Well, today was the first Sunday of Advent. This morning was the first Sunday that we have attended a worship service in English since October 8th at Grace Church in Winkler. Since then we have worshipped in Low German once and many times in Spanish - Pan de Vida has worship services on Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings. In fact this last Thursday I spoke at the worship service. One of the other volunteers translated for me. I find it hard to keep my train of thought when a translator speaks - I keep listening for how certain English words will be translated.
I have learned that worship can happen even if I understand very few of the words, it can also not happen when I understand every word that is spoken (Oops, I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to preach until January).
This morning we worshipped with a group called the Queretaro Christian Fellowship which meets at a Church called The Rose of Sharon. I assumed that this English language group rents the facility from the Spanish group that meets later. Queretaro Christian Fellowship is a small group of about 40-50 (we only used the chairs/pews on the left side of the picture and the phone numbers of the whole church are listed on the back of the bulletin) and it was quite an informal gathering. We arrived fashionably late and the person who was leading the service made his way to the back of the building where we were sitting, welcomed us, and asked if it was alright to ask me to introduce our family to the group which I did.
Despite the fact that today is the first Sunday of Advent it does not feel remotely like Christmas. The weather today was cool (only got to about 16 with an East breeze), it was quite warm and sunny yesterday and the only snow we see around here is inside the freezer. It feels like it should be late August or early September not the first sunday of advent. This has been the longest summer of my life.
After church we had a quick lunch and headed out of town in the direction of Mexico City for another adventure - a hiking adventure this time.
We arrived at a small town called Bernal which has the distinguishing feature of being the home to the world's second or third largest rock - behind Ayers Rock in Australia.
The town of Bernal is a small village but like all Mexican villages it has narrow streets and because quite a few tourists arrive in the town there is an active market section. They feature lovely, colorful tablecloths and other crafts - Jeffrey got a dragon to hang on his wall at home (ours is to figure out how to get it home without it being bent out of shape).
On the way to the base of the rock we were only slightly confused by this particular piece of signage (Pena means 'rock' or 'large stone'). The drip of paint by the graffitti artist gave it away for us.
The rock itself is most impressive. Frankly, I have no idea what the difference is between a rock and a mountain (although I have been caught between a rock and a hard place, but that's different). All I know is that the trail climbing up the rock was definitely not the type that would occur in any national or provincial park in Canada.
This trail would be a Canadian insurance underwriter's nightmare to see the way in which this trail was arranged with very little effort seemingly given to minimizing the risk of injury for hikers.
There were two handrails on the entire trail. One was a steel two by six mounted in concrete posts about two feet off the ground (which is closer to the waists of Mexican people than it is to the waists of Canadians) with no spindles from the handrail to the concrete. The other handrail was two strands of barbed wire strung from rock to rock (we took that to mean "Keep Out"). In the end we all climbed as high as we could go without rock climbing equipment which is about where the trail ended.
As you can see from the picture the GPS read that we reached an alititude of 7845 ft. above sea level.
It looked as though the rock would go up a couple hundred feet higher than that.
But we all made it. When we got back to Pan de Vida and Joan and I were looking at the pictures she said, "Wow, that's awfully high. I would never go up there." But as you can see, she did it. On the climb up and down it was quite warm and we were glad that we went today and not yesterday when it was much warmer here. We started out wearing jackets but about 20 minutes into the climb they became a liability. However, when we got to the top we could feel the breeze and we were glad we had taken our jackets with us.
The calendar has turned to December and we know that this is the month when we head home. It's quite amazing how our thoughts have begun to turn toward making sure we get done what we want to accomplish before we leave. Joan is not sure the library work will get done. I know the concrete work won't get done but we are seeing the sights that we feel are important to see. This coming Friday one of the classes in the Pan de Vida school is going to Teotihuacan near Mexico city. It's a sight that features two large pyramids and was an ancient city of Mexican native peoples. We will write more about that when we arrive back from that adventure.
Until then, thank you for keeping up with us and God Bless you all.
I have learned that worship can happen even if I understand very few of the words, it can also not happen when I understand every word that is spoken (Oops, I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to preach until January).
This morning we worshipped with a group called the Queretaro Christian Fellowship which meets at a Church called The Rose of Sharon. I assumed that this English language group rents the facility from the Spanish group that meets later. Queretaro Christian Fellowship is a small group of about 40-50 (we only used the chairs/pews on the left side of the picture and the phone numbers of the whole church are listed on the back of the bulletin) and it was quite an informal gathering. We arrived fashionably late and the person who was leading the service made his way to the back of the building where we were sitting, welcomed us, and asked if it was alright to ask me to introduce our family to the group which I did.
Despite the fact that today is the first Sunday of Advent it does not feel remotely like Christmas. The weather today was cool (only got to about 16 with an East breeze), it was quite warm and sunny yesterday and the only snow we see around here is inside the freezer. It feels like it should be late August or early September not the first sunday of advent. This has been the longest summer of my life.
After church we had a quick lunch and headed out of town in the direction of Mexico City for another adventure - a hiking adventure this time.
We arrived at a small town called Bernal which has the distinguishing feature of being the home to the world's second or third largest rock - behind Ayers Rock in Australia.
The town of Bernal is a small village but like all Mexican villages it has narrow streets and because quite a few tourists arrive in the town there is an active market section. They feature lovely, colorful tablecloths and other crafts - Jeffrey got a dragon to hang on his wall at home (ours is to figure out how to get it home without it being bent out of shape).
On the way to the base of the rock we were only slightly confused by this particular piece of signage (Pena means 'rock' or 'large stone'). The drip of paint by the graffitti artist gave it away for us.
The rock itself is most impressive. Frankly, I have no idea what the difference is between a rock and a mountain (although I have been caught between a rock and a hard place, but that's different). All I know is that the trail climbing up the rock was definitely not the type that would occur in any national or provincial park in Canada.
This trail would be a Canadian insurance underwriter's nightmare to see the way in which this trail was arranged with very little effort seemingly given to minimizing the risk of injury for hikers.
There were two handrails on the entire trail. One was a steel two by six mounted in concrete posts about two feet off the ground (which is closer to the waists of Mexican people than it is to the waists of Canadians) with no spindles from the handrail to the concrete. The other handrail was two strands of barbed wire strung from rock to rock (we took that to mean "Keep Out"). In the end we all climbed as high as we could go without rock climbing equipment which is about where the trail ended.
As you can see from the picture the GPS read that we reached an alititude of 7845 ft. above sea level.
It looked as though the rock would go up a couple hundred feet higher than that.
But we all made it. When we got back to Pan de Vida and Joan and I were looking at the pictures she said, "Wow, that's awfully high. I would never go up there." But as you can see, she did it. On the climb up and down it was quite warm and we were glad that we went today and not yesterday when it was much warmer here. We started out wearing jackets but about 20 minutes into the climb they became a liability. However, when we got to the top we could feel the breeze and we were glad we had taken our jackets with us.
The calendar has turned to December and we know that this is the month when we head home. It's quite amazing how our thoughts have begun to turn toward making sure we get done what we want to accomplish before we leave. Joan is not sure the library work will get done. I know the concrete work won't get done but we are seeing the sights that we feel are important to see. This coming Friday one of the classes in the Pan de Vida school is going to Teotihuacan near Mexico city. It's a sight that features two large pyramids and was an ancient city of Mexican native peoples. We will write more about that when we arrive back from that adventure.
Until then, thank you for keeping up with us and God Bless you all.
posted by Franz Sabbatical Updates @ 7:27 PM
1 Comments:
At Friday, December 08, 2006 7:27:00 AM,
Anonymous said…
I did that climb with in Feb with Don F and others in the mission group. Your climb brought back great memories of that. I was tired.....but it was a good tired. Marv..in Winkler
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