We were in a little village not too far from the big city doing another camp for the Deaf. This time it was just the Deaf from our church in Merida. We would like to expand this to include all of the Yucatan Deaf. But at this point we are the only Christian ministry for the Deaf that we are aware of.

Camp
Tuesday
Before picking people up to head to camp, I had to swing by the immigration office to fill out the paperwork to cancel our visas. We will be leaving the country in less than 2 weeks. I got out of the immigration office much later than planned and started my rounds of getting everyone to the church.

Camp started well and we were able to run some events and give out medals that first night. We had an obstacle course. I was not in the competition for a medal, but I did run the course in the second fastest time. I lost to a 17 year old. I was pleased.

We had a good service that night with Bill, the pastor of our church, speaking.

Wednesday
I preached both services on Wednesday. We had some good games with no major injuries. That is always good.

Thursday
Bill preached both services on Thursday. We took the whole group to the beach. The girls went to one side of the world’s longest pier and the boys went to the other. I have never been to the beach in Progreso when it has been so nice. There was hardly any wind and the water was clear enough we could see our feet. That is special.

Friday
I preached the final service. My son took the Gold medal in scripture memory. We gave out Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for the team competition. By doing that, we were assured that everyone would get a medal. We happened to have 2 Golds left over so we gave them to the cooks.

Running
Wednesday
I ran 4.66 miles. It was from the town we were in, Chablecal, through the town of Dzibilchaltún and just a little past that. Then turn around and back to camp. I did not sleep well that night before. In fact, it may be better said that I did not sleep. I was pleased with my distance and pace despite the lack of sleep.

I noticed that there were a lot of bikes and few cars that I saw on my trip back to the village where we were in camp. They were headed to the big city where we lived.

Friday
I did not really plan to run on Friday, but would do so if I woke up in time. I did, so I did. I ran just 2.32 miles. It was the same route from Wednesday, but I turned around earlier. This time, though, I took note of the number of vehicles I saw on the road. There were 23 bicycles, 9 motorcycles/scooters, and 6 cars. You can tell from this that we were not in a very wealthy place.

I took my camera and snapped a shot of the road I ran on. It was very narrow.

Bananas
We have 2 bunches of bananas growing in the field next door. I chopped one bunch down yesterday after we got back from camp. There are close to 200 bananas on it. The second bunch will have to be harvested after we leave.

We are going with an Olympic theme for obvious reasons. We have a few events that we will borrow from the real games to play out in our own setting. We also have medals that we will present the winners. The medals are all identical, but the ribbons will indicate Gold, Silver and Bronze.

We will use a hula hoop to play discus. This should be pretty easy for the less physically capable.

Shot put might be a bit tougher. The shots will be water balloons. There might just happen to be a few people who get hit with these. Certainly a lot less painful than a 16 lb. shot.

Archery will be performed with darts and balloons.

The Triathlon will be a combination of three common items: jump rope, hula hoop and baseball bat. The jump rope will be used to jump while moving from one point to another. The hula hoop will be rolled along a designated path. The bat will be at the end of a run. The contestant has to put their head on the bat and spin around 10 times and then try to make their way back to the finish line. A timed event of course.

One of the unique events we will be doing is a team standing long jump. This will be a relay type event. The team members will be in a line in which the person at the front of the line will take a standing long jump. The rest of the team will move up to the landing spot and the next member takes their jump. This continues until all team members have a chance to jump. The team that jumps farthest overall will win.

There are a few other events planned, but that is the idea of our games.

We are expecting about 20 people at camp to make all this happen.

Camp
The reason we were in Monterrey a couple of weeks ago was to head up our Deaf camp in the northern part of Mexico. It is called Campamento Henson named after Missionary Ron Henson who worked many years with the Deaf in Monterrey and Guadalajara as well as many other places in Mexico. I have been the director for the last 3 years. That just means that I get to be the one to make the final decision and feel the pressure when things go wrong. For the most part, this camp just runs itself. Many of the people who go to camp have been going for more than 10 years.

Location
This year we were in a bind in that the camp we had reserved did not have us written down for the right dates. That caused us to have to look for a new camp location. By the time I finally got one nailed down, it was well into the new year. We were very grateful for the location we were able to get

This location was nice in that it was nearer to many of the churches than we have been in the past. We had people from 11 different cities at camp. The camp site was also at 7000′ elevation. That meant that it was much cooler than we experience here at sea level in the south. They have snow 6 months out of the year in the area. Unfortunately, this is not one of those months. One night it got down to the low 50s. That is not too terribly cold, but the rooms we stayed in are not sealed for the cold weather. It was like sleeping in a tent. I think most people enjoyed the change since most everyone is experiencing much warmer summer temperatures at this time.

Results
There were 109 campers and 7 accepted the Lord as Savior. It was a very successful week along those lines. We had churches that brought quite a few more campers this year than in the past because the distance was changed in their favor. There were almost 20 campers more this year than our previous high year of recent camps.

Tight Quarters
The camp ground that we used was well equipped for 70 people, but we had 109! There was plenty of space in the auditorium and dining areas, but there just were not enough beds. The camp is still in the process of building. They have plans for another dorm which will add 25 more beds. As it was we had several people sleeping on the floor in the dorms. Some of us slept on tables in the dining room. I am disappointed that one of our churches was not able to come, but I am also not sure where we would have housed another 20+ people.

Activities and Staff
We had some fun activities. We were able to go on a hay ride and play on a zip line. For me it was my first experience with a zip line. It was fun.

The staff at the camp was great. Though there were some struggles with the facilities being too small and not having enough water to keep us well cleaned, I cannot praise the staff enough. We have been at other locations  where the staff was very helpful and we were told that if we needed anything to let them know. At this camp though, the staff stood around and said “What can I do for you right now?” A small difference, but it was very noticeable. The camp owner/director even offered to do a craft project with the campers. That was a blessing since one of our big activities each year is the daily craft. But because of some people not being able to make the trip, we did not have enough crafts planned. The camp director had no idea that we were needing help with a craft, yet he was there to step in and take up the slack just by offering.

Some Struggles
There was not enough water. They truck in about 1500 gallons of water a day. That is cheaper than drilling their own well. But, for the number of people we had there, the amount of water was not enough.

One of our main preachers has been under the weather and was not able to come. I knew a couple weeks in advance that there was a possibility of his absence. But it was not confirmed until the day before camp started.

Another preacher informed me 3 days before that he would not be able to make it. His problem was that his transportation fell through. We were able to route some other people through his area (several hours out of their way) to pick him up and bring he and his wife. That was a huge help.

One of my teachers was not able to make it. She was going to be teaching the ladies each morning. Camp started on Monday evening. I did not know for sure until mid-morning Tuesday that she was not going to be with us.

To get the week started, I was about 2 hours late arriving at the camp ground because the group I was riding with had a van break down. That 2 hours was something that I struggled all week to recover. It seemed to never happen. We have mostly done well in the past with keeping things on schedule and getting the activities started on time. Starting everything late on the first night set the atmosphere for the week. Most of the services started 5 to 20 minutes late. When you are trying to pack in as many events as you can in a short period of time, it is important that you keep things on schedule. Many of the speakers are used to preaching in their churches where there is no time limit, but unfortunately we have to set limits while at camp. It was not unusual for me to have to stand at the back of the auditorium and signal to a preacher that he had to cut it short because he overshot his time by 30+ minutes. Personally, if I cannot say what I want to say in 30 minutes, then I am trying to say too much. When you preach for more than an hour and still have to be cut off by the man in charge, then you are definitely trying to say too much.

There were some stressful times trying to adjust the schedule for all the changes.

Finances
We were also several hundred dollars short on being able to pay for the camp. This is something we have never had a problem with since I have been running the camp. But through a long series of events here and there, we ended up short. Fortunately, God showed His hand of control and power and we were able to leave the camp owing nothing.

Conclusion
It was a very mixed bag of emotions throughout the week. Some very wonderful things took place as well as some tough and stressful events. Fortunately there were no life threatening issues that we had to deal with. I have gone through that before, and it is not an experience a camp director ever wants to repeat.

Next year I will not be in the country to work out all the details of camp. I am still planning to be very involved, but am glad to push some of the detailed responsibility off on one of the national pastors. I will be at camp to deal with problems and inevitable crises, but when things go right I will be able to point to the national and thank him for the great work he did leading into camp.

From a final result point of view, the camp was extremely successful. From my point of view I went into this camp the least organized I have ever been. The fact that it was pulled off so well is a testament to the great national pastors and missionaries who have been doing it so long they just rolled with the punches. I am personally embarassed by the behind the scenes mess that I seemed to constantly struggle with, but am thankful that no one but me really saw the fragility of my house of cards. I have kept you in the dark on so many other issues that I did not even cover in this post..

I thank God we were able to see 7 people saved and church people encouraged to go home and have a stronger personal relationship with the Lord.

Normally on a Sunday morning we will have between 10 and 17 at church. We have had a high day of 25. Today we were pleased to see 36 people in church with us. 13 of them were first time visitors. It was an exciting day.

We split up the duties between Bill, our co-worker, and myself for the speaking this morning. Bill told about the history and planned future of the ministry. I gave a Gospel message. We had 2 ladies (hearing) accept the Lord today!

After the service we had a meal and sat around and talked for a while. It was just a generally exciting day. We only took 86 pictures, so I will have to dig through them and see if there are any worthy of uploading. I would just do it right now, but the camera has already been packed for a long trip. When we get to our destination I will try to get a couple pictures uploaded.

The last few weeks have been tied up with some exciting projects. One of the biggest has been some improvements we are making at our church building. We painted early in January, both inside and out. We were helped by a group of college age young people. They did the bulk of the work. The final touches were put on by our co-worker and me.

We also built a platform. Since we are a Deaf church it is hard to be on the same level as the church people. You can never stand for any announcements or singing because no one beyond the first row can see the speaker. Our new platform is only 8-3/4″ off of floor level, but it makes all the difference.

The way we built it was put down a series of concrete blocks and laid a 3/4″ sheet of wood on the blocks. To keep the MDF wood from sliding we put some thick shelf liner between the bricks and the MDF. This has the added benefit of leveling out the inconsistencies in the concrete blocks. Tonight we put an aluminum edge on the platform so that we don’t bang up the front edge of the boards. It is about 12′X6′. Since the back wall has an angle to it, we had to be creative in getting it to all fit.

We have also put up new curtains in the main sanctuary and in the bathroom. The curtains in the bathroom do not serve to hide the sunlight. There is no outside wall. Rather, we use the curtains to cordon off a section of the room that we are using for storage. It dresses up the room and hides all the junk.

There have been a few other improvements that we have done, but those are the big ones.

This weekend we have been promoting a special day where we want to show off our new wares. We will have a special service in which we give the history of the church as well as a Bible message. Then we will sit around and enjoy lasagna and Coke.

Today we had a deaf man of 28 years of age get baptized. Eduardo has been coming to our church since the end of August or the first of September. He accepted the Lord as his Savior in September. The other missionary with whom we work spent the month of November explaining baptism to our church and its significance. Eduardo indicated that he wanted to be baptized.

The second person baptized today was our son. It was my privilege, a few years ago, to lead him to a saving knowledge of the Lord. Today I was honored in being able to baptize him as well.

It was a special day at church for all of us. These are steps on the road to spiritual maturity in our ministry.

I had a great time in Tampico. I met several people from First Coast Baptist Church, including the pastor. Pastor Edwards and family were missionaries to Kenya. I was able to grab an interview from him and his wife for Missionary Talks. There were also a few of their Deaf from church along with an interpreter and her husband. A couple of other special guests were there. One participant was Allen Snare. I did not know he was going to be there. Allen has been a good friend of mine since back when we both had much more hair, almost 20 years. Because of our ministries, we have never spent more than a week at a time together and we always spend a lot of time catching up on each other’s work.

During the week’s activities we had an opening service in which close to 50 attended. There was even one service early in the week where we had about 75 people. This church normally has 20 to 40 people in attendance on a regular basis.

The church was also celebrating their 8th anniversary. I was able to be at their 5th anniversary a few years back and have built a good relationship with the people.

The missionary, Jim Walterhouse, who started the church was pleased to have the building completed. It is not totally done, but it is very usable. The church people now have a building that they can work on to completion. While we were there we applied plaster and paint to some of the walls. I took part in some wiring and plumbing to help get ready for the weekend.

The final major activity of the week was the ordination of the new pastor. I was honored to be a part of Francisco’s ordination counsel. We were not able to go through the legal paperwork this week to officially organize the church. Otherwise, we would have also done a church vote and installation of Francisco as the pastor. As it is (and this is just a technicality) he is the pastor of the mission. Until it is officially a church, they will not vote on him as pastor.

I got to spend some time in downtown Tampico. In my many trips to the city (more than 10), I have never had the chance to roam around downtown. It was fun to hit the tourist market. I spent so much time interpreting for all the other visitors that I forgot to do any shopping of my own. I would have liked to pick up a few gifts for my kids. Our part of Mexico is so different from the rest that there are neat souvenir items that the kids would have enjoyed. I guess I will have to go back again.

The missionary there will be leaving the church completely to Pastor Francisco by the end of the year. I will still be back there on a regular basis though and keep up a good relationship with the church. I have only known Francisco since July, but we have built a friendship with one another personally. He is planning to spend a week with us and our ministry in the spring.

It seems that over the last month we have started to see that excitement and enthusiasm start to build once again.

Last Sunday we had a great crowd with a couple of visitors. There were 16 people there. If that was not a record up to that point for a regular Sunday service, it would have been close. Wednesday we had 25! that included 4 visitors. This morning we had some of our visitors from the previous services and 4 more! We had a total of 10 new visitors in the last 3 service days.

For a church that normally has 14 people on a Sunday, those are some exciting numbers.

However, I took up the task. I wired myself for sound and hit the record button. Fortunately for you, I also know how to edit. This short podcast was whittled down from about 1.5 hours of audio.

I must apologize to Spanish speakers. I can easily criticize other people’s Spanish when they speak. And, I found out that I can criticize my own. This recording does not have the best grammar. It is grating in fact. Why though, can I hear it now, but don’t catch it before it comes out of my mouth? Oh it is embarrassing. But I am consoled in the fact that most of you won’t know or care.

You will also be subjected to my singing in this recording. You will soon realize why I work with the Deaf.

This was the first Mayan ruins that my wife and I had ever seen back in 2001. Today was amazing to see the difference. When we were here in 2001, they had just started doing a rebuild of the city. Though I don’t remember everything that was there back then, I do remember that there was much more growth on many of the structures. Also, there were many foundations for buildings with piles of rocks beside them.

Today it seemed like we did not walk in the jungle as much to see the place and there were many more structures. Where there were piles of rocks before, there were now buildings. In the piles of rocks previously, there were many rocks with numbers on them. That was to help when they finished repairing the inside of the structure, they would be able to place the outer rocks in the original place that they came from if they knew where they were before.

I think everyone had a great time at the ruins. Many of our church congregation has never been to this archaeological site. It is only about 45 minutes from town and is not overrun by tourists.

After the trip to the ruins, we went back to the campground and played there for the afternoon and had 2 great church services this evening. No rain today.

We did the normal camp stuff of playing games and eating hot dogs. Since this is a day camp (we are not sleeping at the campground), we had to be up early to gather everyone and get started. We had a slow start this morning due to broken down buses and having to wake people up to come.

When we arrived at the camp there was some work going on in the auditorium. There were electricians installing some lighting (for which we were thankful this evening when it got dark). That delayed us even more. The morning schedule was all a mess, but we managed to have time to get our services in. Then we had lunch and got ready for soccer in the hot weather.

After soccer we set up the volleyball net and were having a grand time when the rains came. All, except 2 girls, enjoyed the rain. We played volleyball longer in the rain than out.

Other difficulties kept us from doing all our activities this afternoon, but all had a good time. We just shifted things around and I don’t think anyone missed much.

Tonight in church while we were singing the last song before the preaching, a bat flew in and would not leave. With the Deaf, it is important to eliminate all the visual distractions that you can. When they are looking at a bat flying around, they are not paying attention to the speaker. Eventually the bat got tired of us trying to evict him and he flew into a cubby hole in the church. I think that was his home. I watched the rest of the evening and he never came out again.

We have been working with a group of Deaf for 3 years. We have had regular Bible studies with them and have recently (about 9 months ago) started a church. We have seen it grow from 1 person (outside of ourselves) to regularly having 3 Deaf attend on Sundays. Slowly, and without me realizing it until today, we have 6 regular attenders on Sundays. Counting our family and the other missionary family that works with us, we will have 12-17 at church on a Sunday.

Wednesday has, interestingly, always been well attended. We have a core group of 7 Deaf who almost always come. Add in a few family members here and there and we generally have 20 people for that service.

Why is Wednesday bigger than Sunday?

We started the church out of an evening Bible study. Most of our Deaf come from the school for the Deaf in town. We pick them up after school and take them to the Bible study (now church). We are able to provide an easy ride for them after school and take them home after the service. While we provide transportation for anyone who wants it on Sunday, we have just been doing it much longer during the week. That makes the Wednesday night service where most of our Deaf got their first introduction to church. They are used to coming after school. Getting up and going on Sunday (a very sacred family day in the Mexican culture) is new to them.

It is fun to see it grow.

Monday
We started camp without too many problems. Most all of the campers arrived that afternoon/evening. Because the camp was near the big town of Tampico, many people came into the city and we provided rides for them out to the camp. This meant that everyone with vehicles piled in as many as they could. There were 50 of us in 5 vehicles. I had the largest with a Suburban and then we went down to 2 small Nissan pick-up trucks. But we made it.

The biggest excitement of the day was when the evening service was over and my wife went to get our daughter out of the children’s class, but she was not there. No one even knew she was gone until my wife started asking about where she was. Apparently she had slipped off about 10 minutes before the class was over. Panic ensued. There is a swimming pool and a lake with a sloped bank just outside of the children’s class and before you get to the dorms. My wife found our daughter in the dorm room by herself.

One of our speakers was not able to make it until Tuesday afternoon. His wife was to teach the “low verbal” class. This class is for those who do not know signs well. Some would be because of retardation while others just simply have not learned signs and therefore would not understand well in the main service.

Tuesday
That was the first full day of camp. I found out that the service I had scheduled myself to speak in which was to be 1 hour long was not long enough. We had a full song service with a choir special and a biblical drama. That cut my teaching time to about 25 minutes. I worked the rest of the week to shorten the pre-teaching activities but was never able to free up more than 35 minutes for myself. I had planned to teach for the vast majority of the hour.

We also got to go horse back riding that day. Like the swimming, I chose to sit that activity out. Not that I dislike horses or swimming, I just had so many other things to be working on as director.

Wednesday
This was the day I learned one of the privileges of being me. I had been waiting at the meal times until all the campers had gone through the food line before I went and stood in line. This was not out of kindness, but laziness. I would rather sit at the table and talk with my wife than stand in line. The cooks noticed this and started bringing me food while the ladies were still in line waiting for theirs.

Director’s position has privileges along with the responsibilities.

Thursday
By this time we had gotten used to our daughter slipping off to the dorm room. Only one person passed out due to heat exhaustion. I slept through lunch to be able to get a longer nap in that day since I knew that getting people to bed on the last night of camp would be more of a challenge.

During the evening service I was in another class teaching the “low verbals” and I missed the preaching of the main service. The preacher is a pastor from Colima (near Guadalajara). I do not know him well and was really looking forward to seeing him preach. By the time I got out of my class, they were already into the invitation for the main service. Apparently God used Alex and touched hearts in a great way. It was the largest response from the campers.

There were only slight problems getting everyone to bed. I finally went to sleep about 30 minutes after “lights out.” I didn’t think that was too bad.

Friday
We got an early breakfast and started cleaning the camp. Because of my years of experience as the final inspector on Saturday clean up crews at the other camp where I worked, I have learned to be heartless in getting people to clean. But trying to rally a bunch of Deaf to do a general task is not as easy as with the hearing. When everyone is ready to go, you have to get in people’s faces as individuals to tell them what work needs to be done.

I was satisfied after a while and then we had to call the camp manager over to do an inspection. While she worked with my wife to put the final polish on the dorms, I was finishing up the final details to get everyone on the road.

Final results
We had 93 campers. We are not sure if the number of salvations was 3 or 4. I should know when I get back in Mexican cell phone range and I can text message one of the pastors. No fist fights. As far as I know there were no “stupid Jr. problems.” That is what I call petty arguments that people get involved in when they act like 8-12 year olds.

It was a wonderful week from my perspective.

Jim is a missionary whom I met some time back. Although we have been in a few meetings together through the years, I had not had a chance to really sit down and talk with him until last week. I really enjoyed our conversation.

I mentioned over at Missionary Talks that my conversation with Jim would probably change the direction of my ministry. I have already had one friend call me and wanted to make sure that I was not leaving the ministry that I am in. No, that is not the case at all. But, what I learned from Jim is how to more effectively do the ministry that I feel called to do.

My goal in ministry is to establish Deaf works and churches in Latin America. This would be done through training nationals in a short period of time using the sign language from their area. What I learned from Jim (and you can hear the details in the interview) is that I can do this without spending several months in an area all at once. He usually does 3 trips to an area to get a work started. As he lines it out, it makes a lot of sense to me. I will be advantaged in that when I go I will already know the spoken language of the people. I will not have to work through a translator, which I am sure causes Jim to have to spend more time making things clear.

One advantage that Jim has over me (though I am getting there) is age. One of the basic rules that (current) missionaries live by is that we, as missionaries, are not rulers over the nationals. We are co-workers in the ministry. With this I heartily agree. But there are times that, as the teacher or mentor, you have to take the stand that you are the authority on the subject. You are teaching someone something that they do not know. They will need to look to you as the authority, and you really need to handle that situation as if you are the one in control. Sometimes we missionaries work so hard to make the national our co-laborer, that we forget that someone has to be the teacher.

The reason Jim’s ministry works as well as it does, is he goes into the work with the understanding that he is the teacher…he is the boss. He is not there to control and make demands of the people, yet he does know how the ministry needs to work. He has a limited time to train them in the ministry. Again, I think his age helps with that.

It seems that missionaries today (and I am guilty of this) want to be the co-worker and not be the authority. But, the secular world does not have a problem with this mentality and neither should we as missionaries. A new restaurant opened up here in town recently. It was no surprise to walk in there and see a group of Americans in charge of telling everyone how to do their job. They were there to train the nationals in how to run the restaurant. When we went back a few weeks later, there were no Americans and the locals were in charge of everything. The same scenario can, and should, work in the ministry.

How, then, does this affect me? I still have my same goal in ministry, but how I go about it may be a bit different than what I had imagined. I will now plan shorter trips into areas to prepare the people before I actually get a ministry started.

It changes nothing about our ministry where we are today. The purpose for being here for so long is different than our future ministry. This is still training time for us. But, we are affectively doing the ministry while we are still studying the language and culture.

We then had free reign of the aquarium. It is not an overly large aquarium, but it was nicely laid out. They made good use of their space.

I then left the group after a quick run through the fish and headed out on my own. Though I have some good friends here, they all had much tighter relationships with this particular group. Some of these pastors and attendees have been meeting together annually for 27 years. This is my first time to attend this conference. I am definitely the outsider. So, I did not feel bad about taking off and leaving everyone behind.

Just outside of the aquarium area is a large shopping complex. It is not quite like a mall, more like an outlet store complex, except the stores are not outlet stores. A big jumble of just about anything high end. One of the more interesting stores I saw was the Segway store. You could rent a Segway for a few hours or all day. They were also a dealership. For $6K you could have a nice decked out machine.

I then buzzed over to Borders Books. I was pleasantly surprised by something that I had not experienced in a while. I went into the bookstore with my backpack. Being a good Mexican, I went right up to the front counter and asked them where I needed to store my bag. The lady looked at me funny and said that I did not have to leave it at the desk. That was a surprise to me after living here for 3 years. Every store here has a package counter where you have to drop off your carry in items before entering the merchandise area. I was suddenly brought back to a thought that I had 3 years ago, but had forgotten. Here in Mexico (at least in the stores) it is assumed that everyone is a thief. In the US, it is assumed that no one is. The truth is that in the US there are more high tech ways of catching someone at shoplifting than there are here. So you are still assumed to be a thief in the US, but as a regular consumer, you just don’t notice it.

I then made my way back to the church and asked for directions on taking the metro train/bus back to my hotel. One thing I have learned in Mexico is that you don’t ask someone for directions if they are walking. They are walking because they don’t drive. I should have used that knowledge to help me get back to my hotel. I asked a man in the church how to take the train/bus back to the hotel. Don’t ask someone who drives for directions on how to use public transportation.

He told me to buy an “all day” ticket when I got on the train. That would allow me to get on and off as many times as I needed for the day. Then I could use the same ticket to take the bus from the train station to my hotel. Not quite true. I ended up paying for 3 train rides (though I only rode once) buying that ticket and still had to pay for the bus. There is an all day ticket for the bus too. But, they are two separate systems. So you have to pay a fare on each.

I got back to my hotel just fine though. I had a bit of time to get ready for my sermon that night. I was pleased that, even though I was not originally on the speaking schedule, they let me preach. The man that I was supposed to serve as interpreter was not able to make the conference. Therefore, they let me speak in his place. It was an honor.