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
