Birthdays, Bicentennials, and Really Big Shoes...

"God found them in a wilderness... He shielded them and cared for them, guarding them as the apple of his eye." Deuteronomy 32:10



"I will lead the blind on their journey; by paths unknown I will guide them. I will turn darkness into light before them, and make crooked ways straight." Isaiah 42

Dear Family and Friends,
Peace and grace to you from the missions in Mexico! We are entering our last leg of the mission here in San Ramon and working hard to set the church construction on a firm course for the future. Everything is looking great! I know already that the hardest part about the lasat part of this mission will be saying goodbye to the children and families in San Ramon. They have been so good to us and helped us in every way and I know it will be a hard goodbye, though I am certain I will see them again and the church!

I want to take a paragragh to thank all the missionaries who have come down to San Ramon to pray, work, and learn from the simple life with me. Jessica Pankus, Ariel Roland, Courtney Paquin, Sarah Roland, MC Robichaux, Harris Moriarty, John Trufant, Chris Link, Andrew Wellmeyer, Davis Hester, and Chris Cole have all been an incredible help and a particular addition that I know God designed particularly for this mission at this time. I especially want to thank Chris Cole. Chris stayed with me for 6 weeks and left last wednesday morning for home. Every day with Chris is bound to be exciting, productive, and very, very funny. He earned the respect of the workers at the Church and when he left, the President of San Ramon shook his hand and told him that he was the best worker on site! This complement was well earned by Chris and his friendship and hard work has changed the character of the mission for me! I am deeply grateful to all the missionaries for their sacrifice and hard work, and especially grateful to Chris for his sacrifice to come here. their impact can be measured by how much the people in the village ask me about the other missionaries. One young girl came up to my gate this week asking where the girl missionaries where. I explained that they had to leave to go back home in the United States and this little girl, with tears in her eyes, said, "Ya me voy", "I gotta go", and ran down the road to her home. This is one of a hundred like occurances that show me that these children really miss the missionaries! I am so grateful to all of you, Missioneras y Missioneros, for your prayer and sacrifice. Thanks for laughing with me!

The work in San Ramon has been kicked into high gear this week. There are walls up on parts of the church and we are beginning to build window frames into the walls. Three dumptruck loads of dirt and rock have been leveled with the floor (about 3 feet off the ground) and we're looking forward to setting the slab of concrete for our floor. The architect has come twice this week and the men are working harder than ever. This evident change in pace at the work site started with a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding came about just before the missionaries left San Ramon early last week because three of us were sick and the heavy rains prevented children from coming to our classes our the workers to the church. We left a day early hoping to have a retreat in Cancun the next day with Fr. Raoul. One of the workers, our friend Rojerio, misunderstanding a conversation with Chris Cole and Davis Hester thought that the guy missionaries were frustrated with the pace of the mayan workers and had left in a huff. This was certainly not the case, but as it all turned out things have worked out for the better. After we had seen the girls (and Davis) off at the airport we returned to San Ramon last monday afternoon after a stop in Vallodolid to buy some building supplies and tools. When we arrived we were surprised to see walls up on two sides of the Church. The workers must have put hours and hours into the Church over the weekend in order to make that kind of progress. The man with who had misunderstood Chris Cole and a group of about 8 workers were celebrating with drinks awaiting our arrival. When they saw us, they were ecstatic. "You said you leabe ip we no work, now, we work ebry day!", said Rojerio, our overly celebrated friend. The work the mayans did last weekend has made them more motivated than ever to build their own church and work has been going at great pace since then, every day packed with good, hard work.

Here is a picture with Paula (right) and her older sister Fatima, the two youngest daughters of our widow next door.

It is true that my original expectation was to leave Mexico with a Church completed behind me. My experience here has shown me that it takes more time and effort than I thought to build a church of this sort (especially since this is the first Church of this design ever built) and my previous ignorance has been humbled to the reality that the Church will most likely not be completed until 3 or 4 months after I am gone from Mexico. The plan for the village is to inaugurate the new Church with the blessing of Bishop Pedro Pablo on the feast of San Ramon on February 12th. My heart is still swollen with joy at the thought of going to Mass in this church with the people one day, and I pray that I can make it down agaain to celebrate with my friends in San Ramon the great gift of the Eucharist the Church will provide a home for.


Something big happened this week. Where we are staying right now is a sort of mayan daycare - a two room, thatched roof building very close to another mayan family. The building is vacant right now only because the woman who used to run the "day care", so to speak, became a widow five months ago. She did not tell us how her husband died. This kind widow (who is also 7 months pregnant) has let us stay in her old work space and because we are living only a few yards from her family of five children we have become pretty close friends with her little children. Like I said, something big happened this week. Something very big happened to a very small person. The pregnant widow's daughter Paula (we try not to pick favorites, but we can't help but think Paula to be one of the most lovable children in the whole village) turned five on thursday! We were honored guests of an awesome mayan birthday party! It was a blast - the kids made us dance like Michael Jackson, there was a cake brought from Tepich, and, as I had ealier promised our dear little widow, I brought my guitar to play and sing for Paula on her birthday throne. She looked like a princess with her bright, sparkly dress and an even brighter and more radiant smile. We left having eaten much more than anticipated and having laughed a good bit with the children. These people are really fun to be around! They love their children and take care of eachother's families. The party was hosted at a friends house so that our 7 months pregnant widow wouldn't have the burden of cooking and cleaning. Good people.

Harris and I were interrupted while teaching english class a few days ago because a very excited man from the pueblo was anxiously tapping on the wall of our classroom. We were just wrapping up the lesson and preparing to go pray our daily rosary with the children but stopped to see what this little grandfather so urgently needed to tell us. Well, as it turned out, he had returned earlier that day from a successful hunt and he wanted us to share in the feast of "venado" (deer) he had provided. That same morning, I had seen him go on the hunt and he had explained to me that hunting in these jungles is a difficult business! "Todo suerte", he said, "All luck". So, his excitement was justified when I realized that he had brought home a deer and wanted us to come eat with him and his family. It was delicious! On our way back to Cancun after five days of hard work and classes Harris looked up surprised and said, "Man, I am craving deer and beans right now!" It is definately a pleasure to be welcomed into the home of a successful mayan hunter.

Every day finishes with a thousand stories here! On the way to dinner a few evenings back I almost stepped on a deadly black scorpion, and then on the same walk we met two different species of massive tarantula! I have been sent home several times after visits with mayan families with my shirt full of massive Yucatecan fruits, some of which look like nothing you've ever seen before, but all of them have proved tasty. I can't help but laugh as I watch the little mayan children (and the mayan adults for that matter - none of whom ever get taller than about 5'5) marvel at the size of Harris' size 16 shoes. My strength was kept up during the workweek last week because my little friend Karla would stick her head around the corner of the work site and let loose a loud, " Adan!" to get my attention. I would walk over to say hello and my four year old friend would have in her tiny outstretched a peeled orange for me to share with Harris. She did this three times that morning and I know now that there's nothing like a four year old child bringing you presents to lift your spirits. Life is good here in San Ramon. The people are cheerful, the children hilarious, and the days are lovely!

As this mission comes to a close I beg once more from you your prayers for the success of our work here. Pray that God smiles on all the days of work we spent, all the classes we taught, and all the time we've spent with the people in the pueblo. May the missionaries have left a wonderfully positive mark on this place and especially in the hearts of these beautiful people. God has blessed us so far, and I know that he intends to bless this mission with abundant fruit as long as we allow him to do so. Thank you for all of your prayers! You are my greatest support here in the jungles of the mayan lands.

I am praying for you every single day - in Morning Prayer, in the rosary, in the Divine Mercy, in Evening Prayer, and in every uncomfortable moment that we offer up to Jesus - we pray for every person who is involved in the mission and all those we have promised to pray for. You are in our prayers many times a day. Thank you for everything!

"Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." John 16:33

Love Y'all,
Adam

Peace and grace be yours in abundance again as I let my good friend Harris Moriarty give his own account of the mission so far.

"Love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your father is merciful." Luke 6:35-37


Below is a piece from Harris´ point of view:

Greetings from the simple life of San Ramon!
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Harris Moriarty. I went to Belmont Abbey with Adam, and he invited me on this crazy amazing mission down in the Yucatan Peninsula. I arrived here three weeks ago, and this is my bit!

I would like to say hello to my family and friends at home and college. I wish you all could be here to experience this because this place is absolutely amazing. Here’s a quick delineation of what we do every day. This is basically for people who haven’t been to this blogsite before. So if you’re a regular then I guess you can ignore the rest of this paragraph. We wake up somewhere between 7:30 and 8am, and we all pray morning prayer together. Then we begin on the church. We work through the morning with 4 to 10 other men from town who volunteer and rotate day by day. Then we break for lunch around 1pm. Meals are fun because for breakfast, lunch, and dinner we eat with one of the families in the town. Each day a different family puts us up for meals. Then we take a much deserved siesta for a hour or three (haha) depending on the teaching schedule.
The entire afternoon is dedicated to traveling to neighboring towns and teaching English and catechism. We finish the work day by hanging out with the kids in the town and then praying a rosary with them. Then sometimes we have a hour(if it is not too late) of private meditation or just some bonding time with each other before our day officially ends with evening prayer and then bedtime.
I would say the language barrier has been the most frustrating thing but also the most exciting. I came to Mexico knowing virtually no Spanish. The phrase I prepared myself to say to everyone was “Hablo un poquito espanol,” meaning “I know very little Spanish.” Every day though I learn a new phrase, and even after only three weeks I´ve begun to have small conversations. Of course a good portion of the town can´t even speak spanish because they speak only Mayan!
The building of the church is one of the more interesting things I’ve seen so far. They don’t have a widespread amount of tools down here, so the Mayans improvise. A lot.
I’ve seen then concoct 20 foot rebar wire contraptions to bind with cement with their bare hands and the simplest of tools that they use for just about everything. They don’t even use a level to level things. They very cleverly used a long piece of surgical tubing and placed water in it. They then hold the tube up at the points they want to measure and the water levels out at the same point on both ends. They certainly have an interesting way of doing things here and many times we put our hands on our heads wondering what they’re thinking But the work gets done nonetheless and so far it’s been done well! We have 90% of all the interior foundation done, and we’ve even finished the cement/ribarb foundations for 6 out of the 8 columns that circle the inside of the church. Also about 3/4 of the wall is about five or six cinder blocks high, and the ground inside is almost completely ready for cement slab to be put down.
My favorite thing about San Ramon are the smiles on everyone’s face, especially the kids. Here we are in the middle of nowhere. There are dogs running wild leaving their personal belongings in the streets. There’s a clearly apparent lack of shoes. On top of that, even after learning three languages(Mayan, Spanish, and English which would get you so far in America) the best job they can hope for is bussing tables in a Mayan Riviera Hotel/Restaurant. Yet through all of that, they love nothing more than the simple life of their sweet little town. There is community present here that is rarely seen anywhere in modern society. We sleep in hammocks. There are no real doors or windows, but right now there is no better place to be.
I´d like now to make a shoutout to my bunkmate, our bathroom duck. Everyone should have one. That´s all I have to say about that.

I’m so happy that I was able to figure out a way to come down here. This type of work might not be for everyone, but I do believe everyone should give it a try. After these first weeks it’s already begun to be a learning experience that I’ll be able to take with me wherever I go. All the girls(Davis included) that just recently left, I miss ya´ll, and I hope stateside is all you were hoping it would be when you got back! I don’t know if I’ll have my own blurb again in the blog, but tell everyone you know about what we’re doing down here and send us your prayers! God Bless!

Sincerely from an Abbey Student, Chosman, and a NoVa Gangster,

Harris Moriarty

"God condescends to use our powers if we don´t spoil his plans by ours."
-Venerable Solanus Casey
PS
Chris Cole, your persistent criticism of my person is dearly missed.


"For the measure with which you measure will in turn be measured out to you." Luke 6:38

Successful weeks at work, Concerts, Cenotes, Serious Blessings!

"You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you." - John 15:16




"Lord, teach us to pray." - Like 11:1

Hello World from San Ramon! This is Adam writing to inform everyone that all is well here in Mexico! The people continue to baffle me by their overflowing generosity, the Lord continues to change hearts and bring workers to this little corner of harvest's field. The Missionaries and friends who have come to grace us with their presence have been outstanding, and everything is going smoothly and perfectly. I am shocked by how easily the missionaries who flew in 12 days ago adjusted to the culture and people, and I am deeply grateful and deeply impressed by their zeal for the work they did in the classroom and at the Church construction site. MC Robichaux, Sarah Roland, Chris Link, and John Trufant flew out after 10 days of hard work this week end, but not before they were able to enjoy a benefit concert for the mission hosted by Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville in Cancun. Bob Walters and Brett Stewart of Brotherbrother flew in (on incredibly cheap airline tickets arranged by a friend of the band - another little miracle ennabling almost the whole band of brotherbrother to be present!) to join myself, Chris Cole, and John Trufant on stage for a fun night of dancing, witnessing about the mission, and celebrating with two hours of music. The concert was a good success and Chris Cole and I are looking forward to playing more benefits in the coming weekends in an effort to raise more funds and more awareness about the great need of Chruches in this Prelature (they need 137 Chruches to meet their population of Catholics - wow). Jessica Pankus, Ariel Roland, and Courtney Paquin are staying until September 3rd and are looking forward to more time in the village this entire week! Chris Cole continues to be an incredible help and support and a wonderful "detail mind" who gladly makes up for my own deficiencies in that area. Harris Moriarty and Davis Hester are happily arrived in Cancun and are excited to see San Ramon for the first time this evening. All is well and God is good! He is blessing us abundantly!

You will see here some fun pictures showing a little bit of the excitement from the last two weeks. We began our two weeks of missions with the new missionaries by going to Izamal, a Marian Shrine in the center of the peninsula made famous by Pope John Paul II's two pastoral pilgrimages there in 1979 and 1990. The Church there was beautiful. Painted yellow with many wonderful arches around the courtyard stretched before the Church, it looks extraordinary against the dazzling blue skies and cloudwork of the Yucatan. We offered the pilgrimage for the success of the mission in God's eyes, and that He might help us to build the Church in San Ramon but more especially to build the Church in our hearts. After all, what good is a Church if the people who are meant to use it do not know how to pray with their hearts? It was a beautiful time, and Mary blessed us for our full day pilgrimage when we were surprised yesterday when a wealthy Catholic Hotel owner in Cancun invited all of the missionaries to go out for a day on his fully stocked 55 foot yacht for a tour of the Cancun Lagoon, the Hotel Zone, and the Isla Mujeres. We went snorkeling in some of the most beautiful blue water I have ever seen! The day was long and relaxed and we saw flying fish, sting rays, sea turtles, and fish of all kinds and colors. We enjoyed this wonderful day all because this man wanted us to enjoy a blessing for the work are doing and have already done in San Ramon. WOW! We're still a little shocked after experienceing such a luxurious gift. All of this occurred yesterday, which was the feast of Mary, Queen of Heaven, and I am taking that surprise as Mary saying "Thank You" for the pilgrimage and giving us this gift on her feast day. We are all very humbled by how good God is and how he takes care of His missionaries! We don't deserve any of this!

Last week was an incredible week of work in San Ramon. It has been difficult to keep work moving at a steady pace because the work crew is relying on the presence of the architect three times a week to guide the construction. The architect, like many in the culture down here, is not the best at showing up when he said he would and that leaves the work halted until he arrives. Thank God, these last two weeks have been much better and we were able to accomplish a great deal with the extra hands of the new missionaries. The people of San Ramon were very, very happy at the end of the week and it was very uplifting for everyone involved. Please pray that the work in the future weeks will be even more fruitful than it was in the last two! God is Great!

The girls have just been wonderful with the kids. We are now renting a car for the weeks in San Ramon in order to reach all five towns for teaching every single day. It has really been awesome seeing the children fall in love with this new batch of missionaries. The girls are making the best of their free time here by learning how to make tortillas from scratch, spending hours talking to these beautiful Mayan mothers, and helping take care of the little ones. One family even asked MC Robichaux to be the Godmother of their child to be born in December! An amazing compliment and act of confidence on the part of the Mayans to show their respect for the wonderful things these missionaries have done here in this little pueblo. Awesome!

Please pray for stregth for the missionaries as this can be exhausting work, and please pray also for grateful hearts for all those involved in this mission. May God's great peace rest upon you! Looking forward to seeing you in person sometime in the future!





"If the Lord does not build the house, invain do its builders labor..." - Psalm 127





"How can I repay the Lord for his goodness to me?" - Psalm 116:12

Snapshots from the missionaries...

This week new missionaries have come. Here are some of their experiences from the first few days in San Ramon.

It is truly amazing how this group of missionaries came together... Adam and Chris Cole who have been here... Jess Pankus who graduated from Franciscan University a year ago and works as a graphic designer, Courtney Paquin who also graduated a year ago from Belmont Abbey College and has been working in Charlotte, Ariel Roland who graduated this May with Adam Trufant from Belmont Abbey College, her sister Sarah Roland who goes to Appalachian State but is taking off this semester for the purpose of traveling, Chris Link an incoming senior at Spring Hill College and Marie Celeste Robichaux an incoming junior at Louisiana State University.

(Jess) OK so we are staying in this Mayan Village of 400 residents. They live in home-made huts created from palm branches and shaved sticks and logs. Upon arrivial Adam took us on a tour of the town. Standing in the street in front of the school, Adam stops and points in all four directions and says..."that’s the end of town over there.......over there.....over there....and over there". We are staying at the school which is made out of concrete with tile floors.....(yes mom we are sleeping on the floor) which actually has been so great. Naturally sleep comes easily after playing around with these kids all day. The kids are great......they just love that we are here and cant get enough of us. They are taking classes for English, but speak it about as well as I speak Spanish.....(um....si...no.....que?) So its interesting communicating. Luckily a few of the missionaries here are pretty good at Spanish! Everyday a few of us....get to go to eat at one of the villagers house. It is most often black beans and eggs with tortillas. sometimes rice is added to the eggs. Sometimes you get served mystery meat....which we avoid. The last meal I had was a little more special in that they served us a broth with chicken and noodles in it (Mayan chicken noodle soup) which was excellent! We also got a delicacy of rice milk. (literally rice soaked in sugar and milk.....with the rice still in it) it was a meal in and of itself. The people here are so so simple but have so much joy. My all time favorite thing.....is the bucket shower time that we get. In between two of the school buildings are set up two sheets to give privacy......you take your bucket of water.....your soap.......and you clean yourself. Its amazing the things you realize you can live without.....when there is no need for them. It has been such a blessing to see how easy it is to live with nothing but what you need.

(MARIE CELESTE aka MC): Hola, Bax Cawalik! (bash-kawaleeek!) This is the Mayan greeting meaning “Hello!” These first few days have been full of new words, new foods, new faces and new lessons. When we arrived, we were greeted by Adam, sporting a beard which is an interested talent when compared to the relatively hairless men here. After we dropped our belongings in the school where we are sleeping, Adam brought us on a tour of the town. One of my favorite sounds on this trip so far was introduced then... a high-pitched call that carried from across the town, “AAAAAAAA-DAAM!” The honesty of these people is truly impressive, they are simple in their judgment of “new.” Adam’s joy and kindness quickly won him a celebrity-like status among the people, hence the throng of admirers that followed our group in the tour. It was intimidating at first, I was quick to doubt my ability to win the love of these people as Adam and “CHREEEEEEEEES” (Chris Cole) had. However, the answer to this mystery was revealed to me quite accidentally. After praying the evening rosary in the town’s make-shift chapel, we were standing in the streets with the children, who had not decided yet what they thought of us. All of a sudden, we heard a low rumbling coming from the back road. It took me a second to realize it was a bus! The children began laughing and screaming as they ran around, joking about getting out of the way of el autobus. Seeing the joy they got from this simple game, I began running and screaming with them! FREEZE. They all stopped and looked at me for a second, as if deciding whether or not it was ok to have this crazy girl join in, made up their minds it was a good thing, and then carried on! One of the best things I have experienced is the sense of humor of these people. I came upon three of the young boys calling Chris Link “Meees Chreees!” My first instinct was that they were calling him a bad word because they laughed SO hard when they said it! When I finally got the translation, I was suprised and laughed pretty hard myself. “Meees” is Mayan for “Cat,” and because it rhymed with Chris’s name, it seemed only natural to tack it onto his official title.

Ariel and I had a phenomenal time teaching in the village Tac Chivo, where the lesson began with walking along the streets and informing the people that “un lesson de ingles esta en la iglesia en diez minutos!”

(Ariel) One of my highlights was when we divided up into groups and went around to a couple of villages to teach English and catechism which MC mentioned above. Paul, a good (and goofy) friend from Cancun who has been joining Adam and Chris this week, Marie Celeste, and me were dropped off in a small village called Tac Chivo. After walking around to the different huts we went to more or less the center of town and we ended up having an English lesson of about 50 Mayans of all differt ages. It was so awesome!

(Sarah) I am so glad that, for whatever reason, i decided to come here. This is just fantastic. I can’t think of any place i would rather be. I want to build a hut like this in Louisiana and never leave... but then i would lack the community and abundance of palm leaves to keep me as content as i find myself here. perhaps i will wait for a midlife crisis to make such plans, and i could plant some palm trees so my lack of roofing supplies would not be my only limitation if/when the time comes. Kidding. Maybe. Yo hablo muy pequeno espanol. Because of this, i thought it would be difficult to communicate, much less teach english. It is much better than i had imagined. With everyone in good spirits in the classroom, it is easy to communicate, especially because the children are very smart and eager to learn.

This week there will be a large group of friends from Cancun coming to join the 7 of us in missions. More later!

Coba, Mayan Masses, and Some Construction

Greetings to all from the Yucatan! Peace of Christ be yours in abundance. We are tired but happy here in Cancun after another week of teaching and building. Chris is well recovered from a stomach bug he got last weekend and we are enjoying some down time on the beautiful beaches in Cancun! I am including some pictures of our day long adventure in Coba, a city of incredible ruins that is thought to have been home to 55,000 Mayans during the golden age of Mayan culture (roughly 800 - 1100), a picture of Chris with some of our students from our English class in Tepich, a traditional mayan home in the Town of St. Bartolomo where no one speaks proficient spanish (I understand their dilemma), and I hope you enjoyed the pictures osted from last week. The Sea Turtles were a highlight!

Here are some shots below of some of the walls built this week at the Church site.

Please keep praying for us as 7 more missionaries arrive this week from the States. This will be wonderful for us to be able to have more hands in construction and more folks teaching English and Catechism in the 5 towns. The greatest gift you can give us is your prayer. We are super excited!

I will keep you posted in the weeks to come! Thanks again for your prayers!









We had the chance to celebrate Mass with Father Josepe in the small Mayan village of San Bartolome. The Mass was celebrated in Mayan due to the fact that very few people in the village know any Spanish.



Here is Chris with one of the men from the village taking a break from mixing cement.


Peace and grace be yours in abundance! (1 Peter 1:2)

Love, Adam

Tarantulas, Tropical Storms, Tay Hommes, and it's Terribly difficult to understand Maya...

How time flies! This is my fourth weekend in Mexico and I can't believe how fast the time has gone by. Though my spanish is improving a little each day I have a long way to go before I am comfortable with the language (One good step in the right direction: I had my first dream in spanish last night, though I couldnt tell you what was said exactly...). I am excited to welcome the first of the American missionaries to join me on this mission to San Ramon! Chris Cole arrives on wednesday and it will be a total joy to have him here with me starting this week.

So, to begin, as I said before, these are definately the Mayan lands. The Mayan culture pulses powerfully throughout the entire region and the vernacular is definately not a dead language. The people of San Ramon would much rather speak in their own comfortable maya unless they need to speak in spanish for some reason, and some of the folks here (like the family I ate with yesterday) never even bothered to learn spanish. Those 30 or older have mayan accents when they speak spanish and the children speak wonderful spanish and maya. Maya is filled with clicks, "ts" sounds, and pauses inserted into the middle of words making it fun to hear and brutal to attempt. The children (and adults for that matter) get an endless kick out of giving me difficult words and phrases to try to pronounce and when I feel like I am just getting it, they give me a playful look as if to say, "No, no, you´re getting it all wrong!" and then we all laugh some more. We have a good time with eachother and it is certainly a great mental challenge to learn a little maya alongside spanish. Last week we worked hard to prepare the site for the beginning of the construction of the Church in San Ramon. This included digging foundation ditches about 4 or 5 feet deep. This seemingly simple task is actually a considerable challange given the yucatan's Limestone bedrock that lies only inches below the surface soil. This limestone bedrock, as you can see in the picture I included of the ditches we dug, is honeycombed and filled with holes because it is easily eroded by water (that is why cenotes - the curious underground rivers and lakes so numerous in the peninsula - are particular to the northern yucatan. There are no rivers above ground here). Our first task was to dig where we could and expose the large pieces of limestone that emerged from our excavations. Then, after two days of digging, the Mayans used a sledge hammer and a long steal pick to break the rocks from the path of the ditch. Those large rocks were then carried from the ditch to the rock piles nearby. Pretty tiring work but a lot of fun. Its also humbling to work with these folks. Most Mayans are under 5'4 with short arms and short backs that seem to allow them incredible lifting ability. Some of these guys can lift huge rocks and make it look like no big deal at all! All of this of course heightens their sport of watching me clumsily carry large rocks or work with their tools with no grace at all and then cracking jokes in Maya about the American kid. These guys are very good humored, and I have to say I am enjoying my time working with a barefooted Mayan construction crew of 5' strong men - certainly an experience I won't forget. I really do appreciate how these 10 or 12 guys are working on this Church for free, or at least at the cost of my pride. After we finished the ditches, we began to gather rocks for the walls of the Church. This job involved driving in the back of a pick up down a dirt road into the jungle to an area of road that is about to be paved. The side of this jungle road has been cleared by some large machinery leaving many rocks exposed. This is the only time I've seen these fellas wear any foot protection. They wore shoes to protect themselves from the scorpions, snakes, and large insects that have found their way under these unearthed rocks. My job with the six other missionaries from Cancun was to move these rocks (some of them easily bigger than my upper body needing to be carried by several people) into the bed of a truck, ride over to the construction site, unload them all onto a massive rock pile, load up into the truck, go back down the jungle road and repeat until the crew felt like we had gathered enough rocks for today. We did this for several hours and were ready for a rest afterwards. There is a picture here of the crew on the truck after unloading the rocks you see before us. I went to Valladolid with Fr. Raoul, Fr. Josepe, and the Mayan Commissioner of San Ramon to buy the construction supplies for the entire Church project last week. Vallodolid, a pleasant city of about 50,000 in the center of the Peninsula in between Cancun and San Ramon, is off the beaten track in the Yucatan with nearly no tourists passing through. This city is a very characteristic Yucatecan colonial city with 5 enormous Churches, and a magnificent Cathedral casting a long shadow over a beautiful park in the center of town. Our trip here was a funny situation overall. Suddenly I felt like I was in a Jason Bourne movie or something. Allow me to explain, here I am in Central America - I walk into an obscure "tile store" on a back street of a remote Mexican town surrounded by jungles. I am with two men dressed as Priests, each of them huge by the local standards. We, a curious crew, headed to a tiny back office where we were going to finish negotiating the price for the "construction materials", lets just say. The huge, bearded Fr. Josepe in his Franciscan habit on one side and Fr. Raoul, renowned for his incredible physical strength, in his Legionary Guayabera on the other, and me, a bearded American looking amazingly out of place and carrying a small backpack which, unbeknownst to everyone around, contained a large sum of money, in the middle... I felt like I was in some sort of drug cartel conspiracy or a James Bond film. But no, however curious we looked or movie-worthy, we were just trying to get materials to build a Church, which is exciting enough in its own rite! I have to admit, it was fun. In that back office we got a great price for the construction materials to build the Church, one considerably lower than we were originally quoted (people here are generous with priests and projects of this sort), and we had five people in the room and five different first languages represented: Fr. Josepe with italian, Fr. Raoul with French (he's from rural Canada and was raised speaking French), the Mexican business owner with Spanish, the Commissioner with Maya, and me with English. I am glad that everything went smoothly and that we bought from one source - that makes everything a lot easier and takes a large weight off my back to know that the money spent so far on the Church has been spent well with no room for waste. God is good and my prayers are being answered! The construction materials have arrived in San Ramon and we are ready to go! We did very little work last week because a tropical storm blew through that lasted 2.5 days making it difficult to work. The Architect, a good man from nearby Tulum who is also working on this project for free, was not pleased with the work we did last week and has requested that a construction engineer be hired to come twice a week and check on things in order to make sure that every thing is done exceptionally well. The Architect said that this Church is the hardest project he has ever designed because it is modeled after some traditional Mayan buildings (more on this later) and requires a meticulous construction crew. The engineer will come for the first time tomorrow to help guide us in the right direction and then construction on the Church's structure will begin in earnest. Finally, here we go. Pray for this Church please!

So, that's how work has been going! Otherwise, the food is still great, the people still friendly, and the soccer games at night are fierce! Playing soccer with a bunch of little barefoot Mayans who are three times quicker than me is unbelievable. If you've seen the movie "The Rundown" and can recall the scene where the Rock gets beaten up by a bunch of little guys who are fighting with "crazy tarzan jujitzu", thats what I feel like all the time. Even the little kids are amazing soccer players, doing bicycle kicks, kroifs, and rainbows and, again, getting a kick out of the big slow American. I´ll tell you, God is working on my humility down here! Still, the good humour of these guys keeps me simple and cheerful and I really do enjoy playing late night soccer games with wooden goals and my team mates and my opponents speaking in the language of the Movie "Apocolypto" - truly frightening to consider that my team mates' ancestors played a game similar to soccer in their city squares just like we're playing now, except that the losers of our games have to buy the winning team a large cold coca cola; the losers of games in the Mayan city squares were killed on the courts and their hearts promptly removed. Glad this is now and not then... Besides working on the Church, Fr. Josepe has me teaching english and guitar between 5 different pueblos, sometime teaching four classes a day in three or four different towns. These little towns, San Ramon, Tepich, Francisco May, Francisco Madero, and Tac Chivo, appreciate the attention of the missionaries and the children enjoy something to learn like english or guitar. We usually teach in the thatch roofed rooms designated as the Church. I end up learning maya in my english classes and inevitably am asked to play "La Cucaracha" by the students in the guitar classes. It is fun teaching these children and its very easy to connect with them and entertain them despite the language barrier. As tiring as it can be to teach, it is rewarding to laugh with the kids and, strangely enough, hear them laugh at me too! As I was waiting for a class in Francisco Madero last week I noticed that a young Mayan behind a near by house was holding a strange creature by the scruff of its back and trying to tie a rope around its neck. I felt bad for staring but couldn't take my eyes off of the funny looking little thing and the terrible trouble it was giving this young Mayan. It looked like a cross between a ferret and a raccoon and had a long striped tail. As he was struggling to get it under control, the creature came loose, bounced around all over the ground, avoiding his grasping hands, and then zipped up his leg almost faster than my eyes could follow, leapt on the young man's hand and bit the daylights out of his index finger. The guy screamed out loud and grabbed the critter (called a 'Tay Homme' I was soon to discover) and began taunting it by waving his finger just out of reach of its snarling mouth and then giving it a rough whack on the head. Right about then he looked up and noticed me staring at him through the trees and we both, or at least for my part, felt a little embarrassed. No matter, we struck up a conversation which began with me admiring the little animal, now somewhat calm and wandering at the end of the string leash the fellow was holding, and asking about how he found the little guy. This young man ended up giving me various fruits and juices to try, none of them had I ever seen before, and then he took me and my friend Antonio, who was with me to teach Catechism, to a nearby cenote. This Cenote was awesome! I attached a few photos so you can see how cool it was. The mouth of the cenote is a humungous circular hole in the ground, about 30 feet deep, surrounded by jungle. However, it is difficult to see the large hole while approaching the cenote because of some sizable banana trees that are growing out of the bottom of the cenote that look at first glance like jungle brush. There is a wooden ladder that lands on a latform with another ladder that finally brings you to the caverns ground level. The bats in there are pretty big, the stalactites over the water are huge, and the caves in the walls look forbidding... I loved it. All this went to confirm my new love for cenotes and gave me a desire to see many, many more before I leave the Yucatan in a few months. There are some pictures here of the sign approaching the cenote, the entrance into the abysmal looking place, and a view from the interior. I was also blessed to see at least the beginning of an authentic Mayan fiesta. There is one day per year when all of the women from the surrounding pueblos (towns/villages) come to San Ramon to pay taxes to the government for schooling the children. Their families follow and people sell products of their daily work - there are carpenters selling chairs and tables obviously carved with their own hands, mothers and daughters selling necklaces and bracelets, farmers selling produce, and little Mayan Abuelas (grandmothers) selling their famous dishes. Every one pitches in to buy a huge bull to slaughter and feast on, as well as some large pigs and turkey too. The day was rained out within the first few hours, but not before I was able to eat some delicious tacos, to witness several hundred Mayan women dressed in their beautiful traditional dress (a simple one piece white dress with handsewn flowers of incredible color sewn around the breast and bottom of the dress) and to see the gutting of a very unhappy bull, which they slaughtered by hitting it on the head with a sledge hammer. Yeah I know, I was pretty amazed also. In the photobelow you can see a little girl wearing one of the traditional Mayan dresses the women wear for special occosions, and sometimes just in general! These are the kids I get to teach. Aren´t they beautiful? They are joyful, that's for sure! I was preparing a lesson for one of my english classes two days ago when five Mayans passed by my window and encircled a small tree outside my room. I walked outside, curious to see what they were up to, only to find that they were trying to light the tree on fire, or so I thought. What they were actually doing was smoking out a bees' nest that was twice the size of a basketball. One of the guys, wielding a machete, went right into the middle of the swarm of bees and began chopping at the branches the nest was attached to. The other guys were all chuckling as they watched their buddy get "bee'd" pretty badly, apparently saying something to one another along the lines of "Boy am I glad its not MY turn this time! Tha´'s gotta hurt!" That unfortunate Mayan had at least five bees in his hair and many visibly stinging him all across his bakc and belly, but he took it like a champ and just smiled with good humour at his friends, laughing at himself just as they were laughing at him. These people are tough. Within a few minutes the bees nest was out and away from the tree on the ground, the bees were confused and weakened by the smoke and the nest was then taken apart for the honey inside. Picture below of the men taking apart the nest... I was also excited to see my first few tarantulas this week. Now that I've seen them up close I'm twice as terrified as I was before! They sure are scary! I have to check my shoes every morning to avoid an unpleasant morning surprise of tarantulas in your shoe... Thank you to all for your continued support in prayer. There is nothing greater you can give me than the gift of grace through your prayers. Please pray for the morale of of the Mayan workers who are sacrificing a great deal to work on this Church without pay for several months. Please pray for the leadership of the Fathers Raoul and Josepe, and the guidance of the Architect and the construction engineer so that this Church can become a fruitful reality and a glorious place of prayer for this community. I need your help in prayer as all good things encounter bitter battles; I am convinced that God is blessing this project immensely and that makes this a good thing, so please pray for God's will to be done perfectly in the construction of the Church in San Ramon. Even more importantly, please pray that the Church is built in the hearts of the people. After all, what good is building a place of prayer if no one chooses to pray? So, this is the real prayer for my mission to San Ramon: that the Church be built in the hearts of the people, including my own and in the hearts of the missionaries, rather than solely on their soil somewhere close by. The Church must be constructed in the prayerful formation of souls so that the Church building can be properly used to give glory to our Creator, Who loves us with a love far beyond our ability to comprehend. Man, life is beautiful. Thank you all for everything!

"Unless the LORD builds the house, in vain do its builders labor. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand in guard in vain.” - Psalm 127:1

"The Lord says, 'Heaven is my throne. The earth is my footstool. What kind of house are you going to build for me? Where will I rest?'" - Isaiah 66:1

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD, who has compassion on you." - Isaiah 54:10

Will write again in the next week or two! Peace and Joy be yours in abundance.