Today is our first free day off, not traveling and no set plans till 9pm, so we started our fun last night! A group of us went into town to walk around and find something to do. We were looking for some fun restaurant for some snacks and a relaxed place to chill after our intense week. However, ministry never has a day off. As we walked down the street, several walked right past a man on the street without noticing, but certain others noticed him and stopped to talk to him.
Shawna, the paramedic from Canada, checked to see if he was ok, and discovered he was really drunk, not hard to find out. Several of our group spent the next hour with him, fed him food and water and tried to talk to him. He didn´t sober up that much, but by the end went from not knowing his own name, to talking about the Lord. I was ahead of this group, so didn´t take part in this, but had another cool exerience.
We found a cool restaurant with a balcony and as we looked at the menu, a young man came behind us to check it out as well. I am quite sure i´d seen him earlier in the evening, and I was interested in his story, but nobody really talked with him at that moment. We went to the dining room on the balcony, chose a table for our group, and when the guy came up, he sat at the table next to us. Again, I wondered his story, where is he from, what is he doing, why is he in Palenque? But I was sitting at the far end of the table from him, so I continued conversation in our group.
Soon enough though, Eric had begun chatting with him, so I jumped in, intrigued. He was dark skinned with longish black hair and short beard, a bandana on his head, and travelers clothes. Though our discussion, we learned SriRam (forgive my spelling of that) was born in India, raised in LA (I think) and now works in theater in New York. He actually toured with ‘WICKED’ for 6 months this year all over the states! On his time off, he travels outside the U.S. and has spent the last month and a half passing through Mexico and South America. He actually was in Palenqe earlier this week, while we were, and then spent 2 days in Guatemala. He passed on some good travel tips to all of us, particularly the ones headed to Guatemala. He has been all over the place, including Egypt and Turkey. I would have loved to glean more travel info from him, but our time ran short. I really enjoyed our time talking with him and we all wished eachother safe travels and said goodbye. He leaves Palenque tonight, taking time to stop in beach area in Mexico, on his way home.
Our day off today consists of catching up on some e-mails, some chill time with some others outside my team, a team lunch out, and hopefully some laundry!! We will be staying at the Bible school for today and tomorrow but will be taking off on Monday morning for a new housing location, yet to be determined. There are couple options in the works, and Chad is working on it. Fun times!!
