Pray & Preach

This time I came to Zapotitlan with a few people from church, including Pastor Gerardo and a woman named Marta Estrada. It was the first time I got to meet Marta. Wow, what an inspiration! I heard her story previously, but I never had the chance to meet her or even hear her speak. She’s a pastor from Columbia, who travels now as a speaker and a missionary. She has done such amazing things with her life, such as starting an organization to help women out of prostitution, and ministering to gang members and the Columbian mafia. She has snuck Bibles into a certain country, and is going to Thailand for 3 months to help a group there that helps prostitutes. (I know this is just a little ol’ blog, but I’m trying to be careful about what I say because I would hate for this to show up in the wrong person’s search engine or something, and for her to get red flagged if she goes to a certain country again.) She was my buddy on the way here and during her time here because she speaks English perfectly, and she lives in Lancaster City so we’re practically neighbors. I tried not to tire her by acting like a child who wanted to hear “just one more” story, but really I just wanted to keep hearing stories. I shared with her a story of God’s faithfulness and she “one up’d” me, though I don’t believe she meant to. Boldness inspires me. I want to have the boldness to walk up to gang members and offer to pray for them, or to buy a prostitute for the night so I can tell her of the love of Christ. She wrote a book called “To the Mafia with Love,” I recommend checking it out. Talking to her makes me want to share the love of God with everyone, especially those who feel unloved.

It’s been exciting being back here. The group was only here for 2 days, and when they left they took Aby & the kids with them. So now it’s only Israel, Ben and I. Israel had a dream that Ben and I got into a big fight and I told him to leave so he went back to Mexico. I don’t see that happening, but Ben & I have talked about staging a fight to scare Israel. I like that Ben thinks messing with people is fun.

Both churches, in Zapotitlan and Huizitlan, are doing well. They changed the schedule around, and I think it’s better. We had services in both places on Sunday, and they were both really good. Some of the youth started leading worship, for both churches, right before I left last time and they are great! I’m so impressed with their talent. On Saturday they were here practicing for a few hours, and the one kid who had never picked up an instrument was playing bass like a natural. He was actually better than the bass player who’s been playing regularly for a month or so. I’m amazed at their ability to learn new songs, like they’ve been doing this their whole lives. I believe it’s God’s hand on them.

People here seem to like to tell stories about whoever they think my current love interest is. Our first day here Pastor Gerardo heard the story about the guy on the horse. If you keep up with my blog, you may recall that story. If not, basically I saw a really hot guy riding a horse while we were driving home one day. Yeah, it’s not a very exciting story, but someone thought Pastor should hear this story. For a few days we ate at Tia’s house. Tia is Pastor Gerardo’s aunt, actually tia means aunt. Her name is Benni, but we all call her Tia. The first day we were there I was being available to help cook, even though I didn’t actually do anything. During that time she called me a word I didn’t know, and can’t think of, and Aby told me it means daughter-in-law. I didn’t think anything of it, I just thought she was saying it because I was around to help out. The next day she said something about me marrying her son, and I then understood what the daughter-in-law reference was. Somehow Pastor caught wind of this, no, I’m going to tell you the truth. Pastor Gerardo was told that his aunt was trying to get me to marry his cousin, Arturo. Who, by the way, is … um, a very handsome young man. In this case handsome means: so stinkin’ fine I nearly passed out the first time I saw him. Pastor kept telling me that I’m only allowed to pray and preach while I’m here, and he would say “no cowboys.” Arturo was going to be coming home the next day, so the next day we were invited over to eat again. Unfortunately, we ended up going over there a lot later than we wanted. See, this is one of the problems with living with men. Tia came over that day to say that Arturo is home and she would like to have us over for breakfast. The guys wait for me to come out of my room, probably an hour or more later, to tell me we’re going there for breakfast. Well, this girl needs to shower, do her hair and put some make-up on. So by time I was ready, Tia had left her house. We ended up not going over to her house until lunchtime. Arturo was already at work, he works at a store in Zapo, and I wasn’t going to walk all the way across town (it probably takes 5 or 7 minutes to get there) to his store to say hello. I know I could have, but I didn’t want to. So I didn’t get to see him, and that’s ok.

Rach, I’m picturing your reaction to this story. I see you throwing both fists in the air shouting, “NO Becky! You should have gone to the store!!!!” :-)

And by the way, Tia now tells me not to call her Tia anymore, but rather suegra, which means mother-in-law.

Rach, here’s 4 Spanish words for you: tia=aunt; tio=uncle; suegra=mother-in-law; suegro=father-in-law.

Last night I dreamed about McDonald’s. I haven’t had any fast food in 5 months and I’m seriously craving it. I woke up briefly from the dream and decided today I’d head to McDonald’s. I was planning my trip when I remembered that I’m in the middle of rural Mexico and there is no McD’s anywhere to be found. Can I mention that despite my current craving, I think McD’s is pretty stinkin gross? But I plan to go there when I go home.

As I’m writing this I have 1 week and 1 day left. Yikes. As much as I look forward to going home and seeing you all again, I don’t look forward to not being here anymore. I’m going to miss the folks, and the culture, and the weather, and the food. I’m even going to miss my gringo friend, who is going to be Lord-knows-where for the next Lord-knows-how-long. Good thing God knows stuff, cause we certainly don’t.