Messages: December 2006

Ah, yes. Home in La Cruz. Thanks so much for your prayers!!

We had a fabulous time in Washington seeing family and friends, but have to admit we were ready to come home. We were pretty exhausted but happy to have had so many wonderful reunions with everyone. It was great. Still we didn’t do everything and see everyone we wanted to, but I’m not sure how we could have squeezed in more.

It made us sad to see our grandkids crying as we left…broke our hearts. Savannah has decided we need to move closer so they can drive to see us like before. She needs to talk to God on that one! Thankfully, we’ll get back into our video routine with them to lessen the blow of not being together.

Our travel home was interesting but on the whole pretty uneventful. For the first time since 9/11 our luggage wasn’t searched by the TSA when we’ve flown!! And in Phoenix we discovered (actually the airline discovered) that our boarding passes issued in Seattle were not the right type, so us and several dozen others lined up at the podium to get new passes and have our documents inspected again. All in all it went pretty smoothly.

Arriving in Mexico we stood in a very long line of folks waiting for the three customs agents. When we got to the head of that line they moved us to another line! Then we got to see the customs guy, he stamped and inspected all of our documents, handed them all back and sent us on our way. We got all the way to the end of the hall near the baggage claim when they called us back…seems he forgot to collect the little papers we had to fill out at the airport when we left. He looked at them, dated them, initialed them and handed them back. Oooops. He should have kept them. We handed them over and were back on our way to collect our bags. Then another long line to put our bags through the one giant x-ray machine they have. Then we collected them and entered yet another line. Finally our turn came and Ralph walked up to the little stop light, hit the button and we got a green!! So we were off and running. Thankfully no inspection of our overstuffed bags. My big fear was once we got them open and rummaged through we’d never get them closed again!

The Jackson family met us at the airport and it was great to see them again. We had comida together and then they dropped us at the bus depot to head home to La Cruz. Just as we arrived the luggage guys said we needed to hurry as the bus was just getting ready to leave. They rushed our six bags around to the bus as we ran inside to get tickets and then out the back and onto the bus…just made it. We reached La Cruz just as the sun was setting and took a moment to enjoy God’s handiwork. Then we hauled the bags up the hill from the highway to wait for a taxi or arana to take us home. One came along soon enough and within 10 minutes we were home!!

We unpacked just a little, both grabbed showers, changed the bed linens and hit the hay by about 8:30. We were totally running on empty after sleeping only two hours the previous night and then traveling all day. It was good to get a nights rest in our own bed.

Tom had given us a heads up that our water was mostly just a drizzle still, so we were prepared for that, but were thankful to get even a drizzle of a shower after such a long day!

Candy came by first thing yesterday to show us how much Kitzia has grown! It’s amazing how much that little one had grown in just a month. Luis seemed his same happy self! They were happy that we were home. We mentioned the water problems and she said, it’s fixed…and showed me that Eva was watering down the end of the block. We looked and found that someone had turned our water off at the meter! One flip of the handle and we were back in business! Yippee!

Ralph wandered down to Norma’s to restock his cokes, and she too was happy that we are back! We wandered over to the Tom and Lidia’s and had a good reunion with them and brought them all the goodies they had ordered from the states. It was sort of like Christmas all over for them. They brought us up-to-date on the happenings in La Cruz.

Then we were off the the MZ to pick up groceries and semi-restock the kitchen. It was good to get back into some routines! As we were driving through town we were able to greet several people that we know, and even got a look at the giant Christmas tree in the plaza!

When we got home we couldn’t get the door to unlock!! Try as we may, it wouldn’t budge! And our landlord is in Culiacan and won’t be back until later today. What to do? Ralph walked down to Juan Manuel’s and he came back and tried but had no luck either. They finally decided to see if Juan Jr. would fit through the bars on the windows, and bless his little heart he did slide through just barely and got us inside!! We rewarded him with candy and granola bars. It’s such a blessing to have such great neighbors!

Darwin will be spending Saturday, Sunday and Monday with us and has two fellows visiting that will be bunking in with Tom and Lidia. They will be visiting the camps.

Bottom line is, we are happy to be home and are looking forward to our next year in Mexico. We appreciate your prayers so much and thank you for them! Blessings in the new year!

One short year in a tropical environment and you really forget what winter is like in Washington. Cold, dark, gray, windy, rainy, and throw in a little snow and ice. But amazingly, we are adapting again. The rains have been reserving themselves mostly for night, which is good, because the traffic is pretty awful and adding rainy conditions to it would make it worse for Ralph. Yep, I’m still not driving. Thought I might when we got up here, but I’ve decided to continue my role as passenger!

We are having a blast with the kids and with friends and family. It’s been kinda of crazy busy, but good. I’ve had a nasty sinus infection and finally went to the local doc in a box location and got a shot and some humongous antibiotic pills and I’m doing much better.

Our friend Erv had a stroke a few days ago and gave us all a scare, but he’s doing great and is moving today to a hospital rehab where he’ll be for the next three to five weeks. He’s making great progress and has a great attitude about his recovery and we are thankful. Please keep him and his family in your prayers as he recovers.

I’d like to share just a couple of pictures of the trip so far…

The turkey chef