Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

May 30, 2004

We were up and ready on time for church Sunday morning. We walked (it was just next door) to the church and went in. We met Jeff Cates, the pastor, who is also the missionary that we’re working with. His wife and younger daughter were sitting behind us, with Heather, the daughter of another family in the church. Alyssa and Heather came and shook our hands to greet us.
The first service was in English, but the attendance was rather small. I didn’t think anything of it, though, since I had no clue how large the church normally was. There was another mission team there that morning, from Oklahoma, which was also headed to Mexico (but much further south) to do a Vacation Bible School.
After the service, the members of the church led us to the fellowship hall for doughnuts, cookies, orange juice, and coffee. Most of our kids hadn’t gotten up early enough to eat at the motel, so they had doughnuts and juice here (except Michael, who, at age 13, can down coffee like any grown man). I had another cup of coffee (my third of the day… I had to get some caffeine somehow) and a doughnut, too, as did the other adults. The teens went to Sunday School with the youth group from the church, and Ben, Tonya, and myself stayed with the adult class.
Following Sunday School was the Spanish service. Everything was done in Spanish, except the prayer for the offering (kinda random, not sure why it was in English except the person praying spoke both languages). The sermon was about the Heroes of the Faith in Hebrews, and I rather enjoyed it. I was very happy that I could understand it, and tried to explain it a little later to everyone.

We went to the Golden Corral for lunch, since everyone can find something to eat at a buffet. Lee ate with us, and Jeff, his family, and most of the rest of the church ate there but separately from us. Chad got sick from something, maybe the chicken, and lost his appetite for the rest of the day. We made a quick stop at Wal-Mart on the way back to the hotel, with a 10 minute time allotment to buy whatever was wanted. Lots of pool toys, plus water shoes (for the boys with cut up feet), gallons of water, and snacks were bought.
The pool was closed when we got back to the motel, so everyone just hung out in their rooms. Lots of the kids watched Mexican wrestling on tv for a while. Michael, Chase, Chris, and Billy moved their stuff to a different room so the motel could fix the bed.
Around 4:00, we started trying to find a song to sing that night. We were going to sing “Amazing Grace”, but we sounded really off key (imagine 12 people in at least 5 different keys), so we scrapped that idea. I mentioned lots of praise songs, but only Erinn, Ashley, or Michael knew any of them. Tonya wanted us to sing an old hymn, but few of the kids knew them either. We got ready and went to the church to practice. There, we finally decided on “Awesome God” with a tag on the end by Erinn and me.
Church was in Spanish again (the outreach here is English… how about that?) except for that offertory prayer again. We sang our song rather quickly, but we actually sounded pretty good, unlike practice. It’s not about us anyhow.

After we sang, Ben preached, and Jeff translated. Ben had never spoken through a translator before, and it took him a while to get in a rhythm. It might have been good if someone had warned him that you can’t translate parts of sentences or random slang. It was funny to me, Lee, and a couple of the other bilinguals in the church. I heard some laughter when Jeff would get stumped, but it was all in fun. Ben told his story about lying to his dad during a sermon and got a great laugh. I think the church really enjoyed the service as a whole.

We went to Dairy Queen for dinner and waited while Jeff and Jim, a man in the church who work with Jeff quite a bit (he’s also Heather’s dad), explained the week to Ben. We went back to the motel afterwards, but Ben and Tonya took Ashley, KC, and Billy to Wal-Mart to pick up craft supplies. I stayed with the rest of the kids. Pretty soon, all of the kids were in my room. We had a rather interesting discussion about Leviticus and all the rules therein. It was kind of nice to have a more grown-up talk with the teens. When everyone returned, the girls began making samples of the crafts that Tonya had decided on. We had a quick meeting about what the kids should know about foreign places and what our plans were for the next three days. We finally made it to bed (or at least my room did) around 12:30.

Day 3, Monday