We rose early this morning to leave for San Lorenzo. The first part of the trip wasn’t too bad and the road appeared to be in pretty good shape. The most part of the day was spent just getting to know each other a little better and just trying to pass time as we traveled along. Towards evening, the roads were getting rougher and we started to wind through a wicked mountain range. The traffic along this road was primarily large trucks that were moving pretty slow. Everyone seemed to be having a good time however. We finally arrived in the town of Atlacomulco where we were to meet Dr. Daniel Rodriguez, who is a missionary professor at the Baptist Seminary in Mexico City. He was to direct us to the village of San Lorenzo where the church was to be built. Dr. Rodriquez had not yet arrived when we reached Atlacomulco so Charles tried to reach him by telephone, however, one cannot make out-of-town calls after a certain hour there. A few of us went in search of a restroom and we found a hotel nearby and the woman at the desk was kind enough to let us use their facilities. One of the women in our group gave the lady 75 cents as her way of saying thank you. The lady, in return, gave each of us an ashtray advertising the hotel.

On arriving back at the bus, we learned that Charles had not been able to get in touch with Dr. Dan. I went back to the bus and struck up a conversation with Loretta (who was almost asleep). We had a neat visit about satanic nonsense and how scary it could be. Then she tried to tell me about a song called “A Phone Call from Heaven.” Mary had the record. Mary finally came on the bus and explained the song to us and we all got a big laugh out of this. Dan finally arrived and we all met him for the first time. I guess some of the people who had been on work mission trips to Mexico before knew him. Dr. Dan and Charles decided we should head to the village as it was getting rather late. Merle advised him to keep a watch out for us as we had been having brake trouble for the last few miles. The village was only about 10 miles away, but the road was very rough and had some rather steep hills. As we entered the village, the road was a very steep downward hill. Dan was in front of us and had slowed down so we could catch up with him. About that time we didn’t have much left for brakes. When Charles honked the horn for Dan to get out of the way, he stopped, thinking we wanted to talk to him. He quickly realized what was wrong and pulled ahead just in the nick of time. Charles had to use the parking brake to get stopped. At the bottom of the hill some of the village people were waiting for us. Dan introduced us and they welcomed us to their village. They had set up places for people to stay so we wouldn’t have to stay on the bus during our stay. Mary and Loretta split the people into groups to stay at the various homes. After assigning the groups to homes, we gave them their baggage. We had brought the pickup truck along that belonged to Mary and Carlos to help carry everything so we were able to leave the trailer behind. This worked out very well especially for seven of us men who were either single or were without their wives, as we were to stay in a farm home that was a mile out of the village. Dan had brought some cots in his car for us as we had no room for them in the truck after we and all our belongings had been loaded. We all headed for the farm after the women were taken to their respective homes.

The road leading to the farm was very rough and twisted and turned a lot. It was not meant for car or truck traffic, but was primarily used as a burro path! One of the men who lived on the farm gave us directions or we would have been totally lost. We finally arrived at the farm home and carried all our belongings inside to the room they had prepared for us. The home was quite small for the amount of people already living there. The room they gave us was pretty good size with enough room to put all our cots across one wall except one so Harold took the lone cot. It was rather late as we finally settled in and the people of the household stood and watched us in amazement. It was kind of peculiar as we weren’t used to being watched like this and it gave us an uneasy feeling. Dan was still with us and we told him we thought the home was a little further out of the village than we would like to be. He agreed with us completely and told us we would probably have a new home to stay in the next night. The people finally left our room after a short visit and we were all ready for a much needed good night’s sleep.