Mitla's Best Dressed and Training for Eternity

Back when the boys were little, they always had a steady stream of hand-me-downs from their Dallas cousins.  Their cousins had a doting uncle who supplied them with expensive dress shirts from Nieman Marcus or Lord and Taylor. 

In this 1991 Sunday photo (after attending Union Church in the Guatemala City), each of the boys are wearing one of their cousin's outgrown dress shirts.  Obviously they weren't worn very much, even in Dallas.  We seldom found opportunities to wear them in Guatemala, and even less in Oaxaca.  Like never.  Eventually we donated them to the "Missionary Boutique" - where even other missionary families declined to take them for free.

I never knew what became of those discarded shirts until a Wycliffe missionary friend died, and we attended his funeral.  At the funeral, it seemed every little boy in our little  rustic town showed up in a Nieman Marcus or Lord and Taylor button-down, hand-me-down, beautiful shirt.  How they fell heir to such treasures, I never figured out, but it struck me as hilarious at the time.

Too bad I didn't have a camera with me that day.  My sister-in-law would have gotten a kick out of that.

Original Mitla Chime Choir, circa 1996

Another time my sister sent down a bunch of extra t-shirts left over from Vacation Bible School at her church.  I divvied them out to the kids who played in my chime choir, and they became our unofficial uniforms.  They were blue with the words "Training for Eternity" on them.  The kids wore them for years, passed them down to their siblings, and even picked up larger sizes when needed.  I had a BUNCH of matching t-shirts.

Tim is wearing one of the VBS shirts on vacation near Yellowstone

Those, too, eventually ended up at the "Boutique" and somehow ended up in the hands of children all over town.  For a dozen years we would see people walking around or riding bikes with shirts declaring "Training for Eternity."