One year ago today

One year ago today I rode crammed in the back seat of a retired airline shuttle appropriated by Elijah’s church to be used as youth group transportation. Along with me rode twenty-some fidgety teens and preteens and several harrassed adult supervisors. None of us had gotten very much sleep for the last few nights. (We started our journey at 3:30 am, June 17th, 2005—and Elijah and I, in particular, had stayed up the entire night beforehand watching Star Trek episodes.) So as we jostled down the freeway towards Nogales, Mexico, we spent a great deal of time fighting over gameboys and seats and taking things too personally. Two and a half days is a long time to be cooped up in a bus.

I used to brag about the fact that I had never been off the west coast of the U.S. in my entire life. (And by “brag about” I actually mean “justify by making into a joke.”) I live in Oregon, and I had visited California and Washington a few times, but before last summer those were the extent of my travels.

When the opportunity to join Elijah’s youth group on their mission trip to Mexico last summer presented itself, I knew the trip would include a lot of “firsts”: first trip without my parents, first time in a foreign country, first visit to Arizona, first stay in a place where the possibility of seeing a live tarantula in the wild was frighteningly likely (this almost stopped me from going). But the trip proved to be far more than the sum of the various new adventures it provided. It became an experience that taught me lessons I didn’t even know I needed to learn, and it opened my eyes to a whole other world out there.

After the afore-mentioned bus ride, we arrived in Nogales. We slept and ate at a seminary in the city; we also helped with the construction of a new building they would be using for more classes. On my favorite day of the trip, we visited (for the second day in a row) a church started by one of the alumni of the seminary. This tiny church sat perched at the top of a steep hill. The road that we traversed to get there was lined all the way up one side with “houses” made out of cardboard and car doors or, if they were particularly nice, wooden planks. The other side of the road was a sheer dropoff. On one of our visits to this church, the old schoolbus we were traveling in (not our youth group bus) was having such difficulty getting up the hill that we had to get out and walk the rest of the way on foot. A lot of Mexican children peeked their faces out of doorways to watch us and smile at us. I’m sure we looked very out of place to them.

I’ll let my words from that day speak for themselves. I wrote the following paragraphs in an email to my parents on June 22 of last year:

So after lunch, we all crowded into the same dirty old school bus that carried us to the church we visited yesterday. I don’t remember if I told you, but we invited area children to play soccer at 2:30. We got there, and kids started arriving. Little boys and girls approached cautiously from all directions… eager and yet obviously a little nervous. Virginia quickly won them with her vibrant personality, however. As we were standing around talking, we heard some muffled thunder in the distance, but didn’t think much of it. Then we all walked to the soccer field. (I use ‘field’ in the broadest sense possible… it was a high up, wide open space covered in… red dirt and rocks. It did fine, though.)

(We soon dicovered that only the boys wanted to play soccer. The little girls who had come were either bringing their little brothers or just wanted to meet us. So Virginia, one of our translators, led some activities with the girls.)

Virginia had made out cards with our Spanish names on them to give to the kids… our first activity was for them to try to find their American ‘buddy’ by asking our names. (My Spanish name is ‘Juliana’, btw. It’s pronounced ‘Huliana’. They just can’t get their mouth around ‘Erin’. ) The little girl ‘assigned’ to me was very shy at first… I used the few phrases I knew.. What’s your name? My name is… How old are you? That was basically it. But I played with her by making faces and stuff, and she started to have fun. …

… That’s when we noticed the thunder and lightning were getting closer. A little girl sitting next to me kept saying ‘Agua!’ (water) over and over… we thought she was thirsty, but then we began to feel the raindrops too. Virginia and a few of the girls from our group decided to walk all the girls back to the church to continue our little lesson in there, out of the rain. Well, we got the key from the pastor of that church and walked back. We stood in the rain for five or six minutes while Virginia tried to unlock the door… but it was no use. She couldn’t get it. There was a little overhang over the door, but the church is at the top of a hill and the wind was blowing directly toward us. So while Virginia tried the door, I led the group around to the other side of the building, in the lee of the wind. We kept fairly dry there, but Virginia determined she had to go back and get the pastor for help.

So she left me in charge… of ten or fifteen children who couldn’t understand me, and two or three American junior high girls who were terrified of the lightning. I put my arm around the little girl who was ‘mine’ to keep her out of the rain, and tried to reassure Hannah that the metal poles around the church would get the lightning before we would. Virginia and the pastor were back soon… but that was a very interesting moment. Standing there, trying to stay out of the rain, in charge of people whose language I did not speak… yet, I felt very empowered.

Once we got in the church, we had a fun little lesson, teaching them a few English words and singing some little songs. We could hear the thunder growing. When it was time to leave, we walked out into POURING rain… and ran to the bus. Our trips in the bus yesterday were a little scary, because the bus is rickety and the streets are bumpy and the drivers are crazy. BUT today’s drive was INCREDIBLE…. As we got a little farther away from the church, we saw STREAMS of water flowing through the gutters… and then we turned onto the DIRT road on which the seminary is. It was amazing… the street was transformed. It was a RIVER of red mud… We all gaped out the window, taking pictures and exclaiming as the bus plowed uphill through it. Our driver told us that the road is sometimes closed because of all the water. The whole afternoon was a great adventure… what wonderful memories. =)

I should be honest: I was very reluctant at first to go on this mission trip. Although I am not shy about or ashamed of my faith, I seriously dislike the idea of shoving it into people’s faces and saying “Say uncle or you won’t be saved!” Christianity is not a one-time decision. It is a total recommitment of your life, and that kind of change can’t forced by any number of brightly-colored pamphlets in Spanish. (Just to be clear: I don’t think that the church group I went with believes this either. I just feared that they might before we left.)

I have this theory about youth mission trips. Perhaps it is terribly self-centered and near-sighted of me to say this, but I do not think the main value in youth mission trips (or at least the one I attended) lies in the work done through them. Of course, it was great that we could help out the Nogales seminary and make friends with those kids; goodness knows God can use any tool He wishes to bring people to Himself—even clueless, pamphlet-toting teenagers who don’t speak a word of Spanish. But although I have no way of knowing whether God chose to work in the lives of those children through us, I do know how He used that whole trip to work in my life—and, I suspect, in the lives of the other kids who experienced it.

The trip taught me responsibility by forcing me to deal with things outside of my comfort zone. It forced me to not be so lazy. It forced me to get along with people. It forced me to consider the fact that my needs are not the most important needs in the entire world. It even forced me to be brave, in a lot of ways—just as much when I was standing on the top of that hill during the lightning storm as when someone told me that tarantulas lived all over the area where we were staying. On that note: I never actually saw a tarantula, thank goodness. But I believe I reached the point where I would have been able to deal with it. That was a breakthrough moment for me—when I realized that I didn’t have to keep nervously searching the floor every time I walked into a room, because if I happened to find one of those creatures I would just DEAL with it. If you know me very well, you know how significant that is.

Of course, none of that means that I retained any of those valuable lessons… merely that I have now learned them at least once. I’m sure God will have to use other means to remind of them time and again.

Suffice to say, my trip to Mexico with Elijah’s youth group made a big impact on me. A year later, I can still remember the stuffiness of that bus and the dusty heat of Nogales and the huge smiles on those kids’ faces when we sang songs with them. Last year on Father’s day, while I was busy trying to nap in the back of our noisy bus, Mom took our first Father’s Day picture that did not have me in it. (Well, actually, she took a picture of Brian and Dad holding a picture of me, but that hardly counts. )

This year, as you can see, I’m back in the picture. I’m very glad I was able to spend this Father’s Day here in Oregon with my family; but I wouldn’t trade the opportunity I had last year for anything. I hope I never forget it.

Posted on Monday, June 19th, 2006 at 12:58 am.
Belongs with: Things to think about, Nostalgic Things.
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