What a wonderful start to the trip.  Last night we left the church ON TIME and what a great team effort it was.  There was one neigh sayer in the crowd that said that all our stuff would not fit in the bus storage area.  Litterally 20 minutes later it was all in.  What a great effort.

Our first stop was down in Austin where a small group of folks from Austin Bible met us in the Walmart parking lot at 11pm and served us ice cream sundaes.  What  a treat.  Everyone enjoyed the break and grabbed a bite to eat as well.

Our next stop was in Laredo where we switched bus drivers and then headed to the border.  We got there at 4:30 am and unfortunately we were 30th in the bus line.  They said an hour earlier and we would have driven right through the place.   After an hour and a half we were expedited through the check point because we had all our paperwork in order.  They were very pleased.  And then, thankfully all we had to take off our bus was our luggage and not all the ministry stuff we had packed.  So the paperwork and a timely $20 bill and away we went.  SWEET.

We arrived in Monterrey about 10:00 am with our bus driver doing an impressive job of traversing narrow streets and backing a tour bus down an alley to turn around at one point.  Amazing to watch those guys work.  Anyway, we were dropped off at the door of Iglesia Christiana Elim all limbs attached and all noses accounted for.

After a quick cereal breakfast we negotiated putting all our stuff away, got our t-shirts, and made ready for a great lunch.

This afternoon we had an orientation meeting and small groups began touring the area close by, within the parameters given us by TIME.  Many also took the free time to take a siesta.

Tonight we will host the community and show the Jesus Film on the wall, we’ll serve popcorn to the folks and host them to the best of our ability.

Tomorrow is WM Church, English Church, and Spanish Church with a trip to Santa Lucia (a river walk) in town sandwiched in there.

I will check in tomorrow,  please keep praying for the relationships that we are continuing to form today and tomorrow on our team.  It’s over 100 today and long pants are a real bummer, but it’s what we will suffer with as we try and serve this community.   Grateful for your support.  Mark

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Monterrey Experience . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.