Our first day at Agua Viva.
OK, so now I can tell you. When the tire flew apart it damaged other parts of the van. We were still able to safely drive it. (Truth be told, I have driven vehicles in much worse shape, with fewer working parts, for longer distances.) The rental company wanted us to trade vehicles so we drove to LAX to make the trade. We had to fill out a report about the "incident" but it pretty much said, "The tire you gave us blew apart!" It killed about an hour of our time and we still needed to navigate the LA traffic to get to our rendezvous site in San Diego. After a wrong turn, a frozen GPS, a weary traveler in distress, and unloading and loading a van...we made it to the meeting place two minutes late. I KNEW leaving the church two minutes late would come back to haunt us!
Tardiness aside, we were able to eat, bathroom break, and get rolling to the border in short order. I have gone through a number of borders in my life and this was by far the quickest we have ever gotten through any border. We went through with the other church and our guide so it was a total of one mini van, three large white vans, and a big truck with a camper shell and we still sailed through with relative ease. They did open the back of my van twice to poke at things but they didn't even ask me any questions and we were rolling in about five minutes.
About an hour and a half after the border and several games of "Wait for the other vehicles to catch up" we pulled into Agua Viva's campground. We drove to our cabins and found out that we were going to be staying in the rustic cabins where we worked last time we came. The "Nicer" cabins were having a little water problem, namely there was none, so we drove to our previous work site and unloaded. We are looking across the gully at the cabins we added onto last time. (Rich, your awning looks as good today as it did when you finished it!) More specifically , mostly to the veterans who did not come with us this year, we are camping in the cabins next to the volleyball court, below where the house we tore down was, and across the ravine from where we put up sheetrock. They are designed for littler people so my legs are hanging off the beds at the shin...but it's fine.
We learned something about Agua Viva that we didn't know before. The man who founded this place had been working with at risk kids for years and taking them to his property a ways from here. The government found out about him and assumed he was forming a militia so they took away his land. He prayed that he would find a place to buy and felt that this land was where it was supposed to be. He located the owner but she said that she wouldn't sell to him because it was a place called Agua de la Muerta (water of the dead). There were many wells dug, and they were all tested. but the water could not be used for anything since it was contaminated and murky. He assured her that he would bring in his own water so she agreed to rent it to him.
He began having camps for the kids and trucked water in. After several years of this it happened that one day the cook ran out of water for the beans. (alumni know that there ARE NO meals without beans) The cook knew of a well and went over to it and prayed that the water inside would be safe to drink. When she looked down into the well she saw crystal clear water. That had never happened before. The water had always been cloudy. She used the water, waited, and no one got sick. They had the water tested and it came back with a perfect report. The founder took the report to the woman who owned the land and she said, "God surely wants you to have that land!" so she agreed to sell it to him. He renamed the site Agua Viva (Living water) and has been running Christian camps, retreats, and a seminary for people here in Mexico ever since.
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