It was a sweaty night of tropical heat when our van pulled up to the curb on a narrow backstreet outside Monterrey, and our team of a dozen conspicuous Americans climbed warily out of the air conditioning.
Small pockets of neighbors stared from the shadows as Latin music thumped in the background. We got our first look at the Mission where we’d be staying for a week, and the barred windows were not an encouraging first impression. We hastily entered the protection of the stucco-and-concrete courtyard, exhausted from our trip—and overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all.
Later that night, after lugging duffels inside the protective gates and brushing our teeth at a cold-water tap, we climbed a rough outside stairwell to our sleeping quarters. That’s when Tara, one of our team members, happened to come up the steps behind me.
Tara had spent a semester during college in Central America, so she was much more comfortable with her surroundings than the rest of us. “Do you want to see a Mexican kitchen?” she asked softly as we climbed. I nodded.
She pointed over the wall from the top of the stairway: “That’s it.”
Below us in the open night air stood a camp stove connected to a propane tank, and a rough wooden cabinet with mismatched dishes. Nearby was a wire cage of chickens.
“Where’s the sink?” I asked Tara.
She just shook her head.
On our way from the border crossing to this working-class suburb, we’d passed a huge Whirlpool factory, where workers assembled gleaming refrigerators and washing machines for American consumers. But here in a nearby neighborhood, the house didn’t even have running water. I was stunned.
The rest of the team was already upstairs to the Mission’s most luxurious room, the sanctuary, which had an actual tile floor and roughed-in drywall. They were spreading out sleeping bags there on the metal benches; cranking open the windows for ventilation—making themselves at home.
But I stood on the stairway for a long time looking down on the tiny “kitchen.” I knew that in a week, I’d be back in my comfortable air-conditioned world with hot-water taps and electric stoves. Meanwhile, the citizens of Monterrey would be languishing in third-world conditions—two hours from the border of the wealthiest nation on earth.
Starting to “serve”
I woke up the next morning still exhausted. Sleep had been a fitful affair, punctuated every hour or so by the sound of the crowing rooster next door.
Our ambitious agenda for the week was to deliver supplies to an orphanage, lead a couple of worship services, and conduct children’s programs in a few outlying villages. Of course none of those ministries would alleviate the poverty surrounding us.
We held a worship service that night at the Mission, and it was laughably inadequate. We sang worship choruses in bad Spanish. A pastor from our church preached a sermon, which was translated line-by-line by the Mexican missionary we’d come to “serve.” Long before the end, the squirming children and restless teens in the front had completely tuned him out. I couldn’t help thinking that if a foreigner had tried our approach in an American church, the whole congregation would have walked out.
Afterwards, some folks fired up a propane stove in the mission’s courtyard and began making fresh tortillas. In the evening light, the neighborhood around us was alive—and no longer seemed threatening like the night before. Kids played on the streets and adults joked together. We sat down to eat the best tamales I’ve ever had and tried to converse in broken Spanish with our immensely gracious hosts, who always called me hermano—their brother in Christ.
Then I struck up a conversation with a remarkably bright eleven-year-old girl named Karina. I realized—as she patiently endured my awkward verb conjugations—that Karina wasn’t all that different from me, and the whole environment began to seem less strange.
Later that night, I reflected that perhaps the greatest need of this community was not a dishwasher or better plumbing; internet access or public works. The Believers we were rubbing shoulders with had something that was lacking in rich mega churches everywhere: joy.
With all the advantages that being American could bring, I’d still battled serious depression the previous winter. If it wasn’t for the hope of Christ, I might have leaped from a bridge. Why did I think kitchen appliances were somehow what this community needed? Perhaps they already had more true wealth than I did.
Of course, Christians can and should fight poverty in the name of Christ. But in a week’s time, it was impossible for me to have Whirlpool refrigerators delivered to Monterrey. I could, however, bring a few people the hope I’d discovered on those black nights of depression that threatened to overwhelm my soul.
Drawing a crowd
I spent my “free” time for the next few days feverishly translating the story I’m written for our children’s outreaches. Back home, I’d naively composed a tale in English, assuming our translator could turn it into compelling Spanish on the fly. But the first semi-disastrous church service made it clear that our approach didn’t work. Now I scribbled furiously in another language, hoping my word choices made sense.
On Wednesday, we traveled to a tiny village that was reachable only by a bumpy dirt road through scrubby desert land. It was a hamlet of tiny mud-brick dwellings without plumbing; a place where twice-weekly bus service was the only link to civilization. We drew a crowd of children and their mothers simply because we were outsiders—and even more remarkably, a strange species called Americanos.
As we set up our program of storytelling and craft-making, I practiced my story with its hard-to-pronounce words. Then walked over to Beto, who only spoke Spanish (he was sort of an apprentice to our missionary contact). I knew he would give a short sermon after we stumbled through our agenda, and one question suddenly seemed very urgent to me.
“Vas a presentar el evangelio?” I asked. Are you going to present the Gospel?
He gave a rapid-fire Spanish reply; I had trouble following everything. Bottom line: he probably wasn’t going to say too much about Jesus. He didn’t think these families would be open to the Gospel.
“Por que no?” I asked. Why not?
Beto shrugged, and decided to humor the visiting Americans. After I finished the story (with a sigh of relief), he told the ageless story of grace.
Four people raised their hands to accept Christ.
I have no idea if the conversions that day were genuine. Maybe it was just some country folks trying to impress the visiting Americanos—or see how naïve we really were. But I’d like to think that perhaps I was in Mexico not to tell stories in halting Spanish, but for that single moment: a short stumbling conversation that encouraged our missionary-friend to invite people to receive grace. This side of eternity, I’ll never know.
Coming back different
We participated in more church services later that week. We went to two other villages and gathered the children for our mini-Bible lessons. We paid a brief visit to the orphanage and dropped off our supplies.
Overall, it was a good trip. I came back transformed, eyes opened to another culture and the ministry needs next door to America. I can only hope we had some kind of impact on the people we were trying to serve.
Still, as we headed home at the end of the week, I asked myself through the exhaustion if our team’s jaunt was worth thousands of dollars in travel costs. Could that money have been better used to lift some Mexican families out of poverty? Could it have supported our host missionary more effectively by sending money than with our paltry excursion? Quite likely, yes.
But since God is sovereign, then perhaps he assembled our team for work that wouldn’t be accomplished any other way. Perhaps one of the village children (who initially came just to see the weird Americans) experienced the Spirit through our halting Spanish. Perhaps I studied the language for four years in high school just so that one day in that tiny village, I could ask a Mexican missionary to present the Gospel, and four people would encounter Jesus. Perhaps Tara changed a life by speaking to the children in their own tongue thanks to her Central American experience. Maybe Pastor Rob, in his English sermons translated by our missionary-friend, touched someone with great truth. I hope our entire team, through the supplies we brought to the orphanage and our good intentions sometimes marred by inexperience, changed lives.
It’s also possible that we accomplished nothing in the end. But I dare to hope that in God’s sovereignty, our team did meaningful things: things he’d prepared in advance for us to do.
George Halitzka is a former short-term missionary to Mexico and current freelance writer in Louisville. Visit him online at writingbygeorge.com. (Note: For the sake of clarity, some details of chronology have been changed in this story.)
