Day 6: It Was Actually My Blood.

or: I have not been Identity Stolen-ed
or: Another Good Day
or: We Didn't See Any Bears
or: Just Left of Center

It's been brought to my attention that I had a lot of typos yesterday. I almost just went in and fixed them all, but it seemed better to me to leave that for history. I stopped counting at 7 typos. 

I am fine. Don't worry, I haven't been kidnapped, it's not a secret cry for help, there's no hidden message in the typos. I think I'm really tired. I think I'm really language tired. Here's a photo of me (with a date-stamp) from this morning to prove I am alive and well.

There's a Gringo* joke in there somewhere

Heck, beyond just not being identity-thefted, I actually feel really good. I feel excited and happy and positively overwhelmed and really cared-for (yes, and sad and afraid, but they're not very keen today).

If I was going to describe how I felt for most of today, I would use the following 1,000 words:

See how I did that? Let's be honest, I may still use 1,000 words to describe how I feel. Today, in everything I did, I felt like I was just to the left of center. Does that make sense? A great quote that I think about often is: "An ill fate is on me this day, and all that I do goes amiss!" I literally woke up today feeling off-kilter. It expressed itself in a lot of small things: I tried to sample a snowcone and dropped the stuff on the way to my mouth three times before I was successful. I ran into like, three people, just normally walking or doing stuff. I just fell over a few times today. I think three separate times I tried to take my cubreboca off and it pulled my glasses with it or got stuck on my ear or whatever. I dropped my (new) glasses and they got all bent up and I had to put them back right.
I don't feel tired. Like, at all, but I had a billion typos last night and I can't even function today.

Ok, 150 words is less than 1,000, but I did stop early. Anyway. Let's start actually talking about what we did today. 

So, I woke up, got a shower (because our water comes back in the mornings), and spent time with God.
I read some in Luke, had a brief crisis of understanding about the wine/wineskins thing (which we got over with some help from the team), read some in Proverbs (instead of two wolves inside of you, he talks about two women calling out: Folly and Wisdom), and read some in 1 Corinthians (in 12, he says we have been given the Holy Spirit to drink. Idk what that means, but I like it. I welcome your thoughts). I'm kinda all over the place in the Bible right now. 

I had some breakfast (a p p l e) and fidgeted around, waiting for us to be ready to go. I've been singing a lot here in Mexico. Last time I sang this much was LT 09. Idk why I sing or what motivates me to it. 

So, spelling matters. Not just because I'm making a million typos. I have been talking a lot about how we're going to go to the Maderos campus. However, today we went to the Mederos campus. That'd normally be a small thing, but, you see, there is also a Maderos campus. Whoever names these campuses....we have beef. 

Mederos is the liberal arts branch of UANL, basically. A bunch of different departments with art in the name, also communications (what, what). And bears. It's up at the feet of the mountains and bears come onto their campus. But we didn't see one. 

"bro, I'm only reading this because of the blood thing and to get prayer requests, can we move along?"

Yes. Ok. So, we paired up for outreach, I went with Rachel and then Rachel and Cristian (when he arrived). Our conversations were very friendly and good, but nobody was interested to talk about spiritual stuff with us today. One of the other groups had more success, but mostly we encountered the same thing.

We went off campus for lunch, because I think the food place there was closed. We had Pollo Loco. It was good. Don Ismael told us a lot of things about chickens. 

We went back to the house and my gringas went to rest. Hugo and I had a really good conversation about testimonies and their power and importance in outreach. We talked about how every person's story is multi-faceted and different themes can be a blessing to different people at different times, but all of them give God glory. I shared a few of my themes with him (self-righteousness, self-hatred, feeling unworthy of love, bad experiences with religion, etc.) and how I might share differently, depending on who I was sharing with, but it's all my story. We also talked about how God is actually the main character of every person's life story; we're strangely not the protagonists of our lives. We ended with me challenging him to think about and list out some of his own themes so he can share his story with people. 

We loaded up in the van and went back to Mederos to play basketball. We had been inviting all of our follow-ups, so we were excited to get to connect them with the church. 

It was early when we arrived, so we hung out with Hugo (oh, I also told him he was an honorary team member by now and I gave him my Texas patch (his backpack matches mine (homie has big corps vibes))). We played ninja, and, though it was his first time, he nearly won. I did not nearly win. 

In a microcosmic expression of our trip up to this point: we were told the field we had been told we could use was taken, the pump for the basketball did not work, and none of our invitees came. AND everything turned out perfectly! It's that "and" that's very important. 

We did get the court, Henry got the ball inflated, and two people we hadn't met yet came to join us. Maricelo and Ramiro both drifted our way and got pulled into hanging out with us. We'll see if they stick, but God really provided. I really think Maricelo will come. Ramiro may have just stuck around to flirt, but it was Roberto who actually swapped contact info with him. Also, Annie, la esosa de Henry, is a stone cold killer when it comes to basketball. She was draining shots like crazy.

We got to meet Roberto! He's been hard to pin down, but he came today. I like him. I hope he comes and partners with us more.

Oh, yeah, I fell down playing basketball and scraped my knee, but didn't know. It was gross, like a piece of my knee came off. But it doesn't hurt and it was fine, like, I legitimately was confused about it, but it was actually my blood.

We went to dinner, there was lots of good bonding and lots of good tacos. Henry had trompo con pineapple. It looked really good. Idk what mine was. also good. 

Ok, here's the thing though. Strawberries are good on tacos. I don't care if you think it's weird. It's true. So, judge me all you want, but I'm going public with this: I like putting strawberries on tacos. 

We knew our water pressure would drop at 10 PM, so we decided it was best to have our team meeting on the way home, so we'd have time for everyone to shower. We got home around 9:59, so there was just a long wait for a low pressure shower downstairs. 

I felt individually directly blessed and challenged by each member of our team today. God is really blessing us with a good rhythm and helping us find our stride. I thought about making a list, but I'm sleepy. 

*most people will tell you that gringo comes from "green, go!" The story is that this was directed at Americans in the mid 1800s, but most linguists will tell you it can be traced back much further and comes from the word "griego," which means Greek. So, there's your fun fact for today. 

"Thanks, Sam. Your etymological factoids are what keep me coming back to this blog."

Well, obviously. 

I will do a picture post with other people's pictures once I get them. I hope there are no typos. I literally typed a typo in the last sentence the first time through.

PRAIR PLEES                          

-for us to...you guessed it...walk in step with the Spirit tomorrow

-for our partner universitarios (Cristian, Hugo, Ale, Qunitin, Roberto)
-for our new friends to come hang out with us more and connect well to the church
-for more gospel conversations
-for our team to not be sick (literally 1(or more)/day since we started)
-for strength, focus, energy, willingness for us to finish strong