Me Gusta Las Mantanas

After spending our first night in Tula, we met up with Pastor Nimias, our friend from the local church, and his group on Monday morning and started our journey up the mountain to San Francisco. It was only 36 miles from the church in Tula, but the mountainous terrain kept us on the path for nearly two hours before arriving at the village. *It actually took us closer to 2 1/2 hours the first day because we were marveling over the mountains, the streams and waterfalls, the farmers plowing their fields with donkeys and plows, and the livestock - cows, horses, and donkeys. I learned that I am not so bad at herding cattle, but that's another blog... We stayed in a hotel in downtown Tula and drove to San Francisco every day. However, we are making plans to camp in San Francisco during our next visit in order to save four hours of traveling time each day.

As soon as we arrived in San Francisco, we were all taken back by the sheer beauty of the mountains. One of the first things we noticed was the farmers literally on the side of the mountain (think 70% incline, or higher) tending to their crops - corn, beans, and sugar cane. It was absolutely amazing! We worked together to unload the vans and prepare for our first day of VBS (it's referred to locally as Escuela Biblica de Verano - Summer Bible School). Liz and our Thursday morning ladies' mission group had worked extremely hard for months before our trip to prepare all of the lessons and crafts. We had prepared for about two hours of VBS each day. However, the majority of the kids stayed at the church with us ALL day (8-10 hours) each day. While the men were doing construction work on the church building, we played with the kids, taught them Bible stories, did crafts, had snacks, sang songs, did puppet shows, blew bubbles, played with balloons, and just had a wonderful time learning about them and how they like to play. We taught them about Jesus feeding the 5000, Noah and the flood, the Good Samaritan, and the story of the prodigal son. The days seemed to fly by, and the week was coming to a close much more quickly than I was prepared for.

One day, early in the week, when Shawn was leading a Bible study for the village/church elders and leaders, with tears streaming down their faces, they thanked him over and over for coming to their village. They said they had prayed for so long for God to send people to help them. They told him that we were the first white people to ever come to their village. One of the men wanted to slaughter one of his calves for us to celebrate the return of his son who had been lost. The men (including Pastor Shawn - he was so stoked!) killed the calf on Wednesday, and it cooked in a pit down in the ground all night long for us to eat on Thursday - our last day there - and we had a celebration. The kids' lesson for the day was about the prodigal son. How cool is that? For the craft, we made tambourines, and we had a party! During the service that night, all of the kids used their tambourines while we sang all of our songs. It was so neat to see them be so excited about worship!

It was such an amazing week and I was very sad to see it end, but I know we will visit San Francisco again. I am planning to post a few more blogs about our trip to Mexico - about some people and events that have become very special memories for me.