Mexico - Oct 21st

We did not sleep in today. We met in the foyer of the hotel bright and early at 6:45am and headed to the church for 7:00am. I'm glad we did though. We spent time worshiping and praying and had a little message by Arturo. Breakfast was fruit, muffins and cereal again. Today we were very much blessed because we had a man by the name of Carlos join our team. Carlos is able to speak both english and spanish so we were able to communicate with Pedro, Lucas, Alex and Juan. It made for a much easier day for sure. We began the day finishing up with knocking out the concrete we had left from yesterday. Then the fun began. Mixing concrete by hand is not easy. The first batch was 10 bags of concrete/ 50 pails of sand/ 50 pails of stone. You start by dumping the sand in a pile. Then you level out that pile and put the concrete in. You mix up that with shobels until the sand and concrete are well mixed. Flatten that down and pour on the pails of stone. Water is thrown into the mix and you mix and mix and mix until it is to the right consistency. Adding water as you go. Talk about tough work. Thankfully the second batch was only 1.5 concrete/ 7.5 sand/ 7.5 stone. It was still hard work but much less of it. That was about all the work we did. It took basically the whole day. The highlight of my day though was being able to have a real conversation with Juan thanks to the help of Carlos. We talked about how he came to this church and how God is transforming him. He lives in true service to God. He works on this project and pretty much stays at the location 24/7 24 hours a day to serve God. He said he was extremely thankful for us being there but couldn't understand why we would come from so much and so far away to help them when they have a hard time getting people from here to help them. We did our best to explain that we are extremely thankful to be able to come here and help and that it is an honor to work with them. We explained that we felt called by God to come and that we are brothers in Christ so its a blessing to both them and us being here. I'm not going to lie I had to choke back tears quite a bit. The passion these people have humbles me. Oh and it turns out Juan does auto body work too, so thats kinda sweet.

Mexico - Oct 20th

We woke up and headed to the church for breakfast at 8:00am. Apparently we slept in because when we got there the natives were already hard at work. Trust me when I say hard at work I mean HARD at work. These guys are machines. We spent the whole day chipping away at a mixture of concrete and stone bed so that the new walls to this building can tie into the walls around the yard. There was 3 of these holes we had to chisel out and man I have not done physical labor like that in a long time if ever. We went through hammers quite a bit too. We just smacked the hammer heads back on when they fell off. It was interesting though, the ingenuity of the locals at how to do things. We broke a hammer handle for one of the bigger hammers, and instead of it becoming a useless hammer Juan fashioned a new handle from a branch in like 10 minutes. It worked great. Juan helped us out quite a bit. At times it was hard with the language barrier but we eventually got it, and if we didn't he'd step in and show us how to do it. I'd swear he could read the stone. We would be working on a spot for a long time and he'd come over and in a matter of minutes make tenfold the progress. It definitely humbles you and shows there skills. I hope we didn't seem to incompetent to them. Lunch was pretty basic, just sandwiches but on some really sweet bread and some croissants. Supper was breaded chicken, beans, salad and mashed potatoes. Art warned us to be careful with the salad so I didn't actually eat it. I don't think I could of if I wanted to. I was so full. Then we headed back to the hotel. We took some time to rest and shower and got together for our first session. Our sessions are basically going to be a time of sharing testimonies. Art went tonight. It was really awesome to hear his story and his history. He definitely has a passion for these mission trips.

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Sorry for the delay. I got busy with getting our church's young adults lounge painted and totally forgot to update, but I'm back now.
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Mexico Trip - Oct 19th

We spent the entire day at the church today basically.We woke up and headed out for breakfast. I can't recall the name of the place we ate, but I had some sort of omelet with this really good cheese in it. It also had some bite sized quesadilla's too if I recall correctly, with some sort of red sauce and avocado sauce on it. It was delicious. After breakfast we walked over to the church. This was really my first time seeing the city as the drive to the hotel I wasn't really coherent. It is so different. Anyways, we arrived at the church for the service which was awesome. It went from about 11:30am till almost 2. We spent time singing, or rather clapping as they sang because it was all in Spanish. We were lucky enough that a lady whose name was Monica stood with us and explained what the songs were about. We also spent time in little groups praying for each other. Praying with the locals was amazing. Even though I didn't understand one word of what they were saying their passion was definitely inspiring and I'm glad we were a part of it. I hope that even though I was speaking English when I prayed that they were able to enjoy it as much as I did. During the service Arturo preached in English and Monica translated to Spanish. This was easier for them I guess because she could translate to Spanish much easier than to English. Even though it was a long service it really felt short. After the service we just hung out at the church for the afternoon. We enjoyed a super good meal of roast chicken, tortilla's, Cheese, and this salad like thing that I later found out was cactus and was to go with the tortilla's. By this time it was actually a good way into the evening, probably like 7:30pm or so and we headed back to the hotel. After sitting around for a while we decided to take a walk. So most of us ( Art and Ron had gone to Cost-co for some supplies ) went for a walk around the area of the hotel. We stumbled upon a soccer field and watched for a while as a game was on. That was pretty much the night.

Mexico Trip - Oct 18th

So, apparently its been a long while since my last post. I had hit a slump I guess without a lot really happening. One major thing just happened though. I joined a few guys from my church and some that weren't on a short term missions trip to Atizipan Mexico. We were there for 2 weeks and it was simply amazing. I kept a journal while we were there. I tried to do it every night, but while we were in the mountains I got behind a few days so filling in those days was tricky, but I did my best to recall as much as I could. I think that I am going to post those entries onto my blog. To both share with you my experience and also to consider and go over what I experienced. So I hope that this is in the least somewhat interesting, and possibly even helpful or encouraging. I think I'll do one day per post and we'll see if I post one a day or one every other day or what have you. But I will eventually cover the entire 2 weeks. So here we go.

October 18th, 2008

We began our journey at the Regina airport. Our flight took off around 2:00pm and we arrived in Toronto a few hours later. This was my first time flying that I am able to remember. It was good, I was lucky enough to have the window seat and was able to watch the entire take off out the window. It was a fun experience for sure. The speed that the plane accelerates and the rate at which it can gain altitude is awesome. Within minutes cars and trucks became dots and houses became indistinguishable. The landing was also really cool. Approaching the airport over Toronto was a fun sight to see. In Toronto we had about an hour so we grabbed a bite and headed to board the next plane. This flight also went well. Until the landing atleast. I don't know why considering I had no problem with the first landing but I had an episode and passed out as we landed in Mexico. Perhaps due to the higher elevation or a quicker descent. Regardless my very first experience outside of Canada was being escorted off the plane with an oxygen mask and four paramedics. Not including the EMT that came with us. The rest of the night was uneventful as I was in a daze and can't recall a lot. I just remember laying on the van seat and trying hard not to fall off it what with the bumpy, twisting drive. I'm pretty sure that that messed up my back.