A Bible verse

Here is a Bible verse that has new meaning after spending time in El Paso.

Luke 21:1-4, (especially 4)
1As he looked up, Jesus saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. 2He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins.3"I tell you the truth," he said, "this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

The people of Cristo Rey live this.

Why me?

While traveling this month, I realized that either weird things only happen to me, or maybe I just notice them more than other people. Here are a few examples.

When I left for El Paso, I checked in at the airport and headed to the security line. The people in front of me reeked of alcohol, and it was 5am.

There was a girl in line wearing one of those surgical masks. I'm not sure if it was to protect her from us or to protect us from her. Either way, odd.

As I'm disrobing so I can go through the metal detector, I keep hearing the detector going off. As I get to the end, I see that they are pulling all of the people who set the alarm off and sending them through a second line where they are using the hand wand. No big deal, but that line was 5 people deep and there wasn't anyone working the wand yet. I prayed that there were no beeps when I went through, and there weren't, so I didn't have to wait an extra hour until the wand guy showed up for work.

I made it to TX and headed to my room for a little relaxation before dinner. I was watching TV, when all of the sudden, it turned off. I turned it back on and thought that maybe I had unknowingly set the sleep timer, so I made a note to myself to not hit that button again. Only problem with that was, all of the buttons on the remote had been worn off, so I had no idea which button it was. I started hitting buttons but sent the TV into a frenzy of menus, different channels and almost ordered a movie, so I gave up. Later that night, it shut off again, this time I was sure I hadn't done it. It did this several more times over the next 2 days I was in the room. There was either an invisible timer that was shutting it off, or my room was haunted and my ghost didn't appreciate the humor of The King of Queens.

When I picked up the van at the airport, they asked me if I wanted to bring back the van with the gas tank full or have them fill it? It would be nice to let them do it, but the charge was listed at $6.99 per gallon, plus a service charge. Does that seem a bit excessive to you, or is it just me?

I've written about things that I have found in the guilty pleasure that is the Skymall magazine. Here is one for the follicley challenged. This contraption is called the X5 Hair Laser. It appears that you just put this thing on your head and move it around like a massager and it helps fill in your thin spots. That's fine, but they also have the picture below.

Sorry its a crappy picture, but this one wasn't on the website. Might be because, as far as I can see, the X5 doesn't help you grow hair, it just makes it frizzy, which gives the illusion of more hair. I could be wrong, but that is how I see it. If you can see it, the number of hairs is the same in both pictures, the second picture just seems that the hair is coming apart. Good luck on that one.

Next up, a subject matter that I addressed once before. If you read my blog awhile back when I was writing about this catalog, I showed you the following picture.

I wrote that I thought owning enough watches to fill this case, 24, seemed a bit excessive. Well now I found a perfect accessory to this, how about a case that automatically winds your watch as you store it?

Couple issues with this. First, it cost $1,499.95, a bit out of my price range. Second, why would you have 20 watches that needed winding? Haven't they heard of a battery operated Casio?

And finally, I found this subtle little pillow that you can hardly see.

Look closely, its a blue pillow just under the mans cheek, neck and 3/4 of his torso. I think I'll pick one of these babies up for my flight to Africa. I sure hope I have 3 seats to myself so I can use it.

New game invented

As you spend time with a group of people, you eventually run low on things to talk about, so you come up with other ways to entertain yourselves, hence the invention of "Bouncy Ball." You may think that you have played this before, but there are a number factors of danger that may not have been present when you played, that was most definitely present when we played. You start with a $.50 super ball bought from a truck stop somewhere in the middle of Texas. Then, you add 14 twin mattresses, 4 folding tables, 25 boxes of stuff and several people to play and even more who are more or less obstacles or targets, depending on how you look at it. Probably the most important thing to have is several people that either have no idea the game is in progress or who know the game is on, but refuse to participate. Then the object is simple, try to bounce the ball to another participant, dodging the above listed obstacles, especially the people who aren't playing or are oblivious that a small rubber object is being bounced near their melon. Here is an action shot of a game in progress. You will see that there are three of us currently playing, but what you can't see is several others that were playing, whether they wanted to or not.

You may be thinking to yourself, what is so dangerous about this? Well I'm here to tell you that if you aren't fully paying attention, you can get a serious red mark on you. Bouncing the ball is the easy part, but you want to try and get the ball to the next person after only one bounce, because if the ball hits the ground a second time, it not only changes the trajectory of the ball, but the ball also increases speed ten fold. Not to mention that as I have aged, my eyesight isn't what it use to be. This little ball is difficult to see. I was trying to stop it in time so it didn't pass me and drive right into a non participant, but damn that little thing was hard to see, especially after the second bounce and it sped up. Probably the most dangerous aspect of the game came when a game that was started by the inventor of the game who we will leave nameless to protect him from retaliation. Plus, as Val said all week, I wouldn't want to get Chad in trouble. Anyway, when this person started up a late night game, he bounced the ball to an unwilling participant who halfheartedly tried to catch the ball, which she missed. The ball bounced past her right towards our mission leader, who had all ready voiced her opinion of Bouncy Ball, and made it clear that she would not be an investor. She had her eyes closed, as she was trying to go to sleep, and now was unaware that the $.50 ball from hell was on its way towards her. Most everyone in the room held their breath and plotted their escape as we helplessly awaited the scream. I myself decided that if she was indeed plunked, I would fake sleep and hit the pillow, even break out the fake snore, just for good measure. The ball bounced over her head, much to all of our delight, only to land on a chair over her head and start bouncing around like a pinball machine, which only made our hearts speed up. It hit her water bottle, which instantly made me realize that if that metal water bottle falls off the chair and hits the floor, we are not only looking at getting in trouble for playing an unsanctioned game at the wee hour of 8:30pm, but now we are looking at a possible heart attack from a person who is totally oblivious to exactly how close she is to disaster. I'm happy to report that the ball fell harmlessly to the floor and we were all able to start breathing again. That meant we were also all witnesses to the shortest game of Bouncy Ball in history, one bounce. If you would like a written rules list and directions on how to play, here it is.

Directions:

1. Bounce ball

2. Try to catch ball

3. Rinse and repeat

Rules:

1. Do not eat Bouncy Ball

Enjoy!

Was I right or wrong?

I mentioned that my Christian responsibility was tested and I wasn't sure if I did the right thing. The story goes, that we were at the church in El Paso, when Pastor Rosemary came to us and said that there was a man in the parking lot that asked to speak to a "man." I'm not always sure that I act like a "man," but I think my age puts me in the man category. I headed outside with Chad and one of our mission leaders, Garrold. We found the gentleman outside and he shared his current situation with us. He said he was robbed in Juarez, made it across the border, but didn't have any money to get out of El Paso. He never said where he was from, but he was wanting to go to Dallas where his niece said she would pick him up. He was looking for about $68 for bus fare. He said he didn't drink or do drugs and just wanted to get out of El Paso. He was very emotional and kept calling Chad, "Holmes." Here are my thoughts on the story, broken down a bit.

1. He said he was robbed in Juarez, which if you know anything about the city, this is not only possible, but probable. The thought I had was, if they took his wallet, how did he get back across the border? Maybe they didn't take his passport, who knows. With the violence in the city, if his story is true, he's lucky they didn't shoot him, that seems to be the running theme there right now.
2. We couldn't hand him $68 dollars, because if he was scamming us, he would have just gotten what he was looking for, money for drugs or alcohol.
3. He claimed he didn't drink or do drugs, yet I smelled alcohol on him (at least it seemed like it to me). If he didn't drink or do drugs, what was he doing in Juarez in the first place? Right across the border are a bunch of bars and night clubs. There are a few markets as well, but he didn't appear to be the "shopping" kind of guy. What single guy goes to another country to buy ceramic turtles or that sort of thing? No guy I know. You have a wife, girlfriend or even a few buddies, then maybe, but by yourself? If he was visiting someone, he should have been able to get help from them. Seemed suspicious to me.

My thoughts, after the fact, were, if this story was true, wasn't I supposed to help my fellow man? I thought that maybe I should have called Pastor Rosemary back out to help him, seeing as how we didn't know the area or if there were other options for him. He said he was at the shelter the night before and the way they treated people there was "criminal." I thought, maybe we should have driven him to the bus station and bought him the ticket to Dallas. I don't know where the station is, but since we were in downtown El Paso and most Greyhound stations are located downtown, we were probably close. I wondered if his emotions were honest or worthy of an Academy award, because I thought the tears seemed genuine. To watch him walk away was a bit sad, but I'm still pretty sure his story was a bit, if not totally, bullshit. I questioned why he wanted to talk to a guy, when you would think that a woman might have a softer heart and be more willing to help. He had spoken to Pastor Rosemary, but asked for a man, so I wonder if he just didn't want to show his emotion to a woman. I know I'm totally over analyzing this, but after all, I was on a mission trip and my mission is to help people. Not just the people who I signed up to help, but anyone. I try to live my life that way. If his story was true, I just passed on an opportunity to do what Jesus commanded us to do.

I'm baaaaaack!

I'm home from El Paso and I have so much to tell you about. I went into this trip thinking that we would be able to help this little church, but I had no idea that we would make the impact we did and that they would impact me so much more. I got an eye opening education, a little (very little) glimpse of an immigrants situation, both legal and illegal. I've mentioned on this blog before, and it bares repeating, I'm not for illegal immigration, but I understand why it occurs. I'll tell you for a fact, that everyone on this trip has a new perspective on the whole situation. While we were there, we were able to build four, triple bunks. What is that exactly? Check this out:You can see the group on the bottom are sitting on the bottom bunk, without the mattress, then you can see the second and third bunks. These were built without plans, the bunk crew only used photos of regular bunks, then added a third to the top. I was really concerned that they wouldn't be very stable, as was the crew building them, but I can tell you that they are very stable as you can tell by the number of people on this one. I spent the first two days replacing ceiling tiles and adjusting the ceiling so it was all the same height, never done it before, but not too challenging. Here is the tile crew and our finished ceiling above us:

The ceiling looked like plans for a roller coaster, up and down, up and down. We were able to knock most of the hills and valleys out, leaving it surprisingly level. We also built shelves, painted and a few other odd jobs, but the best thing we did was bring hope to the pastor of Cristo Rey (more on that later). This little church, Cristo Rey, does amazing things with very little. They support over 100 kids in Juarez, putting them through school, even though they don't have any idea how they will pay the mortgage of the new building they just bought. They support Dr. Mendoza, who runs two clinics in Mexico that charge people what they can afford, including nothing if that is what they have. We heard how the church would be voting on their budget the Sunday after we left, and it was a -$45,000 bottom line. How can they do that you might ask? Faith. More faith than I will ever know. They subscribe to the, the more you give away the more you get back, school of thought. It has worked for them for 15 years, so whose to say it won't continue to work. In God, all things are possible, the proof is in El Paso. The trip was fantastic, as always, with a great group, most of who I all ready knew. Of the 14 people who went, there was only one first timer. I always feel that the returning missionaries prove that this trip is worthy of our time and money. If it wasn't, people would loose interest or drive and the mission would die. There are numerous people on this trip that I know will be there every year, barring a major life change or schedule conflict. We were able to spend time talking to members of the church, and I'll share pieces of their stories in a future post. There was one night that I felt my Christian responsibility was tested, and whether I failed or not I don't know. I'll share that as well, but I'm tired, so I want to go to bed. One last picture for this post. This is the group on our mountain top church service on Sunday more. Behind us is El Paso at the base of the mountain and waaaaaay in the distance, Juarez.