Down and dirty in the streets - Mexico Reflections Part 1
Down and dirty in the streets - Mexico Reflections Part 1
As Mike P expertly navigated our minivan down the one-lane, but two-way, street (more like an alley, really), I could almost hear the inner voices of the high school boys sitting behind us: Where the heck are we?
Our particular neighborhood in Tijuana, La Colonia Chamisal, was probably not what our team had in mind when we got our ministry assignment. Our training was more focused on a more organized model where we would partner with a local church and use the church facilities for children's ministry, and a soccer field/basketball court for sports ministry, with evening services run by the church (with us helping out). What we got was the opportunity to minister directly in a poor neighborhood (where the church pastor lived and ministered daily), composed mostly of shacks where the average residence would have one actual wall, and the other parts of the "building" would be made of sheet metal or tarps. Cars were mostly run-down, there was garbage on the ground, a fair amount of barbed wire on top of the stone walls lining the neighborhood, there was a thick layer of dust on top of everything, and stray, malnourished dogs and cats roamed the streets freely.. Interestingly enough, there was the visual dichotomy of more than a few shacks with satellite dishes mounted on top. Misplaced priorities, perhaps?
After conversing with Memo, a member of the local church who had done a lot of work in that neighborhood and basically served as our guide, we found out that there could very well be another reason for the dish. Apparently the average family (either husband-wife or single mother) consists of an average of 9 kids, with some families getting up to 15! In that type of home situation, we weren't terribly surprised to think that perhaps the satellite dish had to serve as a suitable distraction for the kids while the parents tried to care for a few kids at a time. Memo also mentioned that drugs and gangs have a tight hold on the community. We didn't see too much "gang" activity, perhaps because we were there during the afternoon in daylight hours, but we did see (and smell) a drug deal go down. All in all, it reminded me a great deal of some of the poorer areas of NYC when I was there in 2000 in the inner city.
So, like I said, it was probably pretty far away from our expectations going in. However, my initial misgivings for myself and the high schoolers quickly changed into excitement, because in my opinion, this would in all likelihood be a very unfiltered, unmitigated missions experience over the week for them. In a church, people may act artificially nicer or more welcoming, but when you're in their neighborhood, you will get real people. And that was what I wanted our team to experience - getting involved in a very real way in the lives of people, if just for a short time, and aiding/complementing the local church in the ministry that they were already doing and would continue to do after we were gone.
We learned to be flexible. With no roof over our heads or table to spread materials out on, we improvised for the children's ministry by cutting open old boxes and laying them flat on the street to give the neighborhood kids a place to sit during the skits and crafts times. For sports ministry, we marked off a section of street with rocks for goals and played soccer with the older boys (7-18 years old), bouncing balls off walls, cars, and occasionally into people's yards. The locals are really good and tremendously athletic (even the 10-year olds are capable of break-dancing and walking on their hands). Most of the other guys from our team did well (the local kids even asked if Mike P was a soccer player back in America, to which I replied no, he developed quick feet on the basketball court with me), but I didn't fare as well - lit up as a goalie and got all sorts of embarrased on the "field"/street - faked so one of my shoes fell off, slipping while retrieiving a ball on the sidewalk and getting it stuck in between a fence and the ground, 6 inches away from a very large, mean-looking barking dog. In mid-week, after we mentioned that we all played hoops more often, we got a game in on a rusty old hoop planted in a garbage can on a side street, and I took out some soccer frustrations. I think I had about 9 blocks in 3 minutes time. Mike P said it was "Mutombo-like."
In between games, we'd strike up conversations with the folks waiting on the sidelines, and during water breaks, various members of our team would share testimonies. Praise God, a fair amount of my high school Spanish actually came back to me on the fly - I was able to hold most of my conversations without utilizing the translator, freeing him up to help out the high schoolers with their conversations. While many kids were obviously focused primarily on the games, there were a few who did seem more friendly and went out of their way to want to get to know us and what we were doing there. Another common conversation topic was encouraging the boys to attend the local church's community small group for teenagers - we wanted them to know that we were not an independent missionary team, but rather that we were working closely with people that they already knew from their neighborhood.
In the evenings, we would eat our bag dinners, and then step out with Memo to visit people. One fascinating aspect of Latin culture is that communities are generally very open - there is nothing intrusive about walking up to their front door, saying "Good evening!" and getting invited in for conversation. Trying this in America gets you slammed doors and "No solicitors" signs - Americans really treasure their privacy. Anyway, we would visit people and ask them how we can pray for them. A few common themes stood out - kids in drugs, kids in gangs, new babies, looking for a job, needing an education. We would pray for them, and then invite them to community cell groups for women and men, again run by the local church.
On the final day of ministry, we helped the church set up for a weekend-long presentation of the Gospel through preaching, worship music, and even a Spanish rapper from San Diego (this is where I picked up my little leg injury). My teammate Mike pointed out that we could almost see a spiritual battleground through this - we set up the stage for the Christian event in the exact same spot where the drug deal went down the previous day. There are clearly many people in bondage to drugs and gangs, and yet there are faithful believers in the very same community laboring hard at living and preaching the freeing message of the Gospel of Christ to a lost people.
Perhaps this was the greatest encouragement and lesson to me from the week of ministry - getting to partner with and supplement the local church's work in the community, and seeing that they are being faithful in God's command to love their neighbor. Seeing the obviously hard-won respect they've earned from people in the community that they interact with, it blesses me to know that Christ is in fact sowing, planting, and reaping. Hopefully we were able to perhaps sow a few seeds, or at least break up some hard ground.
It was also encouraging to see the high schoolers on our team step up. As a youth counselor the past few years, I've tried to dissuade them from casually using the word "ghetto" as an adjective, because they've grown up in a more rich society than 98% of the world. I think they were able to learn a lot through the experience of seeing how the poor - like most of the world - live, and to see that underneath the shabby exterior, people are still people, and you can relate to people in a surprising number of ways if you don't let appearance get in the way.
During our week in Mexico, as I spent time praying for our community, I had a mental image of the power of Christ flooding into the dusty, worn-down neighborhood and transforming lives, cleaning out the filth of drugs, breaking unhealthy dependence on gangs, and freeing people to create a unique generation of worshipers (like the kids who can break dance). As I continue to pray even back here in the states, this is what I hope to see one day in La Colonia Chamisal.
As Mike P expertly navigated our minivan down the one-lane, but two-way, street (more like an alley, really), I could almost hear the inner voices of the high school boys sitting behind us: Where the heck are we?
Our particular neighborhood in Tijuana, La Colonia Chamisal, was probably not what our team had in mind when we got our ministry assignment. Our training was more focused on a more organized model where we would partner with a local church and use the church facilities for children's ministry, and a soccer field/basketball court for sports ministry, with evening services run by the church (with us helping out). What we got was the opportunity to minister directly in a poor neighborhood (where the church pastor lived and ministered daily), composed mostly of shacks where the average residence would have one actual wall, and the other parts of the "building" would be made of sheet metal or tarps. Cars were mostly run-down, there was garbage on the ground, a fair amount of barbed wire on top of the stone walls lining the neighborhood, there was a thick layer of dust on top of everything, and stray, malnourished dogs and cats roamed the streets freely.. Interestingly enough, there was the visual dichotomy of more than a few shacks with satellite dishes mounted on top. Misplaced priorities, perhaps?
After conversing with Memo, a member of the local church who had done a lot of work in that neighborhood and basically served as our guide, we found out that there could very well be another reason for the dish. Apparently the average family (either husband-wife or single mother) consists of an average of 9 kids, with some families getting up to 15! In that type of home situation, we weren't terribly surprised to think that perhaps the satellite dish had to serve as a suitable distraction for the kids while the parents tried to care for a few kids at a time. Memo also mentioned that drugs and gangs have a tight hold on the community. We didn't see too much "gang" activity, perhaps because we were there during the afternoon in daylight hours, but we did see (and smell) a drug deal go down. All in all, it reminded me a great deal of some of the poorer areas of NYC when I was there in 2000 in the inner city.
So, like I said, it was probably pretty far away from our expectations going in. However, my initial misgivings for myself and the high schoolers quickly changed into excitement, because in my opinion, this would in all likelihood be a very unfiltered, unmitigated missions experience over the week for them. In a church, people may act artificially nicer or more welcoming, but when you're in their neighborhood, you will get real people. And that was what I wanted our team to experience - getting involved in a very real way in the lives of people, if just for a short time, and aiding/complementing the local church in the ministry that they were already doing and would continue to do after we were gone.
We learned to be flexible. With no roof over our heads or table to spread materials out on, we improvised for the children's ministry by cutting open old boxes and laying them flat on the street to give the neighborhood kids a place to sit during the skits and crafts times. For sports ministry, we marked off a section of street with rocks for goals and played soccer with the older boys (7-18 years old), bouncing balls off walls, cars, and occasionally into people's yards. The locals are really good and tremendously athletic (even the 10-year olds are capable of break-dancing and walking on their hands). Most of the other guys from our team did well (the local kids even asked if Mike P was a soccer player back in America, to which I replied no, he developed quick feet on the basketball court with me), but I didn't fare as well - lit up as a goalie and got all sorts of embarrased on the "field"/street - faked so one of my shoes fell off, slipping while retrieiving a ball on the sidewalk and getting it stuck in between a fence and the ground, 6 inches away from a very large, mean-looking barking dog. In mid-week, after we mentioned that we all played hoops more often, we got a game in on a rusty old hoop planted in a garbage can on a side street, and I took out some soccer frustrations. I think I had about 9 blocks in 3 minutes time. Mike P said it was "Mutombo-like."
In between games, we'd strike up conversations with the folks waiting on the sidelines, and during water breaks, various members of our team would share testimonies. Praise God, a fair amount of my high school Spanish actually came back to me on the fly - I was able to hold most of my conversations without utilizing the translator, freeing him up to help out the high schoolers with their conversations. While many kids were obviously focused primarily on the games, there were a few who did seem more friendly and went out of their way to want to get to know us and what we were doing there. Another common conversation topic was encouraging the boys to attend the local church's community small group for teenagers - we wanted them to know that we were not an independent missionary team, but rather that we were working closely with people that they already knew from their neighborhood.
In the evenings, we would eat our bag dinners, and then step out with Memo to visit people. One fascinating aspect of Latin culture is that communities are generally very open - there is nothing intrusive about walking up to their front door, saying "Good evening!" and getting invited in for conversation. Trying this in America gets you slammed doors and "No solicitors" signs - Americans really treasure their privacy. Anyway, we would visit people and ask them how we can pray for them. A few common themes stood out - kids in drugs, kids in gangs, new babies, looking for a job, needing an education. We would pray for them, and then invite them to community cell groups for women and men, again run by the local church.
On the final day of ministry, we helped the church set up for a weekend-long presentation of the Gospel through preaching, worship music, and even a Spanish rapper from San Diego (this is where I picked up my little leg injury). My teammate Mike pointed out that we could almost see a spiritual battleground through this - we set up the stage for the Christian event in the exact same spot where the drug deal went down the previous day. There are clearly many people in bondage to drugs and gangs, and yet there are faithful believers in the very same community laboring hard at living and preaching the freeing message of the Gospel of Christ to a lost people.
Perhaps this was the greatest encouragement and lesson to me from the week of ministry - getting to partner with and supplement the local church's work in the community, and seeing that they are being faithful in God's command to love their neighbor. Seeing the obviously hard-won respect they've earned from people in the community that they interact with, it blesses me to know that Christ is in fact sowing, planting, and reaping. Hopefully we were able to perhaps sow a few seeds, or at least break up some hard ground.
It was also encouraging to see the high schoolers on our team step up. As a youth counselor the past few years, I've tried to dissuade them from casually using the word "ghetto" as an adjective, because they've grown up in a more rich society than 98% of the world. I think they were able to learn a lot through the experience of seeing how the poor - like most of the world - live, and to see that underneath the shabby exterior, people are still people, and you can relate to people in a surprising number of ways if you don't let appearance get in the way.
During our week in Mexico, as I spent time praying for our community, I had a mental image of the power of Christ flooding into the dusty, worn-down neighborhood and transforming lives, cleaning out the filth of drugs, breaking unhealthy dependence on gangs, and freeing people to create a unique generation of worshipers (like the kids who can break dance). As I continue to pray even back here in the states, this is what I hope to see one day in La Colonia Chamisal.
posted by Bob at
9:45 PM
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