Mexico Day 5

Day 5

Today we had the church service in Paamul.  Doug spoke on Philippians 4:10 and titled his sermon In The Mean Time.  It was a great service.

After the service we rested for a bit before driving to Akumal, a small resort, restaurant, shopping community.  We ate lunch here and then picked up a few souvenirs for Shawn, Caleb and Amelia.

In past years, they have had three church services on Sunday.  One in Playa del Carmen, one in Paamul and one in Chan Chen.  That meant a very long day and a lot of driving.  We didn't find out until we got there, that someone else has taken over the service in Playa and they moved the one in Chan Chen to Saturdays.  So, we pretty much had a free day this day too.

Mexico Day 4

Day 4

Happy Valentine's Day

Today was the church service out in Chan Chen.  We got there a little bit early and ate some sandwiches for lunch, then set up the chairs.  The women cut tissue paper for a craft we were going to do with the children.  After a few full cargo van deliveries of villagers, it was time for the service to start.  Doug spoke in Spanish and Elliseo, a teenage villager, interpreted in Mayan.  

I was almost immediately brought to tears.  I could understand just enough to know that he was telling them about the love of Jesus and I wondered if they understood at all.  Elliseo was so passionate in his delivery, that I almost wanted to should Amen!  Doug then played them a song and the way Elliseo spoke to them while it was playing, was beautiful!  I wish I knew what he was saying!

 After that, Doug dismissed the children so that Darla could speak to them about el dia del amor y la amistad - the day of love and friendship.  After she spoke to them a little bit, we showed them how to make tissue paper flowers.

 Some of the bigger girls put hearts onto a board so that the children could write the names of family or friends they loved on them.  We also passed out suckers and Valentine's Day stickers to them.

Again, I felt like our time with them was too short.  I would have loved to have spent the rest of the afternoon with them.

As all of the villagers began piling back into the van, Julia, who we had met in the village a couple of days earlier,  gave Vickie, Debbie, Darla and myself, each a different bracelet she had made us.  That was such a sweet gift that I will cherish forever.

I may not know what Doug spoke during the service, but we can only hope and pray that those who came, and continue to come each week, will open their hearts to what they hear.  That they will eventually accept Jesus into their hearts and take that back into the village with them.  

Mexico Day 3

Day 3

Today was our free day.  Lonnie and Debbie opted to relax in their room, while Vince, Vickie, Isaac and I at breakfast at the restaurant on the grounds and went to Jardin del Eden - a cenote (sin-o-tay) , which means "a deep natural well or sinkhole, formed by the collapse of surface limestone that exposes ground water underneath".  A lot of these are down deep caves, but this one was pretty open.  The water is crystal clean and chilly!

 Most of the people had snorkels and were even scuba diving here.

The rocks below look to be just at the surface of the water, but they really aren't.  

 Isaac and I braved the cold water, getting in where the sun was right on us.  

 We swam out to that big rock behind us and sat and watched people jumping from the cliff.  Isaac was trying to persuade me to jump the entire time.  

 I finally talked myself into it.  I mean, how many times would I have the chance to jump off a 12ft. cliff into a cenote?!

I'm still trying to talk myself into it here.

We were supposed to jump at the same time, but Isaac let me jump alone.

 It actually wasn't that bad!  Although, I landed on my thighs, kind of like I was sitting on the water, and that stung pretty bad.  Isaac ended up jumping another 4 or 5 times.

One was enough for me!

 After we got back, Lonnie showed us where the hidden cenote was on Paamul's property.  This was just a bit of the scenery along the way.

 You can see Cozumel and a cruise ship across the way. 

 Pathway to the cenote - where we saw a snake on the way back.

The water's so clear, you can barely tell it's there.

 Lonnie and Isaac.

 I would have loved to have seen one down in a cave, but I don't think I'd be comfortable swimming inside of it.  

The iguanas were out in full force that day too.  We found them around every bend.

 This was just outside of our rooms.  Can you spot them all?

My allergies started acting up after our fun and I was pretty miserable for the rest of the day.  I, again, passed on my devotion and prayed I would feel better the next day.  

Mexico Day 3

Day 3

Doug was still sick and unable to be with us again that day.  Doug and Darla have some friends in Paamul, Bill and Sandra, who are from Canada and their son and daughter-in-law just happened to be  visiting there too.  They have been supporting another small Mayan village called Santa Clara in the Yucatan.  They were planning on going to take gasoline for the village generators.  The generator is for their well and they often do not have gas or any way to go and get it.  They asked us to go out with them that day.

Our first stop was to what would probably be like our downtown city building, in Chemax.  

 Darla was going to help talk with the officials about getting electricity run out in the village.  It is actually already there, they just need to tie into it.  While they were inside, we walked around the small town square and went to look at this church.

 These bikes are everywhere and are almost the only transportation in the villages.

We got out to Santa Clara and were immediately met by an old woman, who hugged us and kissed us.  That is something I will forever remember.  This village is made up of seventeen families.  They have a large holding tank where they have fish to eat.  They have about 100 chickens, that Bill and Sandra gave them.  They also make their own honey.  

I was surprised that this small village had two school rooms.  One for the smaller children and one for the older children.  The teachers actually leave school/college to go and teach somewhere - that is part of their schooling. They live there in the village while they are teaching.  Both teachers looked very young.   This was the older class.

 He had hopscotch on the floor with math problems and wherever their wadded up ball of paper landed, they had to skip that problem  while jumping and then answer it.  

 El bano looked a little scary.

 This was the younger class and they were all enjoying the suckers we had just passed out.  We pretty much disrupted their learning for a couple of hours.

 That is the older woman who greeted us as soon as we got there.  She is letting that little puppy bite on her toes.  All of the older women wore those dresses.  I loved them.

 Another women wanted to show us her garden.  We didn't know they could grow anything because of the rocky soil.  She had fenced off a large area for a garden, but because of the lack of rain, it wasn't doing well.  She also had a lemon tree (they are green, not yellow) and she gave us some of them.  They were delicious.

 Another view of her backyard.

This village had a small church (I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it), that we think may have been pentecostal.  They had also been given stoves to cook on, but were poorly built and most of them had fallen apart and had been taken out of their homes.  Darla told some of the women about our stoves and we scheduled another day to bring one out to them.  

While we were looking at this woman's garden, Bill and Sandra's daughter-in-law, who is a nurse, was checking out a 7 month old baby boy.  He was born with a cleft palate and had a tracheotomy and feeding tube.  She determined he was pretty congested and needed to get to the hospital.  Bill, Sandra, the baby, his mom and her mom all piled in the car and headed to Valladolid to see the doctor.  Before heading out, a villager invited us into his home because he has made some empanadas for us.  We all were nice and ate one and he had even made some sort of red onion salsa that was very good.  Again, I was a little leery of eating something I didn't know what was inside.  

From Santa Clara, we headed back to Chan Chen, because Darla holds an English class at the church each week.  I was looking forward to hearing how their English was, but sadly that day, no one showed up so we headed back home.

Each night we did a devotion with our group and I volunteered to do mine that night before dinner.  When we got back to our rooms, we realized there was about a billion (I'm not exaggerating) black ants running underneath mine and The Sevenski's palapas.  It was then, they accidentally shut their room door with the key inside.   We decided to go ahead with the devotion until the guards came to unlock it.  So, I started but was almost immediately interrupted by the guards.  Then we showed them the ants, which had started consuming the outside of the huts.  The guards then went back to see what to do.  So, we picked up the devotion again….only to be interrupted with the guard again.  They decided to move the Sevenski's to another room, but not me.  He just kept saying, "Dos minutos" while waving his hand around like he was spraying something.  I took that to mean he was going to come back and spray bug spray in my room.  I packed up my stuff to move into their room so it wouldn't be infested with ants.  We decided the devotion was a no go for the night and headed down to Doug and Darla's for dinner.  When we got here, she informed us that they are just army ants and aren't like our ants here.  They move though, eating dead things and keep right on going.  She was right.  When we got back, they were all gone.  I was afraid of being attacked by ants the rest of the night though.  

The next morning we learned that the baby boy from the village received some antibiotics and was doing much better.

Mexico Day 2

Day 2

Today was our first full day in Mexico.  I woke up that morning a little nervous to head out to the village.  I really had no idea what we would be doing or whether we'd be able to communicate with the people at all.  

We all headed down to Doug and Darla's house after breakfast to get ready and head out.  When we got there, Darla told us that Doug thought he had food poisoning and had been throwing up all night and wouldn't be able to go with us that day.  So, Darla would in fact have to take us out there.

People in Mexico drive crazy!!  So, even driving from our place to the village was an adventure.  There is trash everywhere.  The land is mostly rocky and there is hardly any soil to be found.  Because of the terrain, there are't many crops.  Along the way, there are towers, with guards, set up on peoples' properties so that squatters won't come onto their land.  The stretch of highway between our hotel and this intersection was pretty touristy, with resorts we couldn't see from the road, but who's entrances were grand.  There were taxis and tour buses taking tourists from their resorts to Mayan ruins or cenotes or anywhere else they wanted to go.    

I found this picture on the internet, but it shows where we would turn right to go to Chan Chen.

The drive into the village was about 2-2.5 hours one way.  It was a long drive, but the landscape and homes and businesses along the way, kept it interesting.  We would always stop about half way (in Coba) to use the bathroom at a gas station - where you paid 5 pesos to us it. 

Our first stop this day, was at the training center.  It is a two story building, with rooms they can use for classrooms.  One of the rooms right now, has a small store in it, where the villagers can purchase things.  It has toys, clothes, toiletries, paper goods, schools items, etc. in it.  There is a basketball goal in the back and Doug would like to put in a swimming pool.

When we first got there, the men had this net laid out on the ground getting it ready to roll up and take up on the roof.

 This is their church building.  They set up chairs and have their service right there.

 Inside the roof.  Their workman ship on these roofs is amazing.

 Their scaffolding.

 They mix their cement right on the gound in a little hole they form to contain it.

Around the corner from the training center, is the village of Chan Chen.  Chan Chen is a Mayan village of about 1000 people.  

 Vince, Vickie, Lonnie and Debbie have been here multiple times, so it was really neat to see how the villagers reacted to seeing them again.  We stopped at Gergario and Maximilliano's home so that Gergario could go with us to install a stove.  We met a fourteen year old boy named, Mario, that the other team members remembered from before and he stayed with us the rest of the day there.  His whole body is double jointed.  

We then headed to a home where we would be installing a stove.

The Mayans cook inside their homes on giant stones.  They live among the smoke and breathing it all day, everyday, is hurting their bodies, even causing death.  They have had great success with these new stoves.  The stoves cost about $200 and I learned that our church has raised $10,000 for the purchase of a truck load of these stoves, in the past.  

This photo is not the best, but you can see the stone and how black the ceiling is from the smoke.   Imagine what their lungs look like.

 The men got to work leveling out the ground where they were going to place the stove.

 After the stove is in place, they put on the top piece, where they can cook, and install the chimney pieces.

 The boy in the orange and while striped shirt is Mario.

 You can see the stove is already working, with the smoke coming out of the stack.

 While the men where installing the stove, the women chatted with the children and other local women.  Notice the hammock in the background.  These were in the majority of homes.  They sit and sleep on them.  Husbands and wives slept together and children often slept together in them.  And to think,  I often think a queen bed is too small for Shawn and I.

 The older generations only speak Mayan, but the younger generations can speak Spanish.  I was amazed at how well my Spanish came back to me.  I was able to at least communicate, un poco, with them.  That is Darla in the jeans.  The woman in the brown tank top is, Julia (pronounced with an H).   They have met her in the past and she is a wonderful seamstress, making bags and jewelry.  We ended up going back to her house and I bought a small bag.  The detail is amazing.  

 They do all of this work, then go back in and cut out those tiny areas.

 I took a small photo album with pictures of Shawn and the kids in it and the kids loved looking through it.

 Vickie was showing them pictures on her iPad.

 Just outside the home we were working in, was this long line of, what looked like brown sugar snap peas.  As we stood there, I kept looking up into the trees to see what was dropping out of them.  We quickly realized, the pods were popping open.  We're not sure if this is what we know as Mexican jumping beans, or not.  Gergario said they cook the beans and eat them, but if you eat them raw it will tear your stomach up.

 Most of the homes in the village were the palapa style, but there were also some solid homes.  Notice the satellite dish on the roof :o). 

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This is the preschool in the village.

 This is the school.

On the way home, we stopped in a little town to buy some roadside chickens for dinner.  I know, sounds a little scary, but I was assured they were good and no one had gotten sick from them in the past.  They were cooked on a big grill right next to the road and we got rice, pasta and beans and a couple of sauces with them.  They were right.  They were delicious!

I think that the thing that struck me the most after being in the village, was that, not once, did I feel pity for how little they had there.  They didn't even know how little they lack - or what us Americans would think as lacking.  They were happy.  The children ran around like normal children, laughing and playing.  I think I actually kind of envied them and how content they seemed to be with the little they had.  We have so much, we are often overwhelmed.  That may be naive of me to say.  I'm sure they have many things to worry about or desire, but it's just their life.  That's all they've ever known.  To think, why can't we be content with ALL that we have?

The other thing that struck me was how much I wanted to stay there longer.  I wanted to get to know them.  I wished my Spanish was better so I could have a conversation with them.  These people are so far removed from us, but you instantly loved them and where they lived.