Come What May

Greetings Friends,

I write to you today feeling very grateful.  This has been a month of challenges but also of great joy and overwhelming evidence of God’s goodness to our family.

First of all, we gotta give it up to God for our baby girl, Isla Grace Kim.  Great job, God!  Wow.  She has been such a source of extreme happiness and endless smiles.  Despite a rather rough and painful delivery process (the epidural didn’t work!), mom and baby came out healthy and the whole thing went by really fast!

Isla at about 4 weeks!

We are extremely grateful to our community here that have been amazing to us through this whole time.  “Meals on Wheels” came to pass through just 3 families.  Not the army of support we would receive from back home in Irvine but boy have they come through for us in BIG ways!  Rides to the hospital, gifts of diapers and wipes, clothes, food, and possibly everything we would need.  Incredible!

The Yu family even hosted a delayed Baby Shower for us since Isla decided to come earlier than usual and “ruined” our plans for the first Shower.  It was awesome as it was a gathering of our favorite people in Mexico!

The crew playing a baby shower game

A couple stories that have blown us away from this past month:

A 6 year old boy back in California donated his birthday and raised hundreds of dollars for our family.  He believes in our mission and sacrificed his gifts for us.  Wow.  This is a rare generosity that only God can orchestrate!  What was I like at 6 years old?  Thinking of me, myself and I… that’s what.

A Heartbreaking Story: A woman outside of our usual network heard about our family and made a $500 towards our living costs here.  Turns out that her family is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt as her husband recently suffered a stroke.  On top of the hospital bills, the woman noticed bills for a BMW among other expensive goods billed to their credit card.  It turns out her husband had been secretly engaged in an affair and had been showering his mistress with costly gifts before this stroke.  Despite the overwhelming circumstances, this woman has made the choice to stand by her husband.  When we think about the magnanimous sacrifice she has made in the midst of all that she is going through right now, we are humbled beyond words, beyond tears.  May we live lives worthy of this kind of sacrifice!

The Well

We are continuously achieving greater levels of communication and cooperation from the Mexican government as we receive a new girl every 15-20 days.  Please pray for care staff at The Well as they are in need of more help as well as wisdom.  There have been some break-throughs in addition to some set-backs so your prayers are constantly needed.

The Cafe

Cafe NEO continues to be a great venue for live music and food with friends.  We are now trying to host free English conversation classes every Saturday afternoon in order to connect with the community.  Please pray for this venture as we are waiting for the word to travel about this service and hope that this will catapult our desire to love the next generation in Mexico City.

NEO

We have just started holding Sunday morning services at the Cafe and it’s been fun to blast some live, rockin’ worship music into a place that would otherwise have no exposure to something like this.  We consider this an experiment of sorts and another opportunity we are creating to meet people where they’re at.  It’s exciting!

We are also continuing to partner with Vereda, the local church that we joined up with for Easter, in order to further our impact in this city.  This is an amazing church that shares so many of our vision and values and their staff have become some of our closest friends.  If anything, it has been exciting and energizing to be doing life with them.

A Campaign

Our team is meeting regularly now to develop the strategic plan for our campaign to end human trafficking in our lifetime.  It is an audacious task and by far the most God-sized thing we have dared to dream.  At this time we have a lot more questions than we do answers and the work ahead is daunting.  Please pray for us.  Pray that God would create the waves and we would simply surf… obediently.

Our Family

Please pray for continued health.  Our biggest scares this past month have been with illnesses to our family whether it be mysterious fevers for Micah, abnormal bloating and trouble breathing for Sadie, or jaundice for Isla.  We are thankful that God has brought us through those episodes, especially with the help of our friends, but it is definitely no fun to be sick in a foreign country!

Thank you for reading!
We love you and are grateful for you.  Please let us know how we can be in prayer for you as well!

DK, Sadie, Micah, and Isla