In keeping with the rest of my YWAM experience, this past week has been one of changes and challenges. The week was a relatively normal one, with class in the morning and outreach preparation/ministries in the afternoon. What was not normal about it was that we knew that, at least as of last Sunday, we still were missing visas and money to be able to go to India. On Friday morning, we had a meeting to inform us of the status of outreach. It lasted about six hours. Basically, what it came down to was that four students had virtually no money for outreach, and only five students could get visas for India. We were faced with the options of either splitting the group, and sending those who could go to India, or remaining together and doing our next two months of outreach in Mexico. After much discussion, weeping, and gnashing of teeth, it was decided that we would remain together as a group in Mexico. Since the cost of the Mexican outreach is less, this would also allow the four students without money to participate.
Last night, we had another meeting to discuss in a bit more detail exactly what we will be doing over this next two months. While this whole thing is very much a work in progress, today we will leave for Ensenada. We will be spending the next week at a church in Ensenada, helping with evening services, cleaning up around colonia, and revising our outreach program for a Mexican rather than an Indian audience. Depending on what travel arrangements are made, we will probably be flying down to Mexico City around Friday or Saturday. We will be there for about three weeks working with a program called MegaCities. Every two years, YWAM sends teams and ministries from all over the world to a different megacity (city with a population of over 10 million) in an effort to evangelize the whole city in a year. Two years ago, the focus of MegaCities was Jakarta, Indonesia; this year (obviously) the focus is Mexico City. While I don’t know what exactly we will be doing yet, we should have the opportunity to work with other teams from all over the world doing a variety of different ministries. After this, we will be going to a base about an hour away in Pachuca. Pachuca is a smaller and newer base that primarily focuses on ministry to the indigenous peoples of the area, including doing food distribution and programs for children. However, once again, there has been no definitive word as to exactly what we will be doing while we are there. Finally, we will be spending the last few weeks of outreach at the YWAM base in Monterrey, Mexico. While (yet again) I don’t know what we will be doing there, this is the home base for Edgar Figueroa, who worked with our DTS for our first eight weeks teaching us dance and choreography. While I am a bit nervous at the thought of having to attempt dance again, it will be good to see him. Finally, we will return to Ensenada for our debrief and (God willing) have our graduation on May 27th.