Mexico Day 29 - Month 1

‘Twas but a month ago whenst I left my humble abode in the most Northern of the two Carolinas for the Central American country of Mexico and what a spree it has been. I almost can’t believe it’s been a whole month already but the time has not always passed so swiftly. Some days it feels like a mere three months and I’ll be back to the states in a jiffy and others it feels like a whole quarter of a year or 90 whole days before I will ever see a Chick-Fil-A or Taco Bell.

Technically, we as B2B staff are supposed to delegate to group members different jobs to do and supervise what goes on and simply “fill in gaps” along the way. The groups come to work, we give the work, and we all go home happy. But for some reason the math doesn’t always add up for me. I constantly find myself jumping in and working because that’s not the way my brain works. My brain cannot, physically or mentally, just sit by and delegate. I am a DO-er. I am a part of Mexico and it, a part of me and if I was to just sit by and kind of just let the groups do all the work…well that kind of defeats the whole purpose of why I’m here in the first place.

Ironically, the times I seem most stressed and “quarter year-y” is in my tiempo libre. I know that it is Biblically sound that everyone should have a day of rest but somehow I feel strange on my days off. I basically spend all day walking around with my hands in my pockets when there is so much more I could be doing. I feel as though I should be going with the groups to the sites or hanging out with the kids at one of the homes but nooo, I have “rest” for a couple days to “regain my strength”. OMGz my life iz like soooooooooooooo hardddddd!

On the other hand though, that’s only one or two days a weekend and I feel amazing the rest of the week when I’m actually working.

When I’m on a work site I am in my element. My alter ego “Mission Trip Nate” emerges from his resting place and I am ready to do whatever, whenever to help whoever, however. An entity I have just recently gotten to know personally takes control and it’s full steam ahead from that point on. Watching the projects progress from group to group is great. And arriving to a casa hogar and having kids who know you by name run up and say hello is even better. But seeing a group of complete strangers, Mexican and American, Spanish and English, gather together for the sake of something much bigger than any individual is just…gnarly.

I can feel my Spanish getting better each and every day. I am actually relied on to translate from time to time for group members and staff that don’t speak either English or Spanish. I make it a point to learn new words every day and my vocabulary is growing almost as fast as my long, luscious locks of hair. Unfortunately, I have been hanging out with some staff, who shall remain nameless, that have been teaching me words that aren’t necessarily “bad” but that one should not say around mixed company so they haven’t all been necessarily useful. But on the bright side if I ever find myself in a heated moment in “da hood” where it is necessary to use some Mexico-specific slang I totes got dat covered. Bang-bang boom-boom. \m/

Last week I was at La Casa Hogar Bethany with David and as we were getting ready to leave with a group of Canadians from another ministry I said goodbye to a kid who I’d kind of been chilling with named Adan. I let him know that I wasn’t a part of the group that was leaving for good so I’d probably see him again soon within the next couple weeks and he told me this…“Si no puedes regresar es bueno porque estamos hermanos en Cristo y si no regresas temprano vamos a estar juntos en Cielo por eternidad.” Now I am not completely fluent in Spanish nor can I remember his exact words perfectly but in a nutshell he basically said this, “Even if you can’t come back it’s fine because we’re brothers in Christ and even if you don’t come back anytime soon we’ll still be together for eternity in Heaven.” He literally said eternidad. And here I thought I was the one trying to help people…

Right now we have a group of 55 people from a local, Cincinnati, private, middle school (that’s four adjectives in a row) on the campus and chaos would be putting it lightly. They brought an ungodly amount of donations including five bins of just soccer cleats plus food and donations for staff on campus which was pretty cool. I may or may not have taken a twelve pack of Gushers and eaten them within the first fours days I got them. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t…we’ll never know.

150 bags of basic kitchen cooking supplies

Every time I see them talking to one another my brain just goes, “Oh, middle school…Oh, middle school.” With their electric orange and neon green sunglasses compiled with Etnies shoes that are probably at least 387 sizes too big, I just thank the Lord I’m graduated. I dare not speak with them about musical taste for fear of being asked if I like AILD, ADTR, or TDWP and if you didn’t understand that joke, congratulations because you’re one of the lucky ones…

Although the majority is not too fond of actually trabajando, on a MISSION TRIP, it’s nice to have a virtually unlimited work force at our finger tips. Sort of. There is, however, the occasional dude or dudette that will go far above and far beyond the call of duty and work all day, sometimes up to six hours in a row and I just think that’s super chido. I saw a kid at the end of the work day yesterday that was drenched in sweat and sun-burnt like no body’s business and I knew exactly why. I hadn’t seen the kid but a few times all day. But I had been inside all day. I had been helping serve food to the vast crowds of people at Río 3 and passing out donations from the basement and he had been outside playing soccer with the kids all day.

These donations...

...for this crowd

The only times I saw him during the day was whenever he came inside to fill up his water bottle and every time I saw him he had the biggest smile on his face. Later that night when we got back to the campus and got ready for dinner, I saw him again and he looked completely exhausted. Well done sir. Well done.

-N8