Hello everyone. This will be my last post from Mexico. I need to put the computer aside and experience God.

I’ve lost my way and made this trip about something other than Him.

I’ve uploaded another 50 photos to Flickr tonight. I’ll have more after August 23, when I return home.

I’ll also have some video of the welcome presentations at the two child development centers we visited today.

And I’ll have one more blog post.

We spent this morning at the Compassion Mexico office. After a brief introduction and welcome by Omar, the country director, our group of 30+ sponsors broke into three smaller masses, in order to get a little more intimate with the different ministry areas.

First stop for “el grupo de Giovagnoni” was Ministry Services. We had a presentation from Cesareo in Finance. It was about the funding process for money to be granted and distributed to a child development center. It was in Spanglish. Cesareo said that, not me.

Next stop on the office tour, Sponsor Donor Services (SDS).

Here’s the 411 from the folks in SDS, with a little bleed over from Program Implementation, the stars who work with our church partners.

• Compassion Mexico has 129 child development centers in eight of Mexico’s 31 states. They help about 20,000 children.
• 79 percent of the 20,000 children are sponsored. 21 percent are waiting for sponsors.
• Chiapas is the poorest state in Mexico and has been for the past 20 years. It’s where most of Compassion Mexico’s work is done, and it’s where we’ll be until Thursday. Chiapas borders Guatemala.
• Last fiscal year, July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008, Compassion Mexico processed 23,000 letters from sponsors.
• The staff estimates that 45 percent of sponsors write their children and the remaining children don’t receive any letters.
• In the last fiscal year, Compassion Mexico processed 51,000 letters from its children to their sponsors.
• Around 80 percent of Compassion Mexico’s sponsors are in the United States.
• The average number of children in a Compassion Mexico child development center is 160.
• Compassion Mexico expects to register another 5,000 children during this fiscal year.
• The Compassion Mexico office opened in 1976 and does not currently work with the Child Survival Program or Leadership Development Program – only Child Sponsorship and Complementary Interventions.

And here’s some additional info bling strictly from Program Implementation.

• The children in Chiapas are three times less likely to grow up healthy and to attend school.
• 90 percent of children in Chiapas don’t attend school regularly. They work as laborers.

After we left the Compassion Mexico office, the rest of our day was spent traveling – by bus from Mexico City to the Toluca airport and then from Toluca by plane to Tuxtla Gutierrez.

Adios for now.

Hope you don’t mind that this post has been search engine optimized for the keyword Compassion Mexico.

Yesterday ended today at 1:30 a.m. 16 bags were missing. Some still are.

The start line for the Mexico City Marathon was right outside of our hotel, in the Zocalo. I’m told that fireworks announced the “presence” of the race at 5:30 a.m and again at 7 a.m. I slept through ‘em.

My roommate told me I yelled in my sleep during the night – twice. I do that sometimes.

Breakfast was an authentic Mexican buffet. I don’t know everything I ate, but I liked it all. That’s why I made two trips.

The white drizzle on the pancakes tasted like vanilla. YUM! Some people think vanilla is for weenies. What say you?

The green drink was called “mixed juice.” It tasted like celery.

We had a great view from our breakfast table.

We attended church at The Caminando Junto con la Ninez Student Center (ME-857), and enjoyed their lunchtime hospitality afterwards.

Lunch was tasty. I had two bowls of whatever it was. I was told what it was, but I don’t remember.

After service and lunch, we piled on to the Magical Mystery Sponsor Tour Bus and got lost. The magical mystery part is how we manage to squeeze down the narrow roads around here.

While lost we saw two dead dogs on the side of the road and debated over a third. He was sleeping. We also made an infinity-point turn to go back in the direction we had just come from ’cause we wanted to get unlost.

At the end of the day, we climbed the Teotihuacan piramide and got rained on as we descended. My camera died at the top of the pyramid, taken as a sacrifice by the Teotihuacan gods.

But it did manage a few pics before giving up its life. Here’s one.

The pyramids’ resident vendors were offering amazing prices for their wares. “Just for us.” That’s what they said. The price? “Almost free.”

Tomorrow, we will spend the morning at the Compassion Mexico office, have lunch with the office staff and then catch a plane to Tuxtla Gutierrez.

Tuesday is when we get to lovin’ some kiddos. Hope the Internet works down there.

Talk to someone who has been on a Compassion sponsor tour and you’ll hear all about stuff like this,

But you won’t hear about this – the Customs Declaration form.

Not once did I read a blog post from Uganda about this thing. And boy howdy is this form painful.

Name, country of birth, nationality. Easy.

Main Destination in Mexico? Uh … do I put the hotel address or just the city? Which hotel the one I’m staying at for two days or the one I’m staying at for three days?

City? No problem, if it’s seven letters or less. So Colorado Springs becomes C-o-l-o-r-a-d. Nice.

Passport number. I have nine digits but 10 spaces. Is that normal? Did I do something wrong?

Do I need to fill out the stuff below the perforation? It’s the same as the stuff above the perforation. Why is the form perforated? What happens if I accidentally detach the two perforated parts from one another? Does one part then have to pay perforation support to the other?

And how do I answer this question?

“Are you carrying: live animals, food products of animal or vegetable origin, plants, flowers, fruits; chemical, pharmaceutical or biological products of agricultural use?”

Yes or no.

What’s the intent behind that question? Do they want to know about my airline peanuts? Is a nut just a nut or is it also a fruit? A vegetable maybe?

What about my energy bar? It’s technically food, and it’s definitely a food product, but do they want to know all about my packaged food products or just if I’m bringing in fresh stuff.

I know this isn’t stuff you really expected to hear about. It doesn’t bring you any closer to your sponsored child, but it’s all the stuff that we’ve done so far.

Other than eating at Pappadeux in the Houston airport, taking a few pictures while we waited for our delayed flight and getting poked in the nipple by a flight attendant because I didn’t turn my cell phone off quickly enough.

I told you I’d bring you along. Hope you like the “traveling face” of a sponsor tour.

I’m going to Mexico! And I want you to come with me.

I was left behind once, and I’m grateful it wasn’t in the “missed the Rapture” sense. Because of that experience I will do my best to make you feel like you’re in Mexico with me.

I’m going to Mexico as a co-leader on a sponsor tour, not as a Compassion Blogger.

My first responsibility on the trip is to support the sponsors who are traveling with us to meet their sponsored children. However, you will always be in my thoughts.

I intend to:

• upload photos to our Flickr photostream, and I’ll add the best ones to our Flickr group, which you can see in the sidebar under Your Flickr Photos.
• tweet – send regular text updates of what’s going on – so follow us on Twitter
• write colorful and moving commentary you’ll find here, on this very blog
• take some Blair Witch/Cloverfield amateur-style video to share with you when I get back
• eat lots of beans and rice
• hug lots of kids
• et cetera

I don’t sponsor a child in Mexico but if you do, and they’re at one of these child development centers, let me know. I will TRY to get a photo of your child for you. I cannot promise anything other than I’ll try.

The child development centers are:

• The King’s Children Ambassadors Student Center (ME-730)
• The Jesus’ Friends Student Center (ME-737)
• The House of Bread Student Center (ME-708)

Please don’t leave your child’s name or number in your comment. Just let me know you have a child at one of the centers and someone will contact you via email to get the information.

Early in the morning of June 11, after months of heavy precipitation, the Cedar River poured into the streets of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The water quickly swallowed the city.

• 1,300 city blocks disappeared.
• 24,000 people were evacuated.
• 83 of Iowa’s 99 counties were declared disaster areas.
• Nearly every river in Iowa flooded that week.

As I watched the floodwaters rise, my 4-year-old turned to me and said, “Mama, I think we need to get on the ark!” Had there been an ark in the vicinity, I may very well have gotten on it.

In the end, we Iowans are going to be just fine. The prayers of the nation have been with us, and we thank everyone for that. Help has arrived from all corners — from churches to government agencies. So many people have mobilized to get us back on our feet. We know it will be a slow process but, as a community whose roots are in farming, we have learned to be patient — patient with the growth of our crops, patient with the regrowth of our city.

But the impact of the floods on the world community is yet to come.

Iowa is the number one producer of corn and soybeans in the United States. It is estimated that 1.3 million acres of corn and 2 million acres of soybeans — roughly 16 percent of our grain crops were destroyed. (1) And this disaster is just one of many that decimated global crops in 2008.

So how does this impact the global food supply? In a nutshell, it means higher prices and a shrinking supply of food.

For countries in the developing world, this is a cataclysmic combination. In regions where people are already spending 80 percent of their salaries on food, the prices are going to get higher.

If 100 percent of a family’s income goes toward food, how then do they afford clothing, shelter, medical care and an education for their children?

And when the price of food eclipses what a family is able to earn, who in the family goes without? Parents, grandparents, children? How does one make such a decision?

As Thornton Wilder, the author of Our Town, once said: “I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for….”

We must stand together in the fight against poverty and hunger.

If you have a heart for flood victims, consider sponsoring a child in Haiti, Mexico, Bangladesh or India. These are countries that experience regular flooding, often with much loss of life, and an infrastructure that makes it difficult for families to recover.

You may also consider a donation to the Disaster Relief Fund. In the event of a natural disaster, Compassion provides food, blankets, shelter and replacement belongings to children and their families.

Please do what you can.

(1) Iowa State Farm Bureau