Hello! So it seems easier for me to post every two days or so. I hope you guys don’t mind too much. In between being sick with something new every other day (I now have pink eye, or, “conjunctivitis,” since down here, “ojo rosa” isn’t a thing, and a sore throat – unsure if it’s anything serious) and a crazy schedule, I’m finding it difficult to keep you all updated, unfortunately.

Speaking of a crazy schedule, here’s what has been taking up a majority of my time down here:

They start the calendar week on Lunes (Monday), so I’ll start there, too. This is our “down” day. They encourage us to rest and have fun and do whatever it is we want to do. Because it’s literally our only day off, I try to sleep in, usually until eight, maybe nine o’clock. Then, I take time for prayer (usually around an hour) before I make myself some breakfast (usually some pancakes, because I love pancakes). Every two weeks, we go shopping for food, and my roommates are some pretty proactive women, so we go relatively early in the day – so far, it’s been around eight or nine (so I don’t get to sleep in as much as I would like too, but I rest easy knowing we have food for the next two weeks). When we get home, we put the food away and start our chores. The assigned chores are rotated weekly and Monday is the switch-off day in our house. There are four different chores, each with their own set of tasks, and when you are assigned to a chore, those tasks are expected to be fulfilled every day. So basically, we are tasked with keeping a clean home. I also use my day off to catch up on my assignments and go over the notes and recordings I take during class. This day is also used by some of the students to get together outside of church and school every once and a while. It’s nice, because this is the day we evangelise downtown (this week, nine people gave their lives to Christ, as well as a group of kids we ran into at Parque del Madre).

Tuesday is the beginning of the school week. I’m the first to wake up so I can turn on the water heater, which keeps us from having to take cold showers. Every Tuesday, we are required to attend the prayer that is held at the main church. This starts at 8:30 am until nine, and then the Vanguard students make their way next door to the Vanguard building, which also doubles as the kid’s church during La Fuente’s services. The morning class is held from 9 am to 12 pm, sometimes ending a little earlier, other times a little later. Then, we have a break till 4 pm. During this time, we study at the “library” (which is just another Vanguard house similar to the one I’m staying in, only occupied by the guys), cook and eat, and get ready for the evening class. Also – siestas. They aren’t a myth. Of all the things I’ve decided to bring back home with me, it’s the concept of siestas that looks to be the most important. It must work down here – they get a lot done, and everyone seems a lot happier and willing to do more than we do in the States. Is there a correlation? I think so. After my siesta, I get ready for my 4 o’clock class at Vanguard. I have yet to attend a class I don’t enjoy – despite the language barrier and the fact that I haven’t been able to catch everything even with a translator, I still have been able to gain plenty from the different teachings and devotionals, something I’m extremely grateful for. When class ends, we go to the church for A18 – one of the two weekly youth groups of La Fuente that Vanguard students are required to attend (we have to go to at least one, and this is the one I’ve chosen). They do worship, a short message, and then some food. Part of me wants to refer to it as a “mini-Redefined,” but I don’t for my own sake.

We don’t have to be at school till 9:00 am on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which is nice, cause I can sleep in a little. Every school day is basically the same: morning class from 9 to 12, break from 12 to 4 pm, evening class from 4 to 6:30/7. It’s what we do after class that distinguishes each day. On Wednesdays, La Fuente holds an evening service at 7 pm (so we get out of class at 6 on this day). There’s nothing on Thursdays, but a small group (including myself) has been trying to go running or attend a Crossfit class throughout the week, and Thursday is the easiest day for us to go out after school. Fridays is another youth group, called “Anormal” (Abnormal), but it’s much more populated and is louder than A18, so I usually choose to opt out of this gathering.

Saturday is a mission day, meaning we go to our assigned churches (mine is in a town called Puga) to get ready for service the next day by cleaning, inviting people to the services and evangelising, and otherwise getting everything set up. There’s no real set time for how long we stay, but it usually doesn’t last too long (though I have heard of people staying till 5 pm, which is a long time if you consider we usually head out by 7 am). Because of my less than ideal health, I honestly haven’t been able to make it to these since I was reassigned to Puga (I used to be assigned to Compostela, but was moved so I could help relieve Puga’s pastor, Toño, of his duties on the worship team), but I fully plan on going next week. This is also the day I clean my room and touch up around the house to avoid having to deal with a bigger mess on Monday. I also use this day to practice for worship on Sunday. I’m not singing just yet, but that’s mostly because I’ve been sick. So stay tuned for news on that.

Sundays… oh Sundays. My team is scheduled to leave for Puga at 7:15 am (closer to 7:25 – 7:30, though, ’cause Mexico). We stuff a bunch of people and things in a sheltered truck bed and pick a few people up on the way to the church. We usually arrive at around 8:30, giving us an hour to really get everything done – mostly cleaning, because it’s pretty dusty in this part of Mexico, so things get dirty easily. It’s a fairly new building pastored by a younger couple, who are both really amazing (side note: if you guys can pray for them and the church, that would be awesome – provision, attendance, and anything thing else God puts on your hearts would be greatly appreciated). After the message, we stay to converse with the people, or in my case, to stand around awkwardly and say “hola” and “Dios te bendiga” and “gracias.” Baby steps. Then we head back to the main church, where we are given the option to go home and rest before having to attend the last two services. So I go home and try to rest and eat before going back to the church at 4 pm for the 5 o’clock service (Vanguard students have to be there an hour before service starts). Because there are now two services at night, we stay until the end of the 7 o’clock service, which means we don’t get to leave until nearly 9 pm. Which is totally fine with me; I usually stay and try my hand at socialisation with people who know at least a little bit of English, and sometimes I can go out for dinner, or I just hang out. Either way, I go home happy, knowing I can probably sleep in the next day.

 

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I answered both the questions I received from my last post in this one. Again, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask! I love you all and of course, would like to thank you so much for your love, support, and prayers. Until next time, Dios te bendiga!

Hello again! So, as it turns out, I may have spoken a bit too soon regarding my health. It’s not anything alarming – just some swollen lymph nodes underneath my jaw, and still a killer headache. But, it seems that every time I find myself afflicted with a new sickness, it is less severe than what I had before, so I’m praising God for that.

Sorry for not posting the last two days, but Saturday night was pretty weird (the woman who lives in the other half of my home had her house broken into and robbed, so we have had to relocate for a few days), and Sundays are difficult because of the “multiple service” thing they have going on for the Vanguard students (I’ll get into that in one of my next posts).

But it’s Monday, which means that I’ll be evangelising in downtown Tepic (Centro) with a handful of my classmates. I went for the first time last week, y fue muy chido (for you English speakers back home, that’s Español for “and it was really awesome”). While some of my classmates went around the main square to share the Gospel with the civilians, they asked me to sing – in English, of course, since my decision to go was last minute, and I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare a song in Spanish.

So I ended up singing How He Loves per their request – I sang it one time in front a small group of people during one of our study hours, and I guess they enjoyed it enough to make them want me to sing it.

Funny story: I was about a third of the way through “How He Loves” when I felt a tug on my hair, and I looked at Andrea (my roommate), and she gave me an odd look of awkward discomfort – she hadn’t touched me, but she knew who did, but she was singing with me, so she couldn’t tell me what happened without interrupting the song. So I looked to the guy who was playing guitar, Israel, and he directed my attention to what was behind me: there was an older man looking at me desperately, repeating a phrase I couldn’t quite understand. He held in his hand a coin worth two pesos and repeated that phrase as he laid it in my hand. At this point, I had stopped singing in an effort to tell him I didn’t understand him, so I had to awkwardly start the song from where we left of before a stranger touched my hair. I learned later that night that he was saying “me recuerdas,” which translates into “remember me.”

Alrighty, then. I’ll be framing those two pesos to make sure I do just that.

In addition to that slightly odd flattering encounter, after I sang my English song, the group came together to sing in Spanish, which was really nice. This all led up to a message given by one of the students to the crowd that had gathered to enjoy a group of youngin’s singing and preaching about in public. I witnessed a willingness to hear the Gospel I had never really noticed in America – when they were asked if they wanted to give their lives to Christ, 14 people were willing to accept prayer for salvation. On Wednesday, one of the families that were there came to La Fuente and apparently plan on going permanently. Pretty good for a 10-minute presentation of who God is and why Christ is essential for our lives. I was impressed. Back home, I was never able to even mention anything that suggested any religious undertones without receiving resistance and arguments against my beliefs – but here I was, helping my team lead a good portion of a random crowd to Christ. It was phenomenal.

Here’s a picture of my friend Enrique sharing the Gospel to the aforementioned crowd of people – it was pretty amazing.

So needless to say, I’ll be going as often as I can.

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Again, I’ll be posting *hopefully* every day (barring certain circumstances, such as the one mentioned above) until you guys are caught up. I still would like to encourage you all to ask me questions about my experience here in México.

I was asked if the food here in Mexico tastes the same as the food in Mexican restaurants in America – Yes, if you are asking about the restaurants that claim to be “authentic.” Though I would say these restaurants usually lack the (nearly excessive) use of limes that the people here seem to be so fond of. I haven’t tasted all of the food here, yet, but so far, this has been my experience. Of course, it depends on where you eat in America. There are some real deal Mexican eateries that assure us Americans that Mexican cuisine is not a myth, or just limited to Taco Bell, and then there’s Taco Bell.

Hello! Before I say anything else, I would like to first say sorry for my inability to keep you all updated. I am still in Mexico and I am still alive. As you may be able to imagine, things have been hectic for me – I’ve been having a difficult time adjusting not only physically (for those who don’t know, I’ve been sick on and off for almost a month, and the last two weeks especially have been the worst, but I’m much better now *hopefully*), but emotionally, too. I wish I could say that I’ve been doing just fine, and in many ways I have been – I’ve been making friends, all of whom say I’m learning their language “very fast,” despite my conviction of the contrary. I’m understanding and grasping most, if not all, of the concepts we are learning in Vanguard, and my schedule here is pretty similar to what I had back home. During my time here, I’ve had to deal with a lot of issues, falling into these categories: I totally knew I would have to take care of that right away; I knew I would have to address this, but I didn’t think it would be this soon; and seriously, why?! All (or at least, most) of which you will all hear about soon.

But enough of this talk – I just wanted everyone to know that I am still in Mexico, I’m still alive, and I haven’t forgotten about all of you wonderful people back at home. It’s just that between school, church, and illness, I haven’t been able to find time to sit down and write anything coherent and pleasant enough to share. That, and I haven’t had Wi-Fi access and with my new status as a college student/missionary, time isn’t a thing I have in abundance. But that (hopefully) is no longer a problem. Last week, I was promised Internet connection. That obviously didn’t happen, and hilariously, the reason I was given every time I asked was – it’s Mexico (and I was enlightened with the knowledge of the Spanish equivalent of “yeah, I’ll get to it.” Ahorita, which actually means something similar to “now,” but can used in situations such as responding to the question of when a few college girls will be getting Wi-Fi in their house).

Speaking of college girls, I’m sure you’re all curious as to who my roommates are.

After Lex left, I was all alone for practically the entire day. I had nothing to do except write out my last blog post, which, yes, was an embarrassingly long time ago. I was told that my new roommates would be home by five or six pm, so I resolved to make it back there from the café I was writing at by 4:30. When I made it home, I did my best to make the house look nice so they would have one less reason to hate the new American (sounds ridiculous, especially now that I have gotten to know them). I hear some noise outside the house and excitedly rush to the window… only to see a group of three college-aged girls jump in the car parked outside the house and drive away. Oh. Okay then. They’ll be back soon – they probably had no idea I was home.

I waited another four hours.

Around eight o’clock, I hear people outside again. Turns out, those girls I saw earlier had just parked their car in front of the house so they could get some sushi from next-door. The first girl I met was Andrea, who happened to be the one out of the three others who knew the most English, and we talked for a good portion of the night – our quick testimonies, why we came to Tepic and how God made it all work out – it was nice. I wouldn’t be meeting the other two until the next day, so at around 10 P.M, I went to bed (it turns out, the bed I had been sleeping in for the past four days wasn’t even mine), and tried to prepare myself mentally for the next day.

The next day, I met Paola (the girl whose bed I had been sleeping in), and Rosario (or Chayito/Chayo/Chayis – I don’t fully understand Mexico’s nicknaming methods), whom I will be bunking with until June. She speaks English well enough for me to have a nice conversation with her, but also struggles with it in a way that challenges me to speak more Spanish than I am currently comfortable with (definitely a good thing. Also, she was sick with Dengue Fever and is in the process of recuperation – prayers for her would be greatly appreciated!). Pao (Paola) speaks very little English, but is really good at speaking clearly and slowly and using hand gestures to help me understand what she is saying. It didn’t take me very long to come to the conclusion that I was blessed with friendly roommates. They have been incredibly patient with this awkward American, and they are always encouraging and supportive. Not to mention – they have promised to teach me how to cook authentic Mexican food.

So while I do, at times, feel sad and lonely, I know it’ll be completely worth it.

*I’m going to try to post something every day (by the grace of God) until you guys are caught up, so if anyone is curious about anything, write it in the comments and I’ll address it as soon as possible. Thank you for bearing with me and for your continued prayers and support. ¡Yo los quiero y Dios los bendiga!