We went inside, saw the altar, and the bishop leading Mass. Then we walked by threes through the prayer room and into the “Milagros” (miracles) room. I was saddened by all the work that they put into their church. It’s worthless, yet a “good” Catholic will spend some time, every day, in that room. There is a glass box with a life-size, dead Jesus inside. Jeff explained to us that this is because Catholics worship a suffering, dying Jesus, and rarely pay any attention to the resurrection.
We were about to go back outside, when we met up with the bishop. Knowing Jeff, he asked who we were and where we were from. When Jeff told him that we were working in Mexico, he asked if anyone spoke Spanish. I raised my hand and he said that was good because it would be needed. He asked if he could give us a blessing, and went to get the holy water. When he came back, he asked a prayer of blessing (that sounded pretty universal to me) and then rubbed the water on each of our foreheads, saying “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” He blessed me in Spanish and then squeezed my arm as if we were connected by that. (That saddens me even more, cause I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t believe that grace is all he needs). Jeff explained that we were the first group that has ever had that experience (that worked with him), and he hoped we didn’t mind, but he didn’t want to disrespect the man. We understood that, and didn’t want to ruin Jeff’s testimony with the man.
A little way around the building was a huge mosaic. The bottom was the Rio Grande Valley, above that was Mary (as she looked in this person’s vision), and above her, Jesus. Jeff asked if we noticed anything a little weird about this, and I answered that Jesus was behind Mary. He said that it’s due to the fact that Catholics believe that they must go through Mary to get to God. All the letters in the miracle room were addressed to Mary (still a virgin in their eyes) and thanked her for whatever.
We continued on around through the stations of the cross. They are 15 statue-type things of the road to the crucifixion. There were quite a few things that aren’t exactly correct, at least according to the scriptures. One of them shows Veronica wiping Jesus’ face. Veronica is only in the apocrypha, so no one in our group knew why she was singled out. Then, Mary is always shown wearing buckle shoes (think “Pilgrims”). Jeff explained that since Mary didn’t get elevated to her position in the Catholic church until the 18th century, she is always seen as people of that time were. Also, only Mary is there when Jesus is taken down from the cross, as if she did it all alone. Lastly, and probably the most disturbing, is that after 14 detailed depictions of things that happened on the Via Dolorosa, the only thing for His resurrection is a rock that says “Resucito”. It’s not even well kept. It made me think of the Passion, and how that is really glossed over in it, also.
We stopped at Whattaburger on the way home (they need to bring those back here!). Ben and Tonya left me with the kids at the motel, to go to Wal-Mart for more craft supplies. (We had decided that Tonya’s ideas were a little too time-consuming for our kids and our lack of Spanish-speakers). I let the kids swim for as long as they wanted, since the other adults had said two hours, and they were tired before then. I had fun hanging out with the kids. Chase pulled the drawstring of his shorts up around his neck and walked around like that for a while. Michael begged for our towels, since his room didn’t have any, but we didn’t either. He, Billy, and Chase sat with me in the breezeway until Ben and Tonya got back, because they couldn’t get any towels to take showers with. (The motel only gave each room two towels, so we often had to wait for them to do laundry so that we could get extra towels).
We finally got ready and headed back to Reynosa. Jeff, Ben, Tonya, and I had an interesting discussion about Free Will Baptist versus Southern Baptist on the way there. He grew up Southern and now is Free Will, and I am the opposite, so it was an interesting dichotomy. Ben and Tonya have been Free Will their whole lives. We talked about apostasy, which is the major (but not the only) difference. Jeff seems to lie somewhere in between, kind of like me.
Tonight, we sang “Alelu, Gloria a Dios” and I had to explain when the girls stood and sang and when the guys did. It was still in Spanish (of course), but Rosa had the words written on a poster, so everyone could sing along. We also sang “Tengo Gozo” which our group already knew in Spanish. They were quite happy that they could fully participate. At craft time, we made salvation bracelets and painted suncatchers. I explained the bracelets, while Heather and some of the other adults helped with the suncatchers. Mrs. Andy explained what the colors meant (which I could have done, but doubted myself until I had heard her do it).
We gave out different kinds of cookies tonight, and the kids tried to stick to the rule of three. However, many of the youngsters were really good at pretending they hadn’t had any yet, and ended up getting some extra. Ben made the Kool-Aid really weak, but after tasting it, decided to go back to full sugar tomorrow.
We took lots of pictures of the kids, since they hung around longer tonight. I had been told by many of our teens that KC gave his favorite hat (the Notre Dame one) to his little friend. It was a huge deal because KC is extremely attached to that hat; very little means more to him. However, he became even more attached to this kid, and understood that hats can be bought again.
Once the kids figured out that we had digital cameras, they wanted to see the pictures. Ben showed one little girl, and all of a sudden, he was surrounded by kids wanting to take a picture. He never let the camera out of his hands, but he made a lot of kids happy by letting them think they were “helping” him.
We had another easy time at the border; this time the agent did nothing more than stick his head in the driverside window. We goofed off a lot at the motel. KC entertained us with a rendition of the Pepto-Bismol commercial and Michael and I quoted the identity-theft commercials. Everyone except Erinn and I went swimming after eating. I was tired, so I went to bed around 1:00. The rest of the group were up significantly later.
