Starting to feel fall in the air…

at least a little. Temps are cooler, which is a blessing, and we’ve noticed a few cars with wet leaves stuck all over them. Most shops in town and the MZ are stuffed with back to school supplies. Seems like the kids just got out of school, and some already started back week before last and the rest are back this week. It’s kind of fun to see them all decked out in their various uniforms again and back to their old routines.

And after waiting for the rainy season to come I think we are officially in the middle of it. Depends on who you talk with though, some people say we’ll be done by mid-September, others say it will go through October. Have to wait and see.

Funny thing about the rain too, folks just completely hunker down here when the rains come. They are not out either walking or in their cars, there’s no sitting out in the evenings, so it makes it much more difficult to keep in touch with folks in the neighborhood. It was raining pretty hard yesterday morning and when 11 am rolled around the church was still locked up tight. We figured for sure there would be no services because of the rain, but about 20 minutes later the rain let up a bit and Jose came and opened the church and the three of us had services for about 40 minutes.

This is completely opposite of northwest behavior…goodness, if you hunkered down there to wait for the rain to stop you’d never go anywhere or get anything done for months on end. Goretex baby! It’s what keeps the NW going!

For the first time we actually got caught out in the weather. For newbies we’ve been managing pretty well, trying to get a handle on what is just blowing over, what’s just overcast and what will actually produce rain. But on a walk to town recently we found out we still have much to learn. Nice, cool, overcast day so we decided to walk to town. We had a great time, and were just finishing up our errands and visits when it started to sprinkle. We headed toward home, but the storm just kept getting worse and by the time we got to the house it was flat POURING down rain and we were soaked to the skin. Thankfully it was still warm out, not like at home in Washington where getting caught like that would make you bone-chillingly cold!

We are still waiting to receive our visas that were promised for August 3! They still have no word from immigration in Mexico City, so we wait, we call, we wait some more. Then Friday they called and said that we needed another letter from Pastor Lupe in Mazatlan stating what we do, where we do it and for how long. And of course, the letter needs to be hand delivered to their office in Mazatlan. We have 30 days to get this done. We are trying to see if Lupe can do the letters and deliver them for us rather than having to make another trip ourselves, but we are still waiting to hear from him. And this applies just to us at this point, not to Tom. Lidia thinks eventually they will ask this of Tom too, so she wants to be pro-active and have Lupe do a letter for him now too, just to save a hassle later. Can this be more of a drama or what? Ralph said the other night that the next time he goes to immigration in Mazatlan he’ll either come away with the visas or an exit letters so we can leave! He’s really sick of messing with this. I think we all are. Please keep this in prayer.

We met with the Lumppios the other day to strategize a bit for the restart of the work in the camps. People will start returning in September and we want to work together more rather than completely separately, even in separate camps. We want to see where God is working in these places already and come along side that work. The longer we are here the more we learn about which camps have church services and which don’t and which have a missionary presence and which don’t. The guys are out this morning doing an informal kind of survey trying to get a better handle on things. Should be interesting to hear what all they find out.

We are already looking forward to our first field conference, which will be coming up right after the first of the year. It will be an opportunity to review the work here, report on our experiences, and look to the future. We are currently praying about that meeting, what shape it will take and when to hold it. Please join us in prayer on that.

This week we’ve learned that Ralph’s 93 year old Aunt Mickey in North Dakota took a tumble and broke her hip. She had surgery to repair it and is doing well by all accounts. She’s been living in an assisted living place since a similar fall a few years back. Please pray for complete healing for the break!

Additionally, my cousin Donna will have colon surgery on Thursday in Olympia, so please keep her, her family and the medical team in prayer. Those of you who were at our sending from church have met her…she’s a totally amazing woman and a great photographer! She took the photos that are on our prayer cards and our mug shot for the blog page. She’s also a newly minted great-grandmother to Elleah!

Thanks so much for all your prayers and support…we love and appreciate all you do for us.