A Look at Last Week and and a Glance at the First Leg of the San Ramon Mission

Hello Everyone!

Thank you for all of your prayers! You must be praying because this has been AWESOME.

Greetings from the home of the Fernandez family in Cancun, Mexico! Life is good here as I am resting up after the mission to Carrillo Puerto in the south with Father Juan Guerra. It was an amazing week! Definately one of the tougher physical weeks of my life, but the physical challenges served to make it and even more rewarding experience. Complete with huge spiders, Yucatan hammacks to sleep in, delicious handmade Mayan meals, the noise of the jungle at night, death defying Church roofing stunts, a fresh mango stand yards from the work site, delightful people (especially the little Mayan children), great meditations, no flushable toilets, a wonderful group of guys from St. Mary´s in Michigan (now friends of the closest kind), some of the best stars you´ve ever seen, and a really good priest leading the whole project, the first week of missions in Mexico did not dissapoint on any level. In fact it exceeded my expectations big time.

The people were awesome. I was impressed to here one of the old Mayan dialects spoken comfortably in a small group of local women within the first 30 minutes of our arrival to Aqua Azul, a small roadside village outside of Carrillo Puerto. This particular Church had lost its roof to a hurricane fifteen years earlier and has been waiting for a roof ever since. The village certainly appreciated our presence and our hard work; one family, just before they served us lunch, were on their hands and knees scrubbing their concrete floors in order to make a good impression (they were a wealthier family - they didn´t have a dirt floor). They served us homemade tortillas and bean soups with rice and peppers, fresh fruit and tomales with salsa... Never hungry and always satisfied! It was a tremedous gift to be able to go to daily Mass with the villagers who wanted to attend and to do skits afterwards containing stories from the Bible (Moses splitting the Red Sea was especially well received). At the last Mass, several women approached the Altar with tears streaming down their cheeks asking to take pictures with us and telling us they had gifts to give us before we left them. It was a touching and humbling sight.

The Work was hard. There is a picture above that shows the worksite and the Church. There was no roof, nothing, when we arrived. We moved 1000 cinder blocks up to the roof using wooden ladders and assebly lines, set those blocks in hundred pound beams (64 of them) in between the newly poured concrete roof supports, cut the wood and set the supports for the new supports with hammer and nail (there must have been over one hundred small trees cut for the supports), and finally, on the last day, with the help of half the men in the village, spent a solid 6 hours mixing cement, shovelling it into buckets and lifting it up wobbly wooden scaffolding to the roof of the Church where the roof had to be set and smoothed in cement. Those buckets were heavy, and it was over 100 degrees outside in the midday heat! Definately costing and definately worth it to see those tears coming down the villagers faces who didn´t know how to express their gratitude but through tears. I hope that I can accompany Fr. Guerra on many more missions of this sort.

God blessed us. Perhaps the most rewarding part of this entire week was not seeing the tears on the villagers faces or hearing the laughter of the children at our skits or during the evening games, but seeing the hearts of the missionaries change for the better. I have to admit, when I met up with the guys in the airport I thought, "Oh boy, this is going to be tough". These guys appeared to be not to interested in the well being of the people but in the worldly draw of Cancun, with its beeches and bikinis and beer. My first thoughts may have been partly correct. However, after a week of sleeping side by side on the concrete floor (the "war zone"), feeling isolated in the English Language, hours of late night conversation about God, human sexuality and the Theology of the Body, laughing with eachother, gaining confidence through mutual success in tough situations (like swimming around huge under water pillars in a Yucatan Cenote (water cave) or successfully roping a beam onto the Church roof without injuring anyone below), and seeing a Church roof that didn´t exist a few days earlier, I was deeply surprised by the authenticity and the honesty of the group of missionaries I had doubted earlier. God honors those who give him their time ad talent on earth - He pays you back a hundred fold! And He certainly did; all of us left humbled and hopeful for our future as Christian men. All of us gained some really good friendships also. God blessed us indeed and he will continue to bless us because He loves us!

Since the end of the mission with Fr. Guerra I have been enjoying my stay with my friend Paul herandez and his wonderful family. I stayed with Paul when Father Raoul let Ariel and me stay here in March. They are an Awesome family! They take incredible care of me and always want to make sure that I am well fed and happy. These people are so gracious to missionaries! There generosity is a really good example for me before I leave to serve in the missions.

After having lunch with the Bishop of the Cancun Prelature, Bishop Padre Pedro, on Sunday with Fr. Guerra, I feel better than ever about the mission here. Team San Ramon will be building one of 139 (138 counting the one we just finished in Aqua Azul) new Churches needed in the prelature. The Bishop was very kind and extremely grateful for all the funds raised to build this Church San Ramon. His Prelature has not yet reached the status of diocese simply because there are not enough Churches to meet the needs of the people, though all the people seem to be extraordinarily devout even without the Sacraments offered by a stable Church and priest. So grateful to be able to help somewhere where there is a real need, and it was certainly another blessing from God and confirmation of all my prayers to be able to dine with the Bishop and speak to him about these concrete needs personally.

I was able to visit San Ramon, my more permanent home for the next few months, two days ago. Fr. Raoul, my good friend and priestly host here in Cancun, went with me to meet with the elders of the town, the Franciscan priest assigned to San Ramon (Fr. Josepe, an Italian Franciscan sent to do missions here three years ago), and the architect of the new Church. Everything looks great! The new Church looks good on paper, now its our job to make it a reality. I am almost all ready to go here and will begin working in San Ramon with a group of young mexicans from Cancun (friends of mine from my visit here in March) starting on Saturday of this week. It would be a bit of a miracle, but we hope to finish the Church, at the very least its structure, by the Feast of San Ramon on the 31st of August. We´ll see how things go! Please pray for us! For our safety and for the people of San Ramon. Muchas Gracias.

I have attached some of the pictures from the first week above. More to come later! I love you all and I thank you for your support in my months down here in Mexico. Please remember to pray for us!!

Love,
Adam

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