My Mexican Adventure

After a long absence, I started attending church again and was drawn to the idea of going on a Missions Trip. I can’t say definitively that it was a calling but I later learned it was all preplanned, which will become clearer later.

We attend Compass Church whose motto is, “Navigating People to God” which in my case, is an understatement. The opportunity first arose last year but as I prepared, I tested positive for Covid and was unable to attend. This year, all vaccinated and boosted, I got my checklist and began my journey.

The Mission was for a “Legacy Partner” of the church, Ninos de Mexico. In 1966, a young couple from Missouri made a trip to Mexico to assess how they could best work to meet needs and evangelize the people. They were met in Mexico City by veteran missionary Dean Cary. They decided to begin a program that would later be called “Niños de Mexico.”  In January of 1967 they moved to Mexico to begin the work.

In 1978, an office was opened in Union, Missouri to provide communications with U.S. churches and to take care of the business end of the expanding ministry.

Since then, many faithful house parents, staff, and volunteers have cared for and shared the love of Christ with the kids they foster. Today, there are nine homes in three Mexican states, Mexico City, Puebla and Veracruz.

The Mission was medical and we would provide simple medical care to those in need and, as it turns out, the need is great. We would concentrate on wound care, pain management, some nutrition, comfort and prayer over difficult medical diagnosis. We had a mix of medical professionals supervising lay people to provide that care and to minister to those we were there to serve.

I was one of those who crossed over from the lay people. During my law enforcement career, I had been a certified Emergency Medical Technician when I flew helicopters about a hundred years ago with the San Diego County Sheriffs Department. So, imagine my apprehension in working on folks in a foreign land who knew about as much English as I knew Spanish. Not to mention we would be living and working in what I can only describe as deepest, darkest rural Mexico.

DFW Art (What's the message here?)

Now, I’ve traveled extensively in other foreign countries. Ok, full disclosure, I’ve been on some cruises to vacation spots where we traveled in air-conditioned buses and hung out at some cool beach resorts. This, it turned out, was NOT your Cruise Director's Mexico.

After landing in Mexico City, we were taken to the Niños main compound where the staff and some foster kids reside. We spent an evening with the Esperanza home parents and kids. We introduced ourselves and the young boys told us about themselves and their career aspirations as we dined with them. They were happy and well cared for. Though Christianity is always present in the homes, religion is not pushed on them and they choose whether to worship God or not. The focus is keeping them in school and becoming productive citizens. 

I too had been a foster parent to my son as well as hanging around other foster homes during my career as a cop and could see these kids were thriving. Kudos to the house parents who were mentoring those kids. They have a lot to be proud of.

The next day, we packed up and headed to attend church in the City of Puebla. It was a small church with both American ex-pats and Mexican worshipers.

My wife and I attend a pretty, what I like to refer to as a “high octane” Big Box church in Colleyville, Texas. A large auditorium worship center with theater seating and a full rock band musical cast with sound, lighting and big screen video displays that could compete with most major concert venues.

This little church had a nice auditorium with folding chairs and windows providing the lighting and a small pulpit at the head of the room. The “I.T. Department” consisted of two parishioners mounting an iPhone on a tripod to video and upload the sermon to their website.

The Worship Pastor had a simple six-string guitar and his associate had an electronic “beat box” to accompany him as they led the congregation in worship. One of the pastors was in charge of the laptop displaying the lyrics on a big-screen TV, but was so into the music that he would forget to forward the lyric text so the lead Pastor had to run up and hit the “enter” button to move the lyrics forward. The church also runs a seminary and we were treated to two of their students. This is where I could tell I was supposed to be on this Mission as I mentioned at the start.

The message was from the Book of Psalms 27:1-14 where God is speaking through David to all of us (especially me) about the uncertainties of life. David was being pursued by King Saul who was trying to eliminate David as a threat to his reign as well as a bunch of the surrounding countries who were threatening to topple and enslave the Israelites. Basically, Gods telling David not to worry or be scared in that God is watching over him (and us, well…me) and to trust in Him rather than take on the problems of the world by yourself. God will equip us with whatever the situation requires and we’ll get through it.

Realize this sermon was conducted in Spanish but Steve Ross, the Executive Director of the Niños program who was supervising the Mission, was handwriting the message in English and passing the notes to us to understand the sermon. It was a change of pace to see how this little church was celebrating their members and supporting them openly with prayers for individual families and recognition of new members who were going through struggles in their lives.

Afterwards, all of us moved to a fun restaurant which produced Lebanese inspired Mexican food (yep...that’s what I thought too). Antigua Taqueria La Oriental (yeah…name is weird too), is part of a small chain of restaurants who whip up really tasty beef on a spit which is served in bowls along with cheese and onions in what they refer to as “Arabese style.” Their tortillas are handmade and are thicker (more like pita bread) than the traditional thin corn tortillas we’re accustomed to. They also had their own hot sauces which were fabulous.

We then drove to our home base at the Hotel Villa Del Rey in Zaragosa, Puebla, Mexico. It is an economy three  story hotel with an attached restaurant called the Cielo Azul where we took our breakfast and evening buffet style meals. They were simple but filling and delicious meals which we would eat while discussing the day's agenda and the evenings where we would reflect on the day’s activities. Lunches were provided at the site of our clinics by the locals who we were serving. It’s important to note that these lunches were locally farmed chicken, corn, beans, fruit, rice and vegetables. All the food, as well as the handmade corn tortillas and salsas, were all freshly made and were extraordinary. Mind you, the people we served in each of the clinics we ran, live in abject poverty and the food they gave us could have been sold for profit, bartered for other food or services or eaten by them but which they sacrificed as a thank you for our service to them. A very humbling experience for all of us.

Our team consisted of our nominal leader Chad, his wife and nurse Sara, their daughter Lorna, an aspiring nurse like her Mom, Pamela, our second nurse, Missionaries Carolyn and Sherrie, layman Ernie, Steve Ross of Niños de Mexico who brought along four foster boys Carlos, Jesus, Oscar, Gabriel and myself. We piled ourselves into two vans loaded with supplies and headed out.

The first clinic was a small church in the mountains above Puebla called Chilapa in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. In their modest assembly hall, we cobbled together a medical clinic and pharmacy with tarps and a lot of duct tape to treat patients, some of whom had to travel great distances to attend. Many had not seen competent medical help in several years.

Our Spanish speakers, Chad, Steve, Ernie, Pamela and the Niños kids, did triage and probing questions as to their chief complaints while Lorna and I took vital signs and Sara diagnosed and treated more serious patients. Pamela ran an IV station which mixed medications or vitamins into hypodermics or IV bags for injection into patients. Many just needed vitamins and pain medications like Tylenol which Sherrie and Carolyn dispensed in sealed sandwich bags. Realize these people had full time jobs or worked farms in rural Mexico with little access to a drug store or the means to purchase common medications we take for granted over-the-counter or by prescription. Many had very demanding physical jobs without the OSHA safeguards or modern machinery we’re familiar with; so many came to us with serious occupational injuries, some new, some old. Our only remedies might be a short supply of Tylenol or Ibuprofen to ease their pain. Sometimes it was that and Prayer Warriors Carolyn and Sherrie praying with them for comfort and healing.

After six hours with a lunch break, we would tear down the clinic, repack and head back down the hill to home base to recover and regroup for the next day.

Our next clinic was in an assembly hall in the town of Contla also in the state of Puebla. We arrived to a waiting line of townspeople as we quickly set up the clinic and began taking in patients. We were now getting into a rhythm where the team, after recreating the various stations, just took up where we had left off the day before. It was always touching to watch these proud people stoically wait in line, sometimes in the rain, waiting to be seen and upon leaving, making a point to shake our hands and thank us for helping them, then watching them begin their sometimes very long walks home.

After tearing down that clinic, as we drove off, a woman and her two children we had seen at the clinic insisted we stop at their home so they could give us some fruit from their farm. As we approached their home, they came running out in the pouring rain to hand us the bags of fruit. Again, these were fruits they could have sold or eaten themselves but were willing to give to us as thanks for serving them. They were literally sharing the fruits of their labor with us.

On the long drive back, I witnessed something I had never seen. I watch a lot of documentaries and have seen videos of people plowing fields or hand raising livestock, but that day I saw my first upfront view of a donkey pulling a man and an old-time plow cutting furrows in the soil, back and forth, on this little plot of land in the rain. I can add that during the week we drove around, I never saw one mechanized tractor or support vehicle. These folks did everything driving animals by hand or jury-rigged old pick-up trucks to carry people or products around the area.

The last clinic was in the town of Libertad, Puebla, Mexico, another modest assembly room used as a community center and church for Sunday services. It was situated on a dirt road with working corn fields around it. As we drove up, there were already about 40 men, women and children waiting patiently on plastic chairs under a flapping blue tarp on the entry patio.

We quickly unloaded and moved everything inside. A pharmacy was established along with a “doctors office” for Sara and a cordoned off area for intravenous therapy for Pamela. While creating the IV area, I noted some orange paracord wrapped around one of the interior pillars. One of our leaders, Chad’s, calling cards is the orange paracord he brings each year used to hang plastic tarps to wall off the treatment areas. There are bits and pieces of cord everywhere we go. I pointed this out to Chad remarking that he left his mark the last time they conducted a clinic there. We all laughed but when he reflected on that moment at the end of the days debrief, he got a little emotional when describing his feelings at seeing the cord, reminding him and us of how we don’t always see the impact our little clinics have on the people we see, but the evidence is there that we showed up and did our best to make a difference even for those few hours we were serving those people.

Taking Vitals

After the tear down and drive back to our hotel, we were asked to sum up our experience over the last five days after dinner. Many had moving stories of cases they had handled or interactions with some of the patients. Everybody remarked how good they felt helping those people in need and how thankful their patients were with just receiving some vitamins for their kids or some Tylenol for their Arthritis.

Everyone was also moved by the food brought for us at each clinic by the organizers. They were simple but filling meals from volunteers from their own pantries and kitchens. One Pastor at Libertad put it succinctly, he said they wanted to make the meal as memorable as possible as incentive for us to want to return next time. A brilliant marketing strategy if you ask me.

Our last full day was a touristy day at the Pre-Columbian pyramid city of Teotihuacán located in a valley below a volcano (location, location, location). The vast settlement with its stepped pyramids, temples and platforms lining a central 'avenue of the dead’ so impressed the Aztecs they named it the place where gods were created. We are all still intrigued, and archaeologists continue to debate who built this ancient city. Luckily the museum was bi-lingual and I got to roam around looking at the ancient artwork.

The walk through the site was awesome. All these temples on either side of the main street rising above us, were all part of a vast network of cityscape that’s still being excavated today. All were built with millions of volcanic rocks held together by early mortar as strong as the first day it was applied.

On site is an interesting restaurant. La Gruta (The Grotto) is in a below ground cave. In 1906, a restauranteur decided putting a restaurant underground would attract visitors from Teotihuacán and he was right. Lots of famous people have dined there including painters Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, writer Jorge Luis Borges and Queen Elizabeth II.

After a really full day of playing tourist, we headed back to Mexico City along Mexico’s government highways. I can dedicate a whole other Blog entry on the various exhibits of crazy driving I witnessed that would draw the ire of all of the State and Highway Patrols I’ve been associated with. Not to mention their “speed bumps” (yes...on the highway) which are significant and the use of strategic “dips”, literally reverse speed bumps which, if unprepared, can send your head into the overhead.

The next morning, we restocked the meds for the next group coming. Then we packed and headed to the Mexico City Airport. Another experience best taken in person. When you’re used to the relative organized chaos of American airports, it can only be described as organized craziness.

Mexico City Airport Art (Seriously...who picks this stuff?)

Although I was reluctant to go, I am forever grateful to those who prodded me to go and especially to the people I had a chance to meet and serve. I do appreciate the opportunity to go on Mission and look forward to the next.