The last two weeks I have been in Mexico on a mission's trip with my school. It was an awesome experience. Below is a detailed chronicle of events, but the Cliff Notes version is that I went there, and saw God work in amazing ways, and now I am back. Here are a few pictures from my trip. 
I am on top of the mountain where we planted the orchard 
This is a picture of an Indian girl weaving a basket to sell to tourists 
This is the view from the front porch of the house we were staying at. It was a saltwater pool, and I never got tired of the tremendous view. 
This is a view of Copper Canyon...very spectacular 
This is me and Jorge, the boy I met and talked with for about an hour at the Catholic boy's home. We just got back from the missions trip Friday night. It was amazing, it was awesome to see how God worked in our lives, through the team, and in the heart of the Mexicans we came in contact with. The whole trip started on an off note when we learned that ATA, our airline filed for bankruptcy the day before we were supposed to leave. They cancelled all flights so immediately we all started to pray. As it turns out we were able to get flights on Mexicana airlines and it left a little later so we didn’t have to leave at 3am, just 6am. J We drove up the HQ and met with Mr. Gothard and a delegation from Ukraine who were prison officials. Many of them had become saved during their time at Oak Brook, and it was awesome to hear their testimonies. Since we were stopping by HQ we all had to dress up for the trip up there. The guys had to wear a suit and tie, which wasn’t too fun on the van ride. Ian took our jackets and ties back with him so we didn’t have to worry about them during the trip. The flight went well. I sat next to Dan and Carrie Tarver. I slept some, read my Bible, and read part of Flag of my Fathers. It is a very sad book, yet true. We landed and made it through customs just fine although I started taking pictures in the customs area and officials came over and told me to stop. We then rode with the Phariss’s to their house and the place where we were going to stay. The house that IBLP got for them in Mexico is like a resort. It is amazing. You look out the front porch and there is a pool, tall skinny pine trees, a lake in the distance, and mountains on the other side of the lake. It was totally awesome. We arrived in Guadalajara the middle of the dry season so everything was dry and brown and dusty. During the day the sun was hot but I hardly ever sweated because it was so dry. It was actually quite pleasant. It only rained once the whole time we were down there, while we were in copper canyon. On Saturday, our first day of the trip, we drove to some village and we divided into four groups and did trash cleanup and reforestation. I was on a road cleanup crew. Cheri, Amy, Dan, Rachel Martin, and Rosie were also on my team as well and Dr. and Mrs. McCray. We worked for five hours picking up trash along on the main highways leading into the town. We made a big difference in our area. We were also assisted by about half a dozen Mexican teenagers. They seem just like normal teenagers, unfortunately I wasn’t able to talk to them since I hardly know any Spanish and they didn’t know any English. Fortunately Amy was able to translate most of the time when we needed to communicate with them. Our leader’s name was Lus, the Spanish word for light. I was glad when we were finally done picking up trash. It was not fun work at all. After all the groups were done we all drove to an old mansion/ranch that must have looked amazing 300 years ago. Now it is run down and is the home for a family but the living conditions would be terrible by American standards, but by Mexican standards it was probably average. The food was excellent. I stuffed myself as I did upon many an occasion while in Mexico. On Sunday we went back to Tizapan and handed out tracks as we walked around town. Rosie, Lizzy, KJ, were on my team. It was really cool to walk through the streets of the town. All the streets were stone and very bumpy. In the town, there are many speed bumps to keep traffic slow. On an hour trip I counted over thirty. They can be very painful in the back of a van. J The people were very receptive to the tracks we would hand out and would read them. The actually seemed interested in it. It seemed to me that these people have real needs. In America we can meet all of our material needs easily. As a result we don’t feel like we have any spiritual needs when in reality there is a gaping spiritual hole in many people’s lives. Mexicans seem like they know that they have needs and they are willing to listen to what you have to say or read what you are handing out. After handing out tracks we sang some songs in the town square. On Monday we hit the schools hard. We went to an number of schools and did our presentation which typically consisted of a few songs, two testimonies, and a skit or two. I was the monkey in the monkey skit and a runner in the race skit. Brad and Taylor told the stories. It was pretty fun after I got over the fact that my job was to hop around like a monkey even in front of adults. We were very well received in the schools and they enjoyed seeing us and I could tell that they were really thinking about what we were saying. I think it was Monday that we went to the orphanage, or the boy’s home. Several thousand boys live at this Catholic home. They are taken very well care of with many sports facilities. We met the English class and we talked to each one individually. My guy’s name was Jorge. His English was pretty good and he took me on a tour of the facility. They have some trade schools where guys can learn computers and auto repair. They also had some greenhouses where they raise fish in giant fish tanks. I witnessed to him at the end I presented salvation as something not to be bought with good works, but that it is a free gift. He understood everything I said, so Lord willing, those seeds will bear fruit down the road. I mainly encouraged him to read his Bible. He said that he had not been doing that, so I hope that he does. Tuesday was a difficult day because we dug an orchard in a mountain. The institute owns a mountain across the lake from the house so we drove over there and proceeded to dig many many holes with picks and shovels. The ground was so hard and rocky that we had to use picks the whole time. It seemed like there was a rock directly in the middle of every hole. They did have a backhoe but we only used it if the rock was too big for us. In retrospect it would have been smarter to have the backhoe start all the holes before a shovel ever touched it. But I think we all had a good time despite the hard work. I was pretty sore after digging all day. One thing about life in Mexico is that they eat at the most random hours. Breakfast is the only normal meal. Nobody ever thought about lunch until at least 1, sometimes we would eat as late as 3:30. Dinner was just as variable. Anytime from 7:00 to 10:00 seemed like a suitable dinner time. The next day we went right back to the mountain and continued digging until 4:00pm. When we were all done we had dug over fifty holes and planted trees in every hole. It looked very nice after we were done. I think they want to turn it into a campground in a few years. The trees we planted were fruit trees. I forget what kind of fruit trees, but I remember they all sounded delicious. While we were working on the fruit trees, we would eat out meals at a house nearby owned by some people who worked with the Phariss’s. It was right on the lake with a magnificent view. We walked on a concrete pier out into the lake and took some pretty cool pictures. Wednesday night, after working for two hard days in the orchard, we boarded a bus at midnight and set out for Chihuahua. We originally thought it was going to be a 12 hour ride, but it turned out to be a 16 hour drive. We arrived at around 4pm Thursday afternoon and chilled at the hotel for awhile before we stopped by the church we were going to minister at. Our job was to run the children’s program while their parents attended an anger resolution seminar. The children’s program lasted Friday and Saturday and it exhausted me but it was the most fun of my entire trip. Rosie and I had a group together and we joined with Jared and Lizzy’s group since we only had one translator. Despite combining the groups the kids behaved very well. There were three boys on my team, Kevin, Daniel, and Jonathan who called themselves the 3 musketeers and Chris. It was very sweet. I got a picture of us together and I gave each of them prints. After I did the monkey skit, they called me Chris the Monkey the First. They even made me a special hat. On Sunday we went to the church that was hosting us and we did a presentation during their morning service. It was strange to go to a Spanish speaking church. I heard the phrase, Gloria Dios, a lot. It means, Praise God. After church I bought a blue pop-ice from a street vendor and got my hands all sticky. Sunday afternoon we went to a person’s weekend house about an hour away from the church and had a barbeque and played volleyball. It was a lot of fun. It was nice to take a break and play some games. On our way back we decided to pick up some pizza. Though we tried to call ahead, the store would not prepare an order of 18 pizzas because they thought we were joking. So we drove there and waited for them to make the pizzas. While we were waiting a group of us went into the pizza place while I and about half of our group waited in the bus. The group that went into the pizza place had an opportunity to witness to a group of five people who must have been involved in the occult judging by the way they were dressed and they way they looked. When they group came back to the bus they told us how the Holy Spirit had given them the boldness to share Jesus with these people. God’s Spirit was so powerful that they all prayed and accepted Christ in their lives!! Before they actually said that they were part of the Darkness. They were visibly different after they accepted Christ into their lives. Not only did the group of five occultists get saved, but even the guys working the pizza joint got saved as well. It was an amazing testimony of God’s Spirit and grace working through our group. Although I was not directly involved in this venture, it is definitely a highlight for me. God can do amazing things when we listen to Him and do what He tells us to do. While we were at the hotel Sunday night we heard the testimonies of two people who go the church in Chihuahua, Richardo and Carlos. Richardo was involved in smuggling drugs and was imprisoned in Texas for awhile where he got saved. His story was a great story of how God can use circumstances which are terrible for His glory and to make our lives better. Richardo not only received Jesus into his life in prison but his sentence also go shortened from 7+ years to a few months. Carlos had a tremendous testimony. He was heavily into drugs and alcohol. He was in severe depression and he tried many times to kill himself. He actually stabbed himself with scissors in an attempt to commit suicide. God used the witness of some friends to bring him to church and he was radically saved. He knelt before the altar for several hours. He said that he could feel the demons leaving him. Immediately he got rid of his drugs and sought to live according to God’s principles. However after awhile he the drugs and depression returned as well as Satan’s attacks. This time it was stronger than before. It was only though the name of Jesus that he was able to successfully make it though these very difficult trials and temptations. Carlos is a man which permeates God’s love and care for people. His joy is contagious. He is a picture of a changed man. Monday morning we packed up all of our stuff at the hotel and loaded onto the bus and headed for a prison. We did our presentation for the men prisoners and the women prisoners separately. We had about an hour and 30 minutes with the men and about 45 minutes with the women. All of them seemed very receptive to the gospel and to our songs, skits and testimonies. We were very welcome. When we were going in, they took pictures of us before and after, and they inspected everything we took in with us, they even searched us individually. After the prison we headed for Copper Canyon. We arrived after a 5 hour bus ride which I did not enjoy. I was stuck in the noisy part of the bus and I was trying to read and sleep (not at the same time). J But we eventually made it there and unloaded our stuff at the YWAM (Youth with a Mission) compound. This was the most primitive place we had stayed the whole trip. The showers were sketchy and you could see light between every plank in the ceiling of the building we were sleeping in. It also got much colder at night because we were in the mountains. I caught a cold sleeping the in the cold air. Fortunately I packed my handy dandy REI sleeping bag which is rated for 0 degrees. So, I was warm except for my nose. Most of the time we spent at YWAM we spent being tourists, although we did hand out tracks while shopping in the neighboring town named Creel. The coolest thing we saw was Copper Canyon. People were saying that it is like a small Grand Canyon. I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon, but the Copper Canyon is amazing. It is huge and spectacular. I got some awesome pictures. The area around Creel is inhabited by native Indians. They are darker than your typical Mexican and they wear very bright clothing. They seemed like a dead people to me. It seemed to me that they rely completely on the tourist trade for money. There were a lot of people on the streets not doing anything. They seemed void of hope. When we passed out tracks they would all read them right away. They seemed very curious, grateful, and open to us. The children were really cute. They would walk around with trinkets and get you to buy their goods mainly because they looked cute. J On Wednesday we dug some trenches for the people at the YWAM compound as a thank you for allowing us to stay there and then we went shopping in Creel for one last time and then hopped on the bus for a long bus ride back to Guadalajara. 22 hours later…we finally arrived back at the house where we started. The bus ride was long but not unbearable. We stopped by Wal-Mart and bought a couple of movies to watch on the way. A group of guys in the back (me included) sang for much of the time. We had some serious harmonies and rhythm going on. It was pretty fun. Sleeping on the bus was another matter. I could only sleep for a maximum of two hours at a time before parts of my body became numb and I needed to change things up. But, overall it was good and we made it back in one piece. We arrived Thursday afternoon and after we all took showers and felt like human beings again we ate dinner and we did our presentation one last time for a pastor and his family who were traveling from Mexico City. We concluded by a time of sharing and prayer. We went to bed only to wake up at 4am to drive to the airport and fly back to the States. My trip was very exciting and I saw God work through me and others in ways I had never seen before. Mexico is a needy country, but their hearts seem open to what people have to share with them. They are a poor people, yet they have a big heart. They are very hospitable people. I enjoyed my time very much. Originally I was rather intimidated because I did not know any Spanish, but I quickly learned that you can communicate quite a bit without speaking any words at all, especially with kids. Here are the words to an old hymn which we sang at the end of every presentation. I have always loved this hymn, but now the words have an even deeper and more special meaning to me. Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light. Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one. Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power. Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art. High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all. | 
) That item of news is, in fact, the sole reason for this post and thus the rest of it will in all likelihood be extremely boring. This xanga will also probably be very boring for the next few months while Chris helps me plan for our wedding. Me + making decisions = many phone calls to Chris. 
Needless to say, we'll both be quite busy. 
With Thanksgiving being this week, it gives us an excellent opportunity to count our blessings and be thankful for the many things we have that so many others do not. Although the path that America is treading leaves much to be desired, we still enjoy many freedoms that are unknown to millions around the world. We still have the freedom to travel anywhere we desire, to go to church without fearing for our lives, to live anywhere we please, AND the freedom to marry the person we love. 
