The team met regularly from May through October to prepare for their time in Mexico. First we tackled our fund raising, which went very smoothly. A local electrical firm donated their scrap wire and we spent many enjoyable hours stripping the plastic coating to net bare copper and aluminum, which we then sold to the metal recyclers. Not only was it very profitable but it also proved to be a great team-building endeavour.
We also put a call out to our church family, friends and places where we worked for pop bottles and other recyclables, and they put aside many dollars worth of returnables for us. I'm sure the very helpful bottle depot employees got tired of seeing us arrive weekly with a number of big black bags in tow. Most importantly, our church family were very generous in their support, as always, and the offering plates were overflowing at our one "Mexican Lunch" fundraiser in September.
Soon our budget was pretty much in the bank and we could focus more intently on preparing for ministry. We were blessed to have a team member who speaks fluent Spanish and is gifted in leading worship with his guitar. He patiently taught us a half dozen Spanish worship songs, some of which we hoped to sing as special music in the church service in Mexico. As we stumbled through them, trying to get our tongues to cooperate around the unfamiliar words, we were not sure how the finished product would sound! But we persevered, praying that God would be glorified in our weakness.
We arrived in Nogales on a Saturday and got settled into our hostel. That night we drew up a plan for the Sunday church service because our missionaries assured us that the people would love to see us up front leading a portion of the program. We chose 4 songs that we thought we knew well enough to be presentable, Pastor G would do a children's feature and we delegated two of our team members to share the testimonies they had prepared. However the next day we learned quickly the lesson about "being flexible."
The church service was just starting as we pulled up to the gates. We had no chance to confer with the pastor ahead of time about what he wanted us to contribute. Seconds after we got seated in the three front rows which they had saved for us, the worship team began singing. To our initial dismay, three of the four songs we had chosen were among those they sang as a congregation that morning. But soon it dawned on us that God hadn't prepared us to sing for the people in Mexico, He had prepared us to worship with them!
When we were invited up to participate in the service, we sang the one song they hadn't sung yet, which was a medley well known to them, and they joined in enthusiastically. The pastor's daughter had earlier sent us a special request via e-mail, so we sang that song in English and in Spanish, even though they had sung it previously. And just for fun, we repeated one of our favorites, which they didn't seem to mind one little bit, judging by the clapping in time and the joyful voices singing praise to God along with us.
One of our team members got up to share a heartfelt testimony and G shared his object lesson, both translated by L, our bilingual team member. By then, the time was getting late, so we cancelled the second testimony and sat back to listen as Pastor Jésus delivered a very inspiring sermon about the people of Israel building the temple. He challenged us and his church to go forward into the week of work ahead with an attitude of building this structure for God.
We were so grateful for how he and L worked together to share this message from God's word in both Spanish and English. One of our prayer requests and goals for this trip was that we could somehow participate more fully in worshipping with our Mexican brothers and sisters. God pulled it all together in a most remarkable way!
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