Mexico Day 39 - Day-to-Day

So I know a lot of my faithful, daily, dedicated, supportive readers have been asking…What does a day in the life of Mission Trip Nate look like? Well, here it is…

Every night I set my alarm for 6:45am and 7:15am. This was a trick that I learned last year and it’s started to work quite well. Now I know that most people set two alarms because they have trouble getting up and need a little motivation but I am not one of those people. Yes, I do have trouble getting up in the morning sometimes but I do not set two alarms for that specific reason.

I have learned that by setting my alarm two times about 30 minutes away from each other I can actually start remembering the majority of my dreams I have. Dreaming is a remarkable ability that God has blessed us with that should be utilized to its fullest. I believe that dreaming is one of the only times where you have absolutely no control over what’s going on in your head. There is a saying that I have heard someone say at least one or possibly even TWO times in my entire life: “Intoxicated words are merely sober thoughts.” I’m sure whoever made up those awe-inspiring words of wisdom was quite the philosopher, but think about it…when intoxicated almost all inhibitions go out the window and there is very little that gets filtered between the brain and action. Now think about when you are dreaming.

When one is dreaming there is no such thing as inhibitions. It’s just an uncontrollable mental diarrhea every time you go to bed. That being said I would like to make my own philosophical galleta. “If ‘intoxicated words are merely sober thoughts’ than dreams are intoxicated words that are stored up in one’s mind and almost immediately forgotten for those who do not get intoxicated.”

“¿Comó te llamas?”

“Me llamo Señor Aristotle” Desafortunadamente, as humans, la mayoría de nuestros sueños are lost late at night in our deepest states of sleep, hours before we will ever wake up and any worthwhile dream is almost always forgotten by the time we awake. But I have found that if I sort of “half wakeup” to stop my initial alarm I almost always dream for the last 30min of my sleep. Granted, I do not always dream right before I get up, but if I do I almost always remember it and I think that’s pretty cool. Try it.

I normally roll out da crib around the 7:45am area to go have breakfast at the two coolest people that live in the second level of the LDM above the age of twenty with a baby girl named Evelyn’s house (notice how specific my ratings are). Jelly sandwiches or Zucaritas (the Mexican version of Frosted Flakes) are the way to go every morning. And yes, I do have weird things I do with my cereal as well.

Riddle me this world…Why are we forced, day in and day out, to put all our cereal in a single bowl every morning and drench it with milk that will eventually lead to the final bites of cereal being nothing more than a sorta-kinda-not-really tasty slag of some sort of foreign, cere-milk mixture? I say thee nay. Every morning when time is not an issue I pour my cereal in a normal bowl like 100% of the rest of the American population but that is as far as it goes. Following the bowl of dry cereal comes a carton of milk. I pour nothing; I simply bring the carton with me to my seat and take the two elements of the cereal experience individually. I take a spoonful of cereal using one of the Lightsaber spoons I won from the box then a drink of milk, spoonful of cereal, drink of milk. Call me Leonardo da Vinci but I believe yo soy el primer hombre  that I know of, to come up with the only way you can possibly get that, “first bite” bite every time for the entire breakfast experience. Running late? No problem. Just return the excess cereal back to the appropriate box and place the milk in the fridge and pick up where you left off whenever the next time of convenience arrives. Try it.

Every morning at 8am we have a “Stand-Up Meeting” to go over what will be going on that specific day and pray for the day that is about to ensue. After the meeting we take out the necessary materials to have a successful work day and prepare to leave for the worksite. We normally leave around 10:00-10:30am and arrive on the worksite around 11. Lunch is at 12 and depending on where we are and what day it is, sometimes the casas hogares may cook an authentic Mexican meal for the entire group or maybe we will eat ham and cheese sandwiches that have been prepared in advance.

Worksite time normally lasts until 4ish to 5:30ish. Sometimes we won’t really do any “work” for the day and instead we will take some of the kids from one of the homes to an amusement park or to rent bikes or just to do something fun to breakup the daily monotony of breakfast, school, homework, dinner, breakfast, school, homework, dinner.

We normally arrive back on the Back2Back campus around 5:30-6:00pm and have time to chill and shower before dinner. Dinner is at 6:30 every single night on the dot unless we go to dinner out at some restaurant. Normally when eating out with the groups we attend a restaurant chain local to Monterrey called “Pollo Loco” which is Spanish for “Crazy Chicken” in case you are completely oblivious to the cultures that have surrounded our country since the beginning of time when Pangaea separated into the different continents some 742.98 buzillion years ago. Look it up. It’s on the internet…

After/during dinner on campus I normally have a bit of time to chill around and say, “whatup” to some of my homies. Occasionally, some of the RIDICULOUSLY CUTE staff babies may be out and about in which case I completely skip dinner and spend the remainder of the night grabbing toes, speaking in “the baby voice”, and letting them grab my long, tropically delicious locks of hair because for some reason they like my hair better than everybody else’s. Coincidence? I think NOT! It’s seriously the little things here that make every day worthwhile. A super cute baby’s smile at the end of a hard day of work or a ham and cheese sandwich smothered in hot sauce. Take your pick ‘cause they’re both amazing.

This is either Alex or Evan....they're twins and I still don't know who's who even though they're not identical twins....

When I die I want to be seen as one of those people who stopped to smell the roses. Someone who stopped to smell the roses and picked a few out to give to someone else and in some way inspired someone else to pick roses for another. As Christ-Followers we should live life in such a way if people look back at our life all they should say is, “Yo, that _________ dude was legit. They actually DID something. For real.” Try it.

Now I know that this has, by far, been my longest post but now you know. Now you know that you can set an alarm early as an aid to maybe remember some of your dreams. Now you know that taking the elements of cereal like the elements of communion at church is the one and only way to get a first bite every bite. Now you know the random mezcla of information that goes through my brain every day and possibly a part of the reason why.

I honestly have absolutely no clue as to how my brain got to be so “weird” over these past couple years. Maybe it’s the contusion, maybe it’s the North Carolinian air, I don’t know. But I do know one thing: I know that when you take a step back from the endless banging of a gong our lives can sometimes become and just chill for a second, God can do amazing things in your life. When you leave the country, change your job, mix up this spiritual uniformity we get trapped in, God shows his true face and it changes you. For real. Try it.

-N8