Mexico – Page 7 – My Thought Spot

Re-Entry: Making The Transition From Missions To Life At Home

This is not a full book review of the book Re-Entry: Making the Transition from Missions to Life at Home, rather just some observations as I read through it.

This book was loaned to me by an older missionary couple yesterday. We were talking about furlough (the topic of a soon-to-be-released Missionary Talks episode). The book talks about some of the struggles that missionaries face as they go back to their home culture. While the book focuses on people returning permanently, it also covers missionaries who are only temporarily returning home, such as we will be over the next year.

Two things the book mentioned that I thought might be of interest to you have to do with relationships and misunderstandings.

Peter Jordan, the author, mentions that relationships will be different upon return home. Even though a relationship can thrive over distance, often the individuals are no longer as emotionally connected. Our emotional togetherness happens through shared experiences and just spending time with one another. The missionary and the friend back home have not only been living through different experiences, but through different cultures.

We have friends with whom we love to spend hours and hours talking. We would often spend 2 or 3 nights a week with one another talking into the wee hours of the morning when we were in town. We were very connected. While we still have a tight relationship with them, we have also not been a part of their lives for the last four years. When we got a chance to be with them earlier this year I noticed that other mutual friends were now filling in where we used to be. I became jealous of the fact that we no longer occupied the same space we used to. Of course it is silly to think that your friends are going to not change or build new relationships over a four year period.

But multiply this with every friend the missionary has, and you can start to see why re-entry can be stressful for the missionary. Things will never be the same as they were.

The other thing I wanted to point out is the matter of misunderstandings. The missionary returns home and comments about how things have changed for the worse, or how wonderful things are back home. Those who have lived through the changes won’t see it as starkly as the returning family will. They have had a chance to grow into the changes a little at a time.

Where we personally had greater frustrations were when we would mention some things that were so great in the US and then hear people complain about that very thing we found to be wonderful. We have to remember that others will never see things from the same light we do. Nor, will we be able to see things from their perspective.

One example of this is the variety of products you can find in the stores. When we go looking for something here in Mexico, a can of peas for example, we might find a can or two on the shelves. There will be no choice as to which brand you get. If they do carry them, they will only have one brand, and more often they won’t have any anyway.

Earlier this year when we were home for a few weeks we were amazed at how much people complained that Wal-Mart did not have the particular product the person wanted. Maybe they were looking for milk. Of course they want a particular brand in a particular size and fat content. When we arrived in Mexico just four years ago we could not get pasteurized, homoginized milk like we expect in the US. All the milk came in un-refrigerated liter boxes with expiration dates 6 months into the future. Now we have a choice of 2 brands of milk that resembles and tastes something like the milk back home.

I just have little sympathy for the person who has to settle for a different size (a gallon as opposed to a half gallon) or has to go to the store across the street to get the milk they want because the store they are in doesn’t have it. At least it is available relatively easily.

It would be easy for the missionary to become bitter at their friends and family for not understanding them, and the missionary is just as guilty for not understanding those back home.

I am half way through the book and find it very insightful. I am glad I have gotten a chance to read it and will probably write a review of the book in a couple of days when I am done.

Trains of Mexico

Today when I was in the post office (in Mexico) I saw a sheet of stamps that had pictures of trains. I am not a big train buff, but I do love clever pictures. Especially stamps. As you can see from the photo, some of the trains span several stamps.

The stamps are only valued at 50 Mexican centavos each. Which equals out to 25 pesos. Currently that is about $2.45 US. I only bought one sheet. The sheet is numbered on the back like it is a limited edition.

Click on the image below to get a larger version of the picture. You can also download a high resolution scan, 16.5 MB.

Bike repair

I decided 2 weeks ago that I wanted to chip the rust off my bike and put it back into service. My rims were eating holes in my tubes from all the rust. Rim tape alone would not have been enough. However, I did not have any money at the time.

Finally payday arrived. It was a Wednesday that I was able to take my bike in for an estimate. I know this will sound ridiculously cheap, but that is because it is. Bikes are such a part of the culture here that the parts stores are almost as busy as auto parts stores. They deal in crazy volume. Plus many of the parts are cheap Chinese products.

I got an estimate for 2 new rims, all new spokes (64), a new seat, all new cables (brakes and gears) and a derailer cleaning and adjustment for a whopping total of $31.

Supposed to have been ready at 3:00 on Friday afternoon (2 days later). On Friday we buzzed by the shop and the bike was not ready. But, they said, it would be ready in a couple of hours. I could not get back on Friday evening, so I went by about noon on Saturday. Still not ready. I was assured that it would be ready by 3:00 since they closed at 4:00.

I called at a little after 3:00 on Saturday and the man said that it would be ready at noon or maybe 1:00 on Monday afternoon. I told him I was getting a bit frustrated with the constantly changing completion time. He absolutely assured me that it would be ready by noon.

Monday I called at 1:00. Still not ready. I talked to the man who was doing the work and he told me it would be ready by 2:30. By this time I was more than a little frustrated.

I ended up writing a nice long email to the general manager of the bike shop. They are a fairly large chain of stores here in the city, Bicimotos. I outlined my frustration with him and just asked that he respond to my email letting me know that he had talked to the store in question to find out what the issue was and to try and prevent it from happening in the future.

I got my bike that afternoon. Their excuse was that they could not get the rims I needed. They were at their main store downtown, but for some reason this chain of 10 stores was not able to figure out how to get 2 rims from one store to another. If they did not have the rims until Monday, why did they tell me on Friday to come back in a couple of hours and the job would be done? They either had the rims the whole time and just did not do the work, or they really did not get the rims until Monday but figured that I would be fine with them telling me to come back every 2 hours for 3 days until they arrived. Not cool.

The next day I got an email from the general manager telling me that he had a talk with the store. He also said that the problem was getting the rims to their location, but that it was no excuse and that he apologized for doing such a poor job. He also told me to take his email with me the next time I went there and I would get a discount.

While I appreciate his getting back with me and offering a discount, I will probably never go back to that store. I may go to another Bicimotos to buy parts or to have work done, but never to that particular location (Prolongación Montejo). You can only lie to me and treat me poorly just so many times before I take my business elsewhere. On top of that, I was not overly pleased with the completed job. Cables were too long.

My bike is nothing special. I bought it at a yard sale for $10 I think. It might have been $5. But for a store to hold my bike hostage and not do the work requested is just not acceptable. I somewhat worded it that way to the manager. I said that his store stole my bike for 3 days while they kept putting off the work.

Ants in my pants!

Saturday morning I went out to weed eat the greenery in the lot next to our house. I would like to say it is beautiful grass, but “greenery” is the kindest word I can find for the stuff. Of course things never go quite as smoothly as planned. I ran out of string about 5 minutes into the job. That meant that if I was going to be able to finish it Saturday, I would have to do it in the afternoon. I did not have time to go get string and complete the job before my morning responsibilities.

After I got home in the afternoon, I went down to the hardware store and picked up some line for the weed whacker. After enduring the ridicule from the workers in the hardware store about my accent, I got the machine all loaded up and ready to whack some weeds.

I have a pair of coveralls that I wear when I do this. They are already grass/weed stained from previous encounters. Do you know how hard it is to get a pair of coveralls off when you are sweat soaked and in a hurry?

When I felt the first ant on my leg I simply killed it through my pants. But I quickly realized there were more than just a few crawling up my legs. Fortunately for the neighbors we have a 10′ tall brick wall around our house. Otherwise they would have seen my boxers Saturday afternoon.

We have an outdoor shower that got put to use to assuage the pain from the ant bites.

When I got back on the job Monday morning it was with a liberal application of duct tape holding my pants to my boots to keep the ants out.

Teaching English

I am teaching an English class right now in a remedial type class. I was teaching about past progressive verb construction in which you use the being verb in the past tense plus the verb you want and add -ing to the ending. It would be a sentence like this: Bill was eating Rice Krispies.

I asked the class what “ing” was (meaning what is the equivalent in Spanish). One boy, who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, blurted out “It’s a bank!” What was funny is that he could not understand why his answer was not correct.