Adventures in Life Ministry

The Covid pandemic has hit Mexico hard, particularly the state of Oaxaca, the cultural heart of the indigenous communities of our neighbor to the south. Many have been left with no work and no way to feed their families. I work with Adventures in Life and along with our local partners, we have identified over 200 families in the Amatlanes south of the capital city who are in dire need of help and support.

We are raising $15,000 to provide emergency aid food boxes to these families for the next three months. Then, starting next month, we will follow those emergency boxes with a development plan to provide 1000 egg laying chickens and literally thousands of seeds so that the people of this region can grow their own vegetables. We're also providing a team of local leaders to assist in putting this all together and providing the technical help necessary to make sure people succeed as our development plan comes on line.

We need $15,000.00 to make this happen. Can you help us help the people of Oaxaca in their time of need? Can you make a difference in someone's life today?

We are raising funds for the UCLA Asian American Christian Fellowship to support our efforts to support our sister church, Dios Es Amor, in Ensenada, Mexico. Our missions trip will be from March 21 to 27 of 2020. We will be helping with their youth ministry, their hospital ministry, working on slight refurbishments of their church, as well as generally fellowshipping and sharing life with them. We hope that this trip will not only be a blessing to Dios Es Amor, but also be eye opening to the world of missions for the students going on the trip. God bless you for your consideration and we appreciate both your financial and prayer contributions.

With Love,
AACF Ensenada Team 2020

God has again graciously provided UCLA’s Asian American Christian Fellowship (AACF) the opportunity to partner with Adventures in Life Ministries to embark on a short-term-missions trip to Ensenada, Mexico, from March 23 to March 29, 2019.

During the trip, we will be supporting the local church in Ensenada, Dios Es Amor, as well as reaching out to the community who may have never heard of the gospel and the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Throughout the trip, we will be serving the people of Ensenada through various building projects as well as serving the church in ways such as helping to prepare a Vacation Bible School program. Above all, our goal for this trip is to demonstrate and proclaim God’s love through our actions and through the verbal communication of the gospel.

God bless!
- UCLA AACF Ensenada Team, 2019

More information about Adventures in Life Ministry: We do church and community development work in Mexico. Our work includes camps, medical clinics, disaster relief, providing clean water and economic relief, primarily in the state of Oaxaca.

I am officially closing donations to this campaign. Although we fell short of the goal, we're not as short as the ticker shows thanks to donations from friends that came directly to me (which I have passed along to Adventures in Life). And we definitely raised enough to keep the project moving forward. 

If anyone finds this campaign and wants to donate, you can give directly to Adventures in Life Ministry. This is a portion of the larger $50,000 project that we're working on, and so further donations will continue to help the cause: https://www.ailministry.org/donate

I'm looking forward to heading to Oaxaca in early January 2019, and continuing to work on pushing this project forward.  If you want to see what we're up to, visit our webpage:

https://oaxacasciencecenter.weebly.com/

Updates will be placed under the timeline. Thank you all for your support!

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I've been talking about this project for a while and working hard to lay the groundwork, and now it's finally time for us to take the big leap and make it happen!

I am partnering with Dave Miller and the non-profit he co-founded in 1992, Adventures in Life Ministry. We are working to fund a Science/Discovery Center in Eloxochitlán, high up in the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico. Eloxochitlán is one of the poorest communities in all of Mexico. Educational opportunities are sorely lacking in this area. Advanced science classes are almost non-existent.

The idea for the science center came out of doing little science activities with Dave during the summer camps that they run. The picture above is from one of our first years doing science at the camp. One particular experiment, the corn starch fireball, really got some of the locals to take notice. From that, a question started to bubble up: Can we do more of this?

Fast forward across two years of work with Dave developing science activities (with the help of my colleagues), securing a location, creating equipment lists, and going through all the details of the plan, and we are now on the cusp of turning this dream into reality.

Our goal is to raise a total of $50,000 before December 1. My personal goal is to raise $7500.00 of that goal.

Your tax deductible donations will be used to
•    Provide materials and laboratory equipment [think microscopes, incubators, centrifuges, etc] for the science center.
•    Provide 2 years of salary for local professors to be leaders and teachers at the center.

Will you help us make a science center a reality for a small community in Oaxaca? Will you help me make it possible for us to maybe inspire the next great Mexican scientist?

Visit the webpage to learn more about Eloxochitlan and the story behind the project: https://oaxacasciencecenter.weebly.com/

Oaxaca is the second poorest state in Mexico. 

In September of 2017 it was hit by an 8.1 earthquake that badly damaged a huge part of the state. Since then, it has been just pillaged by constant aftershocks. The rebuilding effort has strained the already mostly non-existent health care system in the rural areas.

Eye glasses, are one way I'm working to help out these rural communities in Oaxaca.

I quit my job, got trained in basic optometry, raised money, sold my car and committed myself to a full year of working here with Dave Miller and Adventures in Life to help people. Since I arrived in January, I’ve already helped over 300 people improve their ability to see and have given out over 400 pairs of glasses in the Sierra Mazateca and the Central Valley of Oaxaca. 

The lines at our clinics are long. Sometimes people wait for hours. But we serve everyone who shows up. The gift of sight however, and giving away hundreds of pairs of glasses is pricey.

I am trying to raise $8000.00 to fund an additional four vision clinics over the next 9 months. If I do not reach my goal, the fact is people in Oaxaca will go without glasses.

This is where I need your help, giving the gift of sight to people of communities like Eloxochitlán, Piedras Negras, San Pedro Amatlán and La Ocotera.

Imagine if when you tried to read this, all you saw was a blurred jumble of letters and words. That’s life for many of the folks I see. It’s amazing that I've been able to help some people see properly for the first time in their entire life! 

Will you join me in this and help give the gift of sight to more people in Oaxaca?

They never saw it coming.

Saturday, September 9 at 12:30 in the morning an 8.1 magnitude earthquake struck Mexico off the coast of Oaxaca. More than 100 people are dead and hundreds of thousands have lost their homes.

Entire villages have been destroyed all across Oaxaca and in every case there is one pressing need. 

Clean water.

I have spent over 25 years working and serving in Mexico, the last 18 in Oaxaca. Most people will never see devastation like this in their lives. Imagine having to think about caring for your family and rebuilding your home if you can't even get a glass of clean water.

I work with Adventures in Life Ministry and together we are trying to raise $13,000.00 to help four small villages, almost completely destroyed by the earthquake.

Here's how we will use the money...

1. A village water purification system that will provide 1000 gallons of clean water daily for each of those four villages.

2. To provide as many as 100 individual water filters to people who might not be able to reach the village water systems we install.

Each village system will cost $1500.00 and every $100.00 will provide 4 families with the gift of clean, safe water.

Can you help and provide hope for the following communities in Oaxaca?

Reforma de Pineda, San Mateo del Mar, and Chicapa de Castro and Asunción Ixtaltepec.