Guadalajara: Travel & Welcome | March 22

Left home at 3:50 am in my awesome rented Kia and made it through security within two hours of leaving the driveway- that could be a new record!

After a smooth ride and an easy two hour time change, I was in Guadalajara. I flew through customs and was greeted by Edgar Gomez, the lead pastor of our first international Radiant Church.

We got in the car and headed right to a beautiful open roadside restaurant, where we promptly ordered a half kilo of goat. Let me just say, in my experience, any trip that starts out with half a kilo of goat is gonna be a decent trip! They served our goat platter with onions, limes, refried beans and fried tortillas on the side, along with a bowl of some wonderfully flavored broth.  I decided all that stuff about not drinking the water in Mexico was probably lies, so we had them make us some fresh lemonade. We then drove around, talked, saw the neighborhood where Edgar grew up, and went to a small ice cream place for dessert.

The city is very big and has just been growing like crazy over the years. There’s a mix of old parts of the neighborhoods surrounded by new development. Roads that used to be the beltline around the edge of the city are now just looping roads inside the city. It’s fairly developed all around here- Sam’s club, Costco, Best Buy, Starbucks etc. There are some amazingly beautiful purple flowering trees all over the place here.

When we got to Edgar’s house I met his wife Erika and the rest of his family. We had coffee and discussed short term missions vision and strategy. After watching a little March Madness in Spanish and the Mexico vs Chile soccer match, we all left to go to one of their family favorite taco stands. At Edgar’s suggestion, I got a steaming bowl of Mexican tradition instead of tacos. I can’t remember what they called it, something with a p and a z… It was a tomato based broth, and there was shredded chicken in it, we added limes and onions, radish and lettuce. It was a wonderful family meal. The kids fell asleep on the drive home. Then it was time for bed- can’t wait to dive in to Edgar’s work tomorrow!

~ Joel Doorlag