Following the Father

Sunday, July 5th 2009

Today is my birthday. I didn't think much about that fact when I got up this morning, my thoughts were more occupied with getting out the door with all my stuff and to the church parking lot by 5:30am.  Today I and 16 others from church left Mac for Mexico!  I've been planning on this trip for the past several months but I didn't foresee that Ben would be going as well.  He didn't know either until Saturday! (Yesterday)  Someone from the team canceled last minute and Mike offered Ben his spot.  God allowed him the ability to finagle his schedule and pack last minute to go.

I'm right now riding in the smaller of the two vans we're taking.  One is a 15 passenger with a borrowed trailer hooked up to it, and the other is a 12 passenger with it's back seat taken out for luggage.

I didn't care for the way so many special events were crammed into June and July with no breathing space.  I felt like I haven't been able to focus on this trip as much as I'd like.  But here I am anyway, I pray God can still use this humble vessel.

Tuesday, July 7th

Last night we arrived in Monterrey around 5:45pm.  We followed Alex and the others from Merge Ministries to the church that we ware staying at and partnering with.  Alex met us at the border town in Texas that we spent the night at in a church.  We didn't really get going again yesterday toward the border till around 10:30am.  There is a paper that we didn't know about that we were supposed to have for the borrowed trailer when we cross the border that we were trying to get faxed to us.  It took about 2-3 hours to get completely across the border due to more issues with paper work for the trailer.  Dale (director of Merge Ministries) ended up having to drive to the border (He lives in the border town we slept at) with another paper that they said we needed.  We did make it across though without having to have the vans searched by the military checkpoint. 

When we arrived at the church in Monterrey the pastor and his family came out to greet us with a little more than a hand shake.  The pastor had an accordion and one of his sons had a large 12 string guitar and they played and sang some songs to welcome us.  We then all lined up and shook hands and were introduced to everyone.  Later in the evening some of the other church members came to greet and eat supper with us.  They had long tables and benches set up outside in the courtyard where they were planning for us all to eat but it started to storm so they moved things indoors.  It poured like the storms I remember from the rainy season in Ghana. 

After we ate and were getting our things unloaded and put into the church where we were going to sleep we saw lightning strike the power box and line across the street.  It knocked our power our and we are still without it.  After the rain stopped the kids from the church started a football (soccer) game.  Hannah, one of the pastor's granddaughters, spent a lot of time in her extremely expressive way trying to communicate with the group.  She finally got across to Tyler that she was asking if they would play football.  Tyler said yes and she spun around from him and shouted "FOOTBALL!" and all the kids came running.  It was a great icebreaker.