The Willem

The Week in Review

// September 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Holy Random Batman!, Life

This has been the first week with Spanish classes and regular ministry outings, so I’ve been trying to adjust to all the hats I have to wear. In that balancing act, I’ve neglected my poor blog. I’ll give some highlights from the first week now, and should be making more regular postings from now on.

I led devotions for the first time this week. I tore apart Hebrews 4:14-16. The passage was originally a proof for Jesus as the Messiah, and today it can be taken as the same, as well as an encouragement to come fully and boldly to Him, for He knows how you feel because He went through all the same temptations we go through. It was great, but way short. I’ll learn to mix it up and get creative and stretch things out as we go along.

We hung out on the CUCEA campus and got to meet people there, including a great lunch.

We got to experience Mexican Independence Day (Contrary to popular belief, Cinco de Mayo means next to nothing here and isn’t their celebration of independence.) I wasn’t feeling up to par, so I stayed home while most of our group was either at the youth center or at church parties.

I not only survived Spanish class; I’m doing rather well in it. I really like my grammar profesor, but my conversation profesora is kind of unsettling. She has a speech impediment (and she teaches conversation…) and she’s all about tequila and dating and whatnot. She flirts with students who are probably 10-15 years younger than her and none of us is even remotely interested. Oh well, enough on that.

I think we finally got the internet situation figured out. We got a four-way switchbox at the access point that redirects to the house computer, two wireless routers (on upstairs and one downstairs) and to a 16-way switchbox that runs to hardline cat5 ports throughout the study room. It’s still only a 5 meg connection, but that should be plenty for most of the time.

I also had an adventure in plumbing this week. The girls upstairs clogged the pipes with too much toilet paper, so every time they used any water in their bathroom it flooded. They apparently didn’t think this was important enough to tell anyone, so they simply dealt with a flooding shower for a week and a half before the toilet started flooding on Wednesday morning. Apparently, I’m the only person in the house anyone trusts to fix anything, so I was tasked with diagnosing, triage, and eventually fixing the problem. I tried to simply turn off the valve to the toilet, but the handle was broken off and we had no vice grips. The next step was to run up on the roof (putting me about 45 feet above ground) in bare feet, using a ladder that is nowhere near tall enough to be safe, jumping up onto a wall to jump up onto the roof. Up there, I turned off the water to the entire house, then almost fell trying to get back down. Eventually, we finished our breakfast (Stacia made some dynamite french toast) and spent most of the day trying to figure out what to do about it, as well as generally avoiding do the homework we knew we needed to get done. In the evening, I headed off to Home Depot to buy a replacement fitting and valve, as I’d managed to at least disconnect all of that. After we got back, I replaced it all, then headed back up to the rooftop and turned the water back on. After a small amount of cheering and fanfare, I told the girls that they were responsible for cleaning up their toilet and getting it unplugged. Until they did that, I declared their bathroom to be off limits. That was Wednesday, this is Saturday, and it still hasn’t been done.

Thursday was a pretty full day, but definitely a good one. We started with Spanish classes, then the guys all went to the mall to eat lunch and have our small group time. We talked about our personal goals and how we wanted to build our small group trust together. Then we went home and everyone practiced our tasks for El Colli (kid’s ministry on Saturdays) until we had run through it all and had to go to a couple different ministries. The girls went to El Triunfo Women’s Shelter, which is a really cool recovery/rehab center for women. The guys were going to go to Casa Hogar (a home for boys whose parents are usually still living, but incapable of taking care of them for one reason or another), but they had already scheduled something for the boys so we went to the El Colli neighborhood and rounded up whomever we could find for a soccer game. After we left there, we headed home for a quick dinner before we split up again. About half the girls did pilates after dinner, and the other half came with most of the guys to play ultimate frisbee on the campus where we take Spanish classes (Autonoma). Matt and I opened up the game with some razzle dazzle (nobody gets to make fun of me for saying that) when on our first possession we made eye contact and he bolted to the exact spot I wanted him to get to. I threw a perfect hammer throw (If you don’t know what that is, it’s an overhand throw that makes the frisbee turn upside-down and arch the exact opposite way it normally would. Needless to say, it’s hard to master.) that reversed course at the very end, just as I’d hoped it would. Just from that throw, I will no longer be taken lightly by the serious players.

Friday turned out to be a blast, too. We had La Fusion (we open up our youth center near El Colli and put on a service with hangout time) for my first time. It was an absolute blast playing with all the kids and getting to talk to a couple of them about their home lives and the character of God. The kid I had that conversation with ended up responding to the alter call, so I got to pray for him and actually knew what I was praying for, which was wonderful. I turned out to be a beast at carpetball, so that may end up coming back to bite me because all the kids were gunning for me. After La Fusion, most of our group went out to a homeless ministry downtown in a park, but I stayed behind to have the first bit of quiet time I’ve had in weeks.

Saturday so far has been insane. My shorts split down the seam all the way from my crotch down my left inseam to the hem. That was during play time before we started our El Colli program. I was at La Cancha again, which is the crazy hyperactive one. I was also in charge of songs and dances with Rachel, so I had to dance in the middle of a giant circle of kids with my whole leg and a portion of my boxer-briefs showing, and I had to enjoy it. Oddly enough, I did. I had a blast. After El Colli, we split into two groups and walked around praying for the neighborhood for about a half hour.

After we came back, we were putting together a bed for a visitor. While I was actually putting it together and making sure everything was going to be right, everyone else decided to ride mattresses down the stairs. Apparently, Mike tried to surf on his, which resulted in a violent crash, ending up with Mike nearly unconscious at the foot of the staircase, everyone else in a stunned silence, with myself completely ignorant of the results of the crash because I simply kept working. Eventually, I snapped at someone to pray for him. I walked downstairs to get him some ice, but Richie was already on it. We retrieved Amy from her side of the house (she’s a nurse) and got Mike moved into his bed, iced up, and ibuprophened up. We took him to the urgent care clinic a few blocks away after we waited for the drugs to start kicking in. Richie, Gabi, Amy and I all waited there for his x rays and whatnot to be finished, which took a little over an hour. The good news is that he didn’t fracture his skull or his pelvis, but he’s still in a lot of pain and will have to be on painkillers for about 10 days.

Now I’m preparing to stay up all night doing homework with Hannah and Justin and hoping it doesn’t actually take all night. I’ll probably give an update tomorrow on how that turns out.

EDIT: I’ve just had a Dr. Pepper explode all over my shirt, workspace, and shorts. That means I’m down to one pair of shorts. Oy vey.

EDIT #2: I went to bed at 4am, but all my stuff was done.

Boot Camp Day 4. Thursday

// September 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // Holy Random Batman!, I just started writing and..., Life

Thursday started slightly earlier than a normal day (no it didn’t. They all start at midnight). We were all up by 7 so we could do devotions before the first year students had to go to La Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara to take our Spanish placement tests. We took the van on Thursday, but we’ll be taking buses from now on (more on the buses in another post). We hadn’t seen our campus yet, so getting there was kind of intimidating. It’s huge, it’s beautiful, there are citrus and palm trees everywhere, and it just feels like there’s so much history there that you’re overwhelmed.

Once we got all the registration stuff figured out and connected with a proctor for our assessments, we were all crammed into a little room with what should never ever qualify as a desk for adults. They plopped the giant assessment packet in front of each of us, then gave us an answer sheet and explained (I’m giving her a little credit here, because it barely qualified as an explanation in English) how to take our assessments and what information was needed on the answer forms. I finished section two with some confidence, so I figured I would place into level two (out of 9). Everyone else finished after me, except the people who simply put their names on the answer sheets and handed them in, knowing they needed to be in level 1. The proctor then corrected my assessment on my desk in front of me: 8/10 for level 1 and 4/10 for level 2. I was then whisked away to a room with a woman who spoke very fast and rather quietly (this is a problem, since I have had a sinus infection that has plugged my ears for days, so I am having trouble hearing), so I couldn’t understand her very well. As it turns out, she was conducting an placement interview (Yes, I meant to put “an.” It’s grammatically correct, even though it sounds funny.), so I didn’t exactly pass that with flying colors. She then swapped over to hesitant English to explain to me that I hadn’t demonstrated enough confidence in my speech to thrive in level 2 communication (we take 1 grammar class and 1 communication class). I assured her that I had the hearing thing going on and I just needed to get back into it and that I’d prefer to be placed into level 2, so she just let me start that way!

Oddly, I’m the only one of us in level 2. Two people tested into level 4, I’m in level 2, and everyone else is in level 1. We had to do a bunch of silly paperwork and running around to get everything set up, and we still didn’t finish before we had to leave, but we can finish that mess on Monday when we start our classes.

We got back to the house around 10ish for a 10:30 meeting, which was basically just a short description of what we’d be doing for the rest of the day. We got to take a tour of all of our ministry sites, praying at each site. This was very exciting for all of us, since we’d only been to one site and hadn’t even gotten to put a full effort into that experience.

We first went to El Colli, divided into El Campo (a dirt field with patches of grass and patches of trash) and La Cancha (a playground). I was in the El Campo team, so we were dropped off first. We walked around praying individually for about 15 minutes before coming together to pray a blessing over the whole place. I got some interesting insight about that place. I saw army ants crawling all over the place and started thinking about needing more soldiers in the Lord’s army, how we would need to crawl on our bellies in humiliation at times and would need to carry burdens much larger than ourselves at times, but how if we work tirelessly and with God’s will in mind and heart, we will build something much greater than the surface can show. We also had a prophesy of life returning to the area, as evidenced by the near jungle on the perimeter. It was definitely an eye-opening trip.

Next, we packed up the van and headed to our youth center, La Fusion. This place is amazing. It’s in a completely broken area of town where you can feel the oppression and depression all around you, but there’s this place above a nail salon that has brightly-colored walls, ping-pong, foosball, carpetball (this game is amazing, so I’ll have to post a video someday), beautiful high arched brick ceilings, and a basketball court in the back. It’s so clearly a lighthouse in the area, and we each took a turn to pray against the strongholds affecting kids in the area.

We then headed off to one of the college campuses (CUCEA) to have lunch, meet the Chi Alpha group on campus, and prayer-walk the campus with them. Lunch was interesting, because I ordered first and got my food last. It was delicious though (chiles rellenos), so I didn’t complain. We got to walk with Jensen, who is from a small island country I can’t remember in the Caribbean. He was a great guide and we got a good idea of the culture on the campus, which gave us knowledge of what to pray for.

After CUCEA, we scooted over to another university where Angela teaches English (UTEG). This was easily the most uncomfortable I have ever been. On top of being cranky already from wearing jeans in Mexican heat and being sweaty, coupled with being itchy from mosquito bites, smashed together with having spent the entire day crammed into a hot van with people who were all talking the entire time, I was the last one into the classroom, so I got stuck with the crazy girls. You know those girls in high school who try to corrupt any wholesome guy who shows them the slightest bit of kindness? I had to work with them. First, they wanted me to teach them how to say breast implants in English, so they could put it on their homework as things they would accomplish in the coming years. Then, they asked me out for tequila and dancing, explaining that one of them was an exotic dancer. This was not my favorite 45 minutes in life. Richie tried to rescue me, but they dismissed him and went back to attacking their prey. Eventually, Angela took pity on me and started a class-wide game of hangman.

Finally, we escaped that place. On the way out, I had a short conversation with Carolyn about my time spent as an atheist, which I still have to finish. We then took a trip to UNIVA, a private Catholic university several blocks from our house. We prayer-walked the campus in one group and met a couple people who our leaders were friends with from last year, then we got ditched. Our leaders left a second year student (Justin) with us and took the van home, telling us it was our task to get home safely for dinner, with the caveat that Justin wasn’t allowed to do anything except keep us alive. I started walking to the nearest exit, which happens to be on the opposite side of campus from our house. Stacia corrected our course and got us going in the right direction (this should have been a sign that I should not be leading the charge on this day, although I’m usually the best direction person I know). Richie and I asked the guards at the gate how to get to our house. They gave very easy and clear directions…which we both heard wrong. They said “derecho” and we heard “derecha.” This seems like a small difference to you non-spanish speakers, but derecho means straight and derecha means right. Considering they were talking about the first intersection, we got ourselves in trouble at the start. We ended up going way out of our way, Brittany almost passed out from dehydration (we’re all adjusting to this altitude and bottled water only thing), were given three sets of bad directions before getting ourselves straightened out, and finally got home. It took us about 45 minutes. Upon getting back, Justin told us of our mistake and explained that it’s about a 5 minute walk if we’d gone straight, and that we come out at the corner that is literally 1 house away from ours. Awesome.

Throughout the day we were faced with tons of riddles from Matt. Most of us enjoyed them and rose to the challenge. Some people didn’t. I was one of those that did. I’m usually good at riddles and answered a lot of them, so I had fun with it, despite the very vocal protestations of some of our less riddle-friendly compatriots.

After a quick dinner, several of us went to play ultimate frisbee at the Autonoma campus. Normally, we’ll be able to join in with the games on Thursdays, but they were practicing for their tournament this weekend so we just took one of their players and played our own side game, which ended 7-6 at dark. It was a great game and a lot of fun and we kept everyone involved without getting ultra-competitive. We all really enjoyed it.

Upon returning home, we faced one last challenge to regain a portion of our toiletries. Matt gave us two ropes and blindfolded two of our team members, who were also instructed not to speak. He then interwove the ropes and faced the two members towards one another. Over an hour later after many failed attempts, swappings of the rope holders, removal of blindfolds, Matt took Phoenicia downstairs and showed her how to do it, once, quickly. She wasn’t allowed to approach or speak to the rope-holders, and she couldn’t quite communicate it. Stacia went next and, in typical Stacia fashion, came bounding up the stairs and couldn’t contain her excitement. About 15 seconds later, we all rejoiced. Then we received 1 stick of deoderant, 1 bottle of shampoo, and 1 bottle of conditioner. We were told that we got to choose one item for the guys, one for the girls, and one to be shared. Loree suggested that the guys get the deoderant, the girls get the conditioner, and the shampoo be shared. This made sense to all of us, so I poured some shampoo into a cup for the guys and handed the bottle to the girls, then we all went to take showers and go to bed.

Boot Camp Day 3. Wednesday

// September 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Holy Random Batman!, I just started writing and..., Life, Uncategorized

Wednesday felt weird. Maybe it’s because we slept until a reasonable hour. The whole day is kind of a blur at this point, but I know Carolyn led devotions and brought a level of reverence for God we hadn’t heard yet. I was moved by what she shared.

Most of our day was spent staring at the front of the living room while we were flooded with information on Mexican culture, respect, and talking with Pastor Daniel, who heads one of our partner churches. He gave us many many insights on both the Mexican cultural heritage and on today’s customs and practices. He also filled us in on a lot of little things worth remembering, like hand gestures, slang phrases, and celebrities. We should be a lot more culturally relevant because of his time spent with us.

Much of the day was also spent studying the history of the church, particularly Catholicism and the path to Mexico’s present-day picture. Today, between 75-95% of Mexicans will identify themselves as Catholics. Much like in the United States, many of those who affiliate themselves with a church do not necessarily practice the beliefs or even attend services. We also got the opportunity to speak on Skype with a highly-respected theologian who grew up in a Protestant church, but converted to Catholicism. He gave us many insights into true Catholic dogmas, practices, and the original and present-day reasoning behind some of their traditions. He also was happy to answer the peppering of questions we threw at him, occasionally regretfully admitting that some of the Catholic traditions were very poorly understood in specific churches. However, that isn’t the point. We were trying to have a conversation on unity and working as one body for one Christ and for one purpose, so we each brought faults to the table. He told us the history of the Catholic church in Mexico and explained why it was so strong here. Additionally, we gained some insight as to the challenges we would face as white, American, pentecostal missionaries. We have a lot of work to do and it’s going to be way harder than we thought, but worth every drop of blood, drop of sweat, and tear.