Monday, July 24, 2006

Monday - The First Day Of Real Work

That's not a joke, today was a wake up call. More specifically, a 6:45am wake up call. For those that don't know me, I only see 6:45 by staying up until then, not the other way around. The only thing that gave me strength? Cocoa Puffs. I totally forgot they turn milk into chocolate milk. Made the morning much better. That may seem like a little thing, but after no sleep, it was a big thing!

So I guess you get the schedule. That lovely breakfast takes place in the commodore (yes, like the old computer system). It's down the street from us, so we have to walk in groups of threes past the four or five infested dogs that live near there. After breakfast, we have our devotion time. Surprisingly, I got stuck on a really simple question, something I do more and more now. Rather than brush over something quickly, I ponder too long now. Here's the question: How is God beautiful? Think about it, you could get stuck for a while.

Then we went to our work sites. A little different than most places, we split into four groups, two work on houses and two do Kids Club (a nine week long VBS), but we only do it for two days, than the groups switch, so everyone gets to do a little of everything. We got Kids first (yay). That's me trying to do crafts with left handed scissors. Notice the concentration. But we did learn a few things. There's a lot of poverty here, although Juarez is considered moderate poverty, still worse than anything in America. Free education lasts until 6th grade. Once done you have a graduation ceremony. If you want to go on, you have pass really hard exams and pay a lot of money. One added catch, schools don't start to teach English until 7th grade.

I also learned some things about myself. I'm not good at soccer. Got schooled badly. I look like some movie star, but not knowing any Spanish movies and not being able to communicate (we learn French in Canada) I have no idea who. I make really ugly masks out of paper plates (their words, not mine), and most importantly, I can speak Spanish Sign Language, which is really a lot of pointing and going "Que?"

One more fun fact, we walked some kids home today. Three kids, one of which I carried on my back until he almost fell asleep. We got to see some of the guard dogs on the way home, not diseased and hungry, but in fences and very, very pissed off! He would have eaten my hand if he could. Still, we took the kids home. Their house was tiny and had a homemade fence built from shipping palates. No gate either, the kids had to climb over them to get into their own house. Reminded me of how every single house in Africa had fences and gates, no matter how cheaply made they were.

After that we had some spare time before dinner, which usually consisted of going to Oscar's, one of the little soda shops run out of someone's house that are every few blocks or our students grabbing their guitars and playing worship.

Our evening activity was a hike. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that yet, so here's one of us hiking from the bunk house to the commodore, just to let you see a little of Juarez. This small mountain showed me a few things too. I kicked one of the small green plants with long leaves and learned those leaves are rock! I bled for quite a while (no one knew, shhh). Also, on the side of the mountain is a message to the city of Juarez that loosely translated says the Bible can save you, read it. It was written in letters painted white that are so huge, you can see them from El Paso. The entire city can see those words. Cool idea.

At the top of the mountain you see two things. Facing south you see the Bible message and cross standing over the entire city as a blessing. Facing north, you see the entire city of Juarez. Here's the funny thing. From that distance and seeing everything, Juarez and El Paso bleed together. If it wasn't for I-10 running through the middle with a huge fence a little south of it, you would think it was all once city, except for the fact that the quality of living jumps a little at that fence. The thought that we discussed after was how the people of Juarez can see America so clearly and so close, yet it's still so far away. It had to be really hard.

The last part of every night is a group time of worship, Youthworks speaks, then we break off into our churches for discussion, where we talked a lot about the impact of the first day and God's beauty, how God is beautiful even here. Family was one of the most common answers, but there are many more. We followed that up with sleep. See you tomorrow :)

T

7 comments:

marciano guerrero said...

Very interesting trip. I know so little about Mexico...so I read everything you wrote and ate it up to live vicariously. Thanks for the journey and journal.

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Anonymous said...

Hey troy, first this is shawn and 2 things. 1. The place we ate was the COMEDOR, spanish for dining room, not the commodore. And 2. (this one not as important) the message said the Bible is the truth, read it.

liz simmonds said...

tough audience...

Troy said...

Apparently a tough audience, but that's Shawn. Sorry I didn't have the message memorized, I was focusing on the person who was sick, and sorry I don't know Spanish, I'm Canadian. The only commodore I know has 64K and a really crappy baseball game with a square ball I played on when I was 8 :)

liz simmonds said...

i'm old enough to remember the commodore 32...we later upgraded to the 64. your office computer sort of reminds me of the 64!