Holy Week (2)

from MTW / RUF missionary Peter Dishman @ UNAM, Mexico City

We had a good time with the group from Trinity U in San Antonio last week, and I hope they enjoyed their time of learning and serving here as well! Because there were no classes (Spring Break = Holy Week in Mexico every year), our rhythm was a bit different than usual.

We started each morning early helping a community service/outreach program that our local church does every year called “extend your hand”. We probably helped serve about 1200 breakfasts over the course of the week, and got to know a lot of the neighbors. Some people came for the first time to the breakfasts, while others had been coming for more than a decade! I met people from the neighborhood behind the church, parents whose children were in the local hospital, and a whole lot of police officers toting their machine guns and shotguns. Each of these groups is part of our local demographic.

Next we headed to my apartment, where on Monday and Tuesday we had a “mini-retreat” for our RUF students on “relationships”. We had decent participation, and Justin’s talks and especially the question and answer times helped clarify a lot of questions, from what it means that marriage is a covenant to the difficulties of leaving and cleaving to the role of emotions in dating and tying the knot. On the other weekdays during this time, people rested and spent time meditating on Scripture and praying, and then we talked through the story of scripture from beginning to end.

In the afternoons, we did English Clubs, and in spite of their being no classes in session, we had a really good turnout - 50 the first day and 30-40 for the other days. We had good topics and good discussions (Amy Oettle really has become the queen of English Clubs), and afterward had long hang-out times playing soccer or capture the flag with those competitive gringos (myself included!), visiting at the Oettle and Dishman apartments, eating tacos, and going to the tourist market. Holy Week is nice (and exhausting!) because no one really has to go anywhere, so you can talk the hours away.

So, that was our week - long, a little intense, a few health issues, but a lot of learning and growing because God is at work, by and with his word among his people and beyond them. It would be great if any Trinity U folk wanted to comment on what they thought of the week since I have just scratched the surface here!