Saturday Night

The flight from Orlando to Mexico City was uneventful, praise God! The transition to our plane to Oaxaca was confusing at best but we found our way to the next gate. We had to go through immigration and then through Customs. This was simplified by the fact that we did not have to get our bags and recheck them. I was not looking forward to that with all the additional duffel bags. But again God provided by having our bags checked through all the way to Oaxaca. The only sort of challenge we had was while going through security again to board the domestic flight to Oaxaca Kathleen had forgot to remove a pocket knife from her carry-on bag. How it got through the US security I don’t know. But the Mexican security did not miss it. This caused Kathleen to be pulled out and have her bag searched. It shook her up but they just took the knife and she was on her way.

Just like in Orlando, the small planes are grouped in to one separate seating area with one gate handling many different flights at the same time. While we were waiting for our flight they would announce the flights in Spanish and then this lovely American woman’s voice came on and made the announcement in English. However no one gave her information on the way to pronounce the cities. So this poor woman butchered the city names without knowing it. She pronounced Oaxaca (wa-HA-ka) with the American phonemes as (OX-a-ca). It just made us laugh and think what the locals thought of this English announcement. I wondered what it made them think of Americans.

I have been working on the Bible study we are going to work through during the trip. It is about preparing yourself for a missions trip and it goes into American attitudes and behaviors which have helped with the feelings other countries have for Americans. So I hope it will be useful for the folks on the trip to consider this in relations with the Mexicans.

It was raining in Mexico City when we landed and when we took off. We took off in a small jet which made the ride a bit bumpy as we were flying around and through the clouds. So it was like a roller-coaster ride. But by the time we got our bags and met up with Saul it was a beautiful evening. We are at an elevation similar to Denver so the evening was cool.

We took a bus to the house we are staying. It was late around 10:00 local time so there was not much to see on the streets except the typical little shops and homes; some ok others shanties. The house is a fairly large house. Actually it is two right next to each other. There are students and ministry staff in one and the visitors in the other. They call the one the students and ministry staff is in the Study House. They are connected through an opening in the wall carved out via sledge hammer.

The picture is of the main meeting area and dining area. It is of the team and the Mexican students and staff. We got room assignments and instructions for Sunday morning and then were feed some pizza, cold and with a sweet dough but well received after a day of traveling. The house has one thing that I have not seen in Mexico before…hot water. They put in a hot water heater for the teams. So we get to take hot showers!

I need to close up and get the youngins to quiet down so the old farts can get some sleep.

If you have questions please add a comment to the posts and I will see if we can answer them.