Sunday, July 15, 2007

Direction, Wind & Exfoliation

Hello to you from somewhere in Mexico! I've spent the last few days walking along winding, forest-guarded roads that have not aided my sense of direction one little bit. I'm... somewhere in Mexico. It's very beautiful through this region (south east of Mexico City) with rolling hills, distant mountains & a fresh breeze all day long to ease the heat of the scorching sun. As it is, I'm not supposed to be in this area at all. According to my itinerary I should be about 200km south west of here but I discovered a series of roads on my map that gets me into Mexico City a day ahead of schedule so Nikki & I took the turn & to this day are enjoying the change up from arid 'leeward' countryside to the greener 'windward' side of the mountains. At the beginning of the week we walked & prayed our way through the windiest part of Mexico where the towns are aptly named 'The Wind' & 'The Windiest'. I counted over 100 wind turbines in between walking along the road & been blown off it. Nikki was very satisfied though to knock off her longest day on the road to date as we trekked 54km after not being able to secure accomodation at the 36km mark in our original destination for the day. The following day was thus rather short & to our great delight landed us very close to the Pacific Ocean. We made our way down to the deserted beach for a final look at the sea until southern Europe in 2008. The waves were pounding the beach & it didn't look particularly safe so we only ventured out to just above knee depth. I still managed to get plummeted by a huge wave, get washed up on the sand & then dragged back into the surf, on my belly, trying in vein to claw my way back onto my feet. I stood up just in time to get smashed back into the sand by a second wave. Effectively I discovered the Mexican all-in-one exfoliation for idiots. I'm still picking sand out of my shorts. Skin looks good though. The Mexican folks through this region have been lovely for the most part & we had our dinner & two rooms offered free of charge last night in a small village because the guy in charge is a Christian & in no way wanted to charge missionaries. Beautiful guy. We passed him at 7am this morning about 10km out of the town as he finished up his night shift working on the road works. Some folks work hard, very hard. A lot more prayer still to come & hopefully many more people to meet & pray with / invite to pray for unity along the way. I'll pass on the beaches though, thanks. More time to think as well as I walk. I've basically spent a lot of time this week pondering the 'actual' differences of various churches but basically it's been a 'presonal pray week' rather than a 'something I can write about in the blog' week. I liked it :-) God bless & please keep on praying. In Christ, Sam.
"Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love & peace will be with you." 2Cor 13:11

2 comments:

micah said...

i prayed for encouragement for both of you last week in the heat of many insults. May you have many more divine encounters with Christians who provide food and shelter... and encouragement. Peace of Christ be with you, Sam and Nikki. Hoping to pray with you in person for unity. May His Kingdom Come, micah from texas

Unknown said...

Gday Sam,
I just want to thank you and nikki for doing the walk and may God keep you safe. God Bless you and the stories Dave Callaghan have told me about what you have experienced and he told me to read your blog and its really beautiful that you are doing this. I will also tell Corey Payton that I had a look as he is my room mate in the Missionary's in Canberra. Michael from Canberra.