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Tampico, Mexico Campaign Site
September 24 2006 / ShareHim in Mexico-North, Aug. 11 - Aug. 26 '06 #64by Dale Murrell
Campaign Site Narrative from Roma, Tampico in Mexico-North. The speaker assigned to this site was Dale Murrell.
There were 5 speakers in the Tampico, Mexico area for the campaign in which I participated. One of the other speakers and his wife are from the same church in Arkansas that we are from. So, it was nice to have someone that we already knew there with us.
Our site coordinator was Jeremiah Weeks, who is the nephew of one of my sisters-in-law. I just can’t say enough good about what he is doing for the Lord. Before going to Mexico, he kept us up to date on everything that we needed to know. Not only that, since he is trained as an attorney, although not currently practicing law, he was able to help us get the projector which I had bought on ebay, but after two months had still not received. I had paid almost $900 US for it by cashier’s check and was getting a little concerned, but the Lord sent Jeremiah to us at just the right moment.
The hotel we stayed in was owned and operated by an Adventist family who also own and operate a vegetarian restaurant attached to the hotel. The rooms were small, but adequate. We had some trouble with water pressure being too low in the showers, but we made it. The rooms had AC and TV. The one we used constantly, the other we hardly turned on. The rates were very reasonable and we were fed like royalty, all vegetarian and much of it local type of food.
Even though the restaurant is closed Sabbath and Sunday, they still provided us with complete meals except for when there was potluck provided by the churches. In addition, the hotel owner let us use the hotel van for any excursions we needed to make. One of the 5 speakers was from Texas and was of Mexican descent. He acted as our general translator when our meeting translators were not with us. His name is Nic Garza and apparently is a very dynamic Spanish speaker.
My meeting translator was a 20-year-old young man who is the son of the conference president of the conference where we were holding meetings. He is a student at La Sierra University in California and has only been speaking English for 2 years. He is a music major, so I got 2-in-one. He plays the keyboard beautifully and, so, he had a dual role. His name is Edgar Perez, and his room in the hotel was next to my wife and mine. This made it very handy for practice sessions.
The pastor of the church I was preaching in was just wonderful to us. His name is Exiquio Durán, and he was willing to cut his vacation short by a week and leave his wife in Houston, Texas, while he came to help us with our meetings. He was so good to take us to our meetings every night and take us back to the hotel. He would take us to the beach every morning at 7:00am for a walk on the beach and we spent hours discussing the meetings and each other’s families and backgrounds. He grew up in Monterrey, Mexico like I did. Even though I know little Spanish and he knew less English, we were able to communicate and we each learned a lot of the other’s language.
In addition, he would take us anywhere we needed to go in the hotel van. Everyone involved with the meetings was just wonderful to us. I think of Claudia, Lupita, and Pima who are leaders in the Roma church where my meetings were held and who worked so hard every night. Was everything perfect? Our church was not air conditioned and we felt as though we would melt at times. The heat caused problems with my computer overheating and locking up when trying to show the DVD’s. We ended up having to get a church member to bring a DVD player for the “Jesus” DVD. The Lord blessed by holding back the rains, which are supposed to be falling at that time of the year. If the rains had fallen, we would not have had nearly the attendance that we had.
There are many unpaved roads including the one the church is on, and when it rains, they become a quagmire we were told. When that happens, the people just don’t come out. We were blessed with two baptisms at our site with one additional one planned for later. Some of the other sites reported as many as five baptisms and some with none. We felt blessed due to the fact that reaping meetings had been held area-wide less than two months previously. The Lord blessed.
Our site coordinator was Jeremiah Weeks, who is the nephew of one of my sisters-in-law. I just can’t say enough good about what he is doing for the Lord. Before going to Mexico, he kept us up to date on everything that we needed to know. Not only that, since he is trained as an attorney, although not currently practicing law, he was able to help us get the projector which I had bought on ebay, but after two months had still not received. I had paid almost $900 US for it by cashier’s check and was getting a little concerned, but the Lord sent Jeremiah to us at just the right moment.
The hotel we stayed in was owned and operated by an Adventist family who also own and operate a vegetarian restaurant attached to the hotel. The rooms were small, but adequate. We had some trouble with water pressure being too low in the showers, but we made it. The rooms had AC and TV. The one we used constantly, the other we hardly turned on. The rates were very reasonable and we were fed like royalty, all vegetarian and much of it local type of food.
Even though the restaurant is closed Sabbath and Sunday, they still provided us with complete meals except for when there was potluck provided by the churches. In addition, the hotel owner let us use the hotel van for any excursions we needed to make. One of the 5 speakers was from Texas and was of Mexican descent. He acted as our general translator when our meeting translators were not with us. His name is Nic Garza and apparently is a very dynamic Spanish speaker.
My meeting translator was a 20-year-old young man who is the son of the conference president of the conference where we were holding meetings. He is a student at La Sierra University in California and has only been speaking English for 2 years. He is a music major, so I got 2-in-one. He plays the keyboard beautifully and, so, he had a dual role. His name is Edgar Perez, and his room in the hotel was next to my wife and mine. This made it very handy for practice sessions.
The pastor of the church I was preaching in was just wonderful to us. His name is Exiquio Durán, and he was willing to cut his vacation short by a week and leave his wife in Houston, Texas, while he came to help us with our meetings. He was so good to take us to our meetings every night and take us back to the hotel. He would take us to the beach every morning at 7:00am for a walk on the beach and we spent hours discussing the meetings and each other’s families and backgrounds. He grew up in Monterrey, Mexico like I did. Even though I know little Spanish and he knew less English, we were able to communicate and we each learned a lot of the other’s language.
In addition, he would take us anywhere we needed to go in the hotel van. Everyone involved with the meetings was just wonderful to us. I think of Claudia, Lupita, and Pima who are leaders in the Roma church where my meetings were held and who worked so hard every night. Was everything perfect? Our church was not air conditioned and we felt as though we would melt at times. The heat caused problems with my computer overheating and locking up when trying to show the DVD’s. We ended up having to get a church member to bring a DVD player for the “Jesus” DVD. The Lord blessed by holding back the rains, which are supposed to be falling at that time of the year. If the rains had fallen, we would not have had nearly the attendance that we had.
There are many unpaved roads including the one the church is on, and when it rains, they become a quagmire we were told. When that happens, the people just don’t come out. We were blessed with two baptisms at our site with one additional one planned for later. Some of the other sites reported as many as five baptisms and some with none. We felt blessed due to the fact that reaping meetings had been held area-wide less than two months previously. The Lord blessed.