Pirates of the Azufres

And after the big week with the team from NPCC... we went immediately to Horisonte youth camp! It was held at "Los Azufres de Michoacan." I didn't know what Azufres were before I went, but as soon as I stepped out of the bus I knew - sulfer springs. And wow, could we ever smell that! 42 young people, ages 11 to 25 went on this camp...

So, we had quite an adventure to start the Monday morning out with. All 42 of us going to camp met at church at 7am, and tried to load all our stuff onto a small rented bus. It was extremely uncomfortable, but we managed to fit everything. We left the church, them JP got a call from Martin (the pastor) saying that we needed to turn back to the church immediately. So we did, and JP wouldn't tell ANYBODY why... We got back to the church and unloaded all our junk, then the bus LEFT, and we all gathered in the sanctuary. Martin said that when we were leaving and he was stepping off the bus, he smelled alcohol on the bus driver, so we had left and he talked with his wife and some other people, and they said we should get a different bus/bus driver. Which we did. And the bus was way bigger, and the driver wasn't drunk.

So we got the the Azufres 3 hours late, but everyone safe!! And we set up all our tents...

(Shultz, Alex, Leslie, and Adiel)

Most of our tents were "2 person" tents, and many of you know that "2 person tents" means it sleeps ONE comfortably. So many people were rather squished in the tents! But, there was a "5 person tent" also, and we had so many tents that only 3 people stayed in the 5 person one - me, Lauren, and Leslie. We probably got the most comfortable sleep of anyone! (But I say it was fair, me and Lauren are the two biggest girls at the camp, we needed our space!)

We divided the group into three teams for games. Below is the Blue team, the team that I was with:

And each team had a "mascot..." Actually, we didn't have enough bandanas for each person to have a bandana in the color of their team, so the youth pastor brough Lucha Libre (westling) masks of the color of each team so the person who didn't get a bandana could wear that...

Shultz, Joanna, and Dani, the lucky people with the Lucha Libre masks!

Brisa and I can't be around a camera without taking a weird picture of the two of us...

Did I mention that in the confusion of the bus situation in the morning, we forgot ALL the meat, cheese, and eggs for the camp?! Justin and Lluvia drove to the nearest town to buy several dozen eggs and some cheese, and the bus driver came back with the bus on tuesday, so he was nice and brought us our meats!

Here is a fake picture of Leslie, JP, and Janah enjoying molletes (bread rolls with refried beans and cheese - very typical dinner) and hot chocolate.

Sleepy the next morning?! No way!

It's not easy to cook eggs on a "comal" (a large grill that is used to cook Mexican foods like gorditas, sopes, and quesadillas). It took about half an hour before the eggs even started to cook! We got extra protein that morning, as during the cooking time, quite a few "animalitos" found their way into our eggs.

And the big draw of the Azufres - the naturally heated pools!! There are three pools there, all at different temperatures. The coolest one is probably about 90 degrees, the one that I spent all my time in was about 100, and the other one was just too hot in my opinion. If your're wondering, yes, the water does smell somewhat like sulfur!

(Sara, me, Hanía, Fany, and Yetzi with several other people from Horizonte in the background)

Leslie, me, and Fany are the three looking at the camera in this picture

Lunch time... AFTER the meat arrived! Hamburgers cook AWESOME on the comal, and we enjoyed those!!

(Back to front clockwise: Carmelita, Mariana, Leslie, Kristen, Lauren, Sayuri, and Pollita)

Maybe we enjoyed the hamburgers TOO MUCH... We ended up havivng an impromptu "who can shove the bigges bite of burger into their mouths" contest. Shultz, Dani, Adiel, and I participated. The hand at the bottom right is me, and that is the bite that I shoved in my mouth. But they disqualified me as having taken the biggest bite - I was laughing so hard that part of my hamburger fell out of my mouth.

The camp turned out quite well despite the disorganization (the leadership basically played everything by ear, we were unprepared!), but bus mishap, and the food being left behind. The kids didn't even know that we had left the food!!

It was wonderful to see everyone hanging out together - even people who had rarely been involved in the youth group were excited about the games, swimming, and spending time with other people their age. I hope the community built during this camp lasts! I was encouraged on sunday to come into the sanctuary at church and be rushed at by 3 of my high school girls who I had barely known before the camp... they ran up to greet and hug me, and said they missed me the rest of the week!

Spiritually, I hope that some seeds were planted. There were three people at the camp who did not attend Horizonte before the camp - I know that 2 of them are not Christians, I'm not sure about the third. But all three of them were at church this sunday! Please pray from Montse (she is 16, and one of my high school girls), Lalo, and Jazmin. We also heard some positive feed back about our "solo time" at camp - 3 hours that we gave the kids to be alone in the woods with their Bibles and God. I was happy to hear that people enjoyed the time to rest in the Lord and dig into the Word.

Bus problems on the way to camp?! They didn't end yet... On the way back, I noticed that we were passing through the city of Irapuato - it's out of the way to get back to Queretaro from Michocan. At one point we were on a one lane road in the middle of nowhere - my "worst case scenario" brain was thinking that we were all getting kidnapped, but we werent! We didn't have any cel phones that had air time on them (we told the kids not to b ring their phones, so only like 3 leaders had phones), and we were arriving in QRO about 2 hours late. Finally, Martin called and asked where we were when we were like 20 minutes from the church, we said we'd be back in 20. Right after hanging up with him, the bus got a flat tire! We were in the middle of road construction outside of QRO (a 15 minute walk from my house), blocking the only lane going in our direccion. And the spare tire was UNDER all our belongings!! The bus company ended up bringing another bus that we switched to, but parents were a bit worried that we showed up almost 2 hours AFTER we had told Martin that we'd be there in 20 minutes! We got back to church, and I think I can speak for all the leaders when I say we were ready to go into hibernation for a few days after the camp/NPCC team!

You'll have to stay tuned for what happend NEXT for me... And I thought I'd have a restful, un-eventful weekend after the camp... haha!

The Rest of the Story

Here are some more pictures of the short-term team that came from North Point in Atlanta:

Rubén, Job, and Peter playing guitar before youth groups started

Rubén, Job y Peter tocando y cantando antes del grupo de jóvenes

Alyssa, Katherine, Nora, and Lila after youth group

The worship team at Horizonte while the NPCC team was here - both mexicans and gringos! El equipo de alabanza el domingo que estaban los gringos - ambos los de Horizonte y los de North Point tocaban.

The team from North Point. El equpo de Atlanta.

Suzanna, JP, and me

Nora, me, and Alma Rosa

Bryce (a.k.a. YMCA), Chalío, and me

Rebecca, Blake, Micaiah, Chalío, Rubén, Julian, and Dani. A bunch of us from Horizonte accompanied the NPCC group to Bernal, a big rock outside of Queretaro.

Algunos de nosotros de Horizonte fuimos a Bernal con los de North Point.

Edíth, Liz, Brisa, Me, and Kent on the bus from Bernal to QRO

Brisa, Kent, Rubén, and Dani

Weird? Not a Chance!

What happens when four youth leaders are exhausted from spending 14 hours a day with a gringo work team for a week, doing cement and a soccer field, having a massive 60+ people youth group in Global Grounds, climbing a small mountain, planning a youth camp, and buying stuff for the youth camp at 11pm the day before the camp??

THIS:

Adiel being smothered by a bag of 80 bolillos (individual sandwich sized bread rolls) in a VW Bug.

JP and me

Juan a.k.a. "Hulk" trying to safely drive during the madness

More to come about the rest of the NPCC short-term team and the Horizonte youth camp!

Episodes From a Short-Term Team

As I previously mentioned, we have a team of high school students from Atlanta here working with us this week. They arrived on Monday evening.

Orientation
I was working on preparations for our upcoming youth camp, and got a call from Whitney that we needed like 12 2-3 liters of pop for the orientation meeting. I got the call about 30 minutes before the meeting started, and I was already on the bus. I was thinking, "wow, how am I ever going to get 12 big bottles of pop from a store to the hotel..." So I called JP. It turned out that he and Adiel were just leaving the church, which is a few blocks from a grocery store that I was passing at that very moment on the bus. So I got off, grabbed all the pop, and they were there by the time I paid. I LOVE Mexico, I hardly had to carry anything because here, the guys have to do stuff like that for the girls! So I got off easy!

The teens from Atlanta aren't nearly as scary as I had imagined. They're actually quite nice and cooperative! (not that I had a pessimistic attitude to begin with or anything...) I got my first round of translating WHILE someone is talking. Julian was giving the orientation, and since we were only 3 who don't understand english, he didn't pause to let me translate to spanish, I just sat in the back with Martin, Adiel, and JP trying to listen to english, think, and speak in spanish all at the same time. To anyone who translates like this on a regular basis - I now have TONS of respect for you!!

So, I woke up Monday night with a bad stomache ache, and ended up spending a couple hours in the bathroom. I was so worried beacuase I really needed to be with the team on Tuesday. I started feeling better in the morning, so I just arrived like an hour late to the church... Not sure what that little bout of sicknes was...

The Soccer Field
At the church, the teens (both gringos and mexicans) are putting in a soccer field over the bumpy dirt area where we normally play soccer after church. Wow, is it ever a big job!

Here is some of the dirt that was delivered to the church to cover the bumpy hard dirt with so we can eventually lay the grass. We spread it all by hand (picks, shovels, and rakes).

Sarai, Chelo, Kristen, and Lauren hanging out after working...

Lucy (organizes the awesome food for everyone!), me, and Brisa...
Day Two

I am learing more about cultural differences, and that NOT everyone has the same feelings and ideas as me!! I translate between the english speakers and spanish speakers during the work at the church. Martin, Fany, Chalio, and JP also speak english, so that helps a bit, but when bigger decisions are involved, the leaders come to me. Ok, that's fine, that's what I'm here for. But translating attitudes is really difficult!! At one point, the Horizonte leaders thought the leader of the Atlanta team was angry with them, but he was only trying to figure out the most efficient and simple way to make the field as good as possible. Other times, the gringos just didn't understand why we can't: get a big machine to level the field, get the dirt and grass to come at the exact time we need it, and things like that. I am in an interesting position as I can see both sides of things like this. It's definitely a good learning experience.

Here is a picture of the field at lunch time of day two...

Youth Leader Training

I spent the late afternoon with the other Horizonte youth leaders meeting with the youth leaders from North Point (Atlanta). They explained to us their model of small groups in youth ministry and how they create relevant environments for youth of Atlanta. They have 500+ teens that come weekly to they giant church, so we are definitely working on a different scale than they are, but the concepts that they have shared are very helpful. Meetings like these, as interesting as they are, make me feel like I have ADD - having everything translated doubles the time on everything. Julian translated the entire meeting, and it had to be super frustrating as most of the mexicans understand some english, and "helped" hime choose the right words... Julian will not be at the second half of the meeting on thursday, so I am the translator. If anyone is actually reading this and you think about me about noon tomorrow, please pray for me: that I can pay attention, correctly relay the information being given, and not get terribly frustrated when people correct my translation! I am excited to get help on organizing our youth group a bit more effectively through these meetings!!

Random Pictures

Here is a picture of some yogurt that Brisa's mom bought for her adult children who live at her home, and made them each drink one... Yep, you are seeing the picture correctly on the yogurt label - pineapple, cactus (nopal), and celery. In yogurt.

And here is a picture that we made for a 6-week youth group series: cuerpo o puerco (body or pig). It sounds WAYYY better in spanish, it was a series on how to honor God with our bodies (using our hands to help and not hurt, guarding our eyes and hearts from things that make us stumble, etc) so that we have good bodies and not pig bodies. (The words for body and pig are kind of similar in spanish). So we decided to take funny pictures of the youth staff and put our heads on pig bodies...
Left to Right: JP, Aaron, me, Jenn, Julian, Adiel, Nadia.

It's All Over...

Four more years... Yep the World Cup ended yesterday. After Brasil got beat in the quarter finals, I wasn't near as interested in it as I was earlier. But of course I watched the final. France v. Italy, and thankfully Italy won. Of all the european countries, Italy is the one that I would most want to win. But in 2010, watch out world, the 2005 "under 17" world champion was MEXICO, so we should be all set for a big group or 21 year old Mexicans to knock all other countries out of the competition! I hope...

Here is me with the Italians celebrating their victory!

Well, this is probably the last blog I'll be writing for the next 10 days or so. Starting today, no, actually, starting two days ago - I have stuff to be at/people to see/things to do from 9am until 10pm. Then thursday the 20th, after three days at youth camp with 40 other young people, I should be ready to die in my bed for a day. No, I am really looking forward to all that we have going on for the next 2 weeks! Today, the 40-high-school-student team from Atlanta arrives to help put in a nice soccer field at our church, to help with a work project at an orphanage, and hang out with the youth of Horizonte! During that time we'll also be having a massive youth group (I have NO idea how 60+ people are going to fit in Global), and going to Bernal (a big rock that you can climb in the Queretaro outback). I'm helping with translation during the work projects. Then the day that the team leaves, the Horizonte youth leave for Michoacan for our 3-day camp. It's absolutely amazing how my experiences in Honduras match up EXACTLY with my responsibilities here in QRO - helping to organize a short term work team, translating for them, being in charge of the games at camp, teaching a worshop at camp, etc. Just that I have a lot more responsibilites here. I wasn't IN CHARGE of anything in Honduras, just helping and observing, and wow is it ever helpful that I had those experiences!!

Please be praying for us these next two weeks. Rebecca, and intern who arrived saturday, is going back home tuesday as her grandpa unexpectedly died a few hours before she left the States on saturday. She'll come back to Mexico on thursday. Pray for me as I get cranky with little sleep, and I won't be getting much for a while! Pray for the youth leadership as we try to finish camp preparations while the gringos are here. Pray that the short term team will have good attitudes and be a blessing to Horizonte.

Thanks!! I'll be ready with pictures and updates maybe the 21st! And me and the other gringas go to Guanajuato (where I did spanish classes for 5 weeks) on the 22nd! yay!

Oh yes, and Felipe Calderon is the new president of Mexico, he'll take office this December! He'd be my choice for president!!

Yummy!

SEE!?!?! I CAN cook! The other day we had a meeting at church for those of us who are planning the upcoming youth camp. The meeting just so happened to be during lunch time, so I said that I was going to bring my lunch to the meeting. Then I remembered, "Hey, this is Mexico, I can't just bring food for me and eat it in front of everybody else!" So I thought maybe a potluck would be good. But the other 3 people coming to the meeting were two single guys and a guy whose wife wasn't going to come. So that's when I decided to just bring food for everyone! And it ended up that Nadia (the wife) came too, so 5 of us enjoyed about half of what I served... in the house that I live in here, the 5 of us could eat DOUBLE what I made!

So, clock-wise from the tortillas, we have tortillas, a chicken and vegetable guiso (basically for a guiso you just invent some kind of sauce (I almost always do tomato sauce), and throw in whatever meat and vegetables you have hanging around the house...) Chori-frijoles (black beans with chorizo sausage), guacamole (YES, it IS homemade by me), and red rice.

The only complaint I had from anyone was that they don't like zucchini.

Also, I found out this week, upon calling my Honduran brother Franklin for his birthday, that Suyapa is going to the USA in December!! I'm really excited for her! I wish I could be in Oregon and have her come up then, but I must choose between buying myself AND Suyapa plane tickets to Oregon, or just buying myself a ticket to Honduras and I'll still get to see Suyapa plus the rest of my family and friends. I choose going to Honduras. So that brings me back to cooking... Suyapa will be gone for the first week that I'm there, so I am officially the "chef encargada." I am just hoping that doesn't mean that I am in charge of the Christmas meal too... last year we had about 30 people in our house for Christmas! I talked to my Honduran next-door-neighbor Luisa today though, and happened to mention that, and she said her and her mom and sister will at least help! I feel comfortable cooking for up to maybe (MAYBE) 8 people, but NOT a Christmas dinner for 30! haha!

PAN or Peje

Mexican elections were Sunday. I asked several people when we would know the results of the elections (obviously thinking of elections in the US, where we don't know for weeks!), and everyone said "we'll know late tonight, like 1am, or tomorrow morning." They say that it's NEVER taken longer than a few hours (polls close at 6pm). Well, this time it took longer. As far as I know, there still hasn't been a "for-sure" decision made. The newspapers this morning say that it looks like Calderon won (YAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!) but I don't know if that's the final answer. We'll see!

I got my visa today to live here!! YES! I'm a legal immigrant!!

Oh, and it's the 4th of July. Happy 4th of July! I'm doing nothing special today... the first year EVER. I've been in Brasil and Honduras on the 4th before, but I've always done some sort of celebrating... even in Honduras when we had a piñata and went out for chinese food. That still counts as celebrating! I was going to make deviled eggs to take to our youth camp planning meeting, but I forgot to boil eggs, so I guess I won't. I always think of deviled eggs as 4th of July food...

Anyway, have a good one everybody!!