Resettling & Easter

I've been stateside for three days as of this morning, but only back Fresno since Saturday afternoon.

When we pulled into Fresno, I had energy.  After unpacking and distributing kids, I headed home and started moving.  I committed to sub in a Spades group that evening.  Laundry was put in baskets ready to run a couple loads through.  Car was cleaned out.  Did a little yard work.

Spades was fun, except that there were seven of us subs, so I didn't get to see a lot of the regulars I was hoping to.  We play 12 hands of Spades (in three rounds of four hands) in a night.  First round, pretty low score.  Second round, awesome score.  Then, on hand 3 of round 3, the fatigue started to set in.  I barely made it to the end.

I stuck around (we were playing at Amy's house) to hold Krissy for a little while, and Amy and I talked a little more about the trip after everyone else left.

As I started to drive home, I remembered I had nothing "easy" in my fridge for a quick breakfast the next morning, so I forced myself to make a stop at FoodMaxx for some milk and toaster waffles.

I came home and crashed.

I woke up and showered.

Easter was wonderful.  My Fresno church abandoned their Sunrise service this year (maybe taking the hint that I hadn't attended once in my ten years of being here).  They inserted a brunch in between the two morning services, pulling 1st service back to 8a from normal 9a, and making both services shorter.  Marie Callendar quiche, apple turnovers, strawberries, cereal and orange juice.  Made that FoodMaxx stop totally unnecessary.  Oh well.

It turns out we had a two-part Easter musical.  I had thought it was all on Palm Sunday and I had missed it being in Mexico, so that was a pleasant surprise.  I was a little antsy listening to the mini-sermon that followed, but I think that was due to over-stimulation from the trip and trying to get back to regular life.

I went over to Craig & Sarah's for Easter lunch.  They have a very laid back home, so much so that they know if they don't see me for awhile, I'm upstairs taking a nap.  They also had his parents, her mom, her sister & bro-in-law & 2 kids, and Katie & her family from Modesto over for the afternoon, along with their three kids (Bailey 13, Matt 11 and Torin 2).  And Darrin, a church friend of Matt's, had been dropped off to spend the night.  Awesome mix of people.

Craig put his slack line up, and a few of us tried it.  I haven't been on one since Bijan's 2nd birthday in August, and Craig's is a bit higher off the ground.  I was expecting the overhead guide rope to be taut, so when I slipped off the slack line and hung on to the rope, I was very surprised to get the wind knocked out of me as my back slammed into the dirt instead of doing some in-air acrobatics.

Craig had a pile of dirt in the front yard.  Best thing in the world for boys, he told me.  Matt and Torin had been playing in it for three days, and now Darrin was enjoying it too.

Craig BBQ'd tri-tip and asparagus, and Sarah cooked pilaf and green beans on the stove.  Three desserts: Shelly's (Craig's mom) banana pudding pie, Amy's (Sarah's sister) lemon cheesecake with gingersnap crust, and Sarah's peach pie.  All delicious, but I think I liked the lemon dessert the best.

When Torin needed to go down for his nap, Craig carried him past me to show that even Uncle Karl thinks naps are a good idea.  Melts my heart to hear Torin say "Unctle Tarl."

Katie's family got back on the road to Modesto, Amy's family and the parents all left, so it was just Craig, Sarah, their kids, Katie and me.  Craig showed me some new things he had been doing on his property (he and Sarah just purchased this huge lot a year and a half ago).  Some lightning showed up in the distance, promising more rain, so Craig pulled in or covered tools and equipment.  We talked about playing a game of Settlers of Catan, but the lightning show became more fascinating.  Katie, Craig & I climbed up on his turn style of pull-up bars he had built out by the chicken coop.  They lightning was still pretty far off, so we figured we were safe for awhile.

We all talked for awhile longer, Katie left around 9 and I left around 10.  I was glad I had taken Monday off work as well.

Now Monday morning, I have finally turned on my computer to catch up on life.  100+ work e-mails have poured in, I received an "A" on the seminary paper I turned in last week, I learned that Fred went into and was released from the hospital, and I'm slowly working through bills and e-mails.

I kept a shorthand journal of the week in Mexico.  Now I will attempt to turn it into one of my traditional travel journals, but we'll see how that goes.  I filled up about 3 pages of a composition notebook each day just in my bullet point reminders.  Some highlights from the trip:

• Enjoying God make me eat a "never" in working with junior high students
• Being lauded as an awesome driver in the eyes of the kids (and even adults) in swerving across two lanes of traffic to make our exit when the caravan didn't properly plan space for me to get back over, changing positions from caboose to lead car as we exited the freeway.
• Learning to be flexible through the MANY glitches in our construction efforts to transform some dilapidated bathrooms into showers at the church we were helping
• Getting to know our junior pastor Lee & his wife Bri better and being even more excited about them overseeing the youth in our church.
• Being blessed and prayed over by the pastor and his wife after a week of serving with them
• Getting pulled over by la policia due to a misunderstanding of traffic signals in Mexico and ALMOST having to go down to the Mexico police station.
• Feeling enriched and spiritually strengthened from a dynamic chapel speaker that had a gift for reaching both adults and junior high students
• Getting flagged for 2nd stage inspection (full car x-ray only, not bag search) coming back across the border
• Seeing my parents and sister on the last leg of the trip home
• Maintaining my 100% return-rate on children entrusted to my care

I'm still processing all that God did in me.  I loved it there.  If I had more clothes and the time off work, I would have gladly stayed longer.

Mexico Countdown

I can't really say, "it feels real now," because it's always felt that way.  The impending arrival of our leave date hasn't snuck up on me in any sense.

We had our final team meeting today, and it was very productive.  I finally received the packing list.  Two things really made me breathe a sigh of relief: 1) air mattresses and 2) kids are not allowed to bring electronics.

We are tent camping in a secured compound just south of the border.  Our Jr. High pastor comes across as pretty no frills, so I was presuming we were laying our sleep bags directly on the floor of the tent on the dirt or concrete.  I normally have no problem saying I need an air mattress for my back issues and my sleep issues, but I really struggle with being an exception when we're trying to teach the Jr. Highers about servant leadership, especially when they usually can't see an exception for anything more than "he gets something that I don't," and not being able to acknowledge how much easier they can function for a week on interrupted sleep than a 28-year-old can.

One of my biggest pet peeves (okay, I have a long list of them, but this is near the top) is kids' addiction to electronics.  I think there is immense value in letting kids get bored and forcing them to observe the world around them.  I read an article once that touted one of the benefits of summer is having kids get bored enough to make their minds wander.  That point is where concepts can start to gel, and all the "book learnin'" from school can start to come together for them.  So I'm glad that we're presenting a consistent message on this.  Kids have been told to have their parents' numbers written down and that they can use an adult's cell phone to call to establish ETA for the return trip (and we have all the emergency contact slips with us), so there will be no need for them to have any electronics.

I think I'm almost ready with setting up my coworkers for me to be gone from Friday through the Monday after Easter, but it may be a little tight getting all my reports done.

My main stressors right now are my next seminary paper and my arm.  The paper is due this Saturday, but I need to have it done on Thursday, as well as knock out a quiz and a couple online forum posts that would be due the next week that I probably won't be back online with coherency to complete by that Saturday.

With my arm, I had blood work done two weeks ago, and the nurse who drew me messed up.  On the first attempt, she missed the vein.  On the second attempt, she got the blood but must have nicked a nerve in there, because my whole arm was throbbing after I left the Dr's office.  The pain would ebb and flow, but never truly subsided.  I finally went back in a week later, and they put me on the strong pain meds to sleep at night because the pain was waking me up.  Yesterday I was finally able to do a couple push-ups and pull-ups for the first time since the draw, and the pain is much more localized today instead of being throughout the whole arm, so I'm hopefully on the mend.  Just in time to go do a week of construction work in Mexico.

I'm also not crazy about the only getting one shower thing (on Thursday), but oh well.

Okay God, you've got this.  Here go I in faith.

Mexico: the Trip Planning

My Fresno church held a men's ministry kick-off dinner in January, and all the pastors gave updates on what their ministries were doing that year and how we could potentially be involved.

When Lee, our Jr High pastor got up to speak, he spoke about opportunities to mentor Jr Highers and their Spring Break trip to Mexico.  I already informally spend more time with a few church kids than the once-a-month mentoring he described, so I felt okay passing on that one.

But the Mexico trip stuck in my head.  I was neck deep in my audit, my back was about to go out, and I had undergone a particularly awful day at work prior to the dinner, so I didn't ask more questions that night.

I spoke to Lee at a later date, and he outlined the trip for me.  The Jr. Highers will do a VBS, but the extra adults going will be doing a construction project for a church in Mexicali.  This isn't with a formal missions organization, just off of a personal relationship that Lee has maintained with this pastor and his family since he met them on a Mexico trip when he was in a youth group growing up.  He's been going back to help out in various capacities with this church year after year.  A few years ago, he and a group built a compound of bathrooms down the to replace the existing ones that were falling apart.  This year, we're going to convert the old bathroom stalls into shower stalls.  Thankfully we have Kyle, an experienced tile & plumbing guy, going with us.

I was getting excited about this.  I still didn't know if it would play out to take the time off work, and I couldn't even request vacation time until the audit was over, but Lee patiently extended the application deadline for me because of my work situation.

Right after the audit finished, I fell ill on the release from the stress wave I'd been riding for so long and was out for three days.  I waited until my second day back, and then took the vacation request form into my boss.  I described the trip, told him I thought we could get the monthly bank reporting deadlines done before I leave, and he signed the form!

Onto the money part.  I love missions.  I love supporting missionaries.  I hate, however, asking for money to do missions myself because I feel that people have a given amount of money they're going to budget for supporting missions, and I don't want to deprive a missionary who needs the support more than I do.  And I am not naturally a salesman, I hate selling products, and much less, myself as something that others should invest in.  Others I know do that very well by nature, and I applaud them for that gifting and don't look down on them for that, but it's not my personality AT ALL.  Since the trip cost was manageable, I asked Lee if he would be okay with me foregoing the sending of support letters and just writing a check for my portion of the trip costs.

Well, it turns out that our church has a policy of not sending support letters if the trip cost is below $500/person.  People can donate to the trip if they like, but mass solicitation is not, because there are summer missions trips that have a much higher cost, and the church has a missions budget from regular tithes that is allocated to offset the cost of trips like these.  As far as us raising money, though. we were going to be raising money exclusively through our annual tri-tip fundraiser.

The church purchases tri-tips, and cooks them at the church on a planned Sunday, and sell them along with containers of rice pilaf, baked beans and dinner rolls as a full meal for 4+ people for $40.  The pilaf is cooked and donated by ladies in our church (I was privileged enough to be taught how to make one of the coveted recipes BTW!).  Approximately 50% of the sale price goes directly into our missions accounts.  Kids going on the trips receive tickets to sell to both people within and outside of the church (the profit from the sales they arrange go into their specific account).  The meal date is this coming Sunday.

I wasn't able to commit to the trip as early as all of the kids were, and--see above--I hate selling, so my tri-tip sales were lackluster (I did get a couple meals sold), but I had budgeted for covering the whole cost of the trip myself, so even those two sales were a bonus.  I was also very blessed with a generous donation by a former church member in town who didn't care for a meal but wanted to support my trip nonetheless.

I was sad to hear some people in the church say that they had been asked by as many as 8 kids about buying a tri-tip meal, and felt guilty for not being able to say yes to more than one.  I want to see if I can find a way to help organize that next year to minimize the multiple requests, such as a check-out system for a set of names that each kid would have exclusive rights to ask.

We've been having weekly meetings on Sunday afternoons to have the kids get their VBS skits ready, and for us adults to do some planning talks on the construction work.  I'm still a little overwhelmed to realize that I'm actually going on this trip.  I'm excited because I've been wanting to go on a missions trip for a few years now, but have never been able to make it jive with time off from work.  This is a very new desire for me, because I always figured that God made me to be a "sender" of other missionaries, both short-term and long-term.  I went to Mexico for two week-long trips in Jr High and HS, and enjoyed them, but never was stirred about wanting to do it more.  But I'm admittedly nervous about my sleep struggles that continue to crop up periodically (though much improved since having my tonsils out).  I'll be a driver for the trip, and I'm not worried about the drive down there, but more my daily functionality for construction work during the trip if I'm not able to sleep well at night.  But if God wants me going on this trip, I have faith that He's going to work out the sleep issues.