4 Years

El Guero dice hola a ustedes!

New Years – Woot Woot!! To celebrate the new year here they take dolls and wrap them with tons of explosive fireworks and Boom! Most of the time there is nothing left but maybe an arm or foot. Mostly there is just dust from the TNT explosives the kids have access to here. Sometimes they take the dolls and pour gasoline on them and then light them on fire. Then they wrap cords around them and toss them over the telephone wires. They are hard to take down so they stay there for a long time – just a freaky burned corpse hanging there. This tradition represents dropping your old self and starting anew. I understand this kind of thinking and I believe were blowing up the dolls and other things before they attached this meaning to it.

Another thing the kids do is that they throw massive fire cracker type explosives in crowds. Last week while we were waiting for a bus I dozed off and one of these landed in the street by us. Scared the bejeeber’s out of me.

For New Years we had an activity in Chaves. The problem was that when we got to the bus station we discovered that it was closed. We decided that we just wouldn’t go to the zone activity. A man heard us talking and said he would give us a ride to Pila, a small dusty little town on the road to Torreon. From there we figured we could hitchhike to Chaves. Well, in Pila we had a hard time getting anyone to pick us up. Finally, a semi-truck driver who had just done a stop in Pila asked where we were going. He said “Well hop in.”

We spent the next two hours talking about his 10 children and he showed us a video that he took in one valley where there have been lots of deaths. I won’t go into the details. We talked about his life as a truck driver. He said that sometimes they go for 5 straight days without sleep by taking these hyper-caffeinated meds. While he was telling us these stories we saw an accident where a semi was flipped on its side. He told us about how he had been addicted to drugs and overdosed which led to a 3 month coma. After that he has stayed away from alcohol and drugs. We told him about eternal marriage and families and he was excited about that. We handed off the reference information to our compadres in his area in Torreon.  

There hasn’t been a baptism here in Parras for 4 years! Christopher has now attended church 5 times so can be baptized this week. All he has to do is ask permission from his parents. We could use your prayers that his parents will agree to letting him get baptized.