[I discovered this unfinished post today. It kills me that I never finished this and posted it. Somehow, it slipped through the cracks. It’s long, and unfinished, but definitely worth the read.]
Glenview Baptist Church has a great mission program and has really done a great job of raising up young missionaries. We start off with sixth graders (about 12 years old) doing work projects at a sister church here in inner city Fort Worth. Middle school goes to San Antonio where the seventh graders (13) are on the “work crew”, usually sorting donations to a shelter or food bank, and painting a church and eighth graders (14) put on a four day vacation bible school (VBS). By the time our kids are in high school, they have a good understanding of working for God, working with kids, and the general mechanics of a mission trip. We take them to Mexico where they feed the poor, put on VBSs, do some hard labor and really get to see God working. The juniors and seniors (17 and 18) also have the opportunity to make a trip overseas where the main focus is evangelism.
Glenview also has a “family” mission trip each year around spring break. The last two years we’ve gone to New Orleans and done construction. This trip is a great opportunity for parents and kids to server together. Plus, “young” grown-ups like me (34) get to work along side “seasoned” folks (as old as 77) and pick up some great wisdom (not to mention some really great construction skills).
In the past few years, I’ve spent the majority of my vacation time on the family and middle school trips. But 2008 is my 5th year at my current job and I’ve got an extra week of vacation. I was able to add Mexico to the mix for the first time.
We pulled out of the church around 8AM on the first Saturday in July. The 10 hour drive was mostly uneventful other than some heavy rain. We crossed the border from Brownsville to Matamoros and checked in to our hotel. The culture shock began.
The hotel was really nice, all things considered. Air conditioned rooms with two full beds (for four people), a cozy restaurant (that served great Mexican food three times a day) and a gated parking lot (although with two mini-buses and three vans, it was more than cozy). By U.S. standards it was a “Motel 2”, but this is a mission trip, so it was much more than I was used to. With a bed and three squares a day, a missionary’s cup overfloweth.
Then there was the rain. It rained and rained and rained and rained. If you’ve never been to Mexico (other than the tourist traps) you may not know that their public works are not always up to snuff. Our five teams were assigned five small churches in a very poor neighborhood where only one or two streets are paved and drainage is something your nose experiences, but the roads don’t. The motto of our mission trips is “be flexible” and it was put to the test by ankle deep mud and knee deep “poo water”.
On Sunday we canvassed the neighborhoods handing out fliers and inviting kids to our VBS. Now, you have to picture this to really get the sense of it. You’ve got a handful of very American teenagers in their “Hollister” t-shirts and cargo shorts wading through mud and water in the pouring rain handing out soaked papers to people huddled in their ramshackle huts with cloth curtains for doors and concrete floors (if their lucky). On top of all that, the Americans have been coached to say about four words of Spanish, which they get wrong 50% of the time. “Eskwellah bibli-eh man-yawn-uh en la Eeglay-sia.” The reaction from the locals was a mix of terror and hilarity.
Sunday night, we all met at the “mother” church for their evening service. The two story cinder block building was one of the nicer in the area but the slick, greasy mud outside incapacitated two of our vans (including the one I drove for the week).
The service was amazing and the pastors and volunteers from the churches where we’d be working sang with us and prayed over us in a truly stirring experience. I was able to pick out a dozen or so words of the head pastor’s message, but I knew exactly what he was saying when he asked for strong men to roll up their pants and help us free our vans from the muck.
Lesson #1: The people we came to help would make great sacrifices for us at the drop of a hat. They understand God’s command to be a servant.
Monday, we started VBS. My team had 35 kids show up which was a lot and considering the continued rain and mud. We counted it a blessing. Another blessing came in the form of the local volunteers. They were well organized and well prepared to teach their lessons. That was a double blessing because we arrived with zero Spanish interpreters. I know just enough Spanish to embarrass myself, but as it turned out Enrique, the pastor of our church, knew exactly that much English. Between the two of us (with a lot of hand waving and sound effects) we were able to keep things rolling. “Glory de Dios!”
On Monday night we held church services at our local churches. We sang songs (in Spanish), performed a dramatic mime, and couple of our kids told their testimonies through a translator. Then one of our kids gave a short sermon, again translated. Our translator for the evening was “Grandpa” Paul, the missionary who’d coordinated the trip with our church. He’s nearly fluent in Portuguese, which is close enough to Spanish that he can make do.
That night, one of the other groups had to cancel their evening service due to the water around their church. (Later in the week, that church became known as “The Island”.) That meant that Steve Melton (the leader of the other group) got to share in the joy of driving down Camino Real, the “paved” street that ended near my group’s church.
For about four miles, you drive through a commercial area; “quaint” restaurants, fruit stands, mechanics, etc. Then, the buildings abruptly stop and on both sides of the road there’s nothing but empty fields. Depending how heavily it had rained, this was about where the road went under water.
It was at this same point that the “paved-ness” of the road became more academic. For about a half mile, under one or two feet of murky water, there hid colossal pot holes, nay, craters, some that spanned the whole road. They were like buried land mines waiting to swallow our van. There was at least one that was deep enough that, when I hit it at the wrong angle, our van’s frame hit the ground and we jolted to a stop. Fortunately, with sufficient long-skinny-pedal, I was able to back out and take a different angle.
Lesson #2: If you can’t see the road under the water, drive really slowly.
Out there, in what we called “the lake”, the water came up over the bumpers of our van. Steve was driving one of the mini-buses and the water came in through the double doors onto the entry steps. Honestly it was kind of fun. It had that tinge of adrenaline you get while four-wheeling, only amplified by driving a two-wheel-drive van loaded with teenagers in a place with no AAA and you can’t speak the language. What a rush!
Tuesday, more rain. After our morning VBS, we were supposed to do some door-to-door evangelism, but the rain and mud (and lack of translators) had squelched that idea. Instead, we made coffee in two of our big Gatorade coolers, bought a bunch of “sweet bread” and headed to the local hospital. One of the small church pastors took us there along with his niece and her boyfriend (Axa and Gustavo), all of whom could speak English. We handed out coffee, bread, and evangelism tracts. We shared the the Good News of Christ as best we could (the bilinguals helped a lot). We were only allowed to send small groups (two or three plus a translator) into the hospital to pray with people and share the Gospel, but that was enough to bring a few souls to Christ.
…
[I don’t know why I never finished this. I don’t remember enough now to do it justice. We made a trip to the dump to hand out sack lunches to the people who live there. Yes. They live in the dump. We also evangelized in the Matamoros tourist market. I can’t wait to go back!]
