2020. The possibilities are endless, right? New year, new decade, new opportunities. As we face all this newness, I am blown away by how far God has brought me…and how differently He has guided me compared to what I thought I’d be doing. There’s been so much growth and change in this last decade. I graduated High School, worked a dream job at camp, made incredible friends that became like family, became an “auntie” many times over, went to Africa, moved to Mexico, became a teacher, started a charity with an amazing team…. And so much more! Imagine the adventures, challenges, and changes that will come in this next decade…
We started the year off in the most “roaring” way. My AP students are reading The Great Gatsby (and adopting the vocabulary from 100 years ago, including “old sport” and “cat’s pajamas”), my 9/10 graders are reading Things Fall Apart (not the MOST positive title to start the year off, but definitely interesting), and my 7/8 graders are reading Around the World in 80 Days and dreaming of travels. We are also diving into Poetry and making it fun by adding rap.
Youth Group starts up again this week. Our focus this semester is on longer-term service. Last semester we did outreach projects, helping with cleaning the school, working in construction at church, etc. This semester a group of kiddos will be fundraising and working to go on a weekend trip to a village here in Oaxaca. They will plan a kid’s Bible Study, a youth outreach, and a service project to help the town itself. We are very excited to see how God moves the youth to reach others and share their own life stories.
Women’s Project, Girasol, has been incredibly busy. We had a small retreat as a team; a time to plan, dream, and pray together. We started building our concrete mission statement and thinking about expanding into the other areas of service to vulnerable women (currently we focus on intervention, but we talked about prevention and rehabilitation as well). Our goal has been to make available medical, educational, psychological, and spiritual help. We started Zumba classes to help us see what times girls could show up and how consistent they are. So far, we’ve had only one class with actual participants. For two months, two of our team-members have done Zumba all by themselves. We were a bit discouraged, but we decided to go ahead and do a more serious class anyways. Last week we began a “Values Workshop.” This workshop includes a therapeutic exercise, questions about values, and group discussion. It comes from a program that is used in other states, written specifically for women in situations of prostitution, and it gives personal help as well as instruction for teaching values to children. We’ve set up a system of rewards for participation in either the Zumba or the Values classes starting this week. Last Wednesday, no one showed up for Zumba. On Thursday, our team showed up for the values class, hoping at least one girl would come. Three did! They had a really great discussion about the word “value,” about friendship, and about trust. The workshop is supposed to last one hour, but they went over that time by quite a bit. Later, we had ten girls show up for lunch and manicures, and when the same three girls that came to the workshop showed up again for food, they all launched into conversations about friendship and value. It was truly amazing. One team member and myself even got to share a bit about our beliefs. We are feeling truly encouraged about the impact this workshop will have. Pray for us, for guidance and wisdom in how we share, and for the girls to be open and vulnerable to accepting the message about where true value lies.
When the girls open up to us, it’s extremely exciting, but the truth is that the stories we hear are desperately sad. While painting nails, we hear about miscarriages had due to domestic violence. We hear about a girl whose boyfriend hit her with a screwdriver, cut up her shoes, and threw bleach on all of her clothes because she refused to do drugs with him; she’s been working so hard to get clean. We hear about one girl (a girl we had a baby shower for and have grown close to) who was beaten and kicked off of the street because they suspected her of stealing something. We heard all this in one day. And my heart breaks. Surrounded by sadness and despair, however, there is laughter at Girasol. Today 27 girls came to Girasol. Twenty. Seven. We had cake to celebrate January birthdays, so everyone came! Girls we’ve been inviting for years finally stopped by. We ran out of chairs and cake so fast! That’s what Girasol is about. Laughter, cake, relaxation, creating friendships, all while listening to the difficult stories these girls share as they learn that Girasol is a safe space filled with love. Then, helping them work through those things. I am beyond blessed to be working in such an incredible area of ministry. Please continue to pray for us; we all spend Sundays at 10pm praying together. And if you get a chance, pray for our team, especially on Thursdays, since we often come home with heavy hearts and tear-filled eyes after spending our day caring for those who have been forgotten so often.
Please continue to pray for the different areas of ministry here in Oaxaca. We’ve had over 400 earthquakes this month, and some of the bigger ones have affected the coastal areas in a really bad way. Our church will be sending a team to one village to work with people who lost their homes.
January has sped by already, and I know that the pressures, the projects, and the insanity of life will make this semester go by so quickly. Pray for rest, peace, and willing hearts.
Thank you so much for your encouragement, support, and prayers.
-Ruth
If you would like to donate to Girasol Women’s Project, go to:
If you would like to donate towards supporting me and the work I’m involved in, please go to The Ridge Church Prescott Valley and donate through their page with the designation of “Ruth Perez Oaxaca Missions” here:
Here are some pictures! Click through to see the images (including my whole family being together for Christmas, a Perez family reunion, Oaxaca views, Nail art done by my awesome Roomie for Girasol, the 100 Christmas gifts we made for Girasol, and our December birthday party there) -->