Mexico

We spent May 31st through June 4th in Mexico, which was not nearly long enough. Originally, we were going to go down there for Ben's wedding. But, because of a BIG mistake on my part about mixing up some dates, we ended up going for the mission trip portion instead. Here is a summary of our trip.

Every Sunday night, the church members meet in a park and play games and fellowship together. This particular Sunday night, they celebrated the birthday of twins.


On Monday, the mission team met at the church building for a planning/working day. Notice that Marie is supervising this project.


On Tuesday morning we went to Jazmin's wedding shower. In the afternoon while Bill and Jason stayed and worked at the church building, the rest of us went to Guatajuanto. It was a beautiful city built on a hill. In the picture from left to right: Jim Cato (Valley CoC-AK); my nephew and his new wife, Ben and Jazmin Baker (South Leon CoC-Mexico); Jennifer Gardner (Valley CoC-AK); my sister and brother-in-law, Tammie and Pete Baker (Valley CoC-AK); me and Marie (Juneau CoC); and Emma, Micah, and Tana Palafox (South Leon CoC-Mexico).


On Wednesday afternoon, we visited an orphanage in Leon. From what I understand, this is more like a children's home because most children are not ever adopted out since Leon is not a well-known place were celebrities and other people come to adopt children. Some members of the AIM team at Leon are involved here. We had brought crayons and coloring books for the children. Then Bill told them the story about creation. After that we had a snack and a prayer.


One of the projects we did was building a new baptistery. Now, a baptistery here is not like the baptisteries we have in the US. They are not porcelain or fiberglass with a faucet. They are unattached; the baptistery has to be filled up before a baptism and then emptied afterwards. Well, the one they had was 5 years old and literally falling apart. So Bill and Jason (far right) took it upon themselves to plan and build a new one. It was actually a pretty neat design. Inside the baptistery, there is a little platform-like thing that the person being baptized sits down on. So they are actually baptized sitting down. This design allows less water to be used in filling up the baptistery. The person doing the baptizing can stand outside the baptistery (as shown by Bill here) or they can stand behind the person in the baptistery. As far as the draining is concerned - they put casters on the bottom of the baptistery which allows it to be rolled to a drain in the middle of the room and then you just pull the plug to drain it. Pretty ingenious if you ask me. The other projects we worked on was moving the projector and the screen - they had been wanting to change the direction of the auditorium. Pete built several wooden benches. Tammie, an AIM student, and I worked on organizing a supply room. And then there were several places in the roof covering that allowed a lot of light to come in, which made it hard to see what was projected on the screen. The cheapest solution we found for this was spray painting it from the inside. This trip may not have been a traditional mission trip, but it was definitely a working one.




On Wednesday night, the church meets together and sings for about 30 minutes and then they have a Bible study. It was a neat thought that even though we are singing the same song, it sounds completely different to us, but to God it sounds the same.