Sonora en Mis Ojos

 I left my Navojoa ranch far far away traveling 12 hours to the U.S. border in the oddly cold city of Agua Prieta. The familiar smell of SOMEYHING CLEVER HERE. The city has the classical Sonoran culture that I'm used to but with a dash of American imperialism here and there. Whether that be stores that accept dollar bills, Little Debbie and other snacks, American houses, and gringos that don’t speak Spanish. It has been especially strange in contacting. When walking in the street or knocking doors, our goal is to talk to everyone we can and invite all to come into Christ. But what happens is that we will walk by and I'll hear something like "STOP IT CARLITOS",  affirming to me there's English near by. Luckily, my companion knows some English. So we manage with awkward Spanglish pauses. 

 In the branch, there's a family that all the kids and the wife speak English and prefer speaking it. It's always fun being in there house because of wild teasing or shouts of wanting to tell their story to the American first. Their family dynamic interests me in how they relentlessly tease yet support and love each other very much. One may joke about how his older brother got in trouble at school for a drawing and laughing about it together. I enjoy being there. In one of our visits with them, they had their cousin from Chiapas who doesn’t speak English and who hasn't gone to church in years. I could easily see the boredom and discomfort she felt while everyone was telling their wild stories in English. My goal was to help them in their family but also help their cousin as well. With quips laughs, and smiles we eventually talked about conversion and deconversion. I got to share my personal college experience in Spanish. The gift tongues helped me not slip into English. The mom, in response to my story, told me hers. She told all of us about the difficulties she's had and the family, mentioning how, at one point, the family was going to split up. Yet the oldest son talked to the father who was ready to turn his back. I could easily imagine the determination and frequent smile of the son expressing to his dad how he needs to help them. As a family, they're doing better and working harder as a team now. 

 

We also have a lot of people we're teaching here. I've noticed that a lot more people are willing to hear something from us and have more questions about the church and missionaries than in other areas I've been in. Yet, it's difficult to help people keep their commitments. Lots of people work in the near by factories almost everyday. Others put their families or jobs first. And others simply just don’t want to do it. I've enjoyed getting to know more people and share my testimony and thoughts with people more freely. I've noticed my tendency to share more directly with contacts we have ir friends in teaching why I'm here, what this Gospel means to me, and more of myself. In one contact in particular, we saw a bunch of children gathered around two kids with guitars. We went to see what's up and they all had fascination with us. We asked the kids to play something for us. Without much hesitation they both began to play while one looked on google for the lyrics to the song "Sonora en mis ojos". It felt right hearing the song and thinking of these Sonoran people I've come to love. 

 

-The Elder d'Evegnée with not too much to say but not too little to say either but in about a kinda middle ground of things to say