Odds and ends for March

Gosh, in a couple of days we will have been in Mazatlan a whole month. Doesn’t seem possible. The time has gone by so quickly it’s just been amazing. But we are really feeling settled in and are adjusting pretty well to life here.

Pastor Lupe and his wife Emilia left on Monday for a two week visit to Alberta Canada. They’ll be speaking at some churches and also visiting the Canadian Lutheran Bible Institute for a talk there, and will also be at the annual meeting for WMPL Canada. So their plates will be full. They have a couple that will be interpreting for them during the whole visit, former Mexico field missionaries, the Gomez family. We’ve met the Gomez family a couple of times when they’ve visited here and they are really nice. Lupe and Emilia were very excited about the trip, they’ve never flown before and never been to Canada. They were a little concerned about how cold it was going to be though, but were excited and happy just the same. Please pray for uneventful travel and good opportunities to share about Mexico and the Lord’s work here as they visit our northern brethren!

We did go back to immigration a week ago to get our revised visas and we could not believe the crowd there, more than 35 people in the work area and more loitering about outside. It was pretty crazy. But we still got our documents in less than 45 minutes, not sure what the system is, but there were still about 35 people there when we left too, many of them the same folks as when we got there. But we were thankful to have the visas back with a minimum of hassle and no expenses at all save for the cost of 10 photocopies! Praise the Lord!

Our biggest achievement this week is that after much searching and praying we have found a language school and enrolled…we’ve already had a couple of classes and think it’s going to be great. We’ve learned quite a bit already and we have a wonderful teacher who is quite patient and who has a grasp of where we are and where we need to be language-wise. It’s a very personal approach to teaching, and there are only two others in the class so we all get the attention we need. We couldn’t be happier. Praise the Lord!

The afternoon we enrolled in school we needed to go down to centro to purchase books for the class, the only place in town that has them is a small bookstore near Plaza Machado. So off we go on the bus and then walk from the bus to the plaza only to find the bookstore was closed!! But we discovered the whole plaza had been taken over by booksellers and people lecturing on books!! So we hunted for the stall of the bookstore we were interested in and she happily went down to her closed store and got the books for us. Yippee! Nice to not have to make another trip and also nice to be able to explore the book fair a bit as a bonus!

We were blessed to be able to go with Carmen and Genaro this past Saturday as they visited and evangelized in a neighborhood near here called Valle del Ejido. They are so good at what they do because they are so down to earth and so grounded in the Word!! This little neighborhood will eventually be home to a new mission church, and getting to know the folks here is part of the process. We had some really touching moments and a really funny moment too when one of the ladies we were visiting with suddenly asked Carmen if Ralph was her dad. After we all laughed a bit about it she explained that no, he wasn’t her dad, but a friend and brother in Christ!! Ralph was thinking he wasn’t old enough to be her dad and was about to feel insulted a bit when he did the math and realized that YEP he was old enough to be her dad after all. Pretty funny. We also had an age related comment from our instructor at school too…he thinks it’s just wonderful that folks our age are learning a new language!! We must be getting up there!!

This week also brought farewells as the Jacksons packed up to head north to Nogales, then to Minneapolis for debriefing and then on to Lake Stevens, WA for six months of furlough. They’ll return to Nogales to work with the churches there beginning in the fall. They gave a lot of stuff away, sold a lot of stuff and ended up packing the truck and trailer twice before they got everything down to the essentials of life and were ready to hit the road. Sounds like us in January of 06!! We made a couple of trips over to their house and back with truckloads of stuff for Carmen and Genaro…and also to take them to lunch before they headed out of town. We’ll miss having them around and are praying for good rest and reunions for them and completely uneventful travel as they make their way to the northwest.

And we finally got our taxes done this week…I started them in January, but we were waiting on some docs to arrive from the states, and then you throw in moving and they really got on the back burner. More than a bit I guess. But they are done now and we are thankful. Not sure when I would have found the time now that we are in school.

Last but not least Benito Juárez Day was celebrated here on March 21, and we had a little parade through our neighborhood with all the little girls who were vying to become queen of their various schools…brightly decorated pulmonias were their mode of transportation. Lots of music, horn honking and the setting off of more than a few car alarms…they made sure you knew they were in the neighborhood!

Big city life, small city life and life on the rancho

Though I was born and raised in a big city, later in life I decided I don’t like it much…way too hectic and crazy for me. I really prefer a smaller city or town. La Cruz was just my speed. Getting used to life here hasn’t been as bad as I thought though. I love having water 24 hours a day every day…that’s a definite plus for the big city. We haven’t been without water once since we’ve been here, and have only had one brief power failure. We never had water at night in La Cruz and there were many days when we didn’t have it either all or part of the day. Power failures in La Cruz, while brief, were much more frequent.

I also love the really cheap and convenient bus service. In La Cruz you could easily walk wherever you needed or wanted to go, but here you can’t and since I’m not driving the bus is the answer. Four and a half pesos and 25 minutes and the bus literally takes me from my door all the way down to the mercado downtown. That’s a bargain. We even take the bus to church…drops us just a little over two blocks from church and only a little more than a block back to catch it home. Easy!! Sometimes Carmen and Genaro give us a lift home.

The people here are a bit harder to get to know than in La Cruz, they are friendly, just busier, not so much time to chat. That will take a bit of getting used to. And I do miss the little things of a small town. Nobody on horseback here. No horse drawn veggie cart coming door to door. No tractors on main street that’s for sure. We miss seeing Kitzia every day. We miss seeing Tom and Lidia and the girls.

But, our neighborhood here is MUCH more quiet than in La Cruz. No big dump trucks, farm trucks, farm equipment and beer trucks lumbering by at all hours. And our streets are paved. Don’t have to dust and sweep nearly as much. That’s definitely a plus!! And we do have great neighbors.

Henry (Enrique) and Maribel have had us over for BBQ, it was great!! And Henry helped Ralph learn how to change the water filter…although neither of them knew that the casing had a crack that had been sealed to prevent a leak, so when they unscrewed the casing to change the filter the seal was broken and the leak began! We had quite a mud pie when they were done. In the end they put in the new filter and sealed it all up with silicon. End of the leak, and we likely won’t be changing the filter again soon, as we discovered that the tinaco on the roof doesn’t have a lid. No sense in filtering water from the street into a storage tank on the roof that isn’t sealed. That’s a project for another day (or week or month).

We also have been trying, rather unsuccessfully to find a language school here. There are about a half dozen in town, but trying to get unbiased information has been tougher than we thought. We want to choose carefully. Please keep this in prayer.

This week also brought the great blessing of a visit from our friends and prayer partners Grant and Ronna and their family. We dropped in at the timeshare they were staying at and took them grocery shopping. Then they opted to ride along with us when we went to La Cruz to pick up the last of our stuff from the apartment and they were able to meet some of our neighbors/friends from there, Yolanda, Judith and Ivana and Maria and Eva. We also celebrated Grant’s birthday (and his sister-in-law Brandee’s) with a sunset dinner one evening. It was wonderful that they included us in this event. They also brought a wonderful care package for us (including my favorite dark chocolate and my favorite pickles!!!) and some great stuffed animals for the kids in the orphanages! Thanks guys!! You are a great blessing to us.

Also made our visit to Immigration…ah yes!! We must notify them of our change of location. We went with a bit of trepidation after our woes with them last year. However, Betty, the wonderful woman at the front desk told us “Cambio de domicilio is facil”, meaning it’s easy to change residence. It really was!! Within an hour we had completed two forms each, gone down the street for the 10 photocopies we needed and were back in the office. We are to go back tomorrow to pick up our corrected visas. Yippee!

Church in Mazatlan has been pretty nice. The people are wonderful and the services are filled with music and good preaching. We’ve been going to the Sunday services, which are from 5-7 p.m. and also to the Wednesday prayer service from 6-7 p.m. We’ve also been to a couple of meetings there as well. We hope to get out to the church in El Castillo soon and visit the folks there as well.

Today was a holiday, so we used our day off to go with Carmen, Genaro and Fanny out to Carmen’s family home in Potorillos, a very small town about an hour south of here near El Rosario. What a day…we had never traveled south before and we drove on two lane blacktop through dozens of small farms, an egg ranch and acres and acres of mango orchards! It was very cool.

Carmen’s family is just as warm and wonderful as she is. Her brother Poncho and his wife Marta were there (they live here in Mazatlan) and we also met two of her sisters, a sister-in-law, her dad and loads of nieces and nephews. One of the nephews was celebrating his birthday. We had a great comida of carne asada (BBQ beef) with freshly made roasted tomato and pepper salsa, tortillas and frijole charro. Never had beans made that way before, chorizo (spicy sausage), ham, bacon, hot dogs and beans. Really yummy. They gave us each a big soup bowl full and I immediately thought it would be too much, but we both ate the whole bowl full. Then for dessert they served their family tradition: leche dulce. It was an amazing sweet custard, very simple, very yummy and laced with raisins. Needed two helpings of that!! When they were all kids at home this was always served for every birthday, and with 10 kids, you had it often! What an awesome treat. Way better than cake. The littlest celebrant was baby Emilia, 8 months old, but I thought she was much younger, maybe two months, she was so tiny…here’s Tia Abuela (Great Aunt) Carmen with Emilia.

Carmen’s family has lived on this small rancho for more than 80 years…it’s a rare feat for any family these days. You really felt the sense of tradition while you were there. They treated us as if we were family too, which was a wonderful blessing to us as we hadn’t met most of them before today. They cooked and joked and played and talked together and you could just see and feel the love they have for one another.

The Lord continues to bless us mightily as we settle in here…and we are thankful. We hope to get language school settled out this week or next with your prayers and we also hope to begin volunteering in the orphanages here in April. They won’t need us until later in that month when all the snowbirds go back home. They seem to have an abundance of help while the north Americans are wintering here.

Thanks so much for all of your prayers and support…love and blessings to you all.

The big move and a week filled with blessings!

Well, we have been in Mazatlan a week today. The move itself was a whirlwind. Six of our Christian brothers from La Cruz showed up at our house at 8:30 last Friday and proceeded to load up a big farm truck and a van. Ralph and I had already loaded our truck the day before. Every vehicle was stuffed. Hard to believe that everything we owned would fit in the back of our pickup just a year ago. But in that year we’ve acquired furniture and appliances and dishes, glasses, silverware and groceries! By 10:15 we were all loaded and on the road to Mazatlan.

On the way we stopped to help a carload of folks who were stranded by the side of the road. Mom, dad and five kids. Somehow the back wheel had locked up, the brakes caught on fire and then the wheel broke off. The guys used the water and cokes in our cooler to put the fire out and then spent several minutes on their cell phones trying to arrange help for the people. Once help was secured we gave them all bottles of drinking water before getting back on the road.

Arriving in Mazatlan the guys were just amazing…they had everything off the trucks and into the house in what seemed like a few minutes. I tried to get them to stay for lunch, but they all wanted to get back to La Cruz. We thanked them profusely for their help and sent them on their way. What a blessing these brothers are to us!!

As they were leaving our new neighbors down the street, Enrique and Maribel arrived with two take-out boxes full of roasted chicken and tortillas…their welcoming gift to us. Another amazing blessing because even though it was only 1:30 in the afternoon I was already tired. It was nice not to have to cook, and actually there was enough chicken to use again on Saturday. Another amazing blessing.

Ralph and I spent time Friday afternoon unpacking all of our clothes and getting our bedroom set up. We also had to call the gas guys to hook up our stove for us and to fill the gas tank, which is on the roof of the house. They arrived within an hour of our call and gave us the sad news that our boiler wasn’t working and, oh yeah, the stove wouldn’t fit in the small opening in the kitchen. So now we have the prospect of the stove sitting in the middle to the kitchen floor and being hot, dirty and sweaty and having no hot shower!! I was really tired and didn’t need to hear this news, but we just rolled with the flow, had cold showers and went to bed.

Saturday broke with Mary Ann and Gracie arriving to help clean the kitchen. Even though our new landlady had promised to completely clean the house, she didn’t and it was a real pit! So we spent most of the day Saturday scrubbing the kitchen from top to bottom, as well as inside and outside the cabinets. Mary Ann was a complete blessing to help us in this way. The kitchen was such a mess, but I wanted to start with the kitchen because it would impact the unpacking the most…six of the bins we had were for the kitchen alone.

We also called Genaro to see if he could help us with the boiler and the stove and he came right over with Genaro Jr and Fanny in tow. He did a quick trim of the counter top and the stove dropped right into place! Hooray!! Then they wanted a quick house tour since they were here, and as they toured through he noticed several things that needed fixing, such as no overhead light fixture in the office, missing fan blades on two ceiling fans, rusted and moldy shower head and many more things. Right then and there he and Jr. scavenged parts from the guest room fan to make a complete fan in our bedroom. Jr. and I took on the task of cleaning the very, very dirty and dusty parts before they were installed. When they left they had a “to do” list for Monday afternoon, and we had a list of parts to buy. This family was a blessing to us as they hosted us last year and they continue to bless us.

Sunday we continued to unpack and try to organize and clean the house…in the midst of it all I fell on the stairs. Knew that had to happen they as they are curved, steep and don’t have a railing. Also, one of the steps is much smaller than the others, a fact I hadn’t noticed until I fell! Thankfully I didn’t break anything, just some lovely scrapes and bruises on my right ankle, knee and forearm! I was stiff and sore and ended up taking the rest of the evening off!

Monday had us in the Telmex office by 9:30 to get our services transferred from La Cruz. Since there are already phone lines in the house we figured it would be a slam dunk, but we should know better by now. We needed to get permission of the landlady to transfer the lines, not just her permission, but permission in writing with a copy of her credentials!! So off we went to track down Sandra…and of course she wasn’t home, but was expected back before noon.

So we left a note with her mom telling her what we needed and said we’d return around noon. Then we were off to the new Home Depot with our list of stuff to get for Genaro. Then back to Sandra’s. We took about a eight block walk with her to the nearest copy place to get a copy of her credentials…thanked her for her help and returned to Telmex. Then the paperwork began in earnest…amazing thing about all of our trips to Telmex over the past year is that we get the same customer service rep each time, which in itself is a miracle. Alma Rodriquez is the most patient, helpful, friendly person you’d ever want to meet and she shepherded us through the bureaucracy that typifies this state owned utility. And while she told us she HAD to tell us it will take 10-30 days for the transfer to happen, she said it with a wink and a smile, and said it would likely be sooner. And she was right, they are here right now!! Praise the Lord.

Monday afternoon the entire clan Ramirez was back to tackle their “to do” list for the house. While Carmen and I visited with our neighbor Enrique the guys tackled all their projects. Several hours later we had mirrors installed in both baths, new shower head in the upstairs bath, new light fixture in the office, and a completely automatic pilot and burner for the boiler!!! Hot showers at last!! Yippee and praise the Lord!

Sky on the other hand has the worst customer service ever…we have move insurance (required) for the dish and called them to let them know we’d be moving on Friday. They promised a technician would be out either sometime on Thursday or between 8 and 10 a.m. Friday to take the dish down so we could take it with us, then a tech here would be assigned to reinstall it for us. All sounded good, but we know them better and of course they never showed up in La Cruz to take the dish down. Trying to deal with them over the cell phone was a pain, we burned a ton of minutes trying to get it straightened away and finally determined that we’d have to go back to La Cruz, fetch the dish off the roof of the apartment and bring it to Mazatlan. The alternative was to start a whole new contract with them, which was NOT going to happen. So Tuesday morning found us back in La Cruz. We tried again to get a local tech to take it down and they wanted us to call Mexico City again and make an appointment for sometime in the next 48 hours!! Jacobo overheard all of this and said forget that, I have a ladder, let’s just go up and get it down. So here’s 59 year old Ralph and 72 year old Jacobo climbing onto the second story of the roof to retrieve the dish, all the while singing at the top of their lungs “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder”!! It was quite a sight. So we grabbed the dish, some odds and ends that were still in the house and our rockers and hit the road back to Mazatlan. The tech came out that night and did the installation, but since then we’ve had three calls from Sky wanting to arrange installation!! Not too efficient!

Wednesday found us testing out the new bus route…Zapata! It stops right outside our door and goes all the way downtown to the centro mercado! Four and a half pesos per person each way, and only takes about 25 minutes. It was quite fun! We walked from the mercado to the church and visited with Pastor Lupe and Emilia for a while and met their charge, 95 year old Coquita who is living in one of the rooms at the Bible Institute. She is the lady who was basically living on the streets when they took her in and she has inspired them to begin work on a home for elders who either live alone or are on the streets. Coquita can barely hear or see, but she is a pistol. She is also my new rival for Ralph’s affections!! Her husband of forty years was also called Rafael, and when she learned that was Ralph’s name she just glommed onto him and started calling him “mi Rafa”, which is the affectionate term for Rafael. She was just certain he was Mexicano, and was surprised to learn he was Norteamericano. I am definitely a Norteamericana, and she refers to me as la gringa Cristina! She’s amazing to be around and talk with, although Lupe and Emilia say she can be a handful sometimes she was perfectly charming with us.

We then walked back to the mercado and met Lidia for lunch at Panama…then shopped for fruit and veggies at the mercado and then the three of us took the bus back to our place. Interesting that it is a complete circle route, however there is a terminus in the neighborhood called Conchi 2 where you have to change buses, pay another fare and wait 10 minutes before continuing, so in the future, we’ll just forgo that and get off when it stops on the highway across from the entrance to our neighborhood!! After visiting a bit, Lidia took off by bus back downtown and we prepared to go to church with Carmen and Genaro. The downtown church has a prayer service each Wednesday evening. We had a nice time at church, reuniting with Celia and Cosme, who were Tom and Lidia’s host family last year, and Rocio, the lady doctor who treated my first illness in Mexico. Darwin was also in attendance, and after church we departed for Tortas Kuwait for cena. We’d never been there before, but Carmen and Genaro recommended it highly. The sandwiches were very good, but they were huge, Carmen, Fanny and I could only eat half!! Ralph, Genaro and Darwin had no trouble downing their entire sandwiches!! Then we were off for home again.

This morning Ralph is off with Enrique getting the lowdown on the best place to buy fruit and veggies, the best meat shop, the best car wash, the best mechanic, etc. Kind of a best of Mazatlan tour! Since I have some quiet time in the house for the first time in a week I thought I’d take the opportunity to catch you all up. We want to thank you so much for your continuing prayers and support. This first week in Mazatlan has been amazing and exhausting. This coming week we have to nail down a language school, although we have been amazed at how well we have done this week with our Spanish. In fact both Lupe and Emilia commented on how well we are doing…which is very nice of them, but we both know we have a LONG way to go yet!! Please pray that we get connected with the right school and that God provides for the lessons.

Blessings to you all!