Hey guys!
First off, I’m home in two weeks! Things are coming to a close here, and I am very excited to come home for the holidays. I am going to miss Tepic, but hopefully, my “home for six months” plan will work and I’ll be able to raise enough money to stay in Tepic for two more years, so I won’t have to worry about being away for very long.
Please pray that things go smoothly – that I will qualify for the Vanguard internship (that will give me a connection to the church and allow me to work here for a year before a decision is made where they want to put for the long term), and that fundraising will go better than I’m planning it to (and I’m planning a lot). I encourage you guys to take a look at my Prayer Requests page to find more things for which you can intercede in prayer on my behalf. That would be greatly appreciated!
La Fuente’s Women’s Breakfast
Next, I’d like to talk briefly about the Women’s Breakfast that La Fuente Tepic held this past Saturday.
It was really fun (and the tamales they served were amazing), and it was nice to see all the women in the church staff and of the congregation come together and fellowship with and encourage one another, and it was equally great to see the men help out, too – making sure everything went smoothly and helping to set up beforehand and clean afterwards.
The way the church here is so ready to serve one another is truly inspiring, and I am proud to be a part of it. Worship – as usual – was awesome, and I was honoured to be there with them.
Vanguard was involved in a couple of ways: as always, we were tasked with helping with the set up and with the cleaning, and we were split into different teams to cover different areas.
We also put on a small concert and sang and “danced” to a song called “Ha Nacido El Rey (Es Navidad)” (The King Has Been Born (It’s Christmas Time)), which honestly kind of reminded me of those recitals grade-schoolers have to put on for school every year, but I had fun doing it. We all did, and I figure that was sort of the point. It was all-around a good day.
Dia de los Muertos
Finally, and I’m a little embarrassed to post about it now, since it’s been a little over a month since I participated in/observed the holiday, but I figured you guys would like to hear about Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Now, I get that it isn’t a very “Christian” holiday, but bear in mind that it’s a big part of Mexican culture, and the people of La Fuente celebrate it as part of Mexican tradition.
So November 1st, as I was told, is technically the day set aside for the children to celebrate the holiday, and the 2nd is for the adults. I celebrated on the 2nd, but ended up celebrating the next day, as well, so to be honest, I’m not too sure how long they celebrate the event.
But it was a Friday, so I went after Anormal with two friends of mine, Pepe (who you may remember being our “guide” from when Lex and Dulce came to pick me up) and Jonah (who is another gringo from Colorado).
When we got there, the place was totally decorated with Day of the Dead characters, and there were people with La Catrina face paint and dresses and the whole shebang. I was overwhelmed with trying to take it all in. There were stands that advertised the history of the holiday with notable historical figures, there was food everywhere, and at the end of it all was the graveyard. At a certain time, they opened the graveyard to the public and allow people to walk through it, taking pictures and videos, and paying respects to those who are buried there. Pepe even showed us where a couple of his family members were buried, which was… neat?
I thought the whole thing was really interesting, and I was so enthralled by the culture. For example, I saw HUGE mausoleums dedicated to well-respected families and individuals who I had never even known existed, but everyone else around me understood the history behind it all. Then there were the small, humble graves that you could very easily miss, or even mistake as open ground, and I found myself feeling a tang of sadness for the individual buried there. And finally, the ways the tombs were decorated definitely stood out. All of the things that people would bring to honour their loved ones, from flowers, to hand-knitted quilts, to full bottles of Coca-Cola – it made me think about where I would fit if I was part of the culture here.
The three of us made jokes and comments about how big our graves would be, and where they would be located, and what items would adorn them, and it made me think of how inevitable it is for every person to leave behind a legacy, whether it is made to be well-known or not. So I’ve been trying to pin down what exactly I want my legacy to entail, but so far, I haven’t quite figured it out. But I still (hopefully) have plenty of time to think about it. All I know is that I want there to be no question that I put everything I had into living my God-given purpose, and I think, at this point, that’s a good start.
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Miko in Mexico 