Whats Happening with the Rices

2010!

2010-01-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

So a new year is under way! I hope that all of you guys had a great Christmas and New Year. 2009 was an AMAZING year for Juli and I personally and for the ministry as a whole here at La Fuente. We advanced in construction projects, the youth groups at our church plants saw some great spiritual growth as well as a new group in our San Juanito church, we hosted several teams from around the world that accomplished some great outreach, and we were able to bless lots of people through your generous donations and prayers. We are really excited to get going here in 2010 and know that God has incredible stuff for this year. As the year begins Juli and I are really looking forward to take over pastoring our La Fuente church plant in Valle de Nayarit. The official transition service is set for January 22. We are in the process of setting goals for this year in all of the ministries where we serve. I can’t wait to see how God blesses the different youth groups and we are expecting several short-term mission teams to come down throughout the year. We have ideas ready to go and are looking forward to some serious evangelism. One of the things that Juli and I really want to do is focus more on trying to meet some of the physical needs of the people who live around the church we are going to be pastoring. It will be cool to see how that plays out. The other day I was reading my Bible and I came across a verse that we are going to apply to our lives and ministry this year as our “theme.” I wanted to share the verse with you all, Psalm 90:17 says, “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And confirm for us the work of our hands; Yes, confirm the work of our hands.” I hope the year is off to a great start for all of you. Thanks for everything!! God Bless

Josh

Its about time

2009-12-03T08:50:00.000-08:00

Wow, so my once a week plan has totally not been working. Here we go, its a new day with a new chance to stay on track with the blog updates. So much has happened since I have last written. I was able to teach a couple classes in our Bible/Leadership training school, and that was a blast. We have also been crazy busy doing construction. An amazing church from Chicago came down and helped us build almost an entire church in one week! My wife and I have stayed really busy and are loving life. We have been leading the mission church youth groups and have loved seeing the growth and excitement in the kids. As of last week, my wife and I were asked to take over as Pastors at one of the churches were we have been leading the youth. After praying and talking it over we have decided to take the offer. We are now going to Pastor our La Fuente church plant in Valle de Nayarit. We are soo excited. This is going to be a big step for us and we are pumped to see what God does. My wife continues to be amazing in school, she is finishing up her semester in nursing school and is looking foward to a little Christmas vacation. I hope that everyone in the good old us of a is doing great. We would love to hear from you guys. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and support, you guys are leaving an impact all over this area! I vow to do better updating my blog and I hope you all have an awesome holiday season!!

Construction!!

2009-09-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

Hey to all. So we just finished an exhausting two weeks of construction in our newest mission church location, Compostela. We dug and dug and dug and then mixed cement like animals and then after pouring the foundations we covered it all up with dirt again so it looks like we didnt really do anything. haha. We are all really excited to see the progress of the church plant. We have been having weekly meetings on Tuesdays where kids come to play and women have Bible study, and as we build the actual building we see more and more excitement in the community. We have about half of the foundations laid for the building and we are now going to take about a three week hiatus as we wait for a team to come down from my home church, the Firehouse Chapel, to continue building. Please continue to pray for our efforts out in Compostela as we believe God for an awesome church filled with people strengthening their walks with Jesus. Thank you guys all for your prayers and support, keep it up and God Bless!!!!

Josh and Juli

2009-08-25T09:36:00.000-07:00

Wow, so I have been really blowing the once a week idea. Anyway, I am going to get back on track. Here we go. So Juli and I have finished a really busy summer season and are now settling in to more of a solid routine. We worked with several mission teams and got a lot of cool stuff done. We were able to do lots of evangelism and construction. Juli started school again last week and between her classes and our youth group she will be a pretty busy girl. We are all pretty excited at how quickly things have been coming together for our newest church plant in Compostela (city 30 minutes outside of Tepic). God has totally blessed us and enabled us to get the land ready for building, and tomorrow a group of us from the main church here and going out to start laying the foundation. So basically, the next week and a half or so is going to be digging and mixing cement (woohooooooo). Anyway, I hope that all of you guys are doing great as you transition into the fall season, it is going to be a great one here at La Fuente and I am sure it will be for you all as well. Thank you all so much for your prayers and support, please keep it up! Juli and I love you guys and look forward to hearing from you all soon.

Josh and Juli

Happy July

2009-07-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hey to all, I just wanted to take a second to say hi. Juli and I have been extremely busy as this is really the busiest time of the whole year here at La Fuente. We have short-term missions teams down here and we are also in the middle of doing our Vacation Bible Schools at our various mission church plants. This time of year can be a lot of fun, but also rather challenging. It is cool for Juli and I to be experiencing this busy season together for the first time, it gives us a chance to grow and mature as a couple. I am sure that many of you are also going through busy seasons, and at times it seems like there is NO TIME. I am really learning to take the positive from the busy times, and still do whatever I can to spend time with God and with my wife. Ok, take care and thanks for EVERYTHING. God Bless!

Taking it up a notch

2009-05-28T15:31:00.000-07:00

Hey to all. ITS HOT HERE IN TEPIC. So I am still trying to nail down a regular blogging schedule so that I can provide more frequent updates to those who invest into Juli and I and our ministry. It is amazing how quick the time flies! Summer is an extremely busy season for us here at La Fuente (but also one of the most enjoyable) because we have short-term mission groups visiting us from all over, and we usually try to catch up on much needed construction projects. Last week we were able to finish up some light construction at our newest church plant in Compostela, and we are currently hosting a group from Kansas that is going to be involved in various aspects of the ministry for the next week or so. I am pretty sure I have already gone over the limit with hillbilly jokes so pray I can restrain myself. On top of that my wife is approaching the end of her semester in school, and this means added projects and final exams, the good news is that she is doing awesome as always in school and will soon be available to help out full time in the ministry while she is off for the summer!! I hope that all is well with you guys, you are all in my prayers.

I wanted to write a bit about something that has been on my mind a lot as of late. I have been really feeling lately like it is time for me and for Christians in general to really make sure we are constantly trying to take our Christianity and relationship with Jesus to the next level. It is such an easy and convenient trap to become stagnant in our walk with God, or even get to the point where we set our relationship with Him somewhere on the back burner to focus on what we consider more important things. It is so easy to get comfortable and begin to neglect the time we invest into what really should be the most important thing we have going for us. We are put on this earth and wired to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and so often we begin one, but that is where it ends. Or we grow for awhile, and then we become a bit complacent and shift our focus to other things such as personal success or our own problems. I believe that when we truly desire to grow in our relationship with Him, that is when we truly get to know Him and who He is. That is when we recognize more and more of what He has given us and we begin to realize the importance of relying on His guidance for everyday matters. Take any one of your relationships for example, if you neglect your friends or family and are not in constant communication with them you begin to drift apart. Even if it is slight at first it can grow over time to the point where you hardly know the person. On the other hand the more and more time you spend with a friend and with more and more communication you begin to understand what makes them laugh or what they like and dislike. It is no different with God. This life is about one thing, knowing and worshiping our Savior. Lets do it. Continually.

Thank you guys so much for your prayers and support. You guys are awesome. Juli and I are truly blessed to have people like you backing us up. We love you guys! We want to hear how you are doing!

Josh and Juli

Roots and Miracles

2009-05-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

So today my wife and I had a pretty full Saturday. The day started with a soccer tournament for the youth from our mission churches. It was a good time and cool to see all of our church plants come together and do something. Valles (the church where I work) came in third place. On saturday nights we have our group for people who are HIV positive or have AIDS. I felt as though the message that was shared was great and important enough to be passed on to my blog. Another pastor on staff came and shared about roots. More specifically roots of issues. Often times as Christians we judge based off of symptoms that we see or experience. For example, if I see a mother miss-treating her son, or someone lying constantly, I tend to judge their actions as wrong and then can easily jump to conclusions about them as individuals. What we really need to do is look deeper at the root causing this behavior, and as believers, do our best to speak into their lives the answer to the root issue, not necessarily the behavior displayed by the root issue. I think that this is a great lesson for all of us to grab hold of. Even in our own lives we tend to judge our actions based off of purely what we see happening while maybe there is something deeper we need to address. I love the example of pulling weeds, if we break it off at the ground it will disappear for awhile, and we may even think we have beat it, but if we don’t get that root pulled out, it will return. I challenge you to examine your life and see if there is a root or two that still needs yanked.

Speaking of our HIV group, this week we saw what we are claiming as a miracle for my good friend Robin. Robin had the original idea of starting this support group; he is a HIV patient who was given 5 months to live about a year and a half ago. He understands the only reason he has any hope is because of Jesus, and with his inspiration we started this group. Robin was hospitalized for a period because of this virus, and has battled quite a bit. We have all been praying and believing for his healing. Last week Robin went for a routine check up of some various cell count numbers and a check on his defenses. There is a lot of science involved here but the bottom line is that the test results came back and the doctor told Robin that his HIV is now “almost undetectable.” The doctor said that the medical treatment Robin is on must have been working…He doesn’t know that because of the side affects Robin did not take the medical treatment…Praise God.

God Bless.

Josh

Lil' update

2009-04-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

Hey to all... I hope that you are all doing great and hanging in there. I wanted to give you all a bit of insight into what Juli and I are doing this week, and also some perspective on all of this flu stuff from here in Mexico. First of all we are doing great and not at all worried. There are many here in Tepic walking around with masks and many businesses and all the schools are closed, but there is really no reason to worry. I was up at my home church last week and spoke about going from an attitude of worry to an attitude of worship. What a great test! We hear all of the news about the spread of the flu and how it is going to affect the economy and our daily lives and our minds wander all over the place. WE SHOULDN'T WORRY. God is in control and we have that confidence in our lives and it is our jobs to share that confidence with those who are freaking out. Anyway, Juli is off school which is cool for me because she can hang with me as we are currently hosting a group from Oregon who are here for two weeks to help do community outreach in Compostela. We are going to be continually working alongside them as well as our other ministry stuff. All is good though, it is getting really HOT, and we are just getting started with the summer. Anyway, let's all stay encouraged and whenever we begin to feel that worry or fear creeping in, shrug it off and trust in the One who has total control. God Bless you guys, let me know how you are doing...

I John 4:4 - You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.

Sharing the Reward

2009-04-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

I Samuel 30:24 - Who will listen to what you say? The share of the man who stayed with the supplies is to be the same as that of him who went down to the battle. All will share alike.

Whats up?!? I just wanted to take a minute to encourage all of you guys back in the U.S. All of you who are standing with Juli and I in our ministry need to know how important you all are. I believe that this story in I Samuel is a great example. David and his mighty men were going to go into battle, there were a couple hundred men who were too tired to fight, so they stayed behind to guard the supplies of the men. The others went into battle and won, capturing lots of plunder. When they returned to the others who had stayed behind, some of the warriors thought all of the plunder was their's, after all they fought for it, but David had other ideas. He put forth an order than I believe should stick with us always, those who guarded the supplies received the same reward as those who were on the battle field fighting. Lets apply this to our lives today.

First of all do not misunderstand me! I in no way want to imply you guys are tired or not in the important battle. On the contrary, I wanted to encourage all of you who make not think that what you do is as important as what someone else does. Those of you praying hard up in the states for us and other pastors and missionaries, or those of you who are working hard and able to support financially, you are all entitled to the same reward as those "on the front lines." We all have a role to play in this family of believers, and all of our roles are equally important. So lets commit to continue working together! As a properly functioning family of believers, we are going to continue to see more "plunder" and we are all going to share in the reward!!!!!

love you guys.

Josh and Juli

Getting started!

2009-03-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

Hey to all friends and family. I wanted to start this blog to give you all a more informed idea about what is going on with Juli and I and our ministry here in Tepic. I will also be including random thoughts and ideas on God and what He is doing in and through us here. I thank you all so much for your prayers and support and hope that you continue to tune in for more detail as to what is going on here in our lives. Have a good one.

Josh