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!