So, we went. Between 20th and 29th November 22, Matt and I were to be found mostly on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, not far from the holiday destination Cancún. Our children stayed behind in wintery Scotland, cared for by a collection of loving friends and family to whom we are forever indebted!

First impressions on arrival were a bit overwhelming. Somehow this trip felt different to any previous trips and we were hyper aware of all the issues that could potentially become daily challenges. From the moment you step off the plane, everything’s different. Even in the air-conditioned airport building, the atmosphere is damp and warm, and has you peeling off winter layers straight away. The Spanish language hustles into your eyes and ears demanding to be made sense of, the shops are different, the airport systems are different, even toilet etiquette is different (you can’t put loo roll down the loo, if you must know, it goes in a nearby bin instead). And if you’re already thirsty, don’t be tempted to refill your bottle from the tap – the water isn’t drinkable. Smartly dressed airport workers approach you, spotting your post-flight bewilderment, and speak to you in kindly English as though you are a lost child. When you step out of the relative cool of the airport doors, Mexico sees its chance and springs on you in further joyful greeting. Keen taxi drivers clamour for your business, the sun sears your eyes, and beyond the airport carpark you see palm trees and bright blue sky.

Luckily for us, our wonderful friends Paul and Elaine Little had come to collect us from the airport, so we strolled smugly past the minibus touts and into the loving welcome of amigos instead. Once settled in the truck, we left the highways of Cancún with its many lanes, unfathomable driving rules, and massive billboards advertising plush hotels, and we headed away from the coast and along a road lined with lush jungle, cut into at intervals to be subdued for a tourist retreat or a luxurious home.

Paul and Elaine have established a life in a town of around 6,000 people called Leona Vicario. It’s off the tourist trail and although it’s only a 30 minute drive from the coast, it’s an absolute world away from the beachfront glamour of the Mayan Riviera. No hotels here! It’s a fairly new town, and is constantly developing, being added to bit by bit by people from nearby states seeking work in the tourist hotspots of the coast. Paul and Elaine have been in Mexico since 2018 and have been in Leona for about 18 months of that. We are in awe of their courage in choosing an existence that is distinctly less comfortable than it could be in their stage of life, and of their tenacity in sticking with it even when the going has been tough.

Paul and Elaine have built their own house, a simple but lovely home, and have put their incredible creativity, hard work and indomitable pioneer spirit to effective use in making it comfortably liveable. In Leona there is no mains gas, sewage or water, and no rubbish collection. A formal electricity supply is a hit and miss situation depending on which part of town you’re in. When you step into the Littles’ garden though, you leave behind the chaos outside and enter a veritable Eden – beautiful, peaceful, safe. A rather smelly dog called Gacho knows a good thing when he sees it has adopted Paul and Elaine’s garden as his new home, a sanctuary from the mistreatment of a world that is not always nice to animals. And the garden is fun! Paul can seemingly turn his hand to just about anything and has built some play equipment out of recycled materials. It’s proving to be a big hit with local children and their parents alike!

Matt and I have seen quite a bit of different parts of Mexico over the years, but neither of us had ever seen a Mexico quite like this one before. Leona Vicario is rural, unpolished and functional, a town cobbled together ingeniously from bits and pieces, connected mostly by dirt tracks and the odd bit of tarmac road, and wrestled plot by plot from the vines and bright, leafy trees of ‘the bush’. It’s steamy hot, muddy, and full of animals, insects and random piles of rubbish. There is a bustling town centre clustered mostly around one main road and comprising a lot of square concrete buildings. It has lots of different kinds of shops, schools, a bank, and a lot of church buildings. There’s a town plaza and even a few restaurants. Away from the main road, life seems to move at a sleepier pace. The humid air smells of the wood fires many people cook on, as well as maize and damp earth, and wherever you look there are wandering dogs, staring children, and passengers piled precariously onto bicycle-taxi contraptions. The people are short and Mayan looking with dark hair and darker skin than other Mexicans we’ve met before. Apart from Paul and Elaine, we didn’t see anyone else who looked remotely like us (we quite like that).

It was a huge encouragement for us when contemplating our own future life not only to see the successful end results of the many things Paul and Elaine have created, cultivated, and nurtured together, but also to witness the warmth and fun evident in all their relationships with neighbours and new friends. They clearly love well and are loved well in return. When we met their friends so many of them said to us out of their earshot – “Pablo and Elena? They have been so good to us. We really love them….yes, these ones are very special.” After 5 days of being wonderfully looked after by them, we agree!

Despite the encouragements though, being exposed to the realities of life in a place where people are not well-off did come as quite a shock. We realised that in the 15 years since we last spent any decent time in such a place, we’ve gone soft. We’ve adjusted to our home environment. We’ve forgotten – in lived experience if not in theory – that not everyone lives as we do, in relative comfort, security and wealth. It was a reality check. Moving to Leona Vicario with our children would not be comfortable, would definitely not be a savvy move made only for a better lifestyle. Without a very good reason to underpin it, it wouldn’t be an advisable move at all. What with the heat, the lack of services, the language barrier, visa limitations, and all the other challenges we don’t even know about yet, there aren’t many obvious incentives.

Do we have a very good reason, then? We believe we do. In fact, we have two:

1) We believe that a life in Leona Vicario is the life that God has been preparing us for and leading us towards for the past 18 years – us, and our children with us. As far as we can see from here, there are abundant opportunities to explore our two main passions: making disciples of Jesus and showing mercy to people who are suffering. It looks as though there is a major need for practical action that will improve life for those who are marginalised, overlooked and struggling, and we want to be part of doing something about that. Paul and Elaine’s life and home encourages us too that once we’ve made it through the tough readjustment period, we’ll get to a place of feeling settled and content in our new environment. They love it, so why wouldn’t we?

2) We want to live there. It’s difficult to explain, because while there are good things about Leona, there are challenges too and we we can’t pretend we’re not daunted by them. In fact, there are many things about a life in Leona that are not particularly inviting and which we know will be hard going, at least at first – but somehow despite those things, we want to be there anyway. Yes, indeed, we might well be mad!

After five days in Leona, we moved on to Puerto Morelos, the seaside town we stayed in when the five of us visited in 2018, where we were warmly received by Ronda into her lovely holiday apartment. It was the perfect spot to pause and think about everything we’d seen and heard, and Ronda’s beautiful home and unsurpassed hospitality made it feel like a holiday! We also caught up with friends we first connected with in 2018, including Rose and Diego and April and Jordan (plus all their gorgeous children) and Quita, who we met while joining the Puerto Morelos faith community online during lockdown. It was so good to catch up, hear about how life is with them and join in with their faith community gathering. Later the same day the Sosas rearranged their home to fit about 50 people around tables for a Christmas dinner, no mean feat! It was a wonderfully squashed, sweaty, noisy, chaotic and thoroughly delicious occasion – a real family feel. Their work sounds wonderful and seems to be going really well.

We’d been asking God whether it’s Puerto Morelos or Leona Vicario that he wants us to settle in, and we were encouraged to find that we both felt the answer was Leona. Again this is something quite difficult to explain as there’s no obvious reason for it really, just an inner sense. Having been led by such senses before, we listen to them now, and count them among the ways God chooses to speak to us. We’re grateful for his guidance!

So, in some ways we’re further forward: we know we want to go, and we know we want to go to Leona Vicario. We’re glad for that progress at least!

In other ways though it feels like we’re now further off – we see more barriers than we did before. Information that we gleaned on the ground highlighted quite a few big things that will need to be hurdled before we can get anywhere near a launch date, and they’re not things we have any real control over ourselves. We’ve no idea when or how it will happen, but nonetheless our prayer is that we’ll be fully settled in a new home in Leona by Christmas 2023. We quite like the idea that any steps that move us forward from here on in will act as confirmation that we’re on the right track. We definitely can’t make this happen ourselves!

In fact, clearly, us even getting close to moving to Mexico in this coming year will take nothing short of a miracle. Luckily, we know someone who does those.