Church, The Beach, Hello Cartel, This is Family

Today you will discover:

What's better than bread for communion?

What tipped us off that cartel members were at the beach?

What's the best word to describe 17 people in a 12 person van?

Church

Sunday we kicked the day off right by attending church. Several of the songs are the same, but in Spanish. This makes it a very familiar experience. Each year, there are more and more words that I understand from the sermon (today there were probably 12, total! haha). Today we had communion with tortillas (of course).

Communion

In the afternoon, my friend picked me up with his brother (2 or 3 years old) on the motorcycle. We went a couple of miles away to the Casa de Adolesente (teenage boy's house). We did what teenage boys do: eat, hangout and watch TV. One of the boys bought me one of my favorite things here: Doritos (and then you add Valentina Sauce, because the Doritos don't have enough flavor by themselves?).

More sauce, I need more flavor!

It's always amazing to me when I see a very small child hanging onto the driver of the motorcycle. It's very normal here to have a total of 4 or EVEN 5 people on one motorcycle (2 adults, 2 kids and sometimes a baby).

The next day, there was no school so we decided a beach day was needed. So off we went, 11 teenage boys, my friends, his wife and her sister, 2 babies and myself (17 of us in a 12 passenger van).

The city of Manzanillo is about an hour drive

We had tons of food and fun. The most difficult part was the relaxing for so long (ALL DAY). One of my friends here says that I'm like a little ant. Always going and going and going. It's my blessing and my curse.

Being ignorant to my surroundings, I was unaware when two cartel guys came to the beach. They were just relaxing and not causing problems, but one of my friends let me know who they were because of the "JGL" logo on the hat of one of them. This stands for Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera or "El Chapo Guzmán". They caused no harm and no one paid any attention to them. One of the best things about my friend is that he sees everything. He is always watching.

Another interesting thing that happened is while we were driving, my friend said "look an american walking down the street". Immediately, without hesitation one of the boys in the back yelled out "money". At first, this hurt a little. Do some Mexicans just see us as money as we walk around their country. After a little thought, I concluded YEP, that is what they think of when they see Americans, because it is true. We spend money like it is nothing. We waste it as if it was going out of style and we needed to get rid of it. American are very wasteful and can be arrogant with their God given resources. I'm one of them and I'm ashamed of it. This is one of the big reasons why I love coming back to Mexico year after year. It really is a good reality check as to how the rest of the world lives. A few weeks ago, I heard a good sermon where the preacher said that we are to be a conduit of God's blessings and not just be a Dam. In other words, our God given resources are to be used to bless others and not just stop at us. So we do need to be using it, but it should be for God's Kingdom and we should be purposeful.

On the way home, everyone was exhausted. You've been there, after a long day at the beach the ride home makes you sleepy. I gave my phone to one of the kids to pick some music. When I arrived back home, I was looking through my pictures and found this one.

"Family" on the way home from Beach

One of the kids took this picture of the 17 of us in the van and then wrote on it "Family" on it. It was a good day.

Prayer Requests:

• I can start to see some arrogance and struggle in some of the teenage boys (like most teenagers get). My prayer is that their foundation in who Christ is will be strong enough to keep them well rooted in the gospel.
• Wisdom for the houseparents. Can you even imagine having 11+ teenage boys in your house? Oh, they need our prayers!

Praise:

• For safe travels to and from and at the beach (with so many in the van!).
• A day of rest, where I could just "be".