Mexico Mission Trip

I am back from Mexico. I traveled down to Monterrey with New Life Presbyterian Church, and when they left on Saturday, I waited with some of the missionaries for the second group from my home church: Christ Community Church. The two weeks spent there were very different, but both were blessings in their own way.

During the first week, we ran a VBS for Bethel Church in Apodaca, a suburb of Monterrey. It is a lower-middle class suburb by Mexican standards, which means we Americans see it as a slum. Three-room houses are “the norm”. The people have almost no sense of “personal space,” at least not as Americans see it. Their normal conversation distance is about 18 inches, compared to the 3 feet that we are used to. They hug constantly. It is refreshingly sincere.

At the end of the first week was a long, tearful goodbye with the kids from the church. Although I didn’t burst into tears, I will miss several of the kids. Hugo in particular. He was in my VBS group (6-7 year-olds), and was adorably precocious. My favorite example: Hugo was sitting in my lap for snack time. Lydia was passing out snacks to our group, and as she gave Hugo his cup, he said “Thank you” in English. Thrilled, she said “Aww! You’re welcome, Hugo!” and walked off grinning. Hugo turned to one of his fellow kids and – get this – wiggled his eyebrows (“That’s how it’s done, amigo.”)! I almost died laughing.

The second week was very different for me. The suburb was very “westernized,” and was more upper-class. Some of my 8-year-olds had cell phones! They had adopted the American 3-foot conversation distance, and hugged rarely.

The biggest difference for me was the translation. During the first week, I was used almost constantly as a translator. There were three of us out of the 22-person group who knew Spanish, so I was used a lot. Well, during the second week, apparently it had been circulated around the Mexican church that Nadia and Diane were the Spanish-speakers for our group, and nobody else spoke passable Spanish. People refused to talk to me. The kids wouldn’t do what I asked them to during VBS (“Get in a line.” Blank stare. “En fila! Por fa’ hagan una fila!” Blank stare.) and the teacher wouldn’t talk to anyone either.

So on Wednesday, Nadia left the women’s ministry and took over my group, and I went off with Theo, the pastor of the church. Nadia was an instant hit with the kids (She couldn’t pry them off with a stick if she wanted to), and the pastor was the only Mexican who figured out that I can speak Spanish. He used me as his personal translator for everything, which helped me feel useful. But more importantly, we talked about my feeling useless during the week and my bitterness about it all.

I went to Mexico not planning on learning anything about myself. I was planning on being used. That’s all. And that’s what happened during the first week. God used me plenty, and I loved it. I reveled in it. Then the second week, I was useless. The kids gave me weird looks whenever I’d so much as glance in their direction. The adults would pantomime what they wanted me to do. The other Americans were having a blast. And the worst part was my response to it all: I started resenting the whole thing.

Theo helped me see it, and then he helped me be useful again. It was humbling.