Camping!!

This past weekend Pete and I were able to get away with seven of our friends to spend some time enjoying God's creation and relaxing...because honestly, we do not get to do alot of that here, even on the weekends.

We headed 2 hours north east of Camdenton, MO to a little town called Sullivan, which is where Meramac State Park is located. We arrived Friday afternoon and set up camp, enjoyed a dinner of chicken and brats, and some interesting fellowship with a few guys from the campsite across the road from us.

A few of us actually got the chance to talk with two of them a little about the Lord so that was exciting.

We had a campfire every night and every morning, not only because it was cold, but because fires are such an essential to camping, and we just so happened to bring ALOT of wood with us.

Our fire master, Sam started the fires...well most of the time, Doug was our early morning fire guy.

Most of the weekend we spent talking and laughing around meals or the fire, but there was definitely some time for hiking, exploring, playing frisbee and bocce ball, and reading all those books we don't get to read during class because of other homework.

Kathryn and Melanie were catching up on their leisurely reading!

We brought all of our own food to make it the most cost effective as we possibly could, and everyone pitched in to help cook.

Here is Liesl cooking the taco meat over the fire

Sam made a jack-o-lantern out of the tomato he was supposed to be chopping for tacos

It was just a fantastic weekend to relax and be in the company of other Christian brothers and sisters learning from and laughing with one another.

Pete and Liesl cuddle up for a picture together.

Focus Your Vision

A warm Monday morning brought 160 students, some of their children, and 137 staff members together singing in praise to the Lord. "All creatures of our God and king, lift up your voice and with us sing, Oh praise Him..." Looking around the room we saw brothers and sisters in Christ and we were all worshipping together. My mind brought alive Revelation 7:9-10:

"After these things I looked and behold a great multitude which no one could count, from every tribe, nation, people, and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb."

Wow, what a joy it is to be preparing for tribal ministry, but what an urgency was felt to take the gospel to those who have never had a chance to hear of the glorious grace of Christ, and who have not had the chance to praise Him sheerly because of His glory and who He is.

As the singing ended we were challenged as an entire group to "Focus Our Vision." There are 2,500 language groups in the world still without the gospel; there is much work to be done.

For Pete and I it was more of a re-focusing of our vision, a refresher that yes, this is what we are here for, God has brought us this far through the New Tribes Mission training, and He will be faithful to take us the rest of the way, with our prayer warriors and support partners to reach those without hope in the tribal regions of Mexico.

We are thrilled to be embarking on our last year of training here in Missouri, and have open hearts and minds to all we know the Lord wants to teach us during our time here. He has taught us about relationships, the importance of being in a culture and experiencing it to enhance our language learning, and how to be before Him in prayer about all of our needs. He has shown us what we can do to be an encouragement to our brothers and sisters here in the training with us, and has shown us the power of His Spirit as He works in our marriage...and we are only finishing up our first week!!

I have made it a goal to update our blog each week this year to keep you in the loop of what God is teaching us and this incredible journey He continues to lead us on. We hope you enjoy it, and as always feel free to contact us anytime!

Adios!

"Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I, send me.

These where the words of the Lord to Isaiah, and his response to the Lord's call, as documented in chapter 6 of Isaiah. This man knew not what this would mean for his life at that time, yet he was willing to go wherever the Lord would send him, and he was willing to be an obedient servant.

I must regret we have been a little lax in updating this blog regularly and hope to do a better job of that in the coming months. However, as we have been going through the missionary training here in Missouri we have been seeking the Lord as to where He would send us.

Through God's direction in prayer and communication with other missionary leadership we see God moving us in the way of serving with New Tribes Mission in Mexico. We applied to the Mexico field in January and are happy and excited to report that we heard back from the New Tribes Mission (NTM) Mexico leadership team in early February say that they had accepted our application!!

Some of you may be wondering, what does this mean? Essentially it means we are now considered as "Missionary Training students enroute to Mexico." So, once we complete our training here in Missouri at the MTC and raise the necessary financial support we will travel down to Chihuahua, Mexico to begin learning Spanish, and becoming accustomed to the Mexican culture.

This is all very exciting for us, and hopefully for you all too as you pray for us and God's ministry through us. We are planning to be done with all of our training, including Pete's extensive linguistics training here in Missouri around October of 2009 and Lord-willing with enough financial and prayer support we will be able to head to Mexico early 2010!!

Another exciting happening in the life of the Hypkis regarding Mexico is that Pete was able to take a trip to visit the NTM base, boarding school, and meet with the leadership down in Mexico this past February. The planning for the trip came up quickly, and Pete and a fellow student flew down on the 12th and stayed for 8 days. It was an amazing experience, Pete was able to see and get a feel first hand for the NTM field of Mexico, and was also able to visit a tribal location, meet the people, and experience life out there. After seeing the pictures when he returned we were even more convinced together that our hearts are burdened for this place, and yes, here we are Lord, send us!

If you would like to know more about Pete's trip a more lengthy article is posted on our NTM website www.ntm.org/peter_hypki

To finish up I have posted a few pictures below of Pete's adventures in Mexico, hope you enjoy and catch the vision with us for what God is doing and wants us to be apart of as we follow His leading to this wonderful country.

God bless!!

Pete & Liesl

A view of a city street in Chihuahua, Mexico

One of the classrooms at the Bible School in Chihuahua

One of the buildings designed with solar power energy out at the ranch where they do Missionary Training such as we are receiving here, but for Mexican nationals.

Pete enjoying the gorgeous scenery at a mountain stream high in the Sierra Madres. This was taken on their 11 hour trip out to the tribal location.

Arrival in the tribal location.

The stream and bridge behind some of the missionary homes.

Some of the tribal people outside of the church building

A little Tepehuan tribal boy

Pete and the guys hiked a deep canyon near the tribal village

Pete and Matt say goodbye as they get ready to board the plane to fly out of the tribal village back to Chihuahua to catch a bus that would take them to their flight in El Paso, TX.