I don't know how to begin this story, so I'm going to begin by talking about my typical day. We would wake up at 6:30 every morning, get ready and get breakfast. At 7:30, a bell would ring and we would find a place on the base by ourselves where we did our devotionals. Then we would get into our pods and head off to wherever the schedule on the wall said we were going. I spent my first day in the chiropractic clinic giving people massages and watching Dr. Anderson realign people's bodies and fix their pain with a single touch. In the afternoons, I had teen outreach. The first day we did our ministry on the beach. The second day we did it at the park. On Wednesday, we had a worship service in a church called Marantha. And then we spent Thursday surfing with the Mexicans on the beach.
Every day we had break time from 4:00-6:00 until dinner. I spent that either playing volleyball, exploring the base, or dancing in flip flops on concrete using glass windows as mirrors with Carolina. But every night after dinner, people would take out all the trash to the field and burn it, starting a really cool, orange, bonfire made of trash. I don't why I found this so amusing. But we would lay down at a distance from the fire on the field and stare up at the sky, eyeing the endless twinkling stars. You could see the clouds moving, covering up the moon and then revealing it again. We were so far from industrialization that we could actually see the constellations. And we all just laid there staring until the bell rang for evening worship.
Or, we'd play a really fun game called "Chasing the stars."
"So, you're going to pick a star in the sky, and spin in circles really fast until I tell you to follow my light. When I say that, you are going to stop spinning and looking at your star and chase after my flashlight," Kylie said.
"Okay!" We all said.
I watched as one at a time we all picked stars and spun around them, and then tried to follow the flashlight. Falling was inevitable and we all looked drunk.
"Go!" She said to me. I picked a star in the sky and stared at it, spinning and spinning and spinning for a really long time.
"Okay follow my light!" She turned on her flashlight and I ran after it, all lopsided a woozy. She shone the light and ran, and I managed to follow for 10 seconds without falling.
"I didn't fall!" I exclaimed.
"You weren't dizzy enough," She chuckled.
Evening worship was always crazy. You could hear everyone singing together. We all sang really loud. People were not afraid to lift their hands, and I loved that. We were one completely unashamed group of people.
Oh, this is important! Mexican style praying is very different from what I was used to. Everybody prays out loud at the same time.
Our speaker, Ben, was also crazy. He told us his story about how he was in and out of prison and hated Christians. Then after 7 days of being in a Christian rehab camp, he accepted Christ, and everyone was shocked. On Tuesday night, he invited everyone who wanted to rededicate their lives to God to come up front. Then the rest of us went up there and put our hands on our friends and prayed.
At around 10:00 p.m, we'd brush our teeth and head to bed. Before bed, we would always talk in our cabins about the message and pray for one another. I slept well every single night.
Okay, onto the exciting stuff now!
