Mexico mission trips

Last weekend, I met a fellow first year student who explained to me a bit about the situation of Mexico missions trips. He's actually been working in Mexico (Tijuana) on and off for the last three years and knows a bit about the mission work that goes on there. He essentially said that Mexico missions is a mess, and it's a reflection of the brokenness of the church in America. There is a ton of mission work done in Mexico and yet we don't seem to see real change there. Some points to consider:

• There is a lack of partnership (my friend would say none at all) among the American churches in missions efforts to Mexico. Each church does their own thing without regard to any other church that might be there. I can imagine there's a lot of redundancy and perhaps counterproductivity.
• There is a lack of partnership between the American churches and the Mexican churches, partnership being the operative word here. Instead of an equal stance between the two churches, American churches generally have a patriarchical view in their relations with their Mexican counterparts.
• Almost all the missions work to Mexico is done on a thin geographical line across the USA-Mexico border; very little is done in the interior or the south.
• Most of these mission trips are short-term; very few of them are long-term with a vision to stay and live with the people to which they minister.
• These short-term mission trips tend to be quite costly (hundreds or even thousands of dollars a person), with most of the costs being a plane ticket (e.g. from North Carolina to San Diego) and van rentals (for driving across the border). The week-long trip is usually followed with a rest/shopping day in the border towns. Is that good stewardship of our money?
• For many churches, this is their annual work of missions.

Seems that the way we've been reaching Mexico needs an overhaul. I'm just not sure how we can go about doing it. Some of his thoughts were to stop most short-term mission trips and to begin a dialogue between American and Mexican churches to create a feeling of mutual help (yikes). It's something to consider if I'm ever in a position to affect mission work and budget in a church or denomination.

Theological discussion

In my Christian Thought & Culture class, we've been discussing the ideas of Annihiliationism and Double Predestination, which I just recently have learned about.

A couple questions I've been pondering related to Annihilationism:

1. Does the Bible say anything about us having an immortal soul, or even a soul at all, or is that just something we got from Greek thought?
2. What happens to us after we die? Do we cease to exist until we are resurrected? If we have souls, where do they go?
   

At the moment, I am somewhat skeptical about Annihiliationism, even though I can see it possible that we temporarily cease to exist before we are resurrected.

First day of school

Taking Introductory Greek. Some interesting tidbits about Greek:

• There are two O's in Greek: omicron (literally "little O") and omega (literally "big O").
• When the Bible was originally transcribed, there were no punctuation marks or spaces.