La paz Day 4- the meetings!

The family was pretty sick yesterday, although it doesn't seem to be something that is too bad for too long. So they stayed home and recovered while i went around and did some investigating and questioning.

I first spoke to the pastor who is the president of the local alliance of pastors. Afterwards i spoke with a missionary who has been here for 18 years. They were a wealth of information and help. here are a few of the things i learned:

• there are 40 churches in town
• 20 of those are "pentecostal"
• 10 of those churches have trained pastors- about 10 don't.
• Many of the pentecostal churches are influenced by the G12 movement- a discipleship movement which many believe have cultic-control issues.
  
• about 5 churches are between 100-200- the rest are smaller- and he majority are very small- between 10-25 people.
• of the 20 non-pentecostal churches in town, several are baptist.
• they have their own training.
• the rest are 7th Day Adventist or Apostolic. Apostolics are very legalistic and do not believe in the Trinity.
• there are around 1% to 2% born again believers in La Paz.
• It is a city of 300,000
• There is somewhat of a need for training, but not sure about the desire for it.

So we were able to get some good information from a couple of perspectives yesterday. Today we are going to to to the missionary's church plant and worship together with them.

I'm hoping to be able to go to some of the poorer areas / colonias to look for some churches and maybe pastors and get their perspective. There is also a "retired missionary" here that started things in 1958, so we hope to get her perspective as well.

When we asked about the poorer areas, we got the same response- there is one here, but it is different than in tijuana or Ensenada. There has been little reason for people to migrate here to work in fields etc. so they do not have the same level of insufficient housing or unaffordable schooling that we see in Tijuana. I'm looking forward to speaking to some of those folks personally to see how they view that!
Both people said that the vast majority of the really needy in this area is in Cabo San Lucas area. Many people came over during the boom years to work in construction of hotels and businesses to serve tourists. But when the economic crisis hit, the employment bubble burst and left many thousands of already poor people without jobs. so apparantly there are many areas down there with migrant workers living in houses of cardboard and pallets and with very real and severe needs. We're hoping to get down there to talk to a Calvary Chapel pastor who is down there to get his perspective on things as well.

We appreciate your prayers for us!

May God bless you all!

Mike