The Mexico Chronicles

I feel as though, in order to tell you about the week, this entry is going to come in 2 parts. The part you will read, and the part to look at (yay for photos!)

To tell you everything won't work. To tell you what we did will seem cliche. Something about describing these sorts of trips always seems the same. We worked, we prayed, we played. Our lives were flipped upside down, and no one wanted to go home. It's always the same old story. I don't know if it differed a lot for us. We built stairs, painted a house. We slept in host homes, and we were more blessed by the kindness of the people we worked for and with, then perhaps they could be blessed by us.

I feel like God taught us all about ourselves. The week was filled with interesting surprises. My favourite was devotions. We read through Proverbs, the chapter according to the day. It was interesting to see how those chapters touched on everything we were seeing and dealing with throughout the whole week. Proverbs 13-23 (because that's the week we were gone) talked about greed, fools, wisdom, families, social injustice, drinking, being kind to the poor- everything! I feel humbled by everything.

What defined the week for me was the beauty of Cancun. While most people only know about the hotel zone, and that is all they see when they travel there, we spent the week in the city, with the people. It's an entirely different world. Knowing that most of us North Americans and Europeans are completely ignorant to the real Cancun. We would travel from our host home to the church every morning and walk down the slums of the city and see a bush, full of the most vibrant of flowers. Constant reminders that everything we saw was God's creations. Everyone we talked to belonged to Him.

I feel like people go on these trips with the self-righteous mind frame. We are helping those who are less fortunate so that we can be right with God. But then again, what sort of mind fram should you go in with? Honestly, it isn't your mind that needs changing. It's your heart. I went into this trip with an open heart. I wanted God to break me, and humble me and teach me. That's what He did.

I feel like I learned to be more soft-spoken. Or to just not speak at all. Watching things, listening to conversations, seeing God's creation, those are the experiences you learn from. Or at least, I learned from.

That being said, here are some photos of what we did, what we experienced and the beauty of the Caribbean.