Day One - Saturday July 26, 2008

GALEN -
The day began quite early for me. I awoke at five thirty this morning at the house of my friends Rebecca and Nelson in Columbus, Ohio. After a delicious bowl of Oatmeal with brown sugar, fresh walnuts, raisins and butter, we headed out to the airport where I caught my seven-thirty flight.
The flight arrived in Las Vegas at eight-forty and the connecting flight took off at nine-fifty dropping me off in San Diego promptly at eleven-fifty. I had previously agreed to meet the rest of the team (David Miller, Michelle Wood, the Twins, Steven and Kelsie, Morgan and Jenna) at the baggage claim area...unfortunately, neither us knew that there were three terminals with three different baggage claim areas. After almost complete panic, I located Jenna who told me to meet them at terminal two.
After meeting the team we waited until twelve-fourtyfive when the bus arrived and both our team and the Newberg church team boarded a huge posh, air conditioned charter bus and headed out for the boarder.
David Miller and I sat together, quizzing eachother on our Spanish flash cards, while others in the bus took the time to get to know each other better. Before we left one of the men from the Newberg church prayed for our travel across the boarder and our time in Mexico, so it should not have come as a surprise (but it did) that when we reached the boader, we ecountered a small, but significant miracle. Apparently they have a little custom on theMexican boarder with charter busess full of Americans. They make one person come out off of the bus, press a button that controls two lights. One light is red and one is green. It is pretty much a gamble as to which light will come on once the button is pushed. A young girl named Madison was chosen to do the honors and to the delight of us all - we got a green light. If we had gotten a red light, we would have been ordered off the bus and our luggage would have been looked through and our trip would have been seriously delayed. There are 22 of us just from the Ohio group. The Newberg group appears to be at least 30 people deep. Praise God for Madison!

Once we were on our way, the scenery of Mexico (as always) was just refreshing to see. The Pacific Ocean on the right, and Huge Mountains decorated by palm trees and beautiful stone houses on the left. We soon entered Ensenada where the City of Children is and stopped for 30 minutes at a Pemex station to refresh ourselves on Magnum Ice Cream bars. (if you haven´t had one - you are really missing out)

An hour and one half later we arrived in Camalu at the Pemex 4 blocks away from the church. But our Camalu Contacts didn´t know that we had arrived, so David Miller and I walked the four blocks to the church where we were immediately met by one of our favorite little boys ¨Luis¨.

Juan Jose (the minister we support) emerged from his home beside the church and we greeted one another with hugs and handshakes and my poor attempts to sound like a regular (in Spanish- wink) We explained to him that our friends and luggage were four blocks away and that we needed to obtain the vans from the hotel to pick them up. He drove us to the Hotel down the road where we met Matt, Laura, Cheryl and Clint. We picked up everyone and arrived back at the church.

Probably the most notable thing that took place was when Luis saw Ricky. He smiled so big and Ricky yelled his name...and the chase was on. You have to know that here in Mexico Ricky Grant is a celebrity with the children and especially the little boys. For the next hour and a half, Ricky ran and played with about five boys non-stop.

Jason Couch then called us all into the church for a logistics and work week schedule meeting. Before he began, he allowed Matt Moore to greet us and make us aware that in this culture we have to be aware that things are a bit different. Here there is such a respect for God and the things of God that when something exciting happens, people don´t clap. They show a somber silence...so he reminded us that if there is a baptism or something that we´d normally show exterior emotion about, that we would do well to do as they do. ¨Don´t be the first to do anything and don´t be the last.¨ Jason then reminded us of other things to keep in mind.
1. Don´t flush toilet paper here. If you do - you will be the one to clean up the mess. Toilet paper is to be thrown away in the bucket next to the toilet.
2. Don´t get sick - watch what we eat and drink and always wash our hands.
3. Use the hand sanitary liquid and wipes before eating.
Then he passed out room keys and we spent about an hour socializing over pizza.

We then adjourned to the hotel. This hotel is ¨off the hook¨ (really nice)
Ok - It´s late and I have to get off of Juan Jose´s computadora (computer) but one last bit of info. Ricky Grant has a Mosquito bite and Patrick Williams has Poison Ivy and when I left the room (those two guys, me and David are sharing a room) were sitting down comparing ¨itch¨stories.
More later...