Another Weekend in San Pedro

Well, it's a normal weekend in San Pedro - which means it's not especially normal at all. Yesterday we headed to Torreon again for a day of soccer. Paul and I went early to take Stephen and go make a Wal Mart run to buy food for everybody. We had a great time watching the game, but sadly the Calor lost after dominating the game due to two goals scored by the other team on penalty kicks of dubious validity. Afterward we had a great lunch of lonches (molillos - a type of bread - with baloney and mayonnaise) and headed to watch the younger kids play soccer.

The young team absolutely dominated scoring five goals in the first half and finally winning the game 9-0 with Sedan, San Pedro's James G duplicate, scoring three goals as a fullback. We didn't think Timothy was going to play because he had hurt his right arm that morning, but he decided to play in the second half, and he scored a goal his first touch of the game. Then in his next big play he made a header that knocked off the crossbar, and Timothy went down, smothered by the goalie. We knew something was wrong when he didn't get up, and soon Stephen was walking Timothy of the field with what looked like a badly broken left wrist. They went to the hospital to get it checked out, and sure enough it was broken. Timothy had actually broken the same wrist some months earlier and it had not set right, so the doctors needed to re-break the bone to get it to heal right. They could wait till Monday for anesthesia which would mean six months recovery, or they could do it right away with no drugs for a six week recovery. They chose the latter. I wasn't there to see it, but I can only imagine the pain Timothy endured. He's a trooper, and by this morning he seemed to be doing all right.

Meanwhile, Paul and I were heading back to San Pedro to help lead worship at an evangelistic meeting with an evangelist named Alegria. It seems to be the story of my life to be leading worship without the slightest idea of what I'm supposed to be playing, and this night was a prime example - unable to see Jacob's hands on the keyboard and trying to get an idea from Sammy as he soloed on the electric, all the while not being able to hear a thing that I was playing. I think it was a good reminder for my pride that the worship is about God and not about me - despite my mistakes, the audience had no trouble worshiping, and that was what we were up there for in the first place.

My Spanish isn't yet good enough to understand a rapidly speaking evangelist so I sat outside and read for a while. Three Mormon missionaries wandered in to see what was going one, and I stood and talked to them for a bit, hearing where they're from and what they're doing here. After that Juan came over and sat with me for a while and began to tell me his story - he's only been a Christian since December! He has such a love and joy in Christ that it blows me away, and he immediately welcomed me into the church. It's something I really about Templo Cristiano that they are such a mix of mature believers and new converts - it brings both a vibrancy and richness to the place.

Afterward, I left my guitar with a guy from the Methodist church who did some amazing work on Paul's guitar. I told him basically to do with it whatever he felt like. But when we got home, I realized I had left the keys to our room in the guitar case, so Paul and I had to go track it down again. We first went to the guy's house, but he wasn't there, but we eventually found him at his church and had a good laugh as we retrieved the keys.

Sunday we went to church, where Stephen preached from some verses at the end of Psalm 137 about how God holds us up and keeps us from falling when we slip. It was a message from his heart - Saturday had been a really hard day for him, and he needed to rest in God's presence. He gave a really good illustration of how God holds us - he had one of the mothers come up who had a baby not yet old enough to walk on its own, but able to walk when his mom was holding his hands. As the baby walked, he could slip, but he would never fall because his mom was holding him up. This is the way that God is holding us, his children. The sermon strongly spoke to the congregation and we spent a while in prayer together at the end of the service, and I got to pray for Eric, a kid from Guadalajara who is living with Don Pablo and Yolanda right now. God has opened my heart for him over the course of the summer, and it was really good to pray and encourage him. We also got some time to encourage Jacob and Stephen after the service.

In the afternoon we worked on dramas for a while and then I made a few phone calls and learned some more stuff on the mandolin from Paul. That evening, we went to church again. This time we were doing worship with just three guitars, bass, and drums. Again, I didn't really know the chords, but it was fun doing it anyway. Stephen preached almost the same message, and again God used it to speak strongly to the congregation.

After church, we headed with the youth group to the plaza to sing and perform dramas. It was a lot of fun to be out there together and we drew a pretty big crowd. Afterward, we went back to the property and went out to buy dinner from street vendor. We sat around the picnic tables eating and talking until I could no longer keep my eyes open. All in all a good weekend.

Work Day

Today I worked most of the day, mainly to finish up the website for Seedtime and Harvest before Stephen returned. The work went fairly well - I managed to fix an annoying glitch in my photo album script. Everything was basically done when I loaded the test photo album onto the website, and I got the strangest error: pictures 1, 10-24, and 28-33 would work, but none of the others would. I spent forever trying to figure out what on earth could be the problem when I finally realized it was that some of the files were ".jpg" while others were ".JPG" - an issue which has no effect on my web server but which makes all the difference on this one. It was good to get fixed and I am happy with how the website looks now.

Paul spent almost the whole day doing homework. Having everything in a different language makes all the work take far longer than it normally would. He has high hopes that after the first semester things will be a lot easier, as his Spanish will improve drastically this fall.

The Tolmans returned from Vallarta tonight. It was great to welcome them home - I have missed having them here, and the house has been so quiet without the kids. Elisa and Timothy start school tomorrow, and everything is slowly shifting from summer mode to the normal year.

San Pedro Times, Pt. 5

I'm down to my last two weeks in San Pedro, and the time has flown by. Paul and I had a great time in Tepic, seeing old friends and hanging out in the city. It was especially good being with Cayeros family again and the youth from their church that we had worked with last March. Coming back, we brought our good friend Olivia Stewart with us to stay in San Pedro for a week, and it was great having her up here with us.

I have continued to visit the prison every week. One week I got teach, looking at Psalm 139 and how it shows how God is both incredibly big and also incredibly personal. We had a great time together, praying and worshiping. Afterward we got a basketball game going. None of us were especially good, but it was by far the most fun basketball game I have ever played, with Paul, Jacob, and I going at it with our brothers from the prison. I love the time I get to spend with those guys, and I am amazed at the joy that they have in Christ, even in the prison.

I am so blessed by the friendships God has given me. I have had such a great time with the youth group, doing worship and dramas in the ranches around San Pedro, jamming together in the plaza, and sitting around the property just talking until late at night. I am encouraged to see my friendships with them deepening despite the language barrier. This past week I had a great talk with a couple of the guys. It was the kind of conversation that I have wanted to have all summer, but I have not had the Spanish to do it.

A Night at the Plaza Like No Other

An incredibly fun night . . . like every Sunday night, after church we hung around, trying to decide how we were going to spend the night. And like every Sunday night, we decided to go down to the plaza. But we were getting a little bored of the normal walking in circles, so we decided to do something different this time: we would bring our instruments and jam in the middle of the plaza.

We piled the instruments and people in a couple cars and headed down to the plaza. Once we got there, we began to jam in the gazebo, Sammy and I on guitar, Paul and mandolin, Toto on the djembe, and everyone else singing up a storm. After playing for a while, we went and had ice cream together, or rather Hawaiian shave ice - of all the things to find in a small town in Mexico.

Afterward, we were walking back through the plaza, and one of the girls asked us to play for a couple of her friends. We took out the guitars and started to play this Spanish ska song that everyone loves. Soon everyone was dancing and singing at the top of their lungs, and we began to draw a crowd. Now you have to understand that this is a small town in Mexico, and everyone goes to the plaza on Saturday night, and now they have a bunch of kids going crazy in the center of the plaza, and with them to blonde gringos. After we finished that song, we played another, and then another, and just kept on playing and dancing and singing and then playing the first song again, until we were all exhausted and laughing, and the crowd had changed out three or four times. At last, worn out but smiling, we put the instruments back in their cases, wandered to the cars, the drove back to the property to sit around talking until I can barely keep my eyes open. Now that's how to spend a Sunday night.

The Guys are Back

Sammy, Pedro, and Toto all returned from Tepic today, and with them around, that means the other guys will all be around too. I didn't realize how much I had missed those guys until I hung out with Sammy this afternoon - my friendship with these guys is a big part of what makes San Pedro so sweet. I played guitar for worship tonight. Don Juan talked, and I couldn't follow too much of it. I have a tendency to space out on any extended speech. Unfortunately, with Spanish, it is significantly harder to pick back up where I left off. Afterward, Paul and I hung out with all the youth for a while, and I hung out with Choco, Dino, and Emmanuel looking at pictures on my computer.

Pablo was in church tonight with his brother. I guess his brother found him in Torreon somewhere. I was happy to see him. I hope he can be convinced to return to the rehab center in Torreon.

Addiction

Yesterday Olivia and I went with Jacob to visit a drug addict named Pablo and invite him to the rehab center in Torreon. The scene will probably be etched into my memory for a long time: sitting in his sister's house, Jacob and I on one side of the room and Olivia seated on the other. Against the back wall sat Pablo's family, four of his brothers and sisters. And facing us all sat Pablo, listening and measuring as Jacob pleaded with him to come to the rehab center and seek freedom. You could see the questions in his eyes: was it worth the three months? Worth the pain of breaking the addiction? His family looked back it him, with pleading with their eyes or watching to see his decision. At last he asked to speak to Jacob in private.

Olivia and I went outside and began to pray for Pablo. After a little while, one the women invited us in to wait in the bedroom. I asked Olivia if she could pray in Spanish, and after receiving a hesitant "yes" I asked Pablo's sister if she would like to pray with us. Olivia and I prayed with her for Pablo, and then she began to tell us a bit more about his story. He had first gotten into drugs as a teenager, and their hold on him deepened as he grew older. He has a wife and three children, but they have left him now because of the drugs. After running out of money to buy drugs, Pablo was arrested for stealing and sent to prison for five months. In prison, he accepted Christ, and when he came out his family could see something different. But drugs have a powerful hold, and within two months he was back into them again. Now his family wanted him to seek help.

As I listened to Pablo's story, my mind wandered back to all the conversations I have had with Stephen about drug addictions and the power of Christ to break them. Stephen has buried over seventy children, all dead from drug use. At this point in his life, he will do anything he has to in order to break the addictions. Stephen has actually met some of the drug lords before, and they are happy that he is getting drug addicts off the street. It makes their homes safer. It's America where all the money is coming from anyway. Let the Americans destroy themselves. The attitude of the drug lords is basically this: the kids of America will use drugs regardless; I might as well get rich off of it. I thought back to some kids I met on an airplane as they headed to Bonaroo, laughing about their LSD adventures and looking forward to the slew of available drugs at the festival. How long does it take to go from there to looking like Pablo, gaunt and worn, deeply stuck in addiction?

After a bit of time, we were invited back in, and Pablo told his family that he had decided to go to the rehab center in Torreon. Jacob would come back and take him in the morning.

The rest of the day was spent on lighter activities. It was Olivia's last day in San Pedro, so we wandered down to the market to buy some gifts for her family and then came back for a great lunch of chicken with a chili sauce at the property. Mario and Sedan brought over a couple of puppies which we had fun playing with. Then Olivia and I went to work on an a cappella arrangement of the Jars of Clay song "This Road." It's amazing how much faster arranging goes with two people and a keyboard. We finished almost all the four-part vocal lines and added a sweet jazz progression to the ending. At this point I basically have to go back and write in the instrumental parts. Paul returned from his first day of classes at Tec de Monterrey, overall a good beginning. Opting for dessert first, we went out for ice cream and then brought tacos back to the house and watched X-men 2.

This morning, we went to pick up Pablo and his brother, also taking with us Olivia to drop her off at the airport. Arriving in Torreon, we said goodbye to Olivia and then took Pablo over to the rehab center. The man in charge welcomed us in. He sat us down and began to tell Pablo the rules of the center. Abruptly, Pablo picked up his bag and walked out. The center is voluntary, so no one chased him down immediately. After a few more minutes of talking, we walked outside, and Pablo was gone. We all around the nearby blocks and then scoured the whole area of the city in Jacob's van, but we never saw him. Finally, we left Pablo's brother to look for him, and Jacob and I headed back to Torreon. I do not know what will happen with Pablo. I know God has him in his hands, but it is hard to watch him be sucked away again by a skewed picture of reality. I pray that God will bring freedom to him from his addiction.

Back in San Pedro

Well, Paul and I are back from Tepic now, and we brought Olivia Stewart to San Pedro with us. We had a great time seeing friends in Tepic. I may try to put up a few "after-the-fact" journal entries up a bit later. I also still want to tell the story of my adventure at the border a few weeks back. For now all I'll say is this: so I own a van in Texas now . . .

Today the three of us went with Stephen and Marcela to watch the Calor play a practice game against the Santos. The Calor are third division, while the Santos team they played was second division, so the Santos should have been far better. The Calor played great, however, and while the starters were in, they totally held their own against the Santos and even had several almost-goals. I love watching good soccer, and these guys are definitely talented.

Later we ran some errands with the Tolmans in Torreon and grabbed some lunch. When we got home I got to have a good talk with Stephen that was very encouraging. Tonight we went to church, where Stephen taught about the power we have over the devil because of Christ's victory on the cross. We are safe in the palm of the Father's hand - no one can snatch us away. And in every temptation we have God promises to give us a way out. If God is with us, who can be against us? We truly have nothing to fear.