Matt Matteson

Mexico was a great trip. I went with 11 others from Englewood bible church to go to Piedras Negras. When we left we thought we would mostly work at an orfanage. When we got there plans for that fell through. All the groups flew into San Antonio to then get bussed to Mexico. Groups were from Long Island, northern NY, Kentucky, and um, a few other places.

One nice/interesting spin on the trip was the groups were all church group, but of all different Christian denominations.

The day was usually get up early, have breakfast prepared by some lady’s (I think members of the church that owned the compound we stayed in.) Followed by some quiet time, then get bused to the work site. There were 3 sites; the first was mixing concreate close to the compound, the second was some miing concreate, and painting and such. I only worked on the last site, that I have not explained yet. I do know one of the two sites was for a new drug rehab center, while the other one was a church.

The third work site is where I worked. It was two large cinder block buildings. We worked on both of them. One was getting converted to a church, while the other building was a family who was going to ‘host’ the church. We painted and dry-walled the house. Took out a wall out of the church, painted it inside, and started on the outside.

The drywall reminds me of one of the more entertaining days of working. I worked with a man from the church, and the bus driver on drywalling, just the 3 of us. A few times we got inter-culture and inter-langauge laugh out of the fact that while we were working on the celling Tino was up on a ladder, Freddy was on a chair, and I was simply holding my hands up.

Painting was also a good time as I worked with Nick and Chad (the Englewood church youth pastor). The 3 of us entertained, or perhaps disgusted, the ladies with our voices hosting our half memorized and not-so-corrent-key lyrics.

We’d get back early in the afternoon have lunch then simply hang out. Quite a few hacky-sack ‘hacks’ took place then.
The break gave way to dinner.

The food was great, but I wasn’t ready for real mexican food EVERY meal. I was joking about the utility use of beans with the leader from Long island. (Put it in a burrito for dinner, put it on a plate with hot dogs chopped up in them for lunch, put them in a burrito for breakfast.) I enjoyed the food and the ability for seconds/thirds…

After dinner the group broke into 3 groups and hosted a Vacation Bible School-like event in a couple neighborhood around the compound. It was great to work with the kids, and make a idiot of yourself as you mumble the lyrics of some spanish song.

Back at the compound a leader would give a message, and we’d have worship time.

Finally sleep. Which I REALLY was ready most of the time, but about 30 minutes of being on your bed you realize sleeping in a 95 deg F room sucks. Every two hours you wake up, making sure no blanket has found it’s way on top of you, and that no fan has been stolen from your side of the room, and make sure your not drowning in the wading pool of sweat your body created. Yum.

One of the things that made this trip awesome was the people. It was nice to spend time with Nick and Steve. I really connected with the 27 year old project leader on the bus ride to Mexico. I really enjoyed spending time with Chad (pastor from Englewood Bible Church.) Those were the leaders, and we got them to be as crazy as we were.

On the way back to Colorado, the price of flying back on Saturday made us reconsider and change our plan to fly back tuesday. This worked out great as our group of 12 simply hung out in San Antino for a few days. One major event we did was floated down a river at about 4 miles an hour. The amazing part was how there were THOUSANDS of others doing it the same, making it a rather social and very entertaining outing.

I’m sure you’ll all hear some other stories, some with great humor, in the while to come.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 29th, 2006 at Jul 29, 06 | 11:20 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.