Mexico



I just got back from Mexico last night. A friend and I went to teach at a cross-cultural ministry training program in Matachi, a rural town in the state of Chihuahua.

The school was founded by my brother and now has 5 students: 3 Mexicans and 2 Argentinans. It's a 2 year program designed to prepare Latin Americans for cross-cultural ministry in Africa, Asia, and the Middle-East.

We had a great time. We taught "tag-team" on the process of making a healthy adjustment to ministry in a new culture. At night I taught on Islam, mostly in a question and answer format.

Apart from the students, who seemed to appreciate the content of lessons, there were 2 American missionaries from south of Mexico who were also teaching during the morning. This couple has been in Mexico for 30 years. The American couple directing the school also sat in on most of our classes. They have only been in Mexico for about 10 months.

As we taught about the process of intercultural adjustment we spoke honestly about the stresses of cross-cultural living and reality of 'culture shock' that is a natural part this process. The couple that had been in Mexico for 30 years had much to offer by way of stories and shared experience, but they were also impacted and were given a new vocabulary to interpret their own experiences and stresses. On the other hand, the directors of the program are now in the period of adjustment most often characterized by stress and difficulty. They are a wonderful couple and are experienced in ministry, but they also seemed to gain some insight into their own adjustment.

The students were also in a season of cultural adjustment, even as they prepare to go overseas. Mexico is very different from Argentina, and the Argentinian couple have had to overcome a number of stressors associated with cross-cultural living. All of the Mexican students have also left their homes and their cities to living in community at a school located in a remote Mexican town of fewer than 3,000 people. This kind of transition is not an easy one.

Murray and I rented a car in El Paso and drove all the way to Matachi, which was quite an adventure. We stopped for directions dozens of times, and the advice always seemed to be the same: "just keep going straight all the way down that road..." A hundred yards later the road would come to an end and we would have to decide whether "straight" meant left or right. Mexico is a big place.

On our last night a skunk got trapped in the schools courtyard and Nacho, the guard dog had trapped in a corner behind a pile of bricks. In the morning we flushed the skunk out and Nacho got sprayed pretty badly... The whole school smelled awful. Eventually the skunk was... disposed of... and we said our good-byes and got in the car to make the trip back to El Paso. It wasn't until a couple hours later that we realized that we smelled like skunk too. I'm sure the people on the airplane appreciated it.

Comments

doro said…
glad that you had a good trip...yucky skunk!
January 16, 2008 at 5:44 AM
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