Saturday, July 07, 2007

Mexico Trip Part 2- The Rain






We were supposed to be the first of the teams to leave Los Fresnos at 8:30 a.m. But we were delayed by complications due to the pouring rain. Finally, we pulled out from the church at 10:30, drenched and packed into the vans. Our team to Media Luna was together with the team going to the nearby town of La Posa. We planned to stop there first and then continue on our way.

Perhaps I should describe our Media Luna group. Of course, there were Zoey, Colette, and myself. Zoey and Colette are teenagers from Morning Star, and I will have lots more to say on how well they did on this trip. I so enjoyed traveling with them! Celeste from Michigan was also on our team. She had brought her three teenaged daughters and had planned the Vacation Bible School for the week. We also had our interpreter, Iliana, who is dedicated and amazing and crazy fun. Along with all of these women, To Every Tribes sent along two of their missionary students as guides/guards/referees/providers, etc. Really, Mark and Kirby should get some type of survival medal for spending so much time with eight women, six of them teenagers.

On that first rainy morning, we didn't know each other as we traveled into Mexico. The border crossing was unbelievably smooth (thank you to all who prayed). We didn't have much distance to travel after that, but the rain and stopping to eat our packed lunches slowed us down. Finally, we turned off of the paved road and headed for the villages.

La Posa is a small town where the missionaries Steve and Robin Henry live and work. We stopped for a few minutes as the team there unloaded and met old friends. Then we continued down the muddy track to La Media Luna (Half Moon). It didn't look like much when we reached the little village on the Laguna Madre: gray and muddy and beat up from past hurricanes. But there were welcoming smiles awaiting us. We pulled up at the two room house of the missionary Chris, who was working with a team in another village that week. He loaned us his home, and even more importantly, his outhouse. Oscar and Minerva (Meme) and their family greeted us. They are some of the few Christians in this place. Meme was the one who cooked for us each day at noon. Oscar helped us with, well, everything, and we spent lots of time throughout our stay fellowshipping with them. The next door neighbors, Vallerio and Lulu and their daughter also befriended us during our stay. It's a good thing they were gracious and patient because we were a noisy American bunch at times (the women, not Mark and Kirby).

That day is kind of a muddy blur in my memory. We worked on organizing the food and other supplies. It was decided that all the girls would stay in the house since the rain and wind would make putting up tents difficult. Mark slept in the van the first night, and Oscar and his family cleaned up a place and hung a hammock for Kirby in an empty building next to their house. At one point in the day, we slogged through the mud up the hill to look out over the lagoon. We could watch the rain coming across the water toward us. As we slid back down the hill, we watched the village come out to see the afternoon's entertainment. A little bread delivery pick up truck was stuck in the mud pit that the road had become. Kirby assisted the men in their many and varied attempts to get it out. Finally, they had success by pushing it with another truck and putting stuff under the tires. Then there was nothing to see, so everyone went home.

Hours later we had sprayed the house and the outhouse with vast quantities of roach spray and put down our sleeping bags on the concrete floor. That night, I couldn't sleep well. I thought I was too old to be comfortable on the floor. I was also listening to all the animal sounds of the village, and I was roasting hot because we'd shut the front door so there was no breeze. I was waiting also. I knew there were roaches, big ones, and the anticipation was making me sick. Finally, I drifted off to be woken a few minutes after 3 a.m. by Zoey next to me. She'd found the roach crawling up onto her sleeping bag. I was actually relieved to have my fears realized. Yes, the roach was huge, but it was no match for the pink Flip Flop of Death. After the first roach incident, I felt like I could now sleep. But I hadn't counted on Zoey, who had now moved her sleeping bag so close to me that she was touching me. She kept me awake by whispering things like, "Did you hear that noise?" every few minutes. "Yes, I heard it. Go to sleep." "I can't sleep now. What if another roach crawls on me?" "Wake me up and I'll kill it." Silence for awhile. "Did you hear that noise?" "YES." Silence. "Are you awake still?" "I AM NOW."

I was wrong about being too old to sleep on the floor. It would just take a couple more nights until I was tired enough to sleep through anything, anywhere. But that's another part of the story.