Mexico! March 17

My time spent in Mexico was used in a variety of ways. Our main project that was planned for us was to raise the lot at a local church. Any time it rained this lot would flood making it impossible to drive on and the water would leak into the church. Fortunately it wasn’t anything that 18 able bodies with shovels and 19 dump trucks of dirt/sand couldn’t fix! Oh yeah, and 4 dump trucks of volcanic rock to top it off. It was a lot of physical labor but our group was up for anything and did it joyfully! The best part of this was how efficiently it could be done. This project was estimated to take up the entirety of our funds and the majority of our time but it turned out costing a third of the price we thought and only took us 3 days (we were there for 2 weeks). This opened up all sorts of other opportunities for us to serve. Dwight, the missionary in El Papalote, is building apartments on his property for when small groups or couples come they have a place to stay. We were able to finish dry walling in the one he had and build the foundation and get the piping in place for the second, something he didn’t even dream of us starting!! Other ways we were able to serve included hosting three events, one for kids, one for youth, and one for the church. Our team split into three groups to plan these events. I was involved in planning the youth event. We had it on the beach, provided hot dogs and had a fire, performed a drime, then I spoke a two minute message (we were pressed for time) with the use a translator, played soccer in the sand and a few brave souls went into the frigid ocean. There were two mornings where we were able to volunteer at a day care centre. This centre is essential to the lives of these babies and children; if it wasn’t there they would be left at home alone. It’s extremely under staffed and only the very basic needs are met. It was such a joy to be able to go and make the kids smile while we played with them or prevent a baby from crying by holding and loving it. Another day we spontaneously walked into a public park in the middle of town and started playing music, I played guitar while Nick played a djembe. Once we had their attention we performed our drime again. Of course there were some relaxed times for when the team needed a break. During said times we were able to walk around the small town and stop at the convenient store and order ice cream in Spanish or one day we climbed a volcano. The of course there was my favorite thing to do, eat fish tacos!!!! Man oh man Mexicans know how to make a mean fish taco J

I figured it’s time to take a break and add a humorous story. The day the team took some time to ourselves and climbed a few volcanoes did not end in the way I had expected. After summiting two volcanoes (don’t be too astounded, they’re probably not what your picturing right now) we went down to the shore line to check out the crashing waves….and pick up a few more rocks for Dwight’s garden. It was a really cool view and the waves were splashing hard against the rocks. Brent (my roommate at school) and I decided to go the farthest and highest point we could. It appeared to be a safe place to go, not a tough place to get too and no waves were splashing up to it…or so it appeared. We reach the point and enjoy the view for a few seconds while a small wave causes a gentle splash off to the side. A few seconds later we see the next wave coming in, we both think to ourselves “hmmm that looks like a really big wave”. The wave hits the rock and the water flies up. Time stopped for a split second as we stare at this wall of water towering over us. While that second didn’t last forever and it all came down! In unison we both cry “que Paso”, the commonly used Mexican phrase meaning “what is this?” yup we were soaked to the bone! Not the most pleasant ride back but hey at least we got a story and a cool picture!

Thankfully there weren’t too many things that I found difficult on this trip. I have been on a missions trip before and knew that the language barrier would be difficult to work around. I was expecting to see people in the state of poverty and had mentally prepared myself for that and again have experienced it before so as disheartening as it was for several people it did not have as much of an impact on me. If anything I admired their poverty and low standard of living because it really proved that their joy was coming directly from the Lord. I would have to say that the hardest thing that I had experienced wasn’t while I was in Mexico but once I got home. While we were in Mexico we had a lot of involvement with the Church through attending services, doing service projects for them, hanging with the youth, and interacting with the pastors. We had the full Mexican church experience and it was awesome! The congregation came alive during worship, all were attentive for the pastors message, many people were involved in the service, everybody greets everybody and they don’t  just say good morning but rather calls them brother or sister and says God bless you. The church was alive and well; literally they had new converts on a weekly basis. What was hard for me was coming back to Canada and realize that our churches are struggling. All around people are slipping away, lacking unity, leadership and responsibility, losing the passion they once had for God and the church. Yup, it’s frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I love church and know that there is plenty good that comes from our Canadian churches; however, it still appears that our problems are more evident than what I experienced in Mexico.

God is good and uses His people in outstanding ways when they let Him. There were so many times that we experienced God’s goodness on this trip, let me share with you my favorite. As I had mentioned before, there was a drime that we had performed in Mexico. “Everything” by Life House is the one we did, it portrays humans falling away from God and getting caught up with temporary pleasures of the world and the emptiness you are left with then how God is constantly longing for you back and will always take you back and bring you true joy. This is something that we had prepared prior to arriving in Mexico; we had practiced diligently and felt confident in our ability to perform it. By the end of our trip we had performed a total of 5 times in 3 locations. I believe it was during our third time when God took over and showed us something great! This was the day we went to the public park and attracted a bunch of strangers to a stage in the centre where two white boys were playing music. While we were playing music the rest of the crew was getting costumes and music ready. Oh, in case anybody doesn’t know what a drime is, it’s like a drama but instead of words we mime with music in the background. Drama+mime=Drime.  The music is essential for timing, emotion, tone and just conveying the overall message. A really cool touch we added to ours was we found the song in Spanish! Ok there is a reason that I’m putting such a strong emphasis on the music, it’s because we really missed it when we didn’t have it! While we were getting set up we discovered that there was no way to play our music, our player wasn’t working without being plugged in and the outlets within our reach were not working and it was very discouraging. We were seriously contemplating not doing it at all, it’s just not the same without music and we felt like we would have looked like a bunch of fools in the middle of the park. Dwight, the missionary, assured us that it would be fine, he had seen it done without music before and it still worked. While since the whole trip was to assist him with his ministry we went for it anyways but still weren’t feeling too great about the whole thing. We finished and it wasn’t horrible but didn’t think anything would come from it. Right away Dwight came to us and pointed out that there were two specific girls watching, one grasped the concept of the whole thing and was explaining it to the other. That cheered us up a bit and we thought maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. Instead of just putting on a performance then walking away we had a few local pastors and students come with us to hand out tracks and talk or pray with people. We were shocked to see how many people were willing to engage in conversation. We non Spanish speaking people were feeling a little helpless right then so several of us spent some time privately praying. Something great has happening before us and we were totally unaware. That day in that park a man accept Jesus Christ as his lord and savior. At this point I was left in awe of what just happened. First of all we meander into a public park, get on a stage in the centre of it, pull out some instruments and start playing music with the intention of drawing people in. then we perform our drime in front of these people, feeling like it was our worst production. But that’s what makes it so marvelous! Our worst production had turned into Gods best! This just emphasised all the more that God was working with us and deserves all the glory.

Thank you for sticking with me this far, there is just one last thing that I would like to share with you and that is what God did in me. To be honest as I was preparing for this trip some questions had raised about is this practical thing to do? How much will it affect the people in El Papelote? Will it change us permanently or just give us a “spiritual high”? Through all of this I had decided to create a new vision of what I wanted to experience on this trip. I wanted to experience a new kind of unity, not just unity within the team or within the Christian community in El Papelote but rather between two cultures, Mexico and Canada working together to serve and worship the one God who created us all. I am pleased to say that this revealed itself in a number of ways. First of all we were literally working together. Every project we did there were always help from the pastors or other people in the community. There was by no means a sense that they just wanted us for our labor, they certainly appreciated all that we did but were working alongside us just as had, if not harder, as we were. Another thing that stuck way out to me was how they had quickly accepted us and made us feel at home, aside from giving us a place to stay and cooking supper for us every day their hospitality became very apparent in church. The first Sunday we were there they introduced us to the congregation at the beginning of the service and at the end they had a time of prayer and invited any to the front who wanted prayer or who wanted to pray. Once they had finished they had specifically asked all of the Canadians to come to the front so that they could pray for us. They did not just pray for the time we were down there or for the work that were doing there but for us and for our families, these people sincerely cared about us. On the last Sunday we were there again at the end of the service they had invited all of the Canadians to the front but this time it was to thank us for the service he had provided them with. However instead of just saying thanks and clapping or whatever, each and every person came up to the front, formed a line, shook our hands, hugged us and personally said thank you. Through the time spent with the church I can speak on behalf of the team that we felt as they were blessing us at least as much as we were blessing them. Finally unity between us was evident in our ministry opportunities. We were consistently working together to spread the word of God. There was only so much that we could do on our own since we literally couldn’t talk to the people. So the role we played in outreach was to open the door. Having a missions team there was an excuse to do stuff. we drew people in by planning the events, paying for the costs then just interacted as much as we could while the locals could build real relationships, have real conversations about God and follow up afterwards. It was great teamwork and through this we were able to build close connections not only with the people we were reaching but with the ones that were constantly by our side working with us. God works in many ways and He definitely astounded me with all He used us for.