It may seem like all fun and games, but that’s because at the end of the day I enjoy all of it - except for getting hungry whilst staring at paperwork, that’s a strange habit I can’t seem to break. So, let me take you through a week:
Sunday:
I like to try and rest on Sundays, however I find rest in others so I‘m awake by 7:00am and out the door by 7:30am headed to help set up the church and I’m not allowed to leave the house without a meal.
Breakfast can be important, but I don’t like eating it.
The church I attend rents out a space that is very auditorium-like every Sunday, it’s typically the same location. I help set up the service when I arrive. We start our service around 11:00 am and finished around 12:30pm. I do what I can to tear down, and then it’s time for comida.
Comida comes with a random adventure around the city.
I’ve visited ramen shops, taco trucks, places known for their pozole, homes, grocery stores, monuments, older parts of the city, there is often adequate walking, so I eat until I’m full knowing I’ll have walked over 5 miles by the end of the day.
That’s how diet and exercise work right?
Then it’s nearly 8:00pm when I realize I should probably go home and sometimes I get there complete with a dance party in the car. Then I read, study, or Netflix until the next day.
Monday:
This is my proper day off. No one tries to schedule me to do anything, I like to be a vegetable because I am going HARD every other day of the week. Like early mornings and late nights. I have a hard time saying no to coffee adventures or bakery runs.
Tuesday:
This is my training day, I go to the CLM around 10:00am so I have to leave my house before 9:30am or else I gotta embrace that brisk walk where you feel your legs burning from how fast you’ve walked. Just because I get to the metro station on time, does not mean I’ll fit in any of the subway cars, Mexico City has roughly 29 million people and if I can resist I won’t buy a pan dulce. They are hard to resist.
I endure a training session, on the culture a check up on how I am as a human, until about 1:00 or 2:00 pm. Then it’s comida time. If I schedule it right, I’ll eat with the ladies I’m meeting at 4:00pm for a weekly meeting or I zone out and read in a park.
We call it Prayer and Accountability - so you know I’m not a total mess.
Then I figure a way home and try to get there around 7:00pm because I like to be home before it gets dark also at 8:00pm I’m leaving again for small group bible study. It starts at 9:30pm and goes until 11:30 pm . Tuesdays are a scheduled 13.5 hour day but can easily turn into 15 hours because Netflix got them good films, and I gotta watch stuff in Spanish.
Wednesday:
My body will automatically wake up at 7:30am but I’ll try and sleep more, but it doesn’t normally work - but a girl can try and dream right? I get coffee and a chore or two done before I run away to my church’s office, to do whatever odd jobs they need. Technology may be involved, paperwork may call my name, Spanish is always practiced. I’ll go hard until about 3 or 4:00pm. Then I stop at home for lunch before I run off to my Spanish class, where I learn more about Mexican culture and learn of what words I’ve been pronouncing wrong that week.
Thursday:
These are the lower key days, where it lasts for about 8-9 hours instead of 12 hours. I fumble around until I make it to my church’s office to continue who knows what. Then I head home for lunch until my next meeting which involves me having my 3rd or 4th cup of coffee. I have a mentor who is my friend who prays with me, checks up on me, tells me to slow down, etc… my mental health is accounted for.
Then I chill. A good Thursday night of something or nothing.
Forget-about-Chill-Friday:
Spanish Class is the first adventure I have to get to. Thankfully It’s not too early I have to leave my house around 9:00 am to get to class at 10:30am and I struggle for a few hours, feel the hungs coming for me but I satisfy my appetite with more coffee, because this is who I am as a person. Around 12:30pm I finish class, and bolt to the University to do some ministry work. From about 1:00pm -7:00pm I hang out with college kids, we practice our English (we all know gibberish was my first language), do bible studies in English and Spanish, play games build community, eat comida in the middle of all that and somehow I’m done and make my way home hopefully before 10:00pm, but we all know I have a hard time not going out for late night ice cream.
Saturday:
This is the late start day. This is the day I have a morning off. I have about 1.5 days off a week and Saturday mornings are mine. I clean, do laundry catch up on whatever I thought was impossible to do at 11 o’clock at night and hopefully do it Saturday morning. I may pop over and bother the worship team if relaxing doesn’t sound appealing to me or they’ve asked me to join them. I am not needed anywhere until 3 o’clock. But this week I’m definitely baking pastries with a friend in the morning.
Around 2:00pm I get my act together and start fixing to head out to my youth group. Here, in Mexico, the youth groups are for anyone who is not married. So my young adults group is technically a youth group. I hang out with middle schoolers, and high schoolers for a few hours, we play football or basketball and have an interactive bible study. Around 5:00pm the kids under 20 leave and the older kids come which is anyone who is over 20 and not married. We hang out for an hour do a bible study and worship and it’s very sweet. Then the party continues, around 7 or 8:00pm we’re about done, but we’re all about hungry so we find food. Tacos chilaquiles or a home to which we can bring food. We get it done and hopefully I get to sleep around 11:00pm.
Hopefully.
I am thankfully an extra-extrovert and I don’t ever really get tired of being with people all the time. No really… All. The. time.
In a few months my work will shift to focus more on food, but all the ministry I do is killing two birds with one stone, I am serving my community and church and also learning about the culture and language of the city I am in.
Cheers,