Picture it. You’re near the equator. You’re sun-burned to the crisp, but you and your team-mates strap your sandals on and head for the hills. It’s literally on a hill where you’re told to pick-ax the foundation of an adobe house for a mother and her daughter. Sweat comes pouring down our face as you swing the instrument that continually comes loose, so you warn your friends to stand clear.
You walk back to a church where you wait for your ministry contact to bring rice and beans, maybe a couple veggies and a chunk of meat. Eat it all cause you will definitely need the energy! After lunch, you’re wondering where everybody went because they’re taking a siesta. And just then the pastora announces, surprisingly, that you all have the day off and it’s time to go swimming! She speaks in a language you can hardly understand, so you celebrate and go with what you think she said. You don’t have your swim suit, but that’s no problem, apprently. Off you go, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with your team-mates in the back of a truck. You breath in the cool air while praying that Old Betsy makes it up the hill.
Now you have a skip in your step cause you just can’t wait to dive into the pool. On the other hand, you’re not sure what to expect. Little do you know that when you arrive, you’re gonna find an empty pool and a couple of guys scrubbing out the algae. Your ministry contact looks confused just like you do. So then you shrug your shoulders at your team-mates and try not to laugh too hard. You’re then gonna have a nice chat with pastora, coming up with a few interpretations amongst yourselves. When you all agree that scrubbing the pool might be why they brought you there, you jump in as the pastora shakes her head. The two guys get all confused and watch a mass of Gringos take their job.
If that happens, you will most likely look like this.
Fast-forward two days. You just finished stomping through mud to make something like cement, and you’re back at the church for lunch. Mud is lining you legs up to your knees and you look like you just crawled out of a WWII trench. It’s the hottest day you’ve encountered. Your ministry contact smiles and says that it’s too hot to finish the work day, and that tomorrow your whole squad will go back to the swimming pool! Understandably so, skepticism arises in your mind, but you smile and say thanks and wonder what might have been lost in the translation.
The next day, a truck comes and takes your squad of fifty-four in rounds to the pool. You smile cause this time there is water in the pool and you don’t have to scrub anything at all!
And that is how the Gringos got wet…
