There are several things about Mexico that really stood out to me. One, it's so hot there that it was almost unbearable... The building we stayed in didn't have any air-conditioning [because it's so expensive there, and it was a church that had to raise it's own money for things] so we had fans...that blew hot air at us. Which almost sucked worse than the heat. Two, Mexicans are serious about their Coca-Cola. And rightly so. Their Coke is way better than the Coke in the US. They use unrefined sugar, so it's sweeter. We also got it in glass bottles so that was neat. We made it a point to take a daily trip down to the Oxxo [sometimes twice daily] to go get Joya and Coca. There were more things, but I'll touch on those later.
Saturday: It was my first time flying, and so needless to say I was nervous. But it really wasn't that bad. We had two planes. One into Texas and then from Texas into Mexico. We had a six and 1/2 hour layover in Texas. It was the layover from hell. It was so boring. I walked around the airport a couple of times. We played BS, blackjack, Texas Hold 'Em, ect. I fell asleep. Had some Starbucks. And whined about how boring being stuck in the airport was. But we finally made it to Mexico and to the Base.
Sunday: We had a service at the Base and then we went to this really tall mountin that overlooks the city. There, we prayed for the city, took pictures, acted all tourist-y, ect.
Monday: It was the start to ministry. In the morning we practiced the dramas and puppet plays we had planned for the services we were doing and then Monday night we went door to door to share the Word. It was actually pretty cool. I was one of the only people in our group [other than our translator] who could speak a bit of Spanish [or at least pronounce the words in the booklet they gave us correctly]. But it was still pretty awesome. We met this one little girl that sat in my lap during the service. When we drove away she chased our vans down the street because she didn't want us to go. We cried.
Tuesday: More ministry preperation in the morning and then we went to this church out in the slums. It was where the squatters lived. They had houses made out of cardboard and aluminum siding. It was terribly sad. But, anyways, we went to this church and moved a dumptruck load of tile. It took FOREVER in the hot, blazing sun to move all of this tile. It was so hot. On the plus side, I got an awesome tan. Then we shoveled gravel. And shoveled gravel. And got hotter. And tanner. But the guys from the Base [who also happened to be our translators] took us to Dairy Queen once we got back into the more prosperous part of town. So we're all dirty and sweaty all up in this Dairy Queen. It was fun.
Wednesday: Soup Kitchen in the morning. I was the ketchup girl. We couldn't let people put their own condements on their hot-dogs, I have no idea why, so I walked around in the hot sun asking: "Quieres castup?" And they would nod or say "si" or "no" or whatever. And I got covered in ketchup. Yay. That afternoon we made tacos and took them to the hospital emergency room. So we handed out tacos and water. After we gave out the food we were allowed inside the hospital [we gave out food on the steps outside] and then we prayed with people inside. We actually found one guy who spoke English!! But most of the time I could speak to people [without our awesome translator's help] or I could understand enough of what our transltor and the people were talking about to translate for the two other kids in our group.
Thursday: Back to the church we moved tile at in the morning for a Woman's Conference. We performed there and then prayed for people. Those women were so awesome and nice. We took pictures for them with Polaroid cameras [because sometimes ladies don't even have pictures of their kids] but after a while people started coming up with their friends and a couple of times my twin, Mom, and I got motioned over to take pictures with people because they wanted pictures with us. It was really touching. That afternoon we went to the cerebral palsy [I have no idea how to spell that so I just guessed] orphanage. It was really sad. Most of the kids [minues about three] were in wheelchairs, so we just had to push them around in wheelchairs and sing to them or play with them. The girl I was with liked to be pushed around the courtyard and sung to. So, despite the fact that I can't carry a tune in a bucket, I pushed her around for two hours and sung anything that came to mind. And you know what, it was awesome!! We got to play with some of the other kids, too. There was one boy there that liked all of the girls in our group. He would shake our hands and give us kisses. [smiles] He was such a sweetheart. And another little boy liked to hold our hands and whenever Muffin [one of my guy friends] would smile at him this little boy would just laugh and laugh. It was really sad, but really awesome, too. When we were back at the base they took us out for 'trole' which was pretty much a mix of crushed ice, fresh fruit and awesome. It was so good.
Friday: Our free day. Our translators took us to this beautiful waterfal. Oh, it was so gorgeous!! Then we went to this half-mile strip of shops to buy souveniers and gifts for our families. It was a lot of fun. There was this really awesome leather store that had saddles and traditional cowboy gear and stuff. And a stuffed ostrich in the back of the story. The thing looked like a zombie. We went out for THE BEST tacos ever that night. They were so good.
Saturday: More flying. This time we didn't have the layover from hell, though. Oh no... We had twenty minutes to go through immigration, baggage claim [which ended up leaving us bag-less when we got back home] and then get to the other end of the airport to get to our terminal and then everyone was starving so we got some food. All in enough time to get on our plane. So we ran. FLAT OUT SPRINTED to our plane. Not fun. But we got back safe, and now I'm home and everything is good!
I missed you guys! Anyone that actually read all of that is super-awesome and gets a cookie! ;)
