Day 9: The breaking of the fellowship

Because Lord of the Rings.

Pues mijos, the last day went about as expected: church was good, but sad; lunch was delicious, but sad; our send-off at the airport was powerful, but sad. Something you should know: you can't love and serve people properly without giving them a part of your heart. This is beautiful and as it should be. However, when they leave your life; it hurts. This too is beautiful and as it should be.

Never withhold your heart from someone you are ministering to because they'll leave someday and hurt you. We're made to feel it when people leave. Think of how Paul writes to the churches he's helped plant (go read something like Philippians if you're having trouble thinking of where to start).

Suffice to say: God is good and hurt is ok and community is beautiful.

Glad to be back!

Day 8: Good to the last drop

Since I stayed up late last night, I decided to get up early this morning and go for a run. It was raining. I love running in the rain (apart from having wet socks, there are few things in the world that make me sad in the way that wet socks make me sad). Running in the rain - in a way akin to trail running - takes me back to the root of why I started running in the first place: it's fun.

Speaking of fun, we went to Casa Hogar today and sang and danced and played with kids. Cuteness overload. Such much. And yes, I am talking about how cute it is when I dance (...the spanish word you're looking for is mentira). This was the first time IGC (Iglesia Gran Comisión) has worked with Casa Hogar and they're hoping to have future opportunities to do so. I don't know why - I guarantee it's not due to our great holiness - but God's been good about timing our being here with the start of things. After dancing, we painted stars and an ark and a desert and heaven in the kids' room. We got paint all over ourselves (and when i say "ourselves," i do mean "each other"). My shirt has handprints and hearts and streaks and smiley faces all over it (vandalism!)...it's beautiful.

"We had our spaceship. but then it left." said Cammy

"My grandmother is my second favorite person, after Jesus." said Kaylen

"The old man dabbled in the dark arts of the calculus." said Craig

"I want to say a sentence of my favorite book." said Monica

"Aha! You've become self aware!" said Sheryl

"No, don't poke 'em in the panza!" said Sam
 
Tonight the church had a concert/rally at the hotel that they meet in on Sundays. The worship band dressed up super swanky and did an amazing job rocking out. A guy connected to the church shared some amazing and intense stories about his life and encouraged everyone not to waste their time and go all-in for following God. Afterwards, Mallory and Kelsie led one of our new friends through the gospel and she gave her life to Jesus! So, that as just really amazing. God showing off and reminding us that evangelism does happen in seasons, but he moves beyond that and we should always be ready (2 Timothy 4:2)

Currently, as the quote stream above might imply, we're exhausted and saying weird things in the hotel lobby as we hang out; trying to squeeze the last few drops out of our tiempo here. I'm gonna go party with my people. Have a great morning!

Day 7: before the cool done run out, i'll be giving it my bestest

Sometimes when you party all night in Mexico, it's hard to muster the conviction to update a blog. But, y'all are worth it. As is the decompression time - there's something lovely about sitting by yourself in the stillness of the world when the rational people have all gone to sleep.

Today was our last day for official, scheduled evangelism (i.e. it should be happening everywhere). We headed back to the Tec campus (i, with some doubt as to whether it might be better to stay at la uni since the...fishing...had been so successful). Sheryl and I teamed up (#classic - just like back in '09 y'all (in case you were wondering, the "#" was pronounced "poundsign" in my mind)), but were feeling a bit off, so we prayed for a while before we got started (always do that, btw, when evangelizing). We ended up talking to the first girl we met, Daniela, for over an hour and a half. We talked about everything ever, mostly languages though (which i just loved). Sheryl made a slick transition into the gospel and we poked at spiritual things for a bit before she had to leave for class. Then we met a friend of Javier's, tried to meet some cats, and went to lunch.

After lunch, we had plans to meet up with a guy Cammy and Kelsie had met before lunch. On the way to meet him, we met a girl who stopped to tie her shoe near us and she came with us to platicar. We all sat and talked through culture and religion and language and life in general. Then, Javier joined us and we played "ninja" and chilled before we went to meet back with the group. We saw Julio, the friendly atheist, today. Sheryl and I met him in 2011 and he was all kinds of open to talking with us. Today, he said "I think your God wanted me to see you," and though he said it jokingly, I agree. It's crazy that he'd still be in Monterrey, much less in school, much less that we would see him. I hope some fruit comes of it.

Have you ever made deep, prolonged eye-contact with a deer as it slowly steals a granola bar from your mouth? Kaylen has.

We had about an hour and a half to rest after the outreach: I got to have really good conversations with Cammy and Sheryl about missions, then with Craig and Javier about life and stuff, and I even got a short nap to recharge before tonight. That was good because tonight was Party Night (part one).

Hang on, there's a bag of Doritos that is upside-down on the shelf across from where I'm typing in the hotel lobby and it is really hurting my soul.

Ok, crisis averted. Right, parties: we had two parties tonight, one for North Monterrey (UANL) and one for South Monterrey (ITESM). Half our team (myself included) went with Mario to the North Party at Julio's house and half (myself not included) went to the South Party at the Handal's house. Our party was hopping, yo - we had a good turnout from the church and from our new contacts. Julio preached the gospel to everyone and then we prayed and ate. Carne asada. It was so, so good. Somehow, both of our vegetarians ended up at the party were all the food was meat, but they did a great job!

About 3 minutes after we started eating, it started raining (did i mention we were outside? no? sorry, we were). It was warm, delicious rain, but not conducive to an outdoor party, so our hosts moved us under the patio and then they set up some tarps and we partied on - slightly soggy, but very undeterred. We talked and ate and laughed and played "pterodactyl" (well, a few of us did. everyone else stared in confusion as we tried to sing to jason mraz as pterodactyls. have you ever seen a pterodactyl singing to jason mraz? it's pterrifying, i assure you).

Tomorrow is playing with kids and painting and Party Night (part two), pray for healthy team conflict management and for our contacts to continue to make good connections with the church!

God's really good friends (all the time), take some time and enjoy the blessings he's given you.

Day 6: Standard Deviation

Today we did all the things!

After the harvestization we saw yesterday, we went back to the Uni today for our outreach, and God continued to do crazy work. Cammy and I teamed up today (Cammy is the lead sister from my homegroup, as Sheryl said, "she just loves everyone so well"). We ran the gamut of people one might encounter doing outreach: an atheist, a believer, a person of peace and a salvation. Yea, I said that - a salvation. That's the best one, so I'mma talk about that one first: We saw a guy sitting by himself in front of a facultad, so we started talking to him. He was waiting for his novia, but he was still in highschool. We dug into the gospel: our separation from God, our brokenness as humans, our inability to earn God's love by going to church or doing good works and the beauty of Christ's sacrifice for our sake. He said he felt separated from God and prayed to give his heart to God - it was so beautiful guys, I, like, literally, can't even.

For those of you who remember (because i operate under the assumption that everyone reads my blogs, (whoa, is that a link?) since i'm famous), we have a history of meeting persons of peace in bathrooms. So, today, Cammy met a girl named Cecilia, who is involved in a Christian church here. She was super sweet and spoke some English and opened up to us about her life. It was super encouraging for us both.

We ate lunch with Sophia (who is just...too cute), the daughter of the family I lived with in 2011. She's 7 now, the first thing she said to me today was: "my mom and I prayed for a girl today because she was sad." At lunch she told me, "I do karate now!" So, lunch was adorable.

After our outreach today, we played on Craig's slackline and then went to get tacos de trompo at a restaurant Mario knows. It was superrico. So, so good. Remind me to talk later about how awesome Mario is.

Tonight we contacted all the people we met on Facebook and hung out and dyed our hair blue and Kaylen opened her life up and shared her testimony with us. Her vulnerability was really encouraging and took the team to a place of deeper unity. Now we're hanging out, enjoying that we're all weird and stuff.

I've pretty firmly decided that everyone ever is really weird. "Normal" being defined as the average personality of everyone, with a dash of cultural values thrown in. But nobody actually fits that, so everyone is weird. But, we're allowed and expected to have a small amount of quirkiness, so long as we don't deviate too far from the norms. But, people do. We're all really, really weird (Shia Surprise! See, that's weird). The thing that is hard is that we don't want to admit it. So, we show our acceptable weirdness - our carefully chosen quirks - and hope people don't see past that. That's one thing that I love about the church; we find our identity in Christ and can be comfortable with being the goofballs God made us to be. So, we let more of it show...and we're accepted and loved anyway. So, we can create a culture where people get to be themselves and we get to know them more. And, the more we know people, the more we love them. And the more we love them, the more they let us know them.

So, pray for our parties tomorrow, that the connections will happen, that the right people will come, etc...

Day 5: Plentiful

So, it turns out (for those of you who didn't know), that God sometimes does the best things when you feel the weakest. It makes it abundantly clear to all involved that he is the one doing the work; our role and blessing is to be a tool in his hand.

Today was pretty hard on me. I feel discouraged, empty and a bit out of place. I also feel loved, blessed and excited about what God is doing through us here. It's an odd dichotomy, but maybe that's what ministry is; feeling weak and being used mightily.

We went today to la Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León (UANL or "La Uni"). La Uni has 175,000 students (yea, i said that). They are spread across 7 campuses, but the majority attend the main campus (the others are major-specific, like the medical school) in San Nicolas, a part of Monterrey. This campus is gigantic, y'all; it holds 13 facultades (departments), each of which is so large it has its own mascot (owls, bears, elephants, unicorns, beavers...) that expresses something about the character of its students. Students at La Uni are not required to take an English exam like the students at El Tec, so dramatically fewer students know or want to speak English.

We grouped up based on language proficiency and evangelism experience. I was in a team with Craig and Mallory, which was absolutely delightful. We prayed and dove into campus, we talked to a couple of guys in a row with whom it was just plain difficult to get into the gospel. We shook it off, prayed for them and then talked through the gospel with a mecatronica student (i don't know what major that is either) who was not very interested and a philosophy student who was very interested, but unsure of what he believed. We left Alejandro (philosophy) with a solid understanding of the gospel and a challenge to ask God if He exists and see what happens. As we left, all of his friends who had been keeping their distance crowded around him to ask what the gringos had been talking about (quien sabe, maybe he walked them through the gospel too!). By this point, my brain was very tired of speaking Spanish and my heart was very tired of trying to do small talk and lead conversations. We were walking up a staircase when we heard a voice behind us speaking English, so we turned around and followed the voice and met Ingrid - an incredibly friendly girl from San Antonio who lives in Monterrey now. Mallory jumped right into making a connection with her and she showed us around her facultad and introduced us to all her friends as they passed. She had to leave before to long for a test, and we had to go to lunch, but we're planning to meet up with her Friday.

We walked to our meeting point, and ran into Kaylen and Monica just in time to join on the tail end of them leading a young man to know Christ; which was a beautiful moment guys - I don't know how to express it fully. When we compared notes, we found out that there had been 4 other salvations that morning! That's an amazing thing for us. We usually see people get connected to the church and start following Christ after a few months, but it's been rare for us to find fruit that ripe.

Our afternoon was marked by a strange encounter with campus security. We asked un chavo on campus if we could talk with him about God and life and stuff, but he said he had a test he had to go to. Uncharacteristically, I felt the impulse to pray for him and asked him if we could. After we prayed, we gave him our information and started to walk away. As we walked past, a security guard called to us and said (en español): "Hey, come here... what are you guys doing here?" after which ensued a conversation started with me trying to make sure we weren't in trouble and ended with the gospel. This guard - Raul - showed us pictures of his grandchildren and then his prayer book. He took us to talk with a couple of students he knew (though they didn't have enough time) we talked through what it meant to really be a Christian. As Mallory described it, we were each "checking to make sure the other actually understood the gospel." We left to meet back up with the group after encouraging Raul to get involved in a church and giving him our church's info.

While standing around waiting for the team to assemble, Julio saw someone he knew and waved him over to talk with us. Within 2 minutes, Julio got us started into the gospel. I was struggling with the Spanish, but he jumped in and started preaching some fantastic gospel to the guy. It was amazing to see passion and truth flowing in Spanish as he led his friend through the gospel and he gave his heart to Jesus. 

Needless to say, we were all pretty beat after the day, so we went back to the hotel and started organizing our contacts for the church to do follow-up on. We had giant pizzas and practiced more dancing, then had a worship night and jam session.

I really struggled with the gospel today. My words were awkward and choppy and sometimes just didn't make any sense. I could see the people I was talking to getting confused or bored. But God worked so mightily today. It was humbling and beautiful. He is so, so good friends. If you haven't talked through the gospel lately, even with another believer, I really recommend it. It's good for the soul.

Please pray that we would be able to make strong connections and that people would be able to get connected to the church here...

Day 4: Elijah Complex, anybody?

As I'm typing this, Mario is regaling us with hilarious stories from his life. There are so many good story-tellers in this church; they become so animated and include (or make up) all the crucial details to make the story absolutely perfect. We just. can't. stop. laughing. Story-telling is an art that I only started developing in 2011 in Mexico (before then i always said i didn't have any good stories, thank you, Henry). And, as Christians, a large part of our identity is to be story-tellers, to set up our Ebenezers and be faithful to give God glory for the things he has done by telling the stories.

We went to the Tec campus today (ITESM) to meet students, make connections and share the gospel. Several of the members of the church here joined us throughout the day, which gave us fantastic opportunities to get to know them better and to compare methods for evangelism. We arrived, prayed, paired up and headed out. I went with Jason today, which was really encouraging. Jason is crazy-smart, a bit quiet (at first) and super passionate about the gospel. We had a few good conversations, but the most interesting was with a guy who had a Judeo-Christian concept of God, but was universalist and believed in re-incarnation. It was fascinating and we got to dive pretty deep into the gospel. He also had the best understanding of the flaws of churches that I've heard outside the Church, and better than some I've heard inside the Church. Our stories were the tame ones though; some of ours met students here who had friends in our church in College Station, for example.

One interesting facet of this year's trip is we've already met and spent time with and encouraged three Mexican students who were solid believers in other churches that were going hard after God. Three is the total number of solid believers that I've met in Monterrey (apart from our church) in total in the past 6 years. And that's from today. I firmly believe that God is stirring something in Monterrey, that people are turning to him with renewed sincerity and passion. It was overwhelming to see the city from Obispado, to think how large the Task is, but we are a small part of God's plan for this city. God is always at work and at work in places we wouldn't believe, through people and events that we'd never predict, with results far better than anything we can imagine. It's the most humbling and the most beautiful Truth of ministry. God is requete good at blowing my mind and I love it. Read Habakkuk 1:5. It's like that.

So, shorter post today, but no shortage of powerful work being done here. We're getting into the meat of our trip, please be praying for us tomorrow as we are out on campus. My little introverted heart gets pretty worn out after talking to people all day, but there is not a single thing I'd rather be doing or a place I'd rather be doing it.

Day 3: Feeling flat tired

Happy Benito Juárez Day everyone! Today is a national holiday here in México, so there's no school. We took today to do some sightseeing and play some fútbol with the church here and any friends the wanted to invite.

I'm a very vision-oriented person. Because of this, there's always a part of my mind that aks:

"Why are we doing all this sight-seeing, souvenir-shopping and general time-wasting? If we aren't going to be out changing lives, why are we even here?" Then I pause and look around at what is happening. Here's what I see: fellowship, discipleship, team-building, vision-casting. In our "just-for-fun" hangouts, I've had (i'm not even going into the conversations i've overheard) discussions with the believers here about atheism, homosexuality, creationism, persecution, dating, marriage, scripture, family... I teared up today as someone I had just met began to talk to me about one of the Hard Things that is defining their life. If that isn't life change, folks, I don't know what is. Our team is far from "super-Christians." We are insecure, prideful, broken, scared, selfish, immature, depressed, shy and all-around screwed up. We have conflict, we wrestle with boundaries, many of us feel like we shouldn't even be here. But God has called us here. The Thing that we've done right is this: we listened to God's call (isn't that all he's ever really asked of us? to hear and obey?). But, by being here, we are being given a level of respect from our brothers and sisters here (even those more mature than us) that is unspeakable humbling. They watch us, they ask us questions, and they listen to our answers. And God speaks through us when we listen and obey.

So. That was an unplanned diatribe. Right, today:

We woke up and ate breakfast (yum) and loaded into our van to meet up with the church at *wait for it...* the HEB parking lot (yea, it's here too). Then we all drove to Las Grutas de Garcia, which are beautiful caverns near Monterrey. I've been to caves before, but not since I've been..all spurchul ("spiritual"). It was amazing to see the intricacy and patterns that exist. It felt so ethereal - like we were in a different world. It was glorious. When we sang a worship song in the naturally-lit underground chapel with our voices echoing through the chamber, it made my heart smile. (also, props to Ana for singing for us and to the Mustard Underground for taking a picture together...underground).

Upon returning to our van after our spelunking adventure, we encountered something of a...complication. We had (mostly) fixed the ground-scraping problem by removing our tow-hitch. However, now our tire was flat. Muy, muy flat. Mario flagged down a truck and they refilled the tire, which lasted long enough for us to drive to a gas station, where we refilled the tire, which lasted long enough for us to drive to a gas station, where we refilled the tire. Justin had the idea to use gum to patch the tire (Keanu Reeves would be proud), which lasted long enough to get us into the city and get the tire fixed.

We had dinner at a mall (the food courts have glorious tacos and stuff, y'all), then went to play some fútbol with the church. It was glorious! I watched and played with kids, which was exactly what my heart needed. After the games, we came back to the hotel and cleaned up, then played cards, ate pizza and talked about Jesus. And I got all humbled and stuff because of shoes, but in a good way!

I am super tired and we're getting out on campus tomorrow, so....que descansen :)

Day 2: Under a Neon Cross (or the post with too many parentheses)

Today we started bright (well, overcast) and early to help with church set-up. I'm so glad to see the church here allowing us to serve and participate and make some things less of a burden for them (the church here goes so far out of its way to make us feel welcome and comfortable, it's hard to tell who's serving who - gotta love that hospitality). We went to the early service (at 11 (right??)) and got to worship and listen to a sermon in Spanish (we had some of our friends here offer to translate (for those who wanted it)). Pastor Sergio is a great speaker (i love hearing him trill his "rrrr"s and how his voice stirs with passion) and I am sure the sermon today was great, but I wasn't paying any attention.

Now before you all start to judge me (i would be): I was too nervous. Yesterday Adrian asked me if I would do the anuncios at church. Now, if you know me, you know that I am terrified by public speaking (yes, i was a communications major. yes, i understand the irony). Oh yeah, and he asked me to do them en español. Now, if you know me, you know that I am terrified by speaking Spanish to native speakers (yes, i was a spanish minor. yes, I do want to do missions in latin america. yes, i do see the disconnect). So, suffice to say: I was freaking out a lot (or "i was freaking out alot"). After Sergio prayed, I stepped up and began to give the anuncios. I thought about (and started) typing out what happened, but I think a transcript of my dialogue would be more enjoyable:
 

Sam (on the mic): "spanish words spanish words spanish words....

.....

.....

PANIC!

um... i don't remember the next announcement..."

Adrian (from the back): "church next week."

Then I continued while everyone laughed. Yes, in case you were wondering, I did yell "PANIC" while I was standing in front of their church. 

For the second service, we mostly helped in "Sheeper" (the sunday school class). For whatever reason, they let me do the anuncios again (churches and their Grace...), which went much better (i wrote them on my hand). 

After church, we put everything back up, then drove to a restaurant near Santiago (a cute little town near Monterrey) to eat lunch. We had around 40 people packed into this poor restaurant, but órale, those enchiladas were so good! We ate, chilled, watched horses, then went to Santiago. The central part of Santiago is an older Catholic church that is on top of a hill, overlooking a beautiful lake-type body of water. The church is absolutely charming, with it's cobblestone plaza and steeple with real-life bells calling the faithful to the misa. Then at the very top of the steeple is a bright neon-blue electric cross. It is quite the juxtaposition. I guess it was added to draw in some more attention, but I'd say something that beautiful doesn't need it. But maybe I do the same. (oh gosh, he's going to metaphor). Maybe I try to add things onto God to make him cooler that actually detract from the depth of his ancient beauty; maybe I don't let him be himself because I don't think that's what attracts people.

As the evening wore on (that's a nice phrase, isn't it? with your permission, i'll say it again: the evening wore on) and the rain trickled, we packed up and headed back into town. We got back to the hotel and had a dance practice session in the middle of the hotel's central plaza. (what?) Oh, we're going to an orphanage Saturday and playing with kids, so they are teaching us some songs and dances from Sheeper. In case that doesn't conjure up a hilarious mental image for you, let me expound: 15 some-odd Americans (average age 22 years) dancing and singing little kid songs in the middle of a courtyard, while a smattering of bemused guests stand on their balconies and watch and laugh. It was heaps of fun, y'all. 

We took a brief excursion to Soriana (think walmart in spanish (though there is an actual walmart here)), stocked up on snacks, Craig and I sat in the hall because we didn't bring a roomkey, went and got a new roomkey, blablabla, I stayed up late typing. 

Please be praying for our physical health, several of us are sick or injured or just generally under the weather at the moment. colds and necks and knees and feet and backs and heads and hands...

new Spanish phrase: Sacado de onda - dismayed, confused, befuddled.