Student Life Office

Star Throwers Trip 2000

Reflection: Visiting the Yucatan Peninsula
By Kathryn Broyles

Star Throwers went abroad once more for Spring Break, this time to Playa del Carmen. Flying from Orlando to Cancun was a "real leap" for most of the folks on the trip since none of the students who went had ever been abroad! Missionaries Mitch and Michelle Hansen and their children, Alaina (5) and Jay (11) met us all at the airport. Their blonde hair and startling blue/gray eyes, were easy to spot in the crowd that milled around the airport lobby. All bags claimed and all bodies accounted for, we piled into our only air-conditioning for the week, an air-conditioned 15-passenger Ford van, and sped off to Playa del Carmen.

From our first moments in Mexico, we were on the go. Mitch explained that dinner would have to wait; we were on our way to a church service scheduled to begin in a half-hour. In no time, we found ourselves bouncing up and down rutted, unpaved, dusty roads. Arriving at church just as the service started, we took our seats near to the front of the sanctuary of what we quickly came to realize was a typical Protestant/evangelical church. Only one wall was complete, the others only partially built, with steel wires and girders protruding from the tops. Strung like a delicate canopy, crisscrossing the area, forming a kind of starry ceiling, were ropes hung with white paper cones, edges decorated carefully with glitter. There were no pews, only plastic chairs or wall and floor space. Such churches and such services composed an integral part of our week. In fact, the believers in the Yucatan worship together every night of the week except Monday! So, this Saturday night service was only the first of five we attended with the Hansens. We were all VERY glad Dr. Joe (our fearless leader) speaks Spanish fluently.

Though we'd come to learn, we'd also come to work and though he gave us Sunday to rest, Mitch wasn't about to pass up free manual labor. The Hansens draw their everyday washing water (not drinking water) from a well near their mission house. The wall around the well, when we arrived, was only a foot or so tall, not high enough to keep children or animals from falling in and offering little protection from debris tossed in by wind. Not so when we left! We spent a good deal of the week, first gathering rocks and pounding them to fit, then cementing up another two and a half feet of wall around the well. We also cleaned and began varnishing the wooden-slatted windows of the Hansen home. There were at least 10 windows in the front room alone, so we couldn't finish in just a week's time, but we made a good start on it and have some great pictures of utility gloves and surgeons' masks. (We wanted just to breathe the fumes, but Dr. Joe insisted that wouldn't be a good idea--SMILE.)

At the end of the week, after plenty of hard work and plenty of fun (we went shopping several times like horrid tourists--SMILE--and also swam in the ocean several times) we treated ourselves and Mitch and Michelle to a "fancy" dinner. (Grandpa, who had arrived on Thursday, looked after the kids). We learned over dinner that the real service we had done that week had nothing to do with manual labor or even singing and sharing in services. Our real service, Mitch confided, had been to encourage. Facing rats, ruts, cement, dust and sunshine, we'd been the first team to visit them and working together we'd been able to keep them laughing and give them the push they needed to plunge head long into what the Lord has set before them. We were really humbled by this compliment, but were excited too; we discovered firsthand a truth scripture has always taught. It is the giver who is blessed. Going to Mexico on Spring Break was WORTH IT!

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