NBYG Mexico 2017: Reflections on the Close of Our First Day

We're here at the City of Children. This is the plaza where we'll spend a great deal of our time. The teens are seated in the covered table area where we'll have a devotional each morning. The building in front of them houses the American cafeteria where we'll eat most of our meals. Each day a different group of children from the home will share meals with us. To the right you see the Creative Arts & Learning Center. And don't worry about our weather this week. The breeze from the ocean actually makes it feel cooler than it is in Tennessee!

There are more pictures at the end of this rather lengthy end-of-the-first-day post. Enjoy them. I apologize for the length of this note but it was a rich, rich day that deserves some reflection.

At 3:30 this morning clocks and cell phones across the Boro were lighting up and ringing awake blurry-eyed teens and parents, who only hours before were doing their last-minute packing. We all converged at the airport, a slightly wacky army in shorts and pajama pants, sandals and tennis shoes, ball caps and straw hats, Oakleys and bifocals. There were goodbye hugs and quiet prayers, quick inquiries -- "Do you have your passport?...allergy medicine?...contact solution?...Bible?...retainer?...need any extra money?" Then one by one parents reluctantly slip away leaving us to set out.

Thank you parents and families for entrusting your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers for a week in another country and culture where we can discover that Jesus is Lord everywhere, where we can learn something about the people we serve, the God we serve and ourselves when we serve.

When you stop to really think about it, this a mind-boggling undertaking for a mostly volunteer army to bring together 61 teens, adults and elders, more than 120 bags, 48 of those filled with costumes, set pieces, cooking utensils, craft items, decorations, games, puppets, construction tools, toys and clothing to give away, devotional and study materials and on and on it goes. It's all probably a pretty entertaining day for TSA agents who watch the cavalcade of odd silhouettes drift across their x-ray monitor. Is that an adult-sized Buzz Lightyear costume? What lengths have we gone to serve 200 orphans in Mexico for a week? The expense of air travel and t-shirts, costumes and decorations, food and materials -- why not be practical and send a check? Just think what you could do with all of those resources?

Those words ring familiar. They put in mind a women with a very expense jar of perfume. She anoints the Lord's head with this perfume and some who witness this question the waste. The perfume could have been sold and the money give to the poor. It also puts in mind the lavish, undeserved outpouring of God's love on each one of us.

Some would judge the expense of a one-week mission trip a waste. So you be the judge -- our journey of service is just beginning -- and you have entrusted a loved one to this group's care. See if they don't return a bit different. Worn and tired, for sure, but also changed in their perspective on the world, onothers and God's working in their lives. Wait and see. A week from now judge for yourself and tell us if it was all worth it. For now, we wait with you to see what amazing things the Lord has in store for this week. Because, rest assure, he has a plan.

Our passage for the week is Ephesians 2. We hope you'll read it with us during the week. There's a couple of verses from that chapter that seem to complement these thoughts from Day 1. "And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparably riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus."

Day 1 is in the books. It was a long day of travel, of preparation and anticipation. We closed the day as we will close every day, with a prayer circle in the middle of the plaza that will see so much of our activity while we are here -- pick-up soccer games, devotionals, grilling out, playtime with the ninos. The Mexican teens joined us and very quickly, as Skid pointed out in his devotion, we were no longer Mexican teens or American teens. We were all children of the living God. Whatever language barrier that exists was quickly replaced with laughter and hugs, fist bumps and smiles. It was the close to a very long day but the beginning of something wonderful. Just wait and see.

Instructions as we arrive. Important things like don't drink the tap water and don't flush any toilet paper...place it carefully in the waste paper basket.