Seeing this as we drove to the AIM base from the airport was comforting.
Race 1 is complete. My team got 3rd for team A I think. It was really close though. Most of the teams got into
Palenque the night before (Friday) and shared 3 hotel rooms for about $7 a person. We had to figure out where our finish line, Plaza de Cruces was and how to get there in the morning. The teams that were there kinda collaborated and we all figured out that the
park of
Mayan ruins that we were ending at opened at 8.
Our team walking through Matamoros to the bus station.
We met Janelle that showed us the way to the bus station. She just got back to this area from Texas that she lived in for like 13 years as an illegal alien. She and her husband Jorge (in the background) have a house and everything there that they want to get back to. They are just waiting for the river to go back down so they can get back. Kinda sketchy, but I guess that´s how people do. I didn´t talk to her much, but she seemed real nice and was very eager to help us out. God bless Janelle!
Morgan talking to a local in the Matamoros bus station.
Getting our stuff off the bus in Palenque after about a day and a half on the bus.
Nine guys in one hotel room. Sweet!
Team hupomone at the Mayan ruins.
My team was going to walk out there because we still had to find 2 more people to pray for. We ended up taking a taxi for about $1/person, and it was good that we did because
Clinton wasn’t and still isn’t feeling well. We prayed for the taxi driver even though he didn´t understand any english.
We all ended up running from the park entrance as soon as we bought tickets to the top of the tallest temple and took a picture of 4 of us with the park in the background.
Joy, Annie and Clinton resting at the base of a temple. Clinton
was not feeling well.
Emilie!
We then walked around and sat around for a couple of hours before going back to our hotel base. Then we worked on the logistics of moving everyone and our incredibly huge pile of
luggage (that we stashed in a hotel room) to the Bible college 2 miles away that we are going to be at for at least the next week. We also had to buy food for that amount of time too. It’s rather incredible, and a little overwhelming, to think about all the logistics that it takes to coordinate this many people.
So now we are at the Bible college. It’s a relatively nice setup: electricity, shelter & beds, a kitchen, toilets & showers and a worship hall. There’s also several fruit trees around: grapefruit, lemon, orange, lime, papaya, mango, banana and some kind of local fruit called maima (I highly doubt that that is spelled right)
We will have a week of more training here mixed with some ministry experience too.
Personally, I’m doing well. Physically I am great, mentally I’m still a little overwhelmed and not trusting God enough with everything. I feel like that may be the biggest thing that God is going to teach me this year is how to truly trust him with literally every single thing in my life. I think about the things that I have to do and get through and I feel like it is too much. Like, how in the world am I going to establish relationships and talk to people here if there’s the language barrier? Ya know? That kinda ties in with my feelings of not being real excited about short term mission trips (which this trip is basically 11 short term trips) as opposed to long term ones. I feel like ministry is so much more effective when you can establish more long-term and deeper invested relationships with people you can fully communicate with. And I feel like that is what I am called to. Perhaps I just need to look at The World Race as more of a training module and learning experience for me. I want to think that I am giving more than I am receiving from this trip, but that just may not end up being the case.
Sidenote: I still feel like I have too much stuff. I have less than average for this trip, but I consider myself a simplistic person and don’t like to be bogged down by stuff. And I was thinking today, one thing (perhaps the only thing) that I do not like about photography and being a photographer is that you pretty much have to have a lot of excess stuff that you wouldn’t otherwise have to have. Ya know? I’ve already made a list of things I want to give away or send back, but I don’t want to jump the gun and get rid of something that I might regret getting rid of.
19:46, January 6, 2007
Tim on top of our dorm in a very manly and hobbitish way.
