuana. Over 5 days they visited a Rehab center where th

ey painted a building, went to a local church and went for tacos and to the marketplace, built a house over 2 days and helped with a local children's program at a church and visited an orphanage as well.

It was an amazing outreach and I can totally see how God's hand was in the details. The team was blessed by God, having come from 4 different communities in Manitoba and from multiple different churches as well, the unity in the group was amazing. The team did amazing work. The house that they built is beautiful and the family that they built it for is sitting inside their newly built house with a clean cement floor, with a roof over their head that keeps them dry, and enough groceries to last about a week.

It was super encouraging to have my hom

e church here. It's great to work with my parents especially when building a house for a family in need. I'm surprised that I am not exhausted. With all the planning, working, driving, and preparing I seemed to be going all day for their entire stay. I can definitely say that God provided me with the strength to keep going. It was a privilege to build with my home church and I am excited to see what will happen next year. Hopefully more than one church building more than one house!

Missions

I've been learning a lot about missions over the past couple weeks. Our God is a missionary God. And our God desires us to reach our neighbor in the house next door and the country across the ocean. So considering this, I've been learning how to reach the nations in a more effective way. How does this happen? Well I've learned that it doesn't involve people conforming to a western way of doing things. The Gospel fits in every culture because it was made for everyone. The Gospel will not change, it has not changed. The message is the same, Jesus.

Jesus meets people where they are at, in the culture they are in. People do not need to become westernized to become Christian. This is part of my motivation for doing a Spanish school. I finally have enough time to take the annual language school in Tijuana. So pray for me as I will be immersed in Spanish 5 days a week for 8 hours a day!
Learning Spanish has been an ongoing thing for me over the past 2 years. I really hope that learning a second language will better equip me to share the Gospel to the nations. I've learned that being a Christian isn't about me, it isn't about being Canadian, it isn't about being a missionary. Being Christian is all about God's Kingdom. Everything else comes second, and I want to be part of those who bring more people into God's Kingdom.

New Season. Back to Basics.

God has taught me so much over the past year. But I think one of the biggest things that I've learned is the importance of sharing the Gospel. Sharing God's word is incredibly important for everyone who is a Christian. So even though I feel like I'm stepping into a new season of my life I am also stepping back to help out a ministry that I have helped in the past. I've been able to share Bible stories for the past 2 weeks at Circulo Andante (or Walking Circle in English). It is a program for kids that YWAM runs twice a week in a community called Antorcha. It's pretty fun when you get kids who are old enough to think that they are to cool for Bible stories. I kinda hope that I wasn't like that when I was a kid. This past week the kids got to hear the story of Gideon and they all got to be involved. 3 kids representing 300 got to chase 20-30 kids representing thousands. It was pretty fun as well as a little chaotic.

I've been challenged over the past year to not only just live out the Word of God but to share it with others. Which is part of the reason why I started sharing Bible stories with the kids at Circulo...also I love the ministry and the kids as well:)

I used to be a firm believer of the saying "preach the gospel, if necessary use words." But not so any more. I know that our actions are meant to be loving and are meant to glorify God but our words should be as well. If we are meant to obey what Jesus commanded us to do then we are to preach, and teach also. Preaching and teaching involve words. We can only go so far showing the love of God just by our actions, it must involve words to bring further understanding. I have realized this and have been challenged by it. I'm not always comfortable but I've asked the question, whats more important? My comfort or the Gospel? I would have to go with the Gospel!

Bright new future!

Dear: Church, Supporters, Friends, and Family.

So as you may have noticed my two year commitment to YWAM Tijuana will be ending in April this year. However God has been speaking to me over the past several months about what He wants me to do. It seems to me that God wants me to stay in Tijuana long term. I don’t know how long, long term is, but I’m at peace with being in Tijuana until God says leave.

So what will I be doing in Tijuana? Well I still wish to continue building. Building is close to my heart and I really wish to continue. It will most likely be on a smaller scale due to new responsibilities and commitments that have come up. As you probably heard I recently took leadership of a three month Bible course called the Biblical Core Course. This school focuses on teaching the Inductive Bible study method which is the study of the Bible in context.

I hope and what I believe God is calling me to do is to keep leading this school and teaching in it. My goal is to get the school on a better foundation with more contacts, resources, more staff who are given opportunities to teach and larger schools that happen more often than once a year.

Once the school gets better legs I hope to be able to take it to the community and be able to help the local churches out by teaching and running seminars.

This is what I feel God is leading me towards and what He wants me to do. Many of you have been a great encouragement to me with your support through prayers and finances. Would you be willing to continue that support longer term?

Please pray about it.

If you wish to be part of my update list please let me know in person or send an e-mail to brodieawilson@gmail.com.

Love you all and God Bless

Brodie Wilson

Teaching

Last week I had the privileged of teaching the book of Hebrews to the Biblical Core Course. It was a great experience, one that I hope to repeat in the future. I can honestly tell you that in the beginning of the planning stages of the school I had decided to teach a book mainly because of budget reasons. But as I began to study the book of Hebrews it amazed me, encouraged me, and simplified things for me. I had already enjoyed the book of Hebrews but once I began to prepare to teach it I fell in love with it. It's amazing how that can happen when you dig in and seek the Lord.
Hebrews is all about Jesus. If I was too sum it up in one word it would be Jesus. Maybe it's the fact that Hebrews is all about Jesus is why I loved it so much. I think many times we can get distracted by different issues which may be Godly but shouldn't be our focus. I believe our focus should be on Jesus which is what the book of Hebrews says in the big picture view. From our focus on Jesus comes, helping the poor, teaching children, evangelizing, and so on.
I've learned a lot over the past couple months when I was preparing for last week. And I think I can say that a few things were challenged in my life. Hebrews speaks to Hebrew Christians who were having doubt's about Jesus, they were drifting away and struggling in their faith. They began to look back at the Old Covenant, The Law. They began to think "maybe I was wrong about Jesus, maybe the old way is better". They began to look back at what used to be their life instead of looking forward to the future of a life with Christ. As I was studying, this really stuck out for me. At the time I was desiring to go back to Canada, go to university and basically live the dream. But through my studies in Hebrews I realized that I was looking back at what could have been, what I could have. But that's not what God has called me too. God called me too Tijuana and I will be here until God says to leave. Now I'm not saying that my life or calling is any better than anyone else's. I believe that God has different callings on different people and all are vital.
God kicked me in the butt and I can happily say that I'm refocused on my future with Christ and am not looking back to what could have been. God knows what He is doing and I am looking forward to what's coming.
Thanks for reading and God Bless.

A Sabbath

I've finally recognized the importance of a sabbath. You would think most people would love to have a day off and would fight to get their own day off but not me. It seems that I can always find something to do to keep myself busy for weeks and weeks on end but the other week it finally caught up to me. You would also think that seeing as I'm now part of a Bible school and living a missionary life that I would have gotten the need of a sabbath through my dense brain sooner,:) but better late than never.
The sabbath goes back to the beginning of time with God creating the world and everything in it. He rested after creation.
In Exodus we see the importance of the Sabbath in the ten commandments. Have you ever noticed which number the commandment for keeping the sabbath is? It's number 4! Before honoring your father and mother, not murder, committing adultery, stealing, false testimony, and coveting. That really proves how important the sabbath is!
I've been working hard for months now trying to keep ahead of the needs of this Bible school. But what I've been doing is running myself down, to the point of exhaustion. Last week I was in bed sick 4 out 7 days!
So I now realize the importance of the sabbath. It's seems like such a simply thing. I've come to realize that it has to do with trusting God. I can always find more work to do and with this school there is always something on my to do list but the sabbath is a commandment. Keeping it is obedience to God, and trusting in God's ability to get things done and not your own.
It's taken a long time for me to realize this.
Hopefully I remember it.