Mexico: Days 6 & 7

Buenos tardes! (Good evening) It’s Sarah here to finish off the week with an update on the last two days of our trip! Yesterday, the day dawned cool and overcast after downpours and roaring winds whipped through the village of Memay during the night. Though the day had just begun we could already see the hand of God guiding our trip. We had previously learned the night before our departure that if it rained the next day we would be forced to ride a bus for 15 hours in order to return to Oaxaca instead of enjoying a 30-minute flight back to the city. However, God prevailed and in the morning we learned that it was clear enough to return to Oaxaca via plane. Another answered prayer in uncertain circumstances. The journey back through the mountains to Amoltepec was if anything exciting, but uneventful. Fortunately, once we arrived to Amoltepec we had to wait for little more than 20 minutes for the first plane to arrive. Kirsten, Mr. Ross, and myself, along with two local people were the first to take the short trip to Oaxaca. Shortly after  Chase, Hiram, Kyle and Dan and were later followed by Abby, Olivia, Jon and Amos. The first two sets of flights were the first to return to the house and spent the time showering, unpacking, and simply relaxing while waiting for the last flight to arrive back to the house. Never again will we take for granted a shower when seeing the difference after taking one! Eventually everyone arrived back at the Ross’ house and once everyone had freshend up we sat down to lunch and had a group devotional led by Abby and I and afterwards, left for some sight-seeing and shopping in outer and downtown Oaxaca. Around 4 o’clock we arrived at the ruins of Monte Alban, an ancient city built by the Mayans, of which provided us with a great amount of “photographic moments”. To say the least, many of our memory cards became close to full after our walk through the ruins. Afterwards we went to visit Neri, the pastor of the church in Oaxaca, and to freshen up with some refreshments. Finally, we made our way over to downtown Oaxaca and spent much time running around to different markets and vendors trying to find gifts for family and friends. Unfortunately, only so much time was allowed, but I believe that many of us found our necessary gifts. Walking through the downtown area brought on many emotions. Much of such emotions centered on our excitement and awe in the differences presented by the city. We stopped at many different vendors and saw many sites, but for me, the most provoking emotional experience was having the walk by the beggars and hear their pleading for money. Of course none of us realize whether their pleading was truly necessary or not, but it really helped to enforce the thoughts of thankfulness in each of us. We need to also remember that Christ places each of us in a specific environment for specific reasons, but it was still difficult to accept and remember that Christ’s Will is perfect. We finished off the day, by eating at a local taco stand were we were fed tacos, quesadillas and house specials, each of which was delicious. Returning to the house, we sat in the living for a while, simply relaxing and eventually turned in for the night to prepare for another day.

Early this morning, we woke for a spectacular breakfast, had a group devotional led by Chase, and then headed off to finish painting the church we started at the beginning of the week which was recently planted by Edgar in a nearby town. After finishing we returned to the Ross’s home and ate lunch and then spent some time napping, talking, playing Dominos, and reading until around 5 o’clock when friends and neighbors of the Ross’s came over in order to work at preparing for the upcoming VBS. We cut, traced and colored many signs and cut-outs to be used during the VBS. I think that it’s safe to say that many of us will be glad to never have to see a pair of scissors for a long time. Finally, we sat down for possibly the most delicious dinner yet (tasty tamales, which are corn husks, filled with meats, a corn mash, and spices). Now we sit, talking and likely playing Domino’s once more, and eventually packing so that we can easily wake at about 5 in the morning to leave for our flight to Housten. We plan to arrive at around 5 o’clock in the afternoon at the Cleveland Airport, so for those of you picking us up, thats about the time to be there. Moms and dads be sure to have on hand our favorite foods (oh Kraft Mac N’ Cheese (hint! hint! ) and a bath ready to go when we arrive home. Also some listening ears may be needed to hear all about our adventures.

We all like to thank each and everyone of you who took the time to pray for all of us during the week and for your thoughts and contributions to our trip. Nothing would have occured without and each everyone of you and for that we are most grateful. We cant wait to share our experiences and would love to ask for one more day of prayer in that we would travel safely tomorrow and to always remember everything that we saw and learned on this trip. Again thank you for everything and we will see you all stateside!

-Sarah

Mexico: Day 5

Hello people who are reading this.

So since Kyle wrote about Tuesday, I’ll write about yesterday (Wednesday).  I didn’t really read what Kyle wrote completely, so some of this might sound kind of repetitive…but I’m just going to write about everything that happened yesterday.  So yesterday we woke up pretty early in the morning.  The boys slept in a cabin up at the top of this mountain in the village, and the girls slept in a smaller cabin a little bit higher in the mountain.  It was so dark at night in the cabin that when I held my hand in front of my face I couldn’t see it.  I didn’t have a watch or anything with me, so I would wake up several times in the night and think “Wow! It’s got to be at least 7:30 by now”  but it wasn’t.  Up in America we are so dependent on time so it was both a strange yet incredible feeling of having absolutely no idea what time it was.  When I woke up, I went outside to brush my teeth and I soon realized that we were in the middle of a big cloud.  It kind of seemed just like a really think fog, but it was moving extremely fast.  There would be times when the entire side of the mountain and the village below would just disappear, and then they would reappear later.  It was pretty neat.  So while Hiram and I were brushing our teeth we saw a donkey tied to the side of the mountain.  It was making donkey noises (whatever they’re called) and Hiram was able to make a sound that sounded exactly like the donkey.  It was really funny.

So after all the guys got dressed and stuff, the girls came down to the cabin and we had breakfast.  Before that though Pedro (who I’m pretty sure Kyle talked about) brought us up to a cabin to watch a chicken get slaughtered.  He did it really fast and took all the stuff out and all, and then he let Hiram do a second one.  Hiram was not really good at it, but it was funny.  Then we went down and ate breakfast.  A native family who lived in the cabin next to the girl’s cabin made all of our meals.  They were delicious. (the meals)

After breakfast, we went down to the village to continue working  on the church.  This time we painted the inside of the church though.  This was a little bit more difficult, because we were not suppoced to spill paint on the ground at all.  outside it didn’t really matter, but inside was different.  We also continued to help with the benches, and we also helped rebuild the pulpit.  Probably the most fun for me, was when Hiram and I helped tear down a doorway.  The entire building was built pretty much out of just dry mud so we used hammers to tear the doorway down.

We brought toys for the kids from the village to have, and throughout  the day we would give the toys out.  The kids would just come up to where we were working and just kind of stare at us.  Then we would smile and they would smile back and we’d give out the toys.  Those in the group who could speak spanish were able to hold little conversations with the children, but the children’s main language is Misteko (a native indian language that I spelled completly wrong)

We took a short break for lunch (which was the chickens from the morning) then we went back to work for a little while.  Later in the afternoon, there was an actual church service in the church.  Dan Southam preached.  A guy named Amos translated from English so the people could understand.  Before Dan’s sermon, we all went around and introduced ourselves and said a brief little thing to the people about who we were and how we were glad to be there and so on.  Amos translated that as well.  Then Pedro stood up and said some more things in the native language. It’s incredible to think that while we couldn’t understand anything they were saying, they were worshiping the same God we worship up in the states.  After the service, we gave out the rest of the toys.  The kids faces’s lit up when we gave out the toys.

Soon after the service ended it started to rain.  Most of the people went back to there homes, but a couple stayed to help us put up the rest of the door frame.  After we put the door up, we soon realized that it was not just raining, but that we were in the middle of a thunderstorm cloud.  We decided that we were done for the day and that we needed to get back up to the top.  Amos and I decided to race to the top, but the others wanted to stay in the church until the storm passed.  Amos and I got to the top in about 2 min, while the rest waited in the church for about 20.  It was nice getting to know Amos a little bit better, and we talked about life as a missionary.  When the others finally made it up the mountain, we had dinner.  It was late by this time so pretty much right after dinner we went to bed.

Today was another great day, but thats for another person to discuss…

Thanks for all your prayers!!!!

-chase

Mexico: Day 4

Hey everyone! We got back from Amoltepec around 2 hours ago. Everyone is doing great. Because we didn’t have any way to blog while we were there,  I’ll be writing about our travel from Oaxaca to Amoltepec by plane and our drive from Amoltepec to Mamey on Tuesday.

When we went to bed Monday night we were all wondering whether or not we would be able to fly. Upon waking up Tuesday morning rather early, we were greatly encouraged to see a blue sky and little clouds! We ate some breakfast, while Hiram led a devotional and then we were off to the airport. Mike organized the flights once we got there, while the rest of us hung out around the MAF building. I ended up flying on the 3rd and final flight with Hiram and Mike, while Juan Carlos manned the plane. (I forget who flew with who on the first 2 flights.) We took off without a hitch and headed to a village on the way to Amoltepec to pick up some paint for the church we painted. Once we loaded the paint, we were off to Amoltepec. The view from the plane was amazing. Although the mountains take your breath away on the ground, it’s taken away even more when you’re in the air. The entire flight went by really quick, except for out pit-stop. We landed in Amoltepec, unloaded our gear and headed up this steep path to where the rest of  the team was waiting. I know that our support letters said that we were going to be in Amoltepec, but we actually stayed in Mamey, which is a little village about a 30 minute truck ride away. Upon meeting up with the rest of the team, we waited a short time for the truck to get there, loaded up the gear and we were off to Mamey.

Just a little information on the truck and our drive to Mamey. The truck was basically a smaller size pick-up truck with high walls around the edges. Our gear was stuffed as far to the front as possible and then we all jumped into the remaining space. I really wish that I had a picture, so those of you who are reading might better understand. Essentially, the truck was over-loaded. I wasn’t sure that we could move, let alone drive through the mountains. But low and behold, the little truck started up and we were on our way. The path, or road, (if you can call it that), was quite thin. It was basically a small road, sometimes barely wide enough for our little truck to get through, cut into the side of the mountians. It was an awesome drive. Sometimes we would get so close to the edge or go so fast around a turn that I thought we would tip and tumble down the mountain. The view of the landscape around is was just as great, if not better, than our view in the plane. I know we all got a bunch of pictures. On our drive back today, Hiram said something like this, “The beauty of God’s creation is inconcievable.” I really think that sumarizes what we saw rather well.  I think we all enjoyed the ride, I know it was one of my favorite parts of the trip thus far.

When we got to Mamey, Pedro, our host who lives in the village and pastor of the church that we painted, greeted us in Spanish (he didn’t speak English) and led us to the 2 houses that we’d be staying in. The bigger of the 2, is actually the house of a German couple that works with Wycliffe Bible Translators, who were away for a few months. The guys stayed in this house, while the girls stayed in a smaller house just a short walk up the mountain. We also met in the bigger house and eat all our meals there.

Once we got settled, we headed down the mountain to the church that we planned on painting. The church itself was made of packed adobe mud bricks, that were held together with more adobe mud. It had 3 windows, 2 of which were closeable and a front door made of wood. It’s roof was made of thin sheet metal with large wooden support beams throughout. We got to work painting the outside walls of the church, as “eggshell blue”, as Jeff Mills would say. We also started renforcing the wooden pews within the church. Dan made quick work of it with a sprayer as others went around and touched up all the missed spots and edges. Because we painted the outside so quick, we scheduled to replace the front door tomorrow. This was great because we weren’t sure how much we would be able to do within our short time there, especially since we couldn’t fly on Monday. During our painting and construction session, I experienced my first case of elevation “sickness”. I say “sickness” because, I wasn’t really sick, my nose just starting pouring blood for no reason. So to stop the bleeding Chase ripped the bottom of my shirt to plug my nose. I also laid down on one of the pews to slow the bleeding. We worked until it got dark and then headed up the mountain back to our houses to sleep for the night.

That’s basically all we did that day, I’m sorry that this post is so brief, it’s hard for me to remember what we all did 2 and a half days ago. Here’s a short summary: Wake. Flight to Amoltepec. Drive to Mamey. Work on church. Sleep.

I hope those of you who read this got something out of my short summary. We are all well and very, very happy to get to take a shower with soap when we got back today. Now, we’re off to do some site-seeing and shopping! Later!

-Kyle

Mexico: Day 3

All is well here in Oaxaca as we continue to trust in God’s sovereignty.  We were not able to fly out to Amoltepec and the village today as a result of a “tropical depression” off the coast of Mexico.  No worries though, we will rejoice and praise God that He has a better plan for us than whatever we had in mind.  Apparantly Oaxacans would be hard pressed to see ten days without sun; of course it is providence!  Mr. Ross (Mike) said something along these lines as we drove back home with an air of despondency, “Well, many of our brothers and sisters are praying for us, we have been praying, and God didn’t just forget about us!”  That really struck me and my disappointment and reminded me that there is a plan!  Turns out, the day was not a waste at all.  Edgar planted a church not too far away only two weeks ago and he received a building to use rent-free from a non-christian!  What provision!  It reminds me of the donkey and the colt in Matthew 21, how God always provides for His perfect plan.   So, God provided work for us today: painting the inside  and outside of the building, previously an old car shop.  We had a great time, and a not so great bathroom (you had to carry a bucket of water up two flights of stairs to be able to flush).  Originally, there was graffiti on the outside of the shop, so it was nice to see a clean, white front to the face of the newborn church.  Next to the building was an empty lot full of trash, on the other side was a fence made of corrugated metal.  “The light shines in the darkness…” (John 1:5).  As you can imagine, when you stick a bunch of teenagers in a room with lots of paint, things can get a little messy.  My once blue jeans now look like they’re acid-washed from the nineties with a smidge of orange from the anamarillos we had for lunch, basically chicken and spices and a sauce wrapped in a tortilla.  I made a mess.  My hands and face were covered in the sauce so I just decided to dive in, and wipe my hands on my jeans when I finished.  After we finished painting most of what we could (we need to paint a green stripe around the bottom and put another coat of white over some parts), we were taken over to a Christian orphanage.  The children were adorable! They have a different way of operating the orphanage, here they are a family, una familia grande, and thus claim responsibility for their family until the children graduate from university.  No adoptions, thank you very much.  I think it’s a great idea and something we should capitalize on here.  Los niños love being picked up (”mas fuerte!”) and pushed (mas alto!”) and their pictures taken (”a ver, a ver!”).  Edgar gave us the grand tour but our favorite part was playing on their AWESOME playground.  It was great.  I made the mistake of thinking I could do upside down crunches on a hanging bar, but ended up falling about a foot on my head (I’m OK!).  After this, John, Kyle, Chase, Amos (our new friend and brand new MAF pilot) and I decided to go on an excursion for a cultrual experience and take the public transportation route back to Oaxaca, about an hour (mas o menos) by bus.  I’m sure the jovial gringos covered in whitewash deserved the stares we got!  After getting off of the bus, we walked about a mile home, showered, and enjoyed the Ross’s always lovely hospitality, including some good ol’ American burgers.  We’re gathered around their living room right now, enjoying each others company and currently comparing the weird things our limbs do, perhaps we are getting a little too comfortable with each other? And this is only day three!  Friends, please pray for the weather tomorrow, that the skies clear and that it doesn’t rain both here and at our destination.  We are all so adamantly awaiting to show our love to the people of Amoltepec.  It is a personal burden on my own heart, to show these people who have no word for “love”, “grace” or “faith” in their language what it means to us.  After hearing Edgar speak, I have strengthened and confirmed my aspirations to live my life completely in God’s service as a missionary in another culture, to live recklessly and without hope save for the love and wisdom of our Lord.  Please pray for the weather, I do so desire to fly out there!

Until next time…

-Hiram

Mexico: Day 2

Hi friends this is Kirsten! We enjoyed our first full day in Oaxaca, Mexico today. We started out with a fabulous breakfast that Joan Ross kindly prepared for us accompanied by Mike Ross’s morning devotional (Psalm 23). We then went to church at 10:45… 45 minutes late which was actually on time. At church all the people kindly welcomed us and greeted us with kisses and spanish words that most of us did not really understand. We enjoyed the long spanish sermon and then went to a Mexican restaurant to eat “la comida”– the main meal for the day. We tried lots of new foods including goat and this really nasty mexican candy that tasted like sugary chile… ew but we all enjoyed the cultural experience. We were able to tour the town and saw the world’s largest tree… it was pretty big. We drove to downtown Oaxaca to shop at the markets and used our limited Spanish vocabulary to haggle down the prices although I’m sure we still got ripped off! After picking Jon up from the airport without complications (thank you God!) we had a team meeting with Edgar Rivera, Juan Carlos, and the Ross family. Edgar got us very excited for our trip to Amoltopec tomorrow (weather permitting) but also reminded us of the seriousness of our endeavor. He warned us of the tribal warfare as well as the spiritual warfare that goes on in Amoltopec. We are trusting God to keep us safe and praying that we would be lights to all the people. Also, we really appreciate and feel comfort in the prayers that we are receiving not only from Parkside Church but local churches in Oaxaca. We can not wait to see what God has in store for our trip! I now sign off to pack for Amoltopec and to triple check our room in search of another monstrous spider similar to the one we just forced Hiram to kill. Thanks for the prayers!

-Kirsten

Mexico- Day 1

Hey everybody! Its Abby here to update you on our trip so far. Yesterday was essentially our first day of the trip. It mostly involved traveling for the day. We met at the church at 12:30 and took off from Cleveland Hopkins Airport at 3:30. Our flight was calm without any problems. We then had an hour layover in Houston where we would then catch our connecting flight to Oaxaca. However, we encountered some unexpected seating problems when boarding. Apparently, they had oversold the flight to Oaxaca which meant that one of us would have to stay back and take the flight the next day. Jon Cameron ended up staying back in Houston but thankfully he was rewarded a voucher for future flying. It wasn’t exactly how it was supposed to run but God had different plans and everything worked out from there. Our flight to Oaxaca was actually a lot more interesting (at least for me). It was a smaller plane (with free sandwiches might I add!) and flying over the water and through some thunderstorms made the trip that much more enjoyable. Once we arrived in Oaxaca, Mike and Joan Ross and Juan-Carlos (a neighbor and friend) picked us up and drove us back to their house. We got there around 10 and (much to our elation) had an incredible meal. Plane food can only hold you over for so long, after all. After calling our parents we all headed off to bed with the girls staying at the Ross’s and the boys staying at Juan-Carlos’s house. This morning, we all woke up to the smell of bacon and coffee and all filed into the dining room for breakfast. Our plans for the rest of the day involve going to church, eating out for lunch, touring the city a bit and then planning and packing for our trip to Amoltopec tomorrow (Oh! and picking up Jon of course). Please continue to pray that our plans for the week would run smoothly, that Jon would arrive safely, and for the word of God to be presented effectively by our serving here in Mexico. This just about concludes our first day overview of Mexico but the rest of the team will be blogging throughout the week. Until then! : )

~Abby Butts~

OAX: Mexico 2009

As many of you know, in a few short days, a team of 6 of our high schoolers and 3 leaders will be heading to Oaxaca, Mexico on a mission trip.  We’ll be working with a few different local churches in the area, helping to both refurbish some church buildings and serve at a Vacation Bible School.  Our hope in going is that we can encourage some of the believers there, and also have our eyes opened to see something of God’s majesty, as we interact with other people from a different country and a different culture who still worship the same Jesus.

Because we believe that God himself hears and listens to the cries of his children, we’d really appreciate you joining us on this trip by praying for us.  Towards this end, we made up a prayer calendar that follows the schedule of our trip, with a different request for each day.  Please download it and pray for us!   And then check back to this site next week, as each day, someone from our team will be blogging about what went down, and what we’re looking forward to! 

SI on the Road

Join us this Thursday (6/18) at Solon Park for a cookout!  Bring $5 for food and a friend!

Freshmen Rafting Pics

The new freshmen just got back from an amazing weekend hanging out in PA and going white water rafting.  Check out the pictures from our trip down the Lower Yough!  We are boats 600, 660, 685 and 686.  What’s your favorite one?  Personally, I like Zach’s look of terror in this one…