Bernal Update (Part II)

Update to Back to Mexico (Part I):

I forgot some important details about the soccer tournament on Sunday (since I now have my journal). Apparently the mayor of Bernal started this soccer tournament but wanted someone to run it. Several months before that Richard and Gadiel had expressed an interest in starting their own soccer tournament and the mayor had said no because he didn't like the church. By the time the mayor wanted to start up a different soccer tournament and Richard & Gadiel expressed interest in running it, the mayor said it would be alright. While we were helping at the tournament the mayor showed up to watch! Ron was able to talk to the mayor who was so excited to have our group there that he invited us back again and offered his house for the team to stay in!!! It was quite encouraging for us, as you can imagine, to hear how the Lord had changed the mayor's heart.

Now on to the second installment of the Bernal Update. Wednesday, June 27th, the whole team went to Gadiel's house to pour his concrete roof. After nearly 8 hours of sleep the night before, I was feeling a little more rested but still pretty tired. I think everyone was feeling the same way because Ron challenged us to be bouncing golf balls and sink drains (This was part of a series that week of "Tales from the Garage." He had already challenged us to be nails, used by God as we were meant to be used; floodlights, allowing our light to shine without holding back; and penguins, encouraging one another and guarding against sarcasm). Our goal for the day was to get our energy from the Lord and let things drain off us, even if something bothered us. I clearly saw the Lord use that message to get the students (and me!) focused and working hard. Several times throughout the day students could be found taking a short break to pray for strength. Pouring the roof consisted of serious work. We had a cement mixer (thankfully) which mixed one bag of cement with two buckets (5 gal. each) of water, one bucket of sand and one bucket of gravel (our pictures include at least one of the cement mixer). Then the cement would be tipped out onto the ground where men would shovel cement into more 5 gal. buckets and our group (along with some neighborhood kids and church members) carried the buckets about 20 feet to an assembly line standing on a ramp to the roof. The carriers would hand their bucket off to the assembly line and the line of 3-4 people passed the bucket up to be handed off to the guys on the roof who carried buckets to the pourers. The pourers... poured the buckets... obviously... and sent the empty buckets back to another line which handed empty buckets to the guys bringing the cement from the mixer to the assembly line. Occasionally the buckets would begin to collect cement at the bottom and need to be rinsed out, so we had people doing that too. Then you had the groups of people who shoveled gravel and sand and carried water to the cement mixer. Now this may or may not sound like a huge job, but we figured at the end of the day (we were there from about 10 am to 3 or 4 pm) that the group carried approximately 12 tons of cement up to Gadiel's roof. It was an amazing testimony of God's grace that we finished in one day!

Well, Wednesday was longer than that. After Gadiel's, a small group of guys along with Joelle and I, went to meet some Bernal guys for a basketball tournament. Joelle and I walked around looking for kids to play with (jump rope and catch with a playground ball) while the guys played basketball. (The rest of the team went door-to-door again and I heard that at least five people prayed to accept Christ!) We walked up and down a few streets asking kids if they wanted to play and none did so we went back to the court. Eventually a few kids showed up and pretty soon we had about 7-8 kids. We played for a while, but had to get back to Enrique & Yolanda's house for the Mexico vs. Brazil soccer game. Part of our door-to-door visits consisted of inviting people to watch the game on a projector outside of Enrique & Yolanda's house. For those of you who don't know, fútbol is SERIOUS in Mexico. When there is a game on, everyone is watching it! Unfortunately, it started to pour while we were playing with the kids so it turned out that everyone was inside Enrique & Yolanda's when we got there. But, we were able to invite the kids to come with us and their families. We ended up bringing three kids with us when we left the basketball court. Once we arrived at Enrique & Yolanda's we found out that the mayor was going to turn on this musical lighted fountain in honor of the visiting Americans! Hopefully I'll get the videos of that up soon. It was quite amazing and it's expensive to run so it was a huge honor from the mayor. Again, what a blessing to see the Lord working in his heart! As you can probably guess, it was another late night.

Thursday morning was the earliest morning as we met for breakfast at 7:15 so we could pack up the bus and leave by 8:30 or 9 am to drive to Mexico City. We arrived around 12:30 pm at a small Christian school (with 10 students this year and 20, I think, already registered for the fall!) and a group of us went to a park to play with some of their students (four were between 5 and 6 and the rest were junior high-high school aged). I played with the kindergarteners (twins Elias & Eliseo, Samuel and Daniel) with three others from our team. We came back to the school (which is also where the church meets) for a 2 pm lunch, which was wonderful, and then began working on the school. Some cleaned the massive tarps that protect the outdoor patio area where we all ate meals and met for church (later); some helped wash & prepare the walls for painting; some organized a whole room filled with donated books; and others began painting. All that was done until about 8:30 or 9 pm when we met our host families and went to their houses for dinner. Happy and I were incredibly blessed to be together! We were expecting to be apart the whole week so this was wonderful! We stayed with Raul & Christina who have three kids (ages 20, 18 and 16), but only the youngest still lives with them in their apartment. We had dinner together and tried to communicate (both couples with a Spanish-English dictionary in hand) for a little while before they brought us upstairs to show us around. They gave up their room for us and we still aren't sure where they slept! Downstairs there was a small eating area that connected with a tiny "living room" area. The kitchen was attached, although we couldn't see in there because there was a curtain in the doorway. Some creaky boards served as stairs up to the second floor which had two small bedrooms, another room where Christina did her sewing (she's a seamstress) and a bathroom. We were completely blown away by their hospitality and love as we stayed there!

I think I shall end here since most of our readers would need to read this in more than one sitting :-) The third update will be later this week so keep checking for it. Hopefully I'll be able to add some videos as well, but we'll see if the computer decides to cooperate (since it hasn't been lately). Thank you for reading all of this and have a wonderful Tuesday!