Men's Retreat at 12,000 ft.

This past Friday, at around 8 p.m., 16 men from two churches traveled the 90 minutes from Ixtapaluca, where we live, to a small town called Amecameca, then up and up and up through the forest to a place called Paso de Cortez, or Cortez's pass, where it is thought that famed conquistador Hernan Cortez traveled between the mountains from Puebla to Mexico City.

Initially we expected more men, because this was a circuit/district church event, but as it turned out, we were only 16. We arrived at night, bouncing around on rather rough dirt roads for the last 5 miles or so of our trip. And just as we were pulling into the campsite, in the dark, it started to rain. Not a downpour...but hard enough to get really wet really quickly! We waited a bit, and when the rain let up, we set up our tents and started a fire. After about an hour, the rain returned, but we managed to eat hot dogs and have a "standing in the rain around the fire" devotional time. I gave the talk on "Integrity." On Saturday we continued our discussion on integrity, particularly as it related to moral issues.

There were a lot of highlights. Sleeping in a tent with 6 other guys wasn't one of them! I unfortunately had wet feet when I went to bed, and couldn't get them warm again all night. I find I do not enjoy camping as much as I did when I was a kid...imagine that.

I caught around 10 native trout in the snow-melt fed stream that flowed through our camp...really fun! They had coloring like I've not seen anywhere.

Here are some pictures and video...