My first missions trip was many things: foremost among them, an illumination, by the Holy Spirit, of the extent of my own selfishness. We live in a culture unaware of (and unsatisfied with) its own affluence. It was a vivid reminder that many of the
simple things we take for granted – those things that some of us see as rights – the ‘
right’ to live comfortably, the ‘
right’ to good food, the ‘
right’ to good health - are really not rights at all, but blessings freely rained upon the fields of the believer and the unbeliever by the God of the universe.
There were many ‘if onlys’.
If only I had learned more Spanish before I left - like I said I would.
If only I knew more about construction so I could be ‘as useful’ as some others in our group.
If only Internet access wasn’t so difficult (initially) to arrange. In retrospect, of all the possible ‘if onlys’ that I, in my arrogance, could compose, just two carried any validity:
If only I had begun my trip with greater faith in what God could do, as opposed to what I could do, and
if only someone had put up a sign at the entrance to Mexico that read, “Deposit all pre-conceived notions here”.
You see, I had a plan. My plan was to stay at the comfortable dorms (hot showers, game room, and a safe neighborhood – in other words, a lot like home) in Pastor Larry Trotter’s church in the beautiful neighborhood of Bugambilias, at the top of a mountain overlooking the squalor of Santa Ana. My plan (anyone notice a pattern here?) was that, since everyone would be staying together, working together on the construction project at the Santa Ana church, and leaving together, we would all be able to post updates to
my pet project, which was the Aisquith Impact website. Within minutes of our arrival, my own vision of the trip had been completely dismantled, and was replaced by something that I didn't like very much.
Not only did I discover that Pastor Trotter’s high speed Internet service had stopped working, but repeated calls to their phone company had yielded no results. There was no estimated time of resolution, and there was no other way to get on line, other than to use Alejandro’s dial up service. This meant no pictures could be uploaded. In other words, my project (there are those words again…) was, effectively, dead. It was only afterwards, however, that I found out that the status of the Bugambilias church’s Internet service didn’t matter anyway.
We would not be staying there. I can still hear John telling us that there would be a ‘slight change’ in our accommodations. We were to stay in local homes with host families. We would become a part of their lives. Hard work was one thing. Contact with indigenous people - on my terms - was OK – but now we would live as they live, eat as they eat, and sleep as they sleep. In a city where you can’t drink the tap water, can’t flush toilet paper, and, as I learned shortly, can’t take a hot shower, this trip was becoming less and less attractive. During all of this, I watched to see how the teens were handling the news. Not a word of complaint. Not a scowl. They all seemed to possess a flexibility that, somehow, I lacked.
We were quickly assigned our living arrangements. I would stay in the home of an incredibly intelligent, well educated, (he spoke fluent English) man named Pedro, along with Dave, Jared, and Jesse Newman, Larry Komenda, and my son, Richie. As we drove down the long, bumpy dirt road to his house, Pedro joked and asked if anyone needed a helmet, as we bounced around so much that our heads were in danger of hitting the roof of his ‘redneck mobile’ – a red pickup truck aptly named by another missions team. My only clue as to what to expect was the powerful stench of garbage dumped along the road. Pigs roamed freely, we saw cows and the occasional horse, and gray cinder block buildings which, had I not seen lights within, and children without, I would have sworn were for storage – but never structures which could house people. My fears about where we would stay were somewhat alleviated, however, as we approached Pedro’s house. It was made of the ubiquitous gray block and cement, but was white-washed, surrounded by barbed and razor wire – and was the largest house on the road, the only one having more than one floor. Directly across the field was the small mountain, topped by Bugambilias, within full view of our revised accommodations. Next door – a little block building, also surrounded by barbed wire, with several small children playing in the dust, mud, and trash. This was the home of our hostess, Vero. Strutting around proudly in the road was a rooster; unbeknownst to me, this was the same rooster whose head I would later vow to have swinging from my key chain.
We stopped and unloaded our luggage, and as Pedro opened the door to the house, one of the first things I noticed was that there were no lights. Pedro explained that, while he owned the house, he did not live there, and there was no electricity, save for the single wire strung into his kitchen from his neighbor’s house, and no running water at all. Thus did my slow surrender begin; for housing and transportation, my son and I were completely dependent on this Mexican about whom, at the time, we knew nothing, other than that he was a member of the Santa Ana church.
After Pedro and I retrieved mattresses, bed sheets, and pillows from Bougambilias, as well as a large bottle of water, we went back to his house. I was greeted by a smiling 14 year old (Richie) whose first words to me were, “Dad, this is such a cool house”. By anyone’s standards, I had to admit that we could have done much worse in the housing department. Pedro had directed every facet of the home’s construction. It was roomy and safe. Like most of the Mexican homes I saw, there was tile everywhere, but no furniture was in evidence, save for a large dining room table with 8 to 10 chairs and a sofa, love seat, and chair in the living room.
Pedro asked me what we would like for dinner. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, since at that point, I didn’t know what ‘real’ Mexicans ate for dinner. He offered us bread and milk, or ham and eggs. I chose the latter – I was already craving familiarity, and ham and eggs seemed to be the safest choice. Within minutes, our dinner arrived, delivered personally by Vero. She was to cook all of our meals. Thus began the second area of surrender: the meals that my son would eat were to be prepared in a home that looked like little more than a pile of bricks, and I was certain that things couldn’t have been very clean over there. As I cautiously took my first bite of the (delicious!) meal prepared for us (we had been told that we must eat what we were offered, since to do otherwise would be offensive to our hosts), I found myself praying for protection from germs which, I was convinced, would surely make us all sick. I later learned that Vero, too, was constantly worried about this, and had been praying every day that her food would be safe for us to eat. Once again, the teens showed no such concern, and made short work of emptying the pan.
We all turned in, after a devotional at Pedro’s table and lots of talk. Thinking that all of Mexico was crawling with scorpions, not only did I shake out my suitcase and all of my clothing, but the bed sheets and pillow, too. No sign of poisonous creatures anywhere. In the other room, Larry and the boys slept with their window open. My fears were, obviously, not shared by these young men.
The cool, dry Mexican night made sleeping very comfortable. Then, at what must have been about 4 am – COCKADOODLEDOOOOOO! It was the rooster. If he had only done this once during the morning, I could have put up with it. He would crow much earlier sometimes, too. Only half jokingly, I remarked that the rooster would only stop if he knew I was out of bed. It seemed that all I needed to do to make this bird keep his big beak shut was to get up. This went on every morning, and my remarks about the rooster became so common that Dave said one day that it was beginning to get a little old. I don’t think he meant it, though. Every once in awhile he would smile and crow like a rooster. Pedro suggested that I take a picture of the noisy bird with my digital camera and make a wanted poster.
After three days, I was finally able to resume work on the website. Pastor Trotter informed me that a local businessman, Alex, had opened a small Internet cafe. It was actually just the Internet – there was no cafe, but that didn't matter to me. For 15 pesos per hour ($1.50 US) I could finally get some pictures up on the site. Thus, surrender number three: for the Internet access I needed to complete the project, I had to rely on a local source. It should have come as no surprise to me that it was only after I was pointed to Alex and his little shop, located conveniently around the corner from the Santa Ana church, that the part necessary for me to resurrect Pastor Trotter’s DSL service arrived. The fact that I just happened to be in Mexico when said part arrived seemed, somehow,
providential.
By this time, it was becoming obvious even to me: (slapping forehead) God didn't want me working in Santa Ana by day, only to retreat to the comfort of Bougambilias at night. Aside from my trip there to fix the network, I had no reason to visit Bougambilias at all; God had provided everything I needed, right there in Santa Ana. I was still a little confused at this point; I felt that I had little to offer these people, aside from the physical labor of working on the church building. Yet God seemed to be arranging everything so that, in order to get anything done, it had to be through personal contact with the people in Santa Ana. How could I witness to a Spanish speaking people when I didn't even speak Spanish? (Perhaps I should have thought of that before I went on the missions trip?) Once again, the answer should have been obvious, and once again, it was our young house mates who provided that answer.
Nearly every night, when we arrived at Pedro's house after work, Vero's children were waiting for them. While Larry had the greatest grasp of Spanish, none of them was fluent. This didn't matter to the children; “Rock, Paper, Scissors” can be played in any language, as can soccer and tag, and even an innocent game of “Truth or Dare”. Richie’s flashlight became the plaything of choice for Vero’s son, and I daresay that neither knew what to call it in the other’s language.
The days flew by, and before we knew it, Friday, our last full day in Santa Ana, had arrived. We spent the day sight seeing and shopping, and that night there was a taquiza – basically, a taco feast, at church. There would be singing, prayer, and testimonies, and we had all bought gifts for our hosts. What I didn’t know was that some of the hosts had some things to say to us – including Vero. Through Horte’s skillful interpretation, Vero first warned us that she is a ‘cry baby’. (Many of us became ‘cry babies’ that night) She then thanked us for our work at the church, and the next two things made even our interpreter get choked up: she thanked us for making her children happy, and she said that, even though God has not blessed her with a camera, that He has blessed her with a picture of us, in her heart. It was then that I remembered something that John had said to us on day one:
relationships come first.
It was the reason why, when the teens all stopped work to play basketball with some local kids, John thanked them. Staying in the dorms would have been fun and comfortable, but all it would have shown is that we wanted to work, but didn’t want to share our lives – or our faith in Jesus Christ - with these people. These wonderful, gracious people were willing to give to us, out of their poverty, and all I could think about, at first anyway, was that my stay wasn’t as pleasant as I expected. As John said at the taquiza, it was evident that we were shown Christ in these people, in many ways, more than we showed Christ to them.
Every single thing that I had whined about was actually God’s gentle way of teaching me, of forcing me to stay put, to interact. The entire trip, revised as it was, became a blessing to me, and I suspect, to everyone else. Yes, even the rooster. He was the reason I woke up in time to get to the airport on that last Saturday.
