As many of you know I have spent the past 10days (March 31st-April 9th) in Mexico for Maple Valley Presbyterian Church’s Annual Mexico Mission Trip. To be honest going into the trip I wasn’t really sure why I was going back to Chihuahua, Mexicali. Last year there was a 7.8 earthquake while we were there and it was a very terrifying experience from me. I believe that it put a handicap on me last year and I didn’t really connect with anyone while I was down there because all I could think about was that traumatic incident that occurred the first day we were in our villages. But that last day I was down there one of the woman from the church asked me to return and over the past year I realized that the only way to truly conquer my fear was to go back to the place where it happened. I was very nervous to be returning because I was afraid that all those bad memories were going to come flooding back to me as soon as we pulled the vans up into the church in Chihuahua.
Our flight left the Sea-Tac Airport early afternoon on Thursday and surprisingly enough had no delays. We had a short layover in Sacramento, California then headed on through to meet up with the rest of the group in San Diego, California. We loaded up our 15-passenger vans, cargo vans, sprinters, party vans, and trucks and drove out to Fletcher Hills. That evening we all got settled in did a quick worship service met in our accountability groups for a short bit then headed off to bed.
The next morning we woke up and I packed my things and headed out side where some of the adults were gathered drinking their Starbuck’s Coffee and trying to get things organized for the day. Awhile later we headed down to the chapel and ate breakfast and made our sack lunches for the day. While there David, Erik, Eric, and I spent a few hours talking to a really cool 23year old guy named Mica who was at the church watching over us and taking care of any problem that arose (like when the Maple Valley guys clogged the toilet, so typical). We talked about the difference between Washington beaches and California beaches and how liars go to L.A. (inside joke, please don’t take it offensively). Then we did a short devotional, some village time, and spent some time going over our vacation bible school plans with our translators.
Afterwards we loaded up everyone’s luggage once again and headed off to a nearby mall (after having to jump the blue van) for an hour to do some last minute shopping. Then we went to the beach for like three or four hours, where we ate lunch and walked the boardwalk. Ashley got an okay from her parents and our youth directors to get a new tattoo and I had heard that there was a tattoo parlor near the boardwalk so we checked out one of the stores where we got a great deal on some swim-trunks and ran into Anna and Lindsey. The four of us found the tattoo parlor and checked out some gages for Anna, but they were way over priced so none of us ended up getting any tattoos or piercings there. But we found an ice cream/snow cone/ milk shake place right by the tattoo parlor so we got some snow cones and headed back to where the rest of our group was on the beach. There we found everyone standing around where Katie was laying in the grass in the park that was attached to the beach. She was being a human sacrifice (that’s when you lay down and someone covers you with goldfish crackers or some other sort of food and the seagulls swarm you like crazy). After quite some time Tyler army crawled up by her feet and we told her there was a seagull right by her feet and then Tyler grabbed her foot and she jumped up screaming and scared all the birds away, it was hilarious. After that we loaded up into the vehicles for the drive over to El Centro (during the drive, when we were passing the casino, Bodwell got a call saying that we needed to go through a different border crossing than we usually do (which we thought was an April Fool’s joke at first) and we were told that a representative from Azusa Pacific University would help us through customs) where we unloaded our luggage, once again. We ordered a butt-load of pizza’s (as Bodwell would say) for dinner and had some worship time (while Anna corn-rowed my hair and we talked about letting go of expectations) burned papers that we had written our expectations on, and went to bed.
The next morning we woke-up, packed our things, loaded up the vehicles and headed over to The Golden Corral for breakfast. Advanced team headed out to tent city in Cuernavaca, Mexicali to set-up all of our tents and get a water drainage system set-up for us to brush our teeth from the water coolers and all that good stuff (because when the dirt there gets wet it’s really not very much fun at all). The rest of us stayed at the church for a few hours (where Danii and I got very much acquainted because of my water spritzer and we became attached at the hip from then on) and did a Wal-mart run and then headed down to the border crossing where we spent an hour or two (yes this does include the time it took to jump the blue van…AGAIN!) getting everyone through customs (well everyone, but David and Deliah, two of our translators, who went to the border crossing we usually pass through, where they just stand and wave to you as you pass through, because David lost his passport). Do you know how hard it is to fill out all those custom forms when they’re all in Spanish? YIKES!!!
Anyhow, we eventually got to tent city which was surprisingly small. It was such a big shock (going from over 1,000 people there to about 100) that when we arrived Madi and I just held each other crying and speechless because we didn’t know how to react. The fenced off area where the staff usually sleeps contained everyone in the whole camp site and that was a huge shock for all of us returners (so much for getting rid of expectations). That night we ate the dinner that Azusa had prepared for us and went to chapel where we were introduced to Jack (leader of Barnabas aka toe-touch fanatic!), Joel (the worship leader for the week, no Peter Neumann?), Joe (the pastor for the week-who happened to make A LOT of Frances Chan references), and Anna (one of the coordinators from Azusa who was basically running the whole week and has super cute kids!). We went over Azusa rules (7meals-8chapel, drink lots of water, wear clothes toed shoes, be quiet after lights out, ect). We’ll let’s just say there were a lot of Maple Valley kids that were not all too happy with the 10:30 lights out time and made that very clear throughout the week (lights out used to be at 11pm).
The next morning we woke-up at 6am to get ready for the day. It was very different being waken-up by Jack and Anna coming around yelling at us to get out of bed instead of Fernando (past barnabas leader) coming on over the loud speaker saying, “good-morning Cuernavaca!”, and telling some jokes and then blasting like five songs over the speakers throughout all of tent city. Anyhow, we got up, used the honey buckets (which was really strange having only fifteen bathrooms for the whole camp, when were used to having about eight to ten for just Maple Valley, just goes to show just how much our group made up tent city) and did whatever else we needed to do for the day. We got breakfast at 7am and started chapel at 8am. When chapel was over around 10am we did some quick devotion time and then divided out amongst the vans to head into our three different villages (Chihuahua, Ocho, and San Diego). Those of us going to Chihuahua continued our on-going tradition/battle to steal signs from Barnabas and we were successful as usual (later on in the week we tried to kid-nap jack-jack, but he was too fast for us).
When we arrived in Chihuahua there were a few church members gathered outside awaiting our arrival. We went to set our backpacks and water bottles down inside the back room of the church, and realized that it looked very different. There were pictures of children on the wall and an attendance chart indicating that they had finally started up a children’s ministry (TOE-TOUCH!). It was awesome to see that we have had that much of an impact on their community! We messed around with the kids and talked to the adults for awhile, and it was hilarious to see Caleb (one of our translator’s one year-old son) seeing a dog for the first time. After an hour or so more people started arriving at the church and we gathered inside for service. The band (Pastor Efron, music leader/director (who’s name I can’t remember right now), and 17-year old Nadia) got up and started worship. After a few songs Nadia handed her drum sticks over to Bodwell for his turn to play drums for the last couple songs(also, an on-going tradition). Then, Pastor Efron prayed and invited Bodwell up to give a sermon. When service was finished and we were all dismissed, we headed out side where some of the adults had prepared some freshly home-made tacos for us (fresh beef, guacamole, pico de gio, and tortillas, it really doesn’t get much better than that!). After lunch, we went inside and took a siesta, then divided up into our VBS groups and went around the village passing out flyers to advertise for our woman’s ministry and vacation bible school.
After that we meet back at the church, loaded up the vans and headed back to tent city (after a quick store-run at Super Cuernavaca, of course!). Surprisingly enough, we were one of the first groups back to tent city and had a few hours to hang out and play card games, catch-up on sleep, and hit up the vendors (and Shay fixed the blue van so that we wouldn’t have to keep jumping it). Eventually, more groups started coming back and 7pm rolled around, so we went to get dinner and sat around waiting for worship to begin at 8pm. After worship we gathered to debrief our day, award barnababe and barnabro, and get into affirmation groups (where Danii brought up that I was her “shot of happiness” and we discussed breaking down our walls and letting God and others into our lives). We got ready for bed and went to sleep. The next morning was pretty much the same routine except for when we were in Chihuahua we had woman’s ministry in the morning (the guys cleaned-up a park while we were serving the woman) and we ate the sandwiches that Azusa had provided for us for lunch and had VBS in the afternoon, with siesta at the end of the day. And everything else after that was pretty much the same as the previous evening. From that day fourth that was our schedule; except for we had church service after siesta and didn’t get back to tent city until about 7:50pm, and there was one morning when a few of us woke-up early to set-up for and serve breakfast.
We had a couple gang fights that we had to break-up during VBS every day, but they really weren’t too bad because it was the younger kids that were involved and our translators stepped in to settle the disputes right away. There were a few days where we just played with kids in the park in the afternoon and many children skipped school just to be with the boys and help clean-up the playground in the mornings. I didn’t really connect with any of the kids until the second day of VBS, when Arely invited me to come jump-rope with her and she rarely left my side after that. The next day she drew me a picture, folded it up and handed it to me pinned together by two sparkly-pink heart-shaped hair clips, and when I unfolded it there was a drawing of the two of us and in the corner it said “Robin, gracias for ser miamiga Robin I love you Robin” and right then I knew that I had made a difference in her life. Later on, we were jump roping and this little cross-eyed girl named, Jennifer, came up and wanted to jump rope, but when she tried…well, let’s just say, she didn’t quite know what she was doing. So the other girls tried to be patient with her, but they were getting very frustrated.
Good thing it was about time to go inside for VBS, but when all the children started lining up outside the doors of the church I watched as couple boys kicked her out of line and started yelling and making fun of her and she ran off to cry. I ran after her and even though I don’t know Spanish, I somehow managed to calm her down and convinced her to join everyone else inside the church. During craft time I helped her make a necklace with a cross on it and when we finished I put it around her neck and her face just lit up with pure joy. The day after that was our last day in Chihuahua and Jennifer never showed up to VBS, but Arely was there and we made each other tons of drawings. At the end of VBS she came and handed me a picture of her that we had taken on the first day of VBS, so I ran into the back room and grabbed my 10th grade school picture out of my wallet and handed it over to her.
Apparently, sometime that day, David, Lofy, and Brian decided to go over and talk to the guys who lived in the nice house, right next to the church, because they had heard that the people living there weren’t Christians. But they guys were drunk when David, Lofy, and Brain arrived, but they still tried sharing the story of Jesus with the men and I guess it turned into some kind of huge argument of them throwing bible verses back and forth at each other and it turns out that they’re like Satan worshipers or something like that and they started casting demons spirits upon them and one of the guys had a hand-gun in his back pocket so David, Lofy, and Brain started praying like crazy and were able to get out of their just fine. I think it’s kind of funny though that David was there and that he was the one who originally wanted to go talk to the guys because David wants to be a pastor when he’s older and his absolute favorite biblical topic is spiritual warfare, so I think it was a good experience for him to see what it was like to be in the middle of that kind of a situation. And for all three guys (David, Lofy, and Brian) it brought them closer to God because they had to trust him in that situation and he really pulled through for them that day.
Later that evening we threw a big BBQ to celebrate pastor Efron’s birthday, Mark (one of our construction worker’s) birthday, and Alison (one of our youth interns) birthday. At the end when we had to say good bye almost everyone from both Chihuahua and Maple Valley were all bawling our eyes out. Arely was giving me a big hug and at one point I thought I might not ever get away from her tight grasp. As we were about to leave I was sitting in the back of the blue van with the rear door open and Arely came running up to me, took off the necklace she had made the previous day (the same one that I had helped Jennifer make), and handed it to me. And she just stood there while I sat in the back of the van, both of us crying and holding hands for what seemed like eternity and then she let go walked away, I closed the van door and we drove off while all of the children ran to the end of the street chasing after us.
Danii and I sat in that van crying the whole drive back to tent city and we cried all throughout dinner, and chapel. That night David had to jump the boarder so we were all praying for him like crazy (which was extremely successful and he had no problems whatsoever and Deliah was able to pick him up on the other side). Madi and I switched tents that evening, so that Danii could remain attached to my hip. We spent our final night in tent city, woke up the next morning, had bimbo donuts and bananas for breakfast, watched the rain fall for a bit (half hour tops), and gazed at the double rainbow that appeared in the sky, then we packed up our bags and headed back to California. On the drive, from the border crossing to our hotel, it started snowing when we were driving through the mountains, which seems ridiculous considering that it was about 102 degrees when we left Mexico and about 89 degrees when we got to our hotel. Anyhow there really isn’t much more to say then that.
In California we all got to take our first shower in days, Lauren and I spent about three hours at Jamba Juice trying to get all our affirmations finished, and for dinner that night Eric, Erik, David, Steven, Shane, Lauren, a few other people, and I went to Denny’s for dinner. Our waiter told David that if he ate over 20 pancakes he could get his meal for free, so David tried and did very well until Eric decided to take his shirt off at which point David almost threw-up and definitely lost his appetite. Over all I’d say that it was an awesome experience and I’m glad to say that I could share Jesus’ love with people who didn’t even speak the same language as me. It just goes to show that love truly has no bounds. Oh, and just for the record the flight attendants that we had for all three flights (we had a layover in Las Vegas and another layover in Reno)on the way home were hilarious (I felt bad though when not all the doors were latched closed so when we took of all the ice and soda went flying into this poor guy who was being pressed against other storage compartments because he didn’t have his seat belt on for take-off, since there wasn’t enough time for his to get back to his seat between giving emergency instructions and lifting up off the runway). I can’t wait for next year!
