The water crisis in Oaxaca has been a repeated concern and topic of discussion since we have arrived in January 2025. Oaxaca has limited wells and there are restrictions to drill more. The good news is Oaxaca has an annual rainy season from May to October. We reached out to our colleague Dwight Bolick and invited him to come to train our partners in how to collect rain water.

In late May COBAMI was delighted to welcome our colleague, Dwight Bolick. Dwight has been working for many years in Latin America with rainwater collection, allowing local communities to more readily have access to usable water for everyday use. He visited several church communities and gave training on building rainwater collection sites as well as how it directly relates to our role as being caretakers of God’s creation.

Many churches around Oaxaca were excited about the project and traveled to be present for the training. Luis wasn’t able to be present during this time due to the passing of Sarah’s mother as well as getting prepared to welcome our new son into the world. However Luis has been working with Dwight online to continue the work of the project going forward. Our goal is to be able to train more of the surrounding communities as well as provide support for starting materials.

The Talita Cumi Girls Clubs and Water Collection Project continue to move forward in Oaxaca. This summer COBAMI has been busy equipping leaders in their leadership classes and hosting various vacation Bible schools in the different COBAMI churches. Most girls clubs took break during the summer and are up and running again now that the school year has started.

We are currently in the US because of the birth of our son, visa processing appointments, and caring for Sarah’s mother as she battled late stages of her cancer. Sarah’s mom, Becky, passed away in July. We will continue working remotely from the US until November as we apply for our son’s passport as well as resident visas for the family. From the States, we will travel to the Dominican Republic for the IM Iberoamerica Regional Gathering for a few days, and then continue on to Oaxaca right after. We anticipate this being a healing experience for us both spiritually and emotionally and look forward to visioning for the future of IM’s work in our region of the world!

Our current prayer requests are: a visa appointment will open up so we can receive our visas, prayers for us as we navigate grief and life without Becky. Prayers for safe travels and transitions back to our life in Oaxaca. Once we arrive back to Oaxaca, we will need to get our daughter into preschool. We look forward to reuniting with our ministry partners and get back to speaking Spanish daily and serving in the part of the world where we call home.

Sarah and the Talita Cumi coordinators plan to offer a retreat in the Spring for the mentors. This would be a time that would allow us to grow spiritually, offer respite for the team, offer two training workshops for boy clubs and parenting classes, and to listen to God’s Spirit as we vision and plan on growing the ministry of Talita Cumi in 2027.

Thank you for walking with us, praying for us, and financially supporting the work we are doing through IM with COBAMI.