STEP: A Student’s Perspective
The last time I had lived overseas was in 2003, so I was looking forward to being out of the country again. I have lived before in Colombia and Ecuador, both nations with similar cultures to that of Mexico, and even the same language. For most people on the trip this experience was something completely new. For me, it was like meeting someone from my past who I had to get to know all over again. I speak Spanish so I was looking forward to not only being able to converse with the Mexicans but to help those on our team who could not speak Spanish very well. Every stage of our trip was exciting for the entire team of 65 youth. From the plane ride, to the airport in Mexico City, to the city itself and on to Poza Rica, all part of an adventure I won’t soon forget. I could not help but constantly look around at the new sites and faces.
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Young people in worship in Mexico. |
Mexico City is a huge city, and I felt like we saw only a pin point of it. What we did see was a typicaly bustling big city but also a beautiful one. The architecture was ornate, the monuments impressive, and there were actually many parks. We stayed in the Best Western Majestic right outside the huge Roman Catholic National Cathedral and the National Palace. We stayed in Mexico City during the first and last days of our trip. On the last day there, we shopped at a market where we could bargain for the items we wanted. It was a lot of fun. There was a lot of silver jewelry and artisan crafts.
During one of our last days in Mexico we went to a place called El Tajin where there were ancient pyramid ruins. It was very impressive. Being a history major in college, I found all the structures, from the sacrificial pyramids to the ball courts, fascinating.
Although the varying places were fun to see, we did not come to Mexico as tourists but to be servants to the Mexican people. We served in a number of ways in Poza Rica, in the state of Vera Cruz, a city not too far from the Gulf Coast. While we were there, we took part in what they call a Youth Congress, which was basically a gathering of youth from that region of Mexico. Some rode 14 hours on a school bus from Oaxaca to attend. Others rode 11 hours from Acapulco. There were about four hundred youth in attendance, and every day they would spend the majority of their time praising God and soaking in His Word in a church with no air conditioning in 100 degree weather. It was unlike anything I had every seen before. It was easy to see how much they hungered and thirsted for more of God in their lives. Despite the prevalent poverty and spiritual oppression of Mexico, there was a great sense of liberty exemplified by the youth during praise and worship. They lifted up their hands and danced before God with abandon, not caring what anyone thought of them. Tony Lane spoke several times and was right on target with his messages, while our drama team (RESCUE) did drama and even taught one to the youth, who were ecstatic to learn it. It was definitely a humbling experience to see kids who supposedly should be less happy than us enjoy the presence of God at a completely different level. Our band, Last Day Open, ministered in music to a very excited crowd! Even though we spoke different languages, it didn’t hinder our worship together.
There was a place on the outskirts of Poza Rica where people have dumped their junk over the years, and the most unfortunate have built their lives around what those others do not want. It was incredibly sad to see the conditions they lived in. They did not have much, but they dressed their best to welcome a group that will probably never fully understand their lives. We had prepared boxes of food for several families in this area, families that each STEP team reaches out to when they come. We did a drama and one of our guys gave his testimony. The people there seemed touched and of course happy for the food. I had followed some of our guys up a hill to a house to deliver a box of food. I gave one of the boys an action figure I had bought back home, and his dad started talking to me about his home and the landscape and about how beautiful he thought it was. It shocked me how much someone with next to nothing could talk about what he did have with so much pride.
Most of our time in Poza Rica was spent at the Casa Hogar orphanage where we got to connect with the kids over the span of several days. Once again it astounded me how much kids with next to nothing could be so happy. Most of the members on our team seemed to individually connect to a child, including myself. There was a little four year-old boy named Jorge who I befriended and who I played with every day we were there. I have never before seen a kid with so much energy and with so much happiness in him as with Jorge. We were there as servants, so we did whatever they needed us to do. Besides connect with the kids we brought food items, and bought a lot of things they needed, such as tires for their van and a clothes washer. We also decorated a game room for them and bought video games, assembled a ping pong table and a foosball table which had been purchased for them. Of course, they were completely excited to have such a blessing. Leaving the kids was one of the hardest parts of the trips, especially knowing most of us will never see them again.
I feel very blessed to have been part of such an organized and spirit-led trip. I am very glad I got to go. I will never forget how different yet delicious the food tasted, or how beautiful the landscape appeared, or the looks on the faces of all the children both the day we came and the night we left. I relearned an old lesson on this trip. It was not so much that we should be so much more thankful for what we have back home, or that we take the presence of God entirely too much for granted in our comfortable churches. And though it is imperative to keep all that in mind, the most important part was the decision I had made to go last fall itself. It is the important decision to step out of your comfort zone, to experience new things not only for the sake of doing new things, but because sometimes that is all it takes for you to realize God’s will for your life.
Stephen Pineros, The Net Student Ministries, Praise Cathedral, Greer, South Carolina
