Nick and Savannah
Saturday, September 30, 2006
The cutest grandkids on the planet!
Okay, so we are a little prejudiced on this subject! The latest portrait of the kids:
Nick and Savannah
Nick and Savannah
Saturday, September 23, 2006
The calm before and after the storm
If Lane interrupted life here, it was brief for most folks. The most lingering effects now are some broken signs and peeled back metal roof tops and some piles of dead and dying limbs that have yet to be picked up and/or burned. Businesses are back open and most everything is cleaned up.
We were amazed that on Monday morning the plaza downtown didn't even look like a storm hit at all, totally free of debris and dirt. Only the missing pieces of the gazebo roof to tell the tale. The road grader has been out trying to smooth out the rain damaged dirt roads and many of them have been repaired this week while others remain big trenches that are impassible.
The biggest lingering effect is lack of water. Our water came on about 10:30 Sunday night and we rejoiced! But it has been off most of the week, only coming on anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours at a time. You never know when or for how long. The other morning Ralph got a shower, but I only got a shampoo and the beginning of good rinse before the water quit. It wasn't on at all yesterday and so far only 10 minutes today. When Ralph went for Cokes Norma complained about it, and she never complains about anything. No laundry is getting done and the whole of the townsfolk are stinky and not as clean as we'd all like. Bucket/sponge baths are the order of the day. We are all thankful this is all we have to complain about after the fury of Lane...could have been much worse.
We were finally able to get an appointment with the oncologist for Ralph Wednesday evening in Mazatlan. Since the appointment wasn't until 5 pm we opted to spend the night in case he decided that some treatment should happen, we didn't know what to expect for sure. We were blessed to have Lidia along, both she and I along with Dr. Maldonado had nagged Ralph into the appointment!! Praise the Lord, Dr. Maldonado's surgery was completely successful, with no signs of a return of the lesion, the borders were completely clear on the pathology report! The oncologist gave him a good once over, recommended some moles come off, but nothing extreme or dangerous at this point. Just precautionary. He also recommended that a baseline thoracic x-ray be done just for safety's sake as well. We were all very happy campers!!
We also ran into Emilia and Hansi, Pastor Lupe's wife and daughter, while we were downtown for the doctor visit on Wednesday. It was good to see them and chat a bit. They are coming to visit La Cruz in November, but unfortunately it's the weekend after we leave for our vacation in the states, so we'll miss them this time around.
We actually took a little time to play in Mazatlan this time. Normally when we go it's for immigration or team meetings or mad shopping trips where we just run our legs off and come home cranky and tired. This time we explored in the Golden Zone shops, where most of the tourists stay, and we explored both malls that we know of and even took in a movie! First movie we've seen in a theater in about a year! Ralph said it was the first time he'd ever had fun in Mazatlan! We may try to spend another day off there next month and explore more of the town. We'd like to see more of the centro (the main marketing area downtown) and the historical center of town as well. Have to see how next month works out.
For the last couple of months we've been praying about whether or not to move from our apartment and we've been looking around a bit for another place to rent. There are hardly any rentals here, so it's very hard to find a place, and it's all word of mouth. We've been thinking we'd like a quieter spot, and somewhere in town where we'd have water more than half the time. A house rather than an apartment would be good too.
The street where we live now is very busy and consequently very noisy. Lots and lots of dump trucks, farm trucks and buses, plus all the normal traffic. And now we have two new neighbors, two single guys in the apartment upstairs from us who are VERY noisy. They stomp and clomp everywhere and yell to each other when they speak, not angry, just loud. They are both really nice guys, but they love to party and always have their music very loud. Then in the tiny three room apartment that's over the cocheras we lost Nicholas, a super quiet, shy doctor who lived there only briefly before landing a job in Culiacan and moving up there. Now there is a lady in that space that we never see, but she has her TV up full volume most of the time and cleans so much that our street is muddy all the way down to the intersection where the church is located. When we run our washer the water overflows the drain in our cochera and flows out to the Professor and Rosie's cochera, but that's about it. This lady uses so much water that the whole side of the street is muddy down to Miguel Hidalgo!! Goodness, that's a lot of water down the drain. Glad we are not sharing her bill!!
So we've continued to pray about another place, and this week Tom and Lidia let us know about a place they heard of, two bedrooms, separate bath with a sink no less and a yard with a covered area and a spot to park the truck. We did a drive by and stopped and talked with a few of the neighbors, trying to get together with the owner to see what's what. We'll keep you posted if we ever catch up with him or if he calls. We left our number with two of the neighbors we talked with.
Lidia and I had a girls night out before Lane hit last weekend. We went to the celebrations in our town plaza for Independence Day. Lidia's neighbor, Lucretia, and her young son went with us. We had a great time. There were traditional dance troupes performing and loads of music and food. I've never seen the plaza and the surrounding streets so crowded. It was really a lot of fun. Lidia even got a frappachino! There's a coffee shop across the street from the plaza, but I've only seen it open once! It was open that night and Lidia got her coffee fix!
Lidia and her frappachino
I also ran into a couple of folks that I knew in town too, so had a chance to visit a bit with them. We stayed all the way through until about 11:30 pm! At 11:00 the church bells ring out signifying the beginning of the battle, then fireworks are shot off. It was pretty spectacular! But the rains started and we walked back to the truck and got home before it really started to come down.
Setting up
Part of the fireworks set up
Independence Day wares
Dancers
Fireworks
More fireworks
Since Tom and Lidia's Suburban was on the fritz on Friday, I drove our truck to pickup Lidia and Lucretia and then downtown to the festivities. No big deal, right? Well, I haven't driven at all since October 14, 2005! That was the night I traded my car in when we bought the pickup! Ralph and I carpooled from that point on, with him driving as we finished out our working schedules, and he's driven every mile since then. So, it was a whole new experience driving the big pickup and tooling around and parking on the street in La Cruz! I did okay, but was too chicken to try to get it in the cohera for the night...just too narrow for me! So it spent the night parked on the street in front of the house and Ralph put it away before Lane hit with it's full fury!
A very joyful Pastor Jose stopped in to see us yesterday to let us know that Gloria and Mimi have returned home at long last. He's extremely happy! It was a long two months for him, being by himself, doing all the cooking and the cleaning! I've never seen him so happy. We are looking forward to seeing them in church tomorrow.
And we were finally able to do our video chat with Savannah on Tuesday, which is actually her birthday, though the party was held on Saturday! We were thrilled to see the kids and talk with them at length. Savannah has a loose tooth and got up close to the camera and gave it a good wiggle for us!! We are so thankful for this technology that lets us see and hear them live and completely free of charge. It is a tremendous blessing and makes it a tiny bit easier to be so far from them.
Even though things can be hard to cope with here sometimes, we do feel blessed and covered in prayer...and we are thankful to all of you for continuing to bring us before the Lord. Bless you for your faithfulness!
We were amazed that on Monday morning the plaza downtown didn't even look like a storm hit at all, totally free of debris and dirt. Only the missing pieces of the gazebo roof to tell the tale. The road grader has been out trying to smooth out the rain damaged dirt roads and many of them have been repaired this week while others remain big trenches that are impassible.
The biggest lingering effect is lack of water. Our water came on about 10:30 Sunday night and we rejoiced! But it has been off most of the week, only coming on anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours at a time. You never know when or for how long. The other morning Ralph got a shower, but I only got a shampoo and the beginning of good rinse before the water quit. It wasn't on at all yesterday and so far only 10 minutes today. When Ralph went for Cokes Norma complained about it, and she never complains about anything. No laundry is getting done and the whole of the townsfolk are stinky and not as clean as we'd all like. Bucket/sponge baths are the order of the day. We are all thankful this is all we have to complain about after the fury of Lane...could have been much worse.
We were finally able to get an appointment with the oncologist for Ralph Wednesday evening in Mazatlan. Since the appointment wasn't until 5 pm we opted to spend the night in case he decided that some treatment should happen, we didn't know what to expect for sure. We were blessed to have Lidia along, both she and I along with Dr. Maldonado had nagged Ralph into the appointment!! Praise the Lord, Dr. Maldonado's surgery was completely successful, with no signs of a return of the lesion, the borders were completely clear on the pathology report! The oncologist gave him a good once over, recommended some moles come off, but nothing extreme or dangerous at this point. Just precautionary. He also recommended that a baseline thoracic x-ray be done just for safety's sake as well. We were all very happy campers!!
We also ran into Emilia and Hansi, Pastor Lupe's wife and daughter, while we were downtown for the doctor visit on Wednesday. It was good to see them and chat a bit. They are coming to visit La Cruz in November, but unfortunately it's the weekend after we leave for our vacation in the states, so we'll miss them this time around.
We actually took a little time to play in Mazatlan this time. Normally when we go it's for immigration or team meetings or mad shopping trips where we just run our legs off and come home cranky and tired. This time we explored in the Golden Zone shops, where most of the tourists stay, and we explored both malls that we know of and even took in a movie! First movie we've seen in a theater in about a year! Ralph said it was the first time he'd ever had fun in Mazatlan! We may try to spend another day off there next month and explore more of the town. We'd like to see more of the centro (the main marketing area downtown) and the historical center of town as well. Have to see how next month works out.
For the last couple of months we've been praying about whether or not to move from our apartment and we've been looking around a bit for another place to rent. There are hardly any rentals here, so it's very hard to find a place, and it's all word of mouth. We've been thinking we'd like a quieter spot, and somewhere in town where we'd have water more than half the time. A house rather than an apartment would be good too.
The street where we live now is very busy and consequently very noisy. Lots and lots of dump trucks, farm trucks and buses, plus all the normal traffic. And now we have two new neighbors, two single guys in the apartment upstairs from us who are VERY noisy. They stomp and clomp everywhere and yell to each other when they speak, not angry, just loud. They are both really nice guys, but they love to party and always have their music very loud. Then in the tiny three room apartment that's over the cocheras we lost Nicholas, a super quiet, shy doctor who lived there only briefly before landing a job in Culiacan and moving up there. Now there is a lady in that space that we never see, but she has her TV up full volume most of the time and cleans so much that our street is muddy all the way down to the intersection where the church is located. When we run our washer the water overflows the drain in our cochera and flows out to the Professor and Rosie's cochera, but that's about it. This lady uses so much water that the whole side of the street is muddy down to Miguel Hidalgo!! Goodness, that's a lot of water down the drain. Glad we are not sharing her bill!!
So we've continued to pray about another place, and this week Tom and Lidia let us know about a place they heard of, two bedrooms, separate bath with a sink no less and a yard with a covered area and a spot to park the truck. We did a drive by and stopped and talked with a few of the neighbors, trying to get together with the owner to see what's what. We'll keep you posted if we ever catch up with him or if he calls. We left our number with two of the neighbors we talked with.
Lidia and I had a girls night out before Lane hit last weekend. We went to the celebrations in our town plaza for Independence Day. Lidia's neighbor, Lucretia, and her young son went with us. We had a great time. There were traditional dance troupes performing and loads of music and food. I've never seen the plaza and the surrounding streets so crowded. It was really a lot of fun. Lidia even got a frappachino! There's a coffee shop across the street from the plaza, but I've only seen it open once! It was open that night and Lidia got her coffee fix!
Lidia and her frappachino
I also ran into a couple of folks that I knew in town too, so had a chance to visit a bit with them. We stayed all the way through until about 11:30 pm! At 11:00 the church bells ring out signifying the beginning of the battle, then fireworks are shot off. It was pretty spectacular! But the rains started and we walked back to the truck and got home before it really started to come down.
Setting up
Part of the fireworks set up
Independence Day wares
Dancers
Fireworks
More fireworks
Since Tom and Lidia's Suburban was on the fritz on Friday, I drove our truck to pickup Lidia and Lucretia and then downtown to the festivities. No big deal, right? Well, I haven't driven at all since October 14, 2005! That was the night I traded my car in when we bought the pickup! Ralph and I carpooled from that point on, with him driving as we finished out our working schedules, and he's driven every mile since then. So, it was a whole new experience driving the big pickup and tooling around and parking on the street in La Cruz! I did okay, but was too chicken to try to get it in the cohera for the night...just too narrow for me! So it spent the night parked on the street in front of the house and Ralph put it away before Lane hit with it's full fury!
A very joyful Pastor Jose stopped in to see us yesterday to let us know that Gloria and Mimi have returned home at long last. He's extremely happy! It was a long two months for him, being by himself, doing all the cooking and the cleaning! I've never seen him so happy. We are looking forward to seeing them in church tomorrow.
And we were finally able to do our video chat with Savannah on Tuesday, which is actually her birthday, though the party was held on Saturday! We were thrilled to see the kids and talk with them at length. Savannah has a loose tooth and got up close to the camera and gave it a good wiggle for us!! We are so thankful for this technology that lets us see and hear them live and completely free of charge. It is a tremendous blessing and makes it a tiny bit easier to be so far from them.
Even though things can be hard to cope with here sometimes, we do feel blessed and covered in prayer...and we are thankful to all of you for continuing to bring us before the Lord. Bless you for your faithfulness!
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Aftermath of Hurricane Lane
Well, Lane came onshore just south of us a bit as a category 3 hurricane, with 125 mph winds. Praise the Lord, we haven’t heard of any major injuries or deaths related to the storm, at least around here. But we did miss being live for Savannah’s birthday party on Saturday…no power, no internet, no party for us! Darane’ has already sent us a bunch of pictures though, and we hope to talk with them later today.
Lane blew pretty well, rained pretty well too. It took our power and water beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday. Power was just restored about 2 p.m. today! We still have no water, but we’ve seen the Japame trucks out and about so we are pretty sure it’s just a matter of time.
Blessedly, we only had one broken window, and our door to the service patio, which has been stuck closed for months due the building settling, blew open and sucked a towel, two pictures and Ralph’s cowboy hat out through the open front door…all were retrieved and we got the service patio door closed again thankfully!! Water came in through every closed door and window and we sopped it up with towels and the back walls in both bedrooms are soaked through three quarters of the way down the walls. That was it for us.
Not everything in town got away as well as we did. Here are the pictures we took as we walked around town visiting folks this morning:
Blown in trash, fallen cocos, palm fronds, and lots of water on the patio:
Parts of Juan Manuel’s tree all over the road:
The wind and rain actually took the paint off on the apartment above Jacobo’s! It used to be white like the rest of the building.
Marta’s trees lost a lot of branches and the electrical pole came down!
Our neighbor’s guava tree, used to be just outside our bedroom window, now uprooted and on the neighbor’s fence:
Our neighbor’s across the street lost most of the tin roof of their garage:
The river flowing full and fast in the background, a ruined road and downed trees, about five blocks from our house:
There’s a pharmacy up the hill from us that lost it’s big, curved plate glass windows in the wind!
The tree in the Red Cross clinic parking lot…blown over and took out the concrete and rebar post as well as two lengths of iron fencing with it.
Only three story commercial building in La Cruz, windows blown out. It’s been empty and for sale since we’ve been here.
One of the many trees that line the streets downtown.
A tree’s branches broke off and fell on this parked truck.
Mexico’s Independence Day celebrations began Friday night and were to continue on Saturday, but Lane had other plans…these were some of the food booths near the plaza.
The roof of the gazebo in the plaza was heavily damaged.
One of the plaza shops that occupy a historic building downtown lost it’s awning.
This and several other directional and business signs were down from the wind:
The clock on the tower of the Catholic church is destroyed:
The CFE troops getting ready to hit the road for electrical repairs…there were lots of lines down.
This electrical sign came right off a building, ripping the wires loose:
Valdez, where we bought our refrigerator and washer, lost their half wall above their entryway:
A wall that surrounds a vacant lot downtown partially came down:
Our wet bedroom wall:
Friday, September 15, 2006
Update on Lane
Well, this guy has turned our direction rather than out into the Pacific! So we are now under a hurricane warning from mid-day Saturday through mid-day Sunday, when it’s expected to come onshore to the north of us. Doesn’t look likely, but it’s still our prayer this thing loses steam or moves out to sea before it gets to the Baja!!
We’ve had no official warnings on this from local government, and they are going full steam ahead on the Independence Day celebrations for tonight and tomorrow, and most people say that hurricanes are extremely rare here. So, we’ll just keep watch and stay in prayer about this.
This is the tracking web site if you are interested in following Lane’s progress:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
We’ve had no official warnings on this from local government, and they are going full steam ahead on the Independence Day celebrations for tonight and tomorrow, and most people say that hurricanes are extremely rare here. So, we’ll just keep watch and stay in prayer about this.
This is the tracking web site if you are interested in following Lane’s progress:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Hurricane Lane
Just thought we’d put out a quick note since this hurricane is in the news today. When John came through a couple of weeks back several of you were concerned for our welfare, and we appreciate that and thank you for your prayers and concerns!
It looks like Lane will miss us, and will go straight up the Baja much as John did. We’ll likely get some wind and rain from this, and that’s about it. Please keep the folks on the Mexican coast and the Baja in prayer. We hope that Lane takes a turn out into the Pacific and breaks up.
If you want to keep track of the hurricane’s progress here’s the web site:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
Scroll down past the Atlantic - Caribbean storms and you’ll find the Easter Pacific storms to see the charts available for Lane. We tend to use the five day warning cone and the tropical storm wind speed probability charts. These are updated several times a day. To locate where we are find the tip of the Baja, we are across from the tip and slightly north.
Love and blessings,
Ralph and Chris
It looks like Lane will miss us, and will go straight up the Baja much as John did. We’ll likely get some wind and rain from this, and that’s about it. Please keep the folks on the Mexican coast and the Baja in prayer. We hope that Lane takes a turn out into the Pacific and breaks up.
If you want to keep track of the hurricane’s progress here’s the web site:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
Scroll down past the Atlantic - Caribbean storms and you’ll find the Easter Pacific storms to see the charts available for Lane. We tend to use the five day warning cone and the tropical storm wind speed probability charts. These are updated several times a day. To locate where we are find the tip of the Baja, we are across from the tip and slightly north.
Love and blessings,
Ralph and Chris
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Cranky and sleepless
I'm having one of "those" kind of weeks. For the last three nights I haven't been sleeping well, two of the three nights I was up from two a.m. on and nauseated to boot. Not fun. And the weird thing is that I can't even catch up with a nap in the afternoon. I lay down, but no luck. Then this morning our water didn't come back on...so I officially caved into crankiness. No sleep AND no shower??? I made do with a sponge bath and then treated myself to strawberry yogurt for breakfast.
We've been frustrated in our attempts to make an appointment with the oncologist for Ralph too...every time we call, no matter what time of day we got this brief little message saying we'd reached the doctors office and thanks. Huh? Nothing about leaving a message to call back, nothing about being out of the office. Couldn't figure it out. So today we talked with Lidia about it and it's one of those cultural learning opportunities. They do not answer the phone at the clinic. People know they need to leave their name and number and they will get a call back. Okey-dokey then...Ralph just did that! So now we are waiting for a call back. We may get this all figured out or we may not...so much to learn all the time. Please pray for a quick call back and clear communications for the visit.
And speaking of learning, I think that both Ralph and Tom have now passed me by in Spanish learning. I have been feeling so stuck lately and they both seem to be moving forward. I've been asking for the gift of Spanish language for about a year now, and have made some small progress, but still have such a long way to go...and I get frustrated. When I paid the phone bill at Letty's this morning the guy couldn't understand me when I said my phone number and I had to write it out for him!!! That's bad! There was a guy named Manual standing next to me and he said he understood me, be he wasn't the one taking the money! He encouraged me to hang in there and not be discouraged, that the language would come in time...please keep our language acquisition in your prayers.
We've had another change in the weather too after a couple of weeks of ever decreasing temps, from hovering around 100 to blissfully down to the 80 and low 90s!! It was a wonderful break. But now we are now back up into the high 90s for this entire week. We've had no rain at all for about five days, so it makes us wonder: What happened to the rainy season? Ralph said yesterday this is the first time in his life he's been looking forward to having summer end!
You know that when we have big storms we have several power outages each night caused by the storms. One night last week our power went out every hour on the hour between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. It would come on anywhere between five and 20 minutes before the top of the hour and then would go out again!! Weird thing was we were not having a storm...the sky was perfectly clear and the moon was shining brightly...still, multiple power outages! No one has a clue about what might have caused it.
The whole town is gearing up for Independence day celebrations coming this weekend...Saturday is Independence Day in Mexico. We already have decorations up in most of the businesses and in both major squares and on the municipal building. We have at least three street vendors selling flags, drums and little ornaments from push carts. Looks like the celebrations here will be a very big deal for sure. Can't wait to see how things go.
Friday we were blessed with a "care" package from my co-workers in Washington! What a treasure it is too...chock full of all kinds of goodies!! All things we can't get here!! Straight cheese crunchy cheetos, Skittles, chocolate chips and baking chocolate, craisins, salty nut and sweet granola bars (my fav!) Motor Trend and Car and Driver mags for Ralph and paperback novels for both of us!! Plus a huge jar of extra crunchy peanut butter, which we can get here, but we have to vigilant and it comes in tiny little jars! Goodness, what a blessing it was to get all that stuff. We are thoroughly enjoying everything and are truly thankful. Thanks a bunch guys!
Thankfully, today was our day to worship together and break bread (tortillas, actually) with the Lumppios!! Thank the Lord. We had a nice time of worship together, Tom led a great study and we had communion. Then we had a nice meal that Lidia prepared. I brought dessert...international magic cookie bars: Minnesota graham crackers, Washington chocolate chips and the rest was local ingredients! It made for a really nice time. It helped me lose my crankies and when we got home our water came on within minutes. Praise the LORD!
My friend Dana sent me this little movie and it's something that Pastor Andrea taught on in July of last year. She called it "A divine appointment". Both messages encourage you to make the most of your "dash". The afternoon Pastor Andrea preached this message, one of our church family who was always making the most of her dash, tragically died in a motorcycle accident. This is a great little movie, very beautiful. Thanks Dana for reminding me to make my dash count for something...
http://www.thedashmovie.com
Love and blessings,
Ralph & Chris
We've been frustrated in our attempts to make an appointment with the oncologist for Ralph too...every time we call, no matter what time of day we got this brief little message saying we'd reached the doctors office and thanks. Huh? Nothing about leaving a message to call back, nothing about being out of the office. Couldn't figure it out. So today we talked with Lidia about it and it's one of those cultural learning opportunities. They do not answer the phone at the clinic. People know they need to leave their name and number and they will get a call back. Okey-dokey then...Ralph just did that! So now we are waiting for a call back. We may get this all figured out or we may not...so much to learn all the time. Please pray for a quick call back and clear communications for the visit.
And speaking of learning, I think that both Ralph and Tom have now passed me by in Spanish learning. I have been feeling so stuck lately and they both seem to be moving forward. I've been asking for the gift of Spanish language for about a year now, and have made some small progress, but still have such a long way to go...and I get frustrated. When I paid the phone bill at Letty's this morning the guy couldn't understand me when I said my phone number and I had to write it out for him!!! That's bad! There was a guy named Manual standing next to me and he said he understood me, be he wasn't the one taking the money! He encouraged me to hang in there and not be discouraged, that the language would come in time...please keep our language acquisition in your prayers.
We've had another change in the weather too after a couple of weeks of ever decreasing temps, from hovering around 100 to blissfully down to the 80 and low 90s!! It was a wonderful break. But now we are now back up into the high 90s for this entire week. We've had no rain at all for about five days, so it makes us wonder: What happened to the rainy season? Ralph said yesterday this is the first time in his life he's been looking forward to having summer end!
You know that when we have big storms we have several power outages each night caused by the storms. One night last week our power went out every hour on the hour between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. It would come on anywhere between five and 20 minutes before the top of the hour and then would go out again!! Weird thing was we were not having a storm...the sky was perfectly clear and the moon was shining brightly...still, multiple power outages! No one has a clue about what might have caused it.
The whole town is gearing up for Independence day celebrations coming this weekend...Saturday is Independence Day in Mexico. We already have decorations up in most of the businesses and in both major squares and on the municipal building. We have at least three street vendors selling flags, drums and little ornaments from push carts. Looks like the celebrations here will be a very big deal for sure. Can't wait to see how things go.
Friday we were blessed with a "care" package from my co-workers in Washington! What a treasure it is too...chock full of all kinds of goodies!! All things we can't get here!! Straight cheese crunchy cheetos, Skittles, chocolate chips and baking chocolate, craisins, salty nut and sweet granola bars (my fav!) Motor Trend and Car and Driver mags for Ralph and paperback novels for both of us!! Plus a huge jar of extra crunchy peanut butter, which we can get here, but we have to vigilant and it comes in tiny little jars! Goodness, what a blessing it was to get all that stuff. We are thoroughly enjoying everything and are truly thankful. Thanks a bunch guys!
Thankfully, today was our day to worship together and break bread (tortillas, actually) with the Lumppios!! Thank the Lord. We had a nice time of worship together, Tom led a great study and we had communion. Then we had a nice meal that Lidia prepared. I brought dessert...international magic cookie bars: Minnesota graham crackers, Washington chocolate chips and the rest was local ingredients! It made for a really nice time. It helped me lose my crankies and when we got home our water came on within minutes. Praise the LORD!
My friend Dana sent me this little movie and it's something that Pastor Andrea taught on in July of last year. She called it "A divine appointment". Both messages encourage you to make the most of your "dash". The afternoon Pastor Andrea preached this message, one of our church family who was always making the most of her dash, tragically died in a motorcycle accident. This is a great little movie, very beautiful. Thanks Dana for reminding me to make my dash count for something...
http://www.thedashmovie.com
Love and blessings,
Ralph & Chris
Monday, September 4, 2006
Birthdays, camps, Pastor Lupe, hurricanes, immigration and doctors!!
First of all, Happy Birthday Marina! Today’s your day!
Additionally, my brother Randy’s birthday is the 10th and Savannah’s 6th birthday is on the 19th (party on the 16th, we get to participate a little via live video over the internet!) and then Lidia’s birthday is the 27th!
The guy’s visits to the camps last week had mixed results. We were really encouraged to find a wonderful working model of a camp church already in place in Campo Cinco. The guys were invited to come and observe the service and it was great. There were about 100 people in attendance (the camp will have about 2,000 people when it’s at full capacity) and there is a pastor in residence at the camp! He holds services twice a week in a building provided by the camp owners no less! What a blessing. It would be wonderful to duplicate this success in the camps that we visit and we’ll be doing a lot of praying in the hope that the Lord will make a way for church services in ALL of the camps!
The visits to Campo Santa Lucia and San Juan were the usual little bit of run around…they were told by the folks in the office for those two camps that they’ll need to have a card in order to visit. Never needed one before, and they actually visited both camps on the same day as the office visit and were never asked for the card. Oh well. The camp officials asked them to come back in November to get the card, perhaps they’ll require it after that. Please pray that the camps would remain open to visits.
Several of you wrote after hearing US reports about hurricane John’s path…and for a couple of days it was projected to come near us, but as things do with those weather systems, things changed and it moved away from us, praise the Lord. We did get some heavy rains and winds (and a little water in the kitchen again) on Thursday night, but then it did a left turn and went out more to the Baja. Thankfully, as it traveled up the Baja it lost speed and was downgraded to a tropical depression. It did drop a lot of rain on the Baja though, 20 inches in some places and that is a total desert environment so there was a lot of flash flooding. Overall there wasn’t much damage because it’s pretty sparsely populated. The storm pretty much skirted around the resort communities on the tip of the Baja. If you ever want to track storms you hear about, here’s the web site that we use: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ You’ll want to scroll down to the Eastern Pacific information and the maps that we tend to follow are the tropical wind speed and the 5 day warning cone. La Cruz is just opposite the tip of the Baja peninsula and slightly north.
We had lunch with Pastor Lupe and his wife Emilia in Mazatlan last week and had a good time getting to know them a little better. We just tend not to see them too much. They are doing fine, and are excited to go to Alberta Canada to speak at a church there during Holy Week this coming spring. They are also involved in the local organizing for the Billy Graham television broadcast that is coming in November, hoping to encourage as many people as possible to watch the broadcast. Please pray that the Mexican people would tune into this broadcast and hear the message of hope in Christ.
Pastor Lupe also did the newest required letter for immigration and it’s now in their hands…and of course they couldn’t say if this was all they would need or when we might expect the visa. Ralph is thinking we’ll give them a couple of weeks and then give a call, hoping they have it worked out at last. Continued prayer on this issue wouldn’t hurt!
My cousin Donna did well in her surgery on Thursday, praise the Lord. I talked with her and her daughter Julie on Friday and both seemed pretty chipper. They’ll get the biopsy results this week, and Donna should be able to leave the hospital later this week too! Then several weeks of home recovery and she should be back on her feet. Thank you for your prayers.
And speaking of biopsy results, Ralph’s are back and the lesion that was removed from his scalp was malignant after all. So Dr. Maldonado has referred him to see an oncologist in Mazatlan. That will happen in the next couple of weeks. Both the doc and Ralph feel it is a precautionary visit, just to be on the safe side. Ralph has had many skin cancers removed over the years, a few of those have been malignant and have not required treatment because of all of the cells were removed by wide margins when the original surgeries were done. As the doc says about this one, he went deep and wide to remove all traces of this thing, but he wants to be completely sure nothing more is needed! Gotta love that kind of follow through. Please pray for clear communications and a clean bill of health. It is somewhat more difficult to communicate medically in Spanish than in every day conversations. It’s really important to be clearly understood and to clearly understand!!
Please pray for Lidia as well. We watched the Lumppio girls the other night while Tom took Lidia into see the doc as she’s been struggling with a chain of infections that have kept her feeling pretty crummy. She’s on a new treatment presently and is hoping that will get rid of everything once and for all! That’s our prayer too.
Thanks to Bob and Sue for a new set of Pastor Bill’s sermons!!! Love getting them…gives us a taste of our home church!
Thanks so much to all of you for your notes, cards, pictures, e-mails and prayers! They are so important to us!
Additionally, my brother Randy’s birthday is the 10th and Savannah’s 6th birthday is on the 19th (party on the 16th, we get to participate a little via live video over the internet!) and then Lidia’s birthday is the 27th!
The guy’s visits to the camps last week had mixed results. We were really encouraged to find a wonderful working model of a camp church already in place in Campo Cinco. The guys were invited to come and observe the service and it was great. There were about 100 people in attendance (the camp will have about 2,000 people when it’s at full capacity) and there is a pastor in residence at the camp! He holds services twice a week in a building provided by the camp owners no less! What a blessing. It would be wonderful to duplicate this success in the camps that we visit and we’ll be doing a lot of praying in the hope that the Lord will make a way for church services in ALL of the camps!
The visits to Campo Santa Lucia and San Juan were the usual little bit of run around…they were told by the folks in the office for those two camps that they’ll need to have a card in order to visit. Never needed one before, and they actually visited both camps on the same day as the office visit and were never asked for the card. Oh well. The camp officials asked them to come back in November to get the card, perhaps they’ll require it after that. Please pray that the camps would remain open to visits.
Several of you wrote after hearing US reports about hurricane John’s path…and for a couple of days it was projected to come near us, but as things do with those weather systems, things changed and it moved away from us, praise the Lord. We did get some heavy rains and winds (and a little water in the kitchen again) on Thursday night, but then it did a left turn and went out more to the Baja. Thankfully, as it traveled up the Baja it lost speed and was downgraded to a tropical depression. It did drop a lot of rain on the Baja though, 20 inches in some places and that is a total desert environment so there was a lot of flash flooding. Overall there wasn’t much damage because it’s pretty sparsely populated. The storm pretty much skirted around the resort communities on the tip of the Baja. If you ever want to track storms you hear about, here’s the web site that we use: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ You’ll want to scroll down to the Eastern Pacific information and the maps that we tend to follow are the tropical wind speed and the 5 day warning cone. La Cruz is just opposite the tip of the Baja peninsula and slightly north.
We had lunch with Pastor Lupe and his wife Emilia in Mazatlan last week and had a good time getting to know them a little better. We just tend not to see them too much. They are doing fine, and are excited to go to Alberta Canada to speak at a church there during Holy Week this coming spring. They are also involved in the local organizing for the Billy Graham television broadcast that is coming in November, hoping to encourage as many people as possible to watch the broadcast. Please pray that the Mexican people would tune into this broadcast and hear the message of hope in Christ.
Pastor Lupe also did the newest required letter for immigration and it’s now in their hands…and of course they couldn’t say if this was all they would need or when we might expect the visa. Ralph is thinking we’ll give them a couple of weeks and then give a call, hoping they have it worked out at last. Continued prayer on this issue wouldn’t hurt!
My cousin Donna did well in her surgery on Thursday, praise the Lord. I talked with her and her daughter Julie on Friday and both seemed pretty chipper. They’ll get the biopsy results this week, and Donna should be able to leave the hospital later this week too! Then several weeks of home recovery and she should be back on her feet. Thank you for your prayers.
And speaking of biopsy results, Ralph’s are back and the lesion that was removed from his scalp was malignant after all. So Dr. Maldonado has referred him to see an oncologist in Mazatlan. That will happen in the next couple of weeks. Both the doc and Ralph feel it is a precautionary visit, just to be on the safe side. Ralph has had many skin cancers removed over the years, a few of those have been malignant and have not required treatment because of all of the cells were removed by wide margins when the original surgeries were done. As the doc says about this one, he went deep and wide to remove all traces of this thing, but he wants to be completely sure nothing more is needed! Gotta love that kind of follow through. Please pray for clear communications and a clean bill of health. It is somewhat more difficult to communicate medically in Spanish than in every day conversations. It’s really important to be clearly understood and to clearly understand!!
Please pray for Lidia as well. We watched the Lumppio girls the other night while Tom took Lidia into see the doc as she’s been struggling with a chain of infections that have kept her feeling pretty crummy. She’s on a new treatment presently and is hoping that will get rid of everything once and for all! That’s our prayer too.
Thanks to Bob and Sue for a new set of Pastor Bill’s sermons!!! Love getting them…gives us a taste of our home church!
Thanks so much to all of you for your notes, cards, pictures, e-mails and prayers! They are so important to us!
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