Nuevo Laredo
Entry posted by Etcetere
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Truly was awesome. There's that whole "religious" guideline here on BZP, and I'll try to respect that. But I mean, come on! It's sad I have to hold back such good news.
Yes, I went on a mission trip with my church and got to reach nearly 1000 people with the Message. It was small, only 16 of us, and only for one weekend, but we partnered up with a ministry down there which boosted our ranks a bit.
We spent about 15 minutes for restroom/sandwich break when we got there, then jumped right in to our first site, a youth group. Take about ninety people in a small, cinderblock, four-lightbulb room and loud, hard rock praise and fajitas cooking, a few dozen degrees closer to the equator, plus the Fire we all had inside us, and it was easily over 110 degrees; and we created our own humidity. So yeah, it was interesting to pretend to be dying on the cross in one of our skits, with sweat literally and I mean VERY literally pouring off me. Ah well. We accomplished what we set out to do.
We spent the other days setting up sites in plazas and parks, using hilarious crowd-grabbing skits like Contagious. I'll run through that in a moment. Then we used our more meaningful dramas to share the message, and spent one-on-one time with the people afterwards, sharing and praying. Awesome awesome.
Sunday night was spent in a brand new colonia of Nuevo Laredo, where they don't even have cement blocks yet - it's just plywood shacks, all off in the outskirts where it really feels like a desert. The church we visited for the evening service was basically four plywood walls, a grooked roof, and carpet spread over the bare dirt ground. But who cares about material circumstances? We had the best two+ hours of praise I've ever had. And it wasn't even two more hours till the service was finally over.
If anything I've learned, it's definately been appreciation. Here in America we have everything we could possibly want if we lived in a third world country, and more than we could have imagined. Yet we're still so plagued with "I-want I-want, I-need I-need". Most of the houses in that colonia were smaller than my bedroom. The computer I'm writing on right now could be beyond their entire family fortune. Once you cross the Rio Grande, you can literally look back over the river and see the nice buildings, then look right next to you and see cinderblock shacks. We Americans don't realize how much of a blessing it is to flush our toilet paper! Now that's a habit you learn to break fast!
I wonder why it's so hard to be thankful? To really, really be grateful? Naw, we gotta have the designer clothes, the Abercrombie jeans that look like they've gone through a paper shredder a few dozen times anyway, and those whatever-name-brand $300 sunglasses that really look like just plain white plastic. WHY? And even if we're in the Wal-Mart and Target crew, we still don't realize how much we have. Whatever it is just never seems to be enough. Even though we all acknowledge money can't buy happiness, we still go through life trying to prove it can.
Take a moment and think about that, everyone.
(o)
Yes, I went on a mission trip with my church and got to reach nearly 1000 people with the Message. It was small, only 16 of us, and only for one weekend, but we partnered up with a ministry down there which boosted our ranks a bit.
We spent about 15 minutes for restroom/sandwich break when we got there, then jumped right in to our first site, a youth group. Take about ninety people in a small, cinderblock, four-lightbulb room and loud, hard rock praise and fajitas cooking, a few dozen degrees closer to the equator, plus the Fire we all had inside us, and it was easily over 110 degrees; and we created our own humidity. So yeah, it was interesting to pretend to be dying on the cross in one of our skits, with sweat literally and I mean VERY literally pouring off me. Ah well. We accomplished what we set out to do.
We spent the other days setting up sites in plazas and parks, using hilarious crowd-grabbing skits like Contagious. I'll run through that in a moment. Then we used our more meaningful dramas to share the message, and spent one-on-one time with the people afterwards, sharing and praying. Awesome awesome.
Sunday night was spent in a brand new colonia of Nuevo Laredo, where they don't even have cement blocks yet - it's just plywood shacks, all off in the outskirts where it really feels like a desert. The church we visited for the evening service was basically four plywood walls, a grooked roof, and carpet spread over the bare dirt ground. But who cares about material circumstances? We had the best two+ hours of praise I've ever had. And it wasn't even two more hours till the service was finally over.
If anything I've learned, it's definately been appreciation. Here in America we have everything we could possibly want if we lived in a third world country, and more than we could have imagined. Yet we're still so plagued with "I-want I-want, I-need I-need". Most of the houses in that colonia were smaller than my bedroom. The computer I'm writing on right now could be beyond their entire family fortune. Once you cross the Rio Grande, you can literally look back over the river and see the nice buildings, then look right next to you and see cinderblock shacks. We Americans don't realize how much of a blessing it is to flush our toilet paper! Now that's a habit you learn to break fast!
I wonder why it's so hard to be thankful? To really, really be grateful? Naw, we gotta have the designer clothes, the Abercrombie jeans that look like they've gone through a paper shredder a few dozen times anyway, and those whatever-name-brand $300 sunglasses that really look like just plain white plastic. WHY? And even if we're in the Wal-Mart and Target crew, we still don't realize how much we have. Whatever it is just never seems to be enough. Even though we all acknowledge money can't buy happiness, we still go through life trying to prove it can.
Take a moment and think about that, everyone.
(o)
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