El Chilar EMMC by Becky Shanahan

The following journal is from Becky Shanahan, who went with us to El Chilar, Oaxaca on an EMMC. She posted this on Facebook and when I read it I thought that it would be a great way to share about our trip in the blog. I have added some photos but the rest is as Becky posted it.--Mark

Becky made a lot of new friends in El Chilar

This was easily one of the craziest and most amazing weeks of my life.

Last Sunday we (I traveled to Mexico with 2 ladies from church, Robyn and Nora) left Lancaster county to fly down to Mexico City. I took about 12 hours to get to Mexico because of all the driving, flying, and long layovers and delays. Flying into the city was amzing: Mexico City is the 3rd largest city in the world, and completely engulfs you. There's traffic 24/7, and even at 1 in the morning, we passed a flower shop that was open for business. It took almost 2 extra hours after landing for our contacts to find us because of the multiple airports in the city. The 3 of us joined Arian, Veronica, Candy, and Armondo in a older van and began our trip to our hotel. We stopped at a gas station for hot dogs and bottled water (tap water will make you sick) and were surprised to see that our hot dogs came with mayonaise packets and smothered in spicy salsa. We eventually added 3 young guys to our van, and another girl not long after. So our 15 passenger van now had 11 people and everyone's luggage. Thankfully the van has jumpseats so you could comfortably fit 4 people to a row.

We arrived at our hotel at 2 am, exhausted for the nonstop travel. The frontdesk man didn't have our room key, but we found that the door could be pushed open and since we were only there for the night we didnn't really need a key anyway. Adrian told us someone would be back around 6:30 (4 1/2 hours later) to pick us up for breakfast at their headquarters. The room was small but very cute, and thebathroom had a shower, the toilet had a seat, and there was free toilet paper-things that seemed like luxuries by the end of the week. And by the way, you NEVER flush your toilet paper in Mexico, it always goes in the waste paper can. Anyway, I was asleep within 10 minutes of getting to the room.

My alarm never went off in the morning, I woke up at 6:30 and panicked. Thankfully, Mexico time is a little more relaxed than here-so we ended up having plenty of time to get dressed before our ride came. I didn't have time for a shower though, I just used some deordorant and dry shampoo and was set for the day. Mark and Lucy, 2 American missionaries who work for the Fishers of Men organization, came for us and we left for Refugee Ranch. It was a short drive, but they had time to tell us a bit about what to expect this week. The organization has 2 missions: one is Refugee Ranch, an orphanage. The couple who started Fishers of men have adopted 13 children, and have 4 of their own. The wife, Julie, takes care of the kids, their education, and making sure the kids know that they have a mom who loves them. The husband, Victor, leads the other half of their organization-the medical crusade we would be going on. We would be traveling to a small village town to set up a make shift medical center for dentistry, gynocology, ophthalmology, and other services like hair cutting and massage therapy.

Breakfast consisted of the freshest cantaloupe I've ever had and eggs. If you sat out on the porch to eat, you could view an active volcano, Popocatepetl, which they locals called Popo. After eating, we loaded 25 people along with all of our equipment and luggage into a truck and the 15 passenger van and headed off on our 7 hour drive south to El Chilar in Oaxaca (pronounced Wa-haca). I sat in the front of the truck between Victor, who was driving, and Richard, a 66 year old doctor who was coming along. Richard and I had a lot of fun trying to talk but couldn't really understand each other well. I thought he was asking me if people had to wake up early to use the bathrooms in Pennsylvania, and he also thought I had 3 children. I was pretty tired and kept falling asleep, but it's hard sleeping in the middle of the truck with no headrest. About 5 hours into our trip we were joined by a car with 2 men from the town who had driven out to meet us, and Victor asked if I wanted to move to their car and I jumped on the opportunity to be somewhere a little less cramped. A hairdresser from the over-packed van also joined us in the car. I did manage a bit more sleep in the car, but the roads got bumper as we got further south into the country. Also, Mexico has developed a clever way for cutting down on speeding-topes, or speed bumps, are EVERYWHERE. They work well, but they are so annoying! Especially in vehicles with bad shocks.

We arrived in El Chilar mid afternoon, and the cook, Rosa, immediately got to work on our lunch. Her kitchen was a completely enclosed bamboo house with a wood fireplace for cooking. How she managed to feed us all under those circumstances amazed me. She made a variety of traditional meal for us through-out the week: tamales, fish, chicken corn soup that was made with maize (HUGE corn kernels) and topped with radishes and luttuce, tacoquitos... Everything was pretty spicy to begin with, but we also had pepper sauce with every meal for extra kick if you wanted it. I loved the spicy food actually-I had a cold for most of the week so it definitely helped clear my sinuses so I could breathe. Plus it all tasted great. After eating we were taken to our house for the week. It was probably one of the nicer houses in town honestly, although very primitive by American standards. The house was made for cinderblocks and plaster are far as I could tell annd had a very simple set up. 4 rooms, 2 on each side, with a hallway down the middle. No doors, except for the front and back doors. When you went out the back door, you found a sink with running water, and around the back of the house was a bathroom stall and a shower. All the water was gravity powered from a water tank on the roof and was room temperature. Our shower didn't have a light, so we would set a flashlight on the opening for a window if we needed light. We weren't alone in the house either-we shared it was geckos, slugs, and huge spiders that were nearly 3" across. Robyn came to my rescue several times a day with flipflops killing these massive spiders for me. I made sure my bags were always zipped. I avoided the shower for 3 days, knowing I wouldn't be able to straighten my hair if it got wet-but eventually I couldn't take the nasty dry shampoo anymore. So I had my crazy poofball curls for the second half of the week.

Our days began at 8 am with a devotional before breakfast. Several people on the team at least somewhat biligual and would translate the devotionals for us, but for the rest of the day we were pretty much on our own. The people in El Chilar knnew almost no English whatsoever, so my high school Spanish came in very handy. After breakfast, we walked to the town's covered pavilion that became our medical center. There were chairs and machinery set up for cleanning teeth, checking eyes, cutting hair, all out in the open with children and wild dogs running around. Dogs are everywhere in Mexico-it was so strange to see these dogs who would follow you around, yet they won't approach you to be pet. They just wander around looking for scraps to eat and actingn like they own the place.

Nora offering massages and prayers

Nora ended up setting up a station for giving massages. Nora would pray for the people as she massaged them, and afterwards the people would tell the evangelists that even though they couldn't understand what she was praying, they would feel heat in their chests as she prayed, and it gave the evangelists a chance to talk to them about the Holy Spirit working in them and the people were so much more open to what they were sharing because of what they had experienced. Meannwhile, Robyn and I spent our days with the kids. I did a lot of face painting, and stole the idea from Nora to pray for the kids while I was painting their faces. I don't really know what impact that had, other than I know that I had tons of kids coming back to have their faces painted and sometimes repainted once I started doing that. We also colored, blew bubbles, played soccer, and frisbee with them throughout the day. The days were very long and hot, and I always looked forward to our lunch/dinner breaks around 3 to rest a bit before heading up to play with the kids for a couple more hours. Robyn and I also taught lessons to the kids-through an interpretor. My lesson had to do with how we are like sheep and Jesus is our shepherd, and we played a game with the kid that day where we put blindfolds on some of the kids and tried to lead them through a maze by listening for their "shepherd's" voice.

The kids of El Chilar chasing bubbles with Robyn

With q-tips for brushes Becky painted a lot of faces and made a lot of kids smile.

The children listening to the lessons prepared by Robyn, Becky and Nora

On friday we were in the middle of a lesson when Adrian came up to Robyn asking if she was ready for something, I didn't really know what he was referring to, but he was carrying a box that said something that looked a bit like papayas (it actually said papayos, or something close to that) He asked if I wanted to come to and I said of course! Well, the word meant clowns, not papayas. He has asked Robyn to dress like a clown along with some of the girls for a special treat for the kids. I guess I kind of volunteered myself too, and soon I was given clown clothes and Veronica was putting on my full clown make-up. All of the clowns headed back to the pavilion, and we played games with the kids, put on a skit, and had another lesson for them about salvation. The skit was a cool play on words-Mark had to explain it to me because it was in Spanish. One of the clowns wanted to write a letter to his girlfriend in America, and asked annother clown to write it as he dictated. He had bought a soda and chips to send with the card, which were sitting next to it. Everytime he told her to write baby, she would take a drink of his soda (thinking he said bebe-the Spanish word for drink) and everytime he said comma, she would eat a few chips (coma means eat). So he ended up with a very short note because of all her eating and drinking, and no chips or soda left! It was cute.

Saturday morning we drove back to the Ranch, and I got a chance to spend some time with the kids there. One of them, Danny, broke my heart. He remembered my name from Monday and kept yelling "Becky!" and wanted me to pick him up. He the happiest, snuggliest 2 year old I've ever met. But he also has heart problems. Danny's hands and feet are freezing cold to the touch because his poor little heart can't beat enough blood. Eventually, sooner than I want to think about, he's going to outgrow his heart. Learnning that made me want to hold him that much longer. I wish I could do something for him, but the family has no choice but to put the whole situation in God's hands-that a hospital would sponsor a surgery to extend his life be maybe a few years, that he will get healed, or to accept that maybe God will take him back sooner than they would like. The whole thing breaks my heart.

Like I said, it was such an amazing week. I'm so much more aware of how rich I am, of the opportunities I have here, of everything I take for granted and expect. I'm planning to take another trip down to Mexico in April and I'm already looking forward to it.