Safe from the Losing Fight

Tuesday didn’t start off as early as Monday. I think a full day on Monday had taken the edge off most of the youth. I still think I ended up getting up about 6am or 6:30am.

Shockingly, the showers were still cold.

Although I was feeling better than Monday, I still wasn’t feeling all that sociable. So I stayed in my tent and read the Bible and worked on the Journal thing we were supposed to do for YUGO. It was mainly a reflection on the previous day. It was trying to get you to think about how things were working out vs how you imagined them.

Breakfast was the same as Monday, but with a different dish.

The children’s ministry meeting was pretty short. They had each team give a high and a low of the previous day. I’m not sure what our high was, actually. Our low was, “no one showed up.” All the other teams said they had about 20 kids show up. After the high/lows they showed us how to do the craft for that day. Like most crafts, it was really easy.

Then came the practice lesson. Since I had been nominated to give the one for the team, I had to give mine on Tuesday (since both my lessons were Tuesday lessons). The group that went before me actually acted theirs out. Since we were made up of two different churches, we had talked about it, but never really practiced it. So I went up there with Nate (aka “John”) and gave it. Nate just helped out with the hook (I need to punch someone bigger than me) and hold the “visuals”. I’m not sure how it went. Most everyone was giving me a freaky look. I’m not sure if that was because I was doing a bad job, or I was the oldest looking youth they had ever seen.

The morning worship service was next. I was feeling better, so I participated. That said, the woman leading it has one of the highest pitched voices I have ever heard. There were times where it was physically painful for me to listen to her. That and the sound was cranked way loud. It also made singing along difficult, since I don’t have a high pitched voice.

The speaker of the week, started laying out his message for the week. He basic message was “You should all be foreign missionaries to places that have never had a missionary before. Go now, go now, go NOW! Why are you still here?!?!” That’s only a partial exaggeration. He had a lot of good points throughout the week though. He talked about how a lot of people tag God onto the end of their life. As in, if they have time, they might do what God wants. As opposed giving everything over to God, and doing what He wants first.

After the worship service, was the daily quiet time. I had been struggling with a bad attitude so far, so I devoted my time to that. I analyzed what I was feeling the best I could. Then I tried to figure out why I was feeling what I was. I found that I resented any kind of assumed leadership over me. I found that I felt like I was being treated like a youth and not an adult. I also found that I was still having serious doubt about God using me. I felt that the cause of all of this was simply me being selfish. I was focusing on my wants and needs, instead of why God had me here in the first place. I also was worrying about how I could work to do good things, instead of trusting God to work through me. I used my quiet time to ask God to give me humility and the heart of a servant. I felt much better after my quiet time.

After the quiet time was the team meetings. I’m not sure what was said during the team meeting, but I do remember the ministry meeting. Joy, Kristy, Noel, and I talked about how to actually get kids to show up. We also tried to come up with a “Plan B” in case all we got were the church kids like Monday. We decided to go to a nearby park and play and invite kids that way. In the evening service, we do crafts like before, but we’d include a little bit of the stories.

Lunch. Same as before, but different.

After lunch we left for the church. We got there a little before we did on Monday. The children’s ministry went to a local park. The park was about nine blocks away, and not the same park the sports ministry was at. Because of cultural differences, we didn’t want little kids around when the big kids/adults were playing in the sports ministry. The park was nice. Probably a little too nice. Noel (aka Bob), Tiger (aka George), Cat, me (aka Jim), and sometimes Elaine were playing four square. I found out everyone plays by slightly different rules. I’m not sure if Mexican kids play four square because no one paid us any attention, much less asked to play. They had a jump rope going too, which was more successful. That actually attracted some attention and some kids joined in for a while. Unfortunately, this was a more affluent part of town, and none of the kids (or their parents) wanted to go to the drug rehab church.

After spending time at the park inviting kids, Noel shuttled us back to the church using the SUV. We waited for the kids and had supper there (sandwiches, as always). None showed up.

The evening service went as before, except this time I didn’t even bother with the collared shirt. There were several members of the congregation who showed up in t-shirts, plus I was going to be in the back, working with kids. Like before, they sang lots of Spanish songs that I didn’t understand. But it had a nice beat, and you could dance to it. And in this church, someone probably did.

The crafts went really well. There was a small turn over in kids. We only had five all together, and two of them had been there on Monday. Kristy went through Monday’s lesson on Jesus really, really quickly. That was so we could explain Monday’s craft (that some of them were doing): “Why does Jesus shoot into the sky like a rocket ship?” I also got involved this time. I got to explain the new craft, since it was tied to the invitation of the lesson I was supposed to have done. It was a folded piece of paper with gift paper on the outside. On the inside was Jesus enclosed in a heart. The message being: having Jesus in your heart is a gift from God. Anyway, I got to present a very concise version of the gospel to explain the craft. I also got to help one of the kids, Valentin. He was there on Monday. He was very quiet and well behaved. I provided him with crayons and glue.

Elaine was back there translating for us. I remember her asking Valentin what the word for glue was. This amused me because I actually knew the answer (goma). We had just learned it in our children’s ministry time that day.

After the service, we went back to YUGO. We managed to get back earlier than Monday, I think. We even made it back in time for snacks.

I don’t remember going to the sharing time, but I guess I must have. But it was the last time we made it.

After the sharing time, I went to bed. It had been a long day, but I considered it better than Monday.

Monday got off to an early start. Did I mention John gets up early? He was gone by the time I woke up the first time. Our tents were right in front of the main bathrooms. I didn’t have a clock or watch so I just got up when it sounded like a reasonable number of people were already up, and I felt reasonable rested. On Monday, a lot of people were up early. I think I ended up getting up between 5am and 6am, closer to 5am.

I had slept pretty well. We had gotten ear plugs from the hotel the night before. Which was a good thing, since John snores pretty loud.

Despite it being hot in Mexico, the showers were cold. Very cold. It took my breath away the first couple of times I stuck my head under the water. Fortunately, it didn’t take long to get accustomed to the water.

Breakfast was at 7:30am, so I had plenty of time to kill. I still wasn’t in a great mood, so I decided to stay in the tent and read my bible.

Breakfast was forgettable. It was the standard “we’re cooking for a lot of people” type cafeteria fare. It wasn’t bad. And when you’re hungry, it tastes pretty good.

After breakfast was the ministry meetings. I was in the children’s ministry, so I went to that one. The coordinators introduced themselves, etc, etc. One of the things they were going to do is ask each team to present one of the lessons during the ministry meetings. So each team would have to present one of their lessons sometime during the week. I immediately knew I was going to be the one from our team to present. I didn’t really want to, so I didn’t volunteer, hoping someone else would step up. But Joy asked me if I would, and I said yes. Oh well.

On Monday, they flipped the schedule around a bit, so I think we had team meetings next. We were supposed to prepare the team for what we were going to be doing that day. We could also split into ministry groups and go over more stuff there. I actually don’t remember what we talked about during this time. I wasn’t really in a good mood. And as we would find out later, it didn’t really matter what we planned for Monday, ’cause it wouldn’t go like we thought.

Next was the worship time. Not being in a good mood, I didn’t really participate. I didn’t feel that I meant the words in the worship songs. The speaker for the week was a man who had been a missionary to a remote tribe in Papa New Guinea. On this day, he just introduced himself and told a little about his ministry.

After worship, was lunch.

After lunch, we had bathroom duty. Not bad. It had been cleaned recently and we had plenty of people. So it didn’t take long.

After “special services” (what they called bathroom duty), we piled into the van and a SUV to drive out to the church we’d be working with. Apparently someone had decided we should all wear our YUGO shirts the first day. I’m not sure why, because if you’re trying to not freak the locals out, you probably shouldn’t have a bunch of gringos show up dressed the same way. Maybe its just me. Anyway, not only had no one told me this, no one had given me a YUGO shirt. Fortunately Melissa was kind enough to go find me a shirt, after someone told me I was supposed to be wearing one.

The pastors of our church actually came out to the YUGO campsite to lead us to the church. So we crammed everybody inside the van and drove out. The church is actually part of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. Right next to a building where a drug dealer works. I’m not sure if that’s the best location or the worst location.

The actual church building was below street level. You had to take wooden stairs down that a Picasso aficionado had designed. There was kind of a courtyard there at the bottom. The sanctuary was to your right, a so-called bathroom to your left, and bunk rooms in front of you. As you might imagine, it was very run down. There were cats and kittens everywhere. Also a couple of chickens. They cooked out in the courtyard.

We went into the sanctuary and met with one of the pastors. We went over what they had done to prepare for us, and what we planned on doing. They were coming up on their three year anniversary so they had already been passing out flyers for that. We prayed and decided that we should go out door to door inviting people to our women’s and children’s ministries. The sports ministry would just go over to a local park and start playing.

The women’s ministry must have got their stuff together quickly, because they left before us. Joy was going out inviting, but wanted someone to go with her. I decided I’d rather go out inviting than wait on kids to show up, so I volunteered to go with her. Unfortunately, the women’s ministry took all the translators with them. So the pastor paired Joy and I with a couple of the brothers from the church. Except they didn’t speak any English, just Spanish.

The inviting went pretty well considering. Mainly the brothers from the church did all the talking. I would just smile, maybe say “Hola”, and hand out a flyer. We did run across a few people who spoke English. One man was a Mormon. He refused a flyer, but he told me that he understood going door to door. Another man was giving me a hard time after he found out I didn’t speak any Spanish. He told me to go to school. We ended up stopping by the park that the sports ministry was playing at. They seemed to have a lot people there playing.

After inviting, we went back to the church and waiting for kids to show up. None did. At one point someone said “Hey Andy, there’s kittens outside.” I thought they said “Hey Andy there’s kids outside.” So I went outside looking for the kids. Elaine had a good laugh at my expense.

We had supper (sandwiches) and prepared for the evening service. Most Mexican churches are fairly conservative, so I was supposed to wear a collared shirt. Unfortunately, mine was long sleeves, and it was very hot in the church. I didn’t understand any of the songs (all in Spanish, and none were English translations). So I just clapped along the best I could. Noel gave his testimony. During this time, we noticed that some of the church kids had shown up. Kristy had the idea to take the kids to the back of the sanctuary and do crafts with them.

The crafts went well. The kids were well behaved, and seemed to enjoying making something. There was one little girl who didn’t like strangers though, and didn’t want to do anything. Her mom (I think) was there, but that didn’t seem to help. There were only about four or five kids and they were jammed around the table. I didn’t get all that involved because there wasn’t room, and because we had such a high teacher to kid ratio. So I just ended up picking out stickers for when the children finished their crafts.

After the service, we hung around for a while. Some people ended up talking with people in the congregation. We finally packed up and headed back to YUGO. When we got back, we unpacked, and went to the sharing service. I think Monday was the night we wrote down what we felt was holding us back, and taped it up on a van. Each day someone from the team would go down and remove a piece of the paper.

At the end of the day, I was feeling a lot better than when I started it. I think actually being at the church and attempting to do some ministry put me in a much better mood. It was more of a “ok, this is why I’m here” kind of thing.

I went to bed as early as possible. It wasn’t long after the sharing time was over.

Technically, the first thing I remember on Sunday was the alarm clock going off. Someone had reset it or something so it went off at midnight. I let it go for a while, hoping John or someone would get it. But apparently I’m a much lighter sleeper than John/Tiger/Phil. I don’t think John even stopped snoring. So I got up and turned it off.

I slept fairly well. Every so often I woke up, pushed Tiger back over to his side, or turned over, then went back to sleep. John is a very early riser. He got up about 4am or so to go get breakfast. He got back around 6am or so (I think he just biked around) to get Tiger and have breakfast. I think about 7am or so he came back to get Phil. As I would find out, Phil is not easy to get up.

I don’t remember what time I got up. But I had the last hot shower I would have for a while.

We went to Newsong Church. Its called a multi-cultural church. It looked like it was about 80% Asian. There’s not anything wrong with that, but I would have described it as an Asian church, not multi-cultural. I guess I envision a multi-cultural church having a more ethnically balanced congregation. i.e. A bunch of Chinese people plus white dude doesn’t make you a multi-cultural church. It just makes you a Chinese church and a white dude.

I remember spending a long time looking for seats. There plenty of open ones. But there was apparently something wrong with them. I’m not sure if we were looking for someone, or for quieter seats (it was loud there) or what. I’m pretty easy to please, so my feeling was “just sit somewhere.” I don’t think God had blessed one chair more than the other.

After church we continued driving. We met up with the Idaho church at a park near the border. We had a small worship time, then an ice breaker. They taped a name to your back, then you played twenty questions with people you didn’t know to figure out who you were.

The Idaho people were nice. Your standard Baptist church youth group. A lot like the one I went through.

We also used the time to meet in our ministry groups. The children’s group went over our lessons again and prayed. I found out that despite our feelings of unpreparedness, the Idaho group was even less prepared when it came to giving the lessons.

Oh, during the meet & greet for the children’s ministry, Noel jokingly introduced himself as “Bob.” Somehow I got labeled as “Jim.” Tiger and Phil were there, so not only did the names stick, but they had to get nicknames too. Tiger went by “George” and Phil eventually went by “Alex” (after changing his nickname a few times).

We left the park to go to Albertsons to get some food for supper (since we’d be in Mexico that night, and YUGO wasn’t providing). We then went on to the border. We didn’t even get stopped, just waved right through.

Not that it mattered because we immediately got lost. We eventually stopped and John asked for directions. He got us most of the way there, but we got lost on some dirt roads. Alan, one of the Idaho adult leaders, then took the lead, and got us the rest of the way to YUGO.

Once there, YUGO gave us all the rules, etc. The Idaho youth were acting like… well, youth. We had to set up our tents and unpack. That took a while. I’ve been camping many times, but never with a tent; always with a camper. So I basically stood around watching everyone unpacking and setting up tents. This wasn’t helping my “what the hell am I doing here” mood.

We also had bathroom duty that night. It wasn’t that bad since people had just gotten there, and it had been cleaned just before.

There was a worship meeting that night, but I definitely wasn’t feeling like it. I actually don’t even remember if I went or not. I think I might have caught part of it. It did not have an impression on me.

I spoke with Elaine that night. I told her I didn’t really want to be there. More accurately, I didn’t feel that I belonged there. I think it was a mixture of being unsure of how God could use me, and all the youth, and the mickey mouse rules that come with them. That, and I don’t think I had much of a servant’s attitude. I was feeling pretty selfish at the time.

I was ready for the day to be over, so I went to bed as soon as I could.

The second day was spent traveling, mostly.

We started out by driving back over to Kristy and Noel’s house. That was the rendezvous point. We picked up Melissa on the way.

Once there, we pack everything into the rental cars and figured out the driving arrangements. We had six registered drivers on the rental cars so we could rotate. Kiki was also there to pray over us and send us off.

The driving was pretty uneventful.

We stopped in Irvine for the night. We got a quick supper then went back to the hotel. Once back at the hotel, we started some last minute preparations for the missions trip. The children’s ministry mainly reviewed our stories.

During this time, I think a lot of us were starting to feel really unprepared and inadequate. I know I did. I had my lessons down pretty well, but I was having a lot of doubts about how God could actually use me. I don’t speak any Spanish. I don’t really relate well with kids. I am a strong introvert, and definitely don’t feel natural in front of groups.

We didn’t go over all the lessons, but instead prayed, and really just gave everything over to God.

I think I got to bed around 11pm. I was sharing a room with John, and his two kids, Tiger and Phil. Tiger and Phil are 7.5 and 6 respectively. I was sharing a bed with Tiger. He was already asleep by the time I got in, and despite being small was managing to take up the entire bed. He was pretty easy to move over though.

I slept pretty well.

The first day for me was really Friday, since I had to travel out to the SF Bay area.

I couldn’t find a ride to the airport (waited too late, and Mike was out of town), so I just drove there. I left early because I knew traffic down TX-121 would be bad, especially with the construction. By the time I got to the airport, the Remote North parking lot was full. Fortunately, Remote South was still open. The remote parking lots are reasonable, only $6/day.

I got there with plenty of time. More than I knew. My flight got delayed because the plane we were using got in late. Apparently there was some bad weather around the DFW area and planes were being routed around it. So my flight left late, then it took longer to get to San Jose. We had to be routed around the same bad weather that had impeded the flight on the way in. The suspense apparently got to the kid two rows in front of me. She threw up, which really added to the atmosphere.

By the time I got to the San Jose airport, I was not in a particularly sunshine-y mood. The flight was long and I was very tired. Elaine met me there (she seemed very chipper at the moment), we got my bag, then went to the car rental.

So before I arrived, Elaine had been at the car rental center. We had reserved a minivan for the missions trip. By the time she got there, they were out. So they offered her a full sized van for the same price. So she signed all the paper work, paid for the van, then went to the other side of the airport to pick me up.

When we got to the car rental together, we went straight to the parking lot to pick up the van. But it wasn’t there. The man handing out keys seem really confused. He told us we had to go back to the counter to figure out where the van was. It didn’t take long to figure out they had rented the van out from under us in the time it took Elaine to go to the other side of the airport to pick me up. Nice.

They kept telling us we should have taken the key. Apparently their booking system is as sophisticated as “do we have the key?” If they have the key to a car, they’re renting it. So never have a car rental employee hold they keys to your car. They’ll rent it out. It doesn’t matter if you’ve paid for the car.

Anyway, Elaine and the woman renting the car spent a lot of time going back and forth, trying to work something out. They didn’t have any more vans, so they offered to rent us two cars. The problem was, the cost kept coming out to more than what they were going to charge us for the van.

Meanwhile, my sunny disposition was not improving. I was getting more fatigued and dealing with the whole “are we going to have transportation or not” was not helping. At one point they needed my license to put me on the driver’s list. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded. But I was tired, and felt like I was being forced into driving because of the rental company’s mistake. Elaine noticed my deteriorating condition and called Kristy and Noel to come out and drive one of the cars back to their place. The idea was I could just crash at their place until the next day.

But Elaine got everything worked out shortly thereafter. That’s when Kristy and Noel arrived, and we drove the rental cars (two of them) back to Kristy and Noel’s house.

Elaine and I then continued on to her parent’s house. She pointed me to a bed and told me what time to get up.

I slept like a rock.