Space Jam

Gloria’s baby died. :’( They ran tests at the hospital (where she’s been since Friday), and the spotting she was having was the beginning of the natural abortion her body was having. How sad. I sympathize so for her and Beto. They will for sure keep trying until God blesses them with success.

Haha! I’m typing this in my room in the dark and my roommate Jokis (our nickname for her) is moaning in her sleep. Just thought I’d share. I love the quirky things you learn about people when you live in the same room as them! It’s so intriguing and so reassuring that you are perfectly normal!

Tonight, while I was Bible reading, I decided to share with Joka and Cheli the passage in Acts that made me “LOL” (“laugh out loud”, for my readers who are blessed with long lives): it was where Paul was preaching at Troas until midnight, and some teenager fell asleep in the window and fell off 3-stories and died. Well Paul just stopped the teaching, went outside to the landing spot, jumped on the dude and gave him a giant bear hug, and then walked back inside saying “It’s all good, guys. He’s alive, no worries,”, and then they ate bread.
Chelita recognized the story half way through my telling it, and after she finished reiterating it, Joka started acting it out by falling on the floor as Eutychus, and then I jumped off my bunk and decided to be like Paul, so I jumped on Joka with a big bear hug and then said to Cheli, “Esta bien, ella no muerte. Vamos a comer!” (“It’s okay, she didn’t die. Let’s go eat!”) We were rollin’! It seems every evening we end up making our own comedy show to self-entertain. Goofballs. Dalila is never really involved though—seems like she’s always out flirting with the guys. She’s missing out, I’ll tell you what!

The conference in Tijuana went great! I ended up going. We crammed into the escort, Elda, Rosanna, Tío, Tía, and I, and headed for our destination church in Tijuana at 7:30ish in the AM. When, we got there, it was an obscure, gated church—it was hidden within a neighborhood. The church was very vintage looking and had a basketball court and lots of rooms. I’m thinking it maybe used to be a school. I was thinking when we entered, “Boy, if Americans showed up to a conference with the place looking like this, they would leave.” I guess that’s just how our culture differs from theirs’. Content is more important than presentation here.

My job the whole time was to check on the car every few minutes (I did every 3-5) to make sure the car wasn’t getting broken into (even though it was parked directly outside the church gates). Last conference they did at this church, the trunk of the car was broken into during. Not this time, thanks to the efforts of myself, my aunt, and uncle checking on it for 5 hours, but more importantly the hedge of protection God put over our vehicle and the trip.

It was a great turn-out! 30+ people trickled in the whole time. We served yummy “Maria” crackers with the coffee that bear a light vanilla flavor. I guess you’re supposed to dip them in your coffee, but they’re kind of addicting just to snack on in general. Oh, and obviously we served coffee, too. I flip back and forth between drink coffee with milk and sugar and just drinking it black like my Pa does. It’s a decision I’ll eventually make here since part of their culture is drinking coffee often—typically served with breakfast and/or dinner. I don’t know if I told before, but a few weeks ago, Abril came to nursery with a coffee, milk, and sugar in her bottle—she’s not even a year old. Aunt Lila said that’s not common, but it’s not unheard of here. Parents tend to be a little ignorant when it comes to nutrition here in Mexico, as compared to the States and Europe. Health in general they really don’t seem to understand; doctors are the ones they rely on—families are discouraged to research “health” themselves. In the states, if you have some unusual symptoms, the first thing you do is get on the web and see what it could be, whereas here they’d head to the ER or doctors right away.

Anyway, back to the conference:
There was this “macho dad” who was kind of being a goofball during the whole conference; sat in the front row and acted like a big kid and laughed extra loud; in the end, ironically, he was weeping after Uncle Kent had given the Devotional in which he called out men into the children’s ministry, too, saying “Guys, working with kids isn’t just for the women; we can make a difference in our own way”. Through his weeping, God reminded me of his intricate plan for our lives—there was a reason that “macho, goofball dad” showed up to the unexpectedly life-altering conference. Cool God!

After we finished cleaning up the conference, we packed up the car and were gonna head out, Rosanna had mentioned that she knew where the Blind Institute was where Rigo would be studying; she thought she knew where it was, but turns outs she was a few blocks off. After asking two different men for directions, the second one pointed right above us at the sign that said “School of the Blind”, it ended up being directly across the road from the church—we were pretty unobservant for not having seen the sign/building.

Uncle Kent took us to his favorite restaurant, China Star, for lunch. I love those little Chinese fried noodles they serve as an appetizer! A handful of those things, a squeeze of half a lime, and a couple squirts of ketchup and I could munch for days!

When we got back to the BI, it was naptime for everyone. I slept for two hours and Uncle Kent and Aunt Lila slept for four (super wiped!).

I called my dad, and while I was talking to him about Biblical stuff, an unlikely parallelism came to my mind:
Space Jam // Spiritual Warfare

NBA players/Looney Toons = Christians
Alien monsters (the Nerdlucks) = demons
Swackhammer = Satan
Michael Jordan = Jesus
Moron Mountain = Hell
The basketball skills Power = the Power of God

I don’t know what I was thinking last night, because before they seemed completely parallel; now, not so much. But they still have similarities.