Why are we here? What are we doing to further the kingdom of God? Are we truly missionaries? During our first year we are to study language and culture. But that doesn't feel like enough to us most days. In our learning we come in contact with many people in the community. We see and talk with them in the shops, on the streets, in the plaza and in their homes. We try to build relationships, little by little.
A lady I've known the whole time we've been here, Maria, is a prime example of building a relationship over time. I see her a few times a week, we chat. I've met two of her children and her husband. She has five grandchildren and another on the way. She's the president of her daughter's school this year and I know that she works part time at a taco stand near the plaza. She worked in the states for a few years and knows a little English. Her husband also worked in the states for a short time and while he likes to hear English spoken, he doesn't know too much of it.
After several weeks of casual chat, she invited me to her home at a specific day and time. I walked over there and learned from the neighbors that she had gone to work and wouldn't be home until much later in the evening. Oh well, I thought. No problem. But it was a big problem for her. She was very embarrassed that she had gotten the opportunity to work and had completely forgotten about her invitation to me. A very big deal to her indeed. I saw less of her for a while by her choice. But each time I saw her I was careful to treat her as before, and let her know that I was still her friend. Slowly but surely we've been seeing more of each other and this past week she invited me to the end of the year party at her daughter's school! I was very excited that she asked and was happy to go, particularly because her youngest daughter would be dancing at the celebration. Even though she had official duties as president of the school, she introduced me to a few people and made sure I had a prime seat in the shade with her husband and daughters before she took her spot on the dais. After so many months I think our relationship is back on track.
Ralph and Juan Manuel hit it off soon after we moved here. He's a cop, and a guys guy. He likes sports of all kinds including US baseball and football. We see him all the time and he lives half a block down from us with his family. The guys talk a bit every time they see one another, just normal everyday chatting about stuff and life. Guy stuff. He knows a little English and would like to learn more to help in his job, to deal with tourists and such. In recent weeks he's been by the house for Bible study and invited us to his birthday party. We gave him a bilingual Bible so he could study in English and Spanish. Then, we didn't see him much for nearly a month. We thought perhaps we had offended in some way, that the gift might have been too much or something, but we couldn't really tell. He was around town and the neighborhood, but we just didn't have the opportunity to speak with one another much. On Friday he had the duty at the municipal building downtown and he stopped us and talked! Seemed like old times. Today he showed up at church for the first time since we've been here, plunking himself down right behind us. He stayed for the whole service and at the end he allowed that he plays the guitar "some". The church has a guitar but no one to play. Pastor loaned him the guitar to practice on this week, we are hoping that means he'll be back next week and will play the guitar while Mimi leads the worship music. Pray that he doesn't have to work on Sunday!
Norma runs the little store where Ralph gets his Cokes. It is the tiniest mom and pop operation you could imagine. One cooler smaller than most refrigerators with soda, milk and chocolate bars, and a small stand with chips and snacks and two video games. One or the other of us is down there a few times a week restocking the six Cokes Ralph considers the minimum to have on hand. She has a large extended family and we've met a few of those folks. She knows we are missionaries and that we are from the US. She and her family go out of their way to be kind to us and will chat and joke with us every time we visit and if they see us in town, or if they are passing the house on the way to somewhere. The other day, she didn't have change for the Cokes Ralph was buying but she sent him home with them anyway, telling him that he should just pay her later when he got change somewhere. Where did she get the idea she could trust us? From months of small talk, jokes and chat? Does that kind of stuff reflect Christ who lives in us?
Can you tell we are in a phase of not knowing whether to be encouraged or bummed out?
There are a lot of ways that the enemy tries to get us down, or gone. For Ralph its sickness and problems adjusting to the heat. It's been pretty miserable for him most of the time we've been here. He keeps hanging in, but this stuff does take it's toll.
Everyone tells us that it is unseasonably warm, that it should not be this hot now. Not until later in July or early August. This 98 degree weather with 50-70% humidity isn't normal. So why is it happening now? Why all the big thunderstorms with very little of the desperately needed rain. Only God knows. But the weather has definitely begun to disrupt our sleep, never a good thing.
Even property laws seem to have conspired against us. We only had one spot to put the air conditioner and the small spot dictated the size of the air conditioning unit. Therefore it did pretty well cooling both the living room and the bedroom until it really began to heat up in earnest, now it will only cool the living room decently leaving the bedroom too hot to sleep. Our solution? Move the couch to the bedroom and the bed to the living room for July and August! Since 99% of our entertaining and visiting is done on the patio it shouldn't be an issue. The last two nights we've slept in the blissful coolness of the living room and had two great nights of rest! Praise the Lord for the clarity of thought to make this small change.
The enemy can use anything to bug you. For me, it's unreliable water for the house. We have no water at night, never had, and probably never will. It goes off at about 10 ish and comes back on at about 5 ish. Japame just tells us that someday the whole system will work perfectly. But not now. Okay, so we've adapted. We just make sure we are totally washed, brushed and flushed by 10 pm! No problem.
But when we have no water during the day too it just makes me nuts. This week has been one of those weeks when we've only had water all day for two days out of the last eight. It just goes off without warning for hours on end. The Japame guys show up in their pickup, they dig up the street and a few hours later there's water again. Often really muddy water for a while, but water just the same. The other morning I got my shower, but by the time I was done and Ralph was ready for his the water was off and didn't come back on until 3:30. One day I fixed lunch using water in the course of the preparation, but by the time we finished the meal and wanted to wash the dishes...no water. It came back on at 7:30 p.m. Call me spoiled, I like to wash and flush when I want. I hate not being able to do that. The enemy knows it. I'm trying very hard to chill and further adapt.
The enemy is odd about what he chooses to nick us with. Smoke filled bedroom in the middle of the night because the neighbors are up late burning trash and debris. Loud farm equipment (John Deere 9500) and large farm trucks without mufflers that travel our street regularly, often stopping and idling right in front of the house making so much noise that we can't talk with one another. Sort of akin to living near a big airport during takeoffs and landings! The noise can be flat deafening!!
Financial stuff. WMPL is a totally faith-based mission. They pay what God provides, and what God provides is enough. Has been so far anyway. We are fine. But we are also on our third month of short allowances, 80%, 65% and 68% of normal, not just for us, but for the majority of WMPL missionaries serving around the world. What is God trying to say with that? What is he trying to teach?
Our visas!! The enemy has certainly been at work on that one. What a journey that has turned into. Last time I blogged we'd been told that our letters got returned to Pastor Lupe for some technical reason, further delaying our applications. This week we learned that the technical reason was that Lupe's computer was broken and he asked Darwin for the address and Darwin gave them the old address, long expired, so the mail was returned. This Thursday and Friday we go to Mazatlan in our attempt to get our FM3 visas. While we still don't have the required letter from Religious Affairs, they advise us to begin the process anyway. We have gathered the ream of paperwork, photos and the little pile of cash required to get the process going. We need to get it taken care of now as our visas expire on July 16th, Tom's expires on the 24th. We need at least the preliminary FM3 in order to keep our vehicles legal here. Once we are through with immigration, we must take a letter to customs and change the status of our vehicles! Hence, two days in Mazatlan! Pray that everything goes smoothly and that the enemy be bound!!
Bottom line, whatever little bit we are doing here has moved the enemy's eye toward us. Even the small things make a difference for God's kingdom. Please keep praying...thanks.
Sunday, July 2, 2006
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Catching up!
With so much going on the blogging has gotten behind! Imagine that!
Please keep our visa situation in prayer! The letter that Pastor Lupe sent to Mexico city was rejected for us and for Tom over some technicalities that Pastor did not include. So he’s sending it off again. The three of us will have to make a trip to Mazatlan in the next couple of weeks to get extensions on our tourist visas that all expire in early July. Rats! We were hoping and praying that we’d get the letters from Mexico city and just proceed with our regular visas, but I guess not.
We got invited to Juan Manuel’s 39th birthday and had a great time! They served a couple different salsa crudas and tacos carne asada, quesadillas and gorditas! All yummy. Plus the requisite cake. It was such a warm night that they moved the table out into the yard and we feasted there. Thunderheads had rolled in and were stuck against the Sierra Madre mountains and there was a ton of sheet lightning all around and through the clouds. It was a really spectacular light show!
The carne asada restaurant around the corner from us was just the best, but the owner fell on hard times somehow and the business was only open sporadically, and our friend Beatrice ended up losing her job there. For the last month or so it has been open occasionally, and we stopped in once for lunch and found the food had lost a lot of it’s quality and the portions had become quite skimpy, so we’ve skipped it since then. We just discovered that the wife of the owner of the car wash next door is now in charge and she’s cleaned the place thoroughly, bought new tables and chairs, loads of plants and has installed a sink where customers can wash up before eating. They have the original menu of yummy, tender carne asada. Plus, she hired Beatrice back! We visited with her today and she is thrilled to be back at work doing what she loves.
Just when I thought I had Mexican money down I got some odd change the other day, a $100 peso coin! Didn’t even know they existed. We have $1, $2, $5, $10 and $20 coins (plus a paper bill in a $20 just to confuse the issue!) and getting even a $20 peso coin is fairly rare around here. We see the little blue bills much more often. This new coin is the largest legal tender coin I’ve ever seen too…check it out!
Have I mentioned futbol? Oh, my goodness! I’ve never seen such wackiness regarding the World Cup before. From June 9 through July 9th there will be nearly 700 hours of coverage for free on our satellite. Futbol promotions are on every product sold in the grocery stores and three out of four commercials on TV are either promoting the futbol coverage or selling products related to futbol. Want a goooooooooooooooooooool ring tone for your phone? $13 pesos! Want photos of Mexico’s team for your phone/computer, not a problem. You can download them! There was even a Mexico futbol hacky sack packed in the cereal the team bought when they were here! One of the channels on our satellite is countering with ads proclaiming they are “Un Canal, Sin Mundial”, which is basically they are the one channel without World Cup! Every restaurant has at least one TV on site now, even if they never had one before, so folks won’t miss any of the futbol matches. And today Mexico advanced to the next stage, so the wackiness will continue I’m sure. And, yes, the US was there too, but they were dead last in their group, and needed a win and also to have a couple of other teams win and/or lose for them to advance. Didn’t happen, so they are headed home.
Ralph and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary quietly on Saturday while our team was here. While they were having lunch at the church in Ceuta we slipped away and had lunch out at Carrillo Brothers Comida China! Hard to believe we’ve been married that long.
The heat has moved up to the higher end of the 90s and with the humidity it’s been miserable trying to sleep at night, so we are now running the A/C every night while we sleep. What a blessing it is to have this! We still just keep the windows open and let the breeze blow all day and into the evening, but about 8:30 or 9:00, the windows close and the A/C comes on to begin to cool the house enough so we can sleep. We bought a curtain and put it up between the living room and kitchen to keep the cool air in the living room/bedroom side of the house. We don’t need to cool the kitchen and guest bedroom at this point!
With the heat and humidity we find it difficult to do the round trip walking to town every day, so we have opted to take the bus to town and then we walk around there and walk back home. Seems to be a good compromise. We are still getting out to practice our Spanish and visit with folks, run errands, etc., but aren’t killing ourselves in the heat!
The rains have finally begun, kind of half heartedly though. We had rain for about 20 minutes or so on Saturday night, and then Tuesday morning about 2:30 a.m. we had a huge lightning storm that caused us to lose power and then boom! The rains broke loose! Regular gully washer! We have three gutters without downspouts that empty from Diana’s patio to ours and water was just gushing from them waterfall style! Our patio had some limited flooding and Ralph swept as much of the water out as he could so I could finish catching up on the laundry. We bought some taller, bigger bricks to put the washer up on too in order to keep it out of the water that gathers in that corner! Looks like it could rain more today too…just threatening at this point, but you can almost feel it in the air.
We’ve had a total of five hours plus homework with our wonderful language tutor Ivonne! We were so blessed to find her, she really is a gift from God. She’s helped us make some connections in our language learning and we’ve made some leaps in conversations! We are thankful. We’ve stopped the lessons for now, will practice some more and get comfortable in our new stuff and then hopefully hire her again. We went over to her house for a visit yesterday afternoon and met her daughter who is off to Puebla at the end of July to begin four years of training as a chef! Ivonne will miss her terribly, but knows it’s what she wants and needs.
Ivonne sent us home with some mangos and with a couple of packets of milk gelatin and the recipe to whip it up. I’ve seen it served here, but have never tried it. She says it’s fabulous and that once we’ve had it, we’ll never go back to regular water gelatin! If we love it, we’ll have to let her know, because you can’t get it here, but if we want it she can get us some when she delivers her daughter at school in Puebla next month! How nice is that?
The Lumppios surprised us with fresh, hot, homemade cinnamon rolls for my birthday breakfast! Pretty impressive! They were a wonderful gift to receive. Thanks to them, and to everyone else who has sent their best wishes, e-mails and cards! 55! Can’t believe I’m 55!
We are so blessed each and every day and we thank God for that and for you!
Please keep our visa situation in prayer! The letter that Pastor Lupe sent to Mexico city was rejected for us and for Tom over some technicalities that Pastor did not include. So he’s sending it off again. The three of us will have to make a trip to Mazatlan in the next couple of weeks to get extensions on our tourist visas that all expire in early July. Rats! We were hoping and praying that we’d get the letters from Mexico city and just proceed with our regular visas, but I guess not.
We got invited to Juan Manuel’s 39th birthday and had a great time! They served a couple different salsa crudas and tacos carne asada, quesadillas and gorditas! All yummy. Plus the requisite cake. It was such a warm night that they moved the table out into the yard and we feasted there. Thunderheads had rolled in and were stuck against the Sierra Madre mountains and there was a ton of sheet lightning all around and through the clouds. It was a really spectacular light show!
The carne asada restaurant around the corner from us was just the best, but the owner fell on hard times somehow and the business was only open sporadically, and our friend Beatrice ended up losing her job there. For the last month or so it has been open occasionally, and we stopped in once for lunch and found the food had lost a lot of it’s quality and the portions had become quite skimpy, so we’ve skipped it since then. We just discovered that the wife of the owner of the car wash next door is now in charge and she’s cleaned the place thoroughly, bought new tables and chairs, loads of plants and has installed a sink where customers can wash up before eating. They have the original menu of yummy, tender carne asada. Plus, she hired Beatrice back! We visited with her today and she is thrilled to be back at work doing what she loves.
Just when I thought I had Mexican money down I got some odd change the other day, a $100 peso coin! Didn’t even know they existed. We have $1, $2, $5, $10 and $20 coins (plus a paper bill in a $20 just to confuse the issue!) and getting even a $20 peso coin is fairly rare around here. We see the little blue bills much more often. This new coin is the largest legal tender coin I’ve ever seen too…check it out!
Have I mentioned futbol? Oh, my goodness! I’ve never seen such wackiness regarding the World Cup before. From June 9 through July 9th there will be nearly 700 hours of coverage for free on our satellite. Futbol promotions are on every product sold in the grocery stores and three out of four commercials on TV are either promoting the futbol coverage or selling products related to futbol. Want a goooooooooooooooooooool ring tone for your phone? $13 pesos! Want photos of Mexico’s team for your phone/computer, not a problem. You can download them! There was even a Mexico futbol hacky sack packed in the cereal the team bought when they were here! One of the channels on our satellite is countering with ads proclaiming they are “Un Canal, Sin Mundial”, which is basically they are the one channel without World Cup! Every restaurant has at least one TV on site now, even if they never had one before, so folks won’t miss any of the futbol matches. And today Mexico advanced to the next stage, so the wackiness will continue I’m sure. And, yes, the US was there too, but they were dead last in their group, and needed a win and also to have a couple of other teams win and/or lose for them to advance. Didn’t happen, so they are headed home.
Ralph and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary quietly on Saturday while our team was here. While they were having lunch at the church in Ceuta we slipped away and had lunch out at Carrillo Brothers Comida China! Hard to believe we’ve been married that long.
The heat has moved up to the higher end of the 90s and with the humidity it’s been miserable trying to sleep at night, so we are now running the A/C every night while we sleep. What a blessing it is to have this! We still just keep the windows open and let the breeze blow all day and into the evening, but about 8:30 or 9:00, the windows close and the A/C comes on to begin to cool the house enough so we can sleep. We bought a curtain and put it up between the living room and kitchen to keep the cool air in the living room/bedroom side of the house. We don’t need to cool the kitchen and guest bedroom at this point!
With the heat and humidity we find it difficult to do the round trip walking to town every day, so we have opted to take the bus to town and then we walk around there and walk back home. Seems to be a good compromise. We are still getting out to practice our Spanish and visit with folks, run errands, etc., but aren’t killing ourselves in the heat!
The rains have finally begun, kind of half heartedly though. We had rain for about 20 minutes or so on Saturday night, and then Tuesday morning about 2:30 a.m. we had a huge lightning storm that caused us to lose power and then boom! The rains broke loose! Regular gully washer! We have three gutters without downspouts that empty from Diana’s patio to ours and water was just gushing from them waterfall style! Our patio had some limited flooding and Ralph swept as much of the water out as he could so I could finish catching up on the laundry. We bought some taller, bigger bricks to put the washer up on too in order to keep it out of the water that gathers in that corner! Looks like it could rain more today too…just threatening at this point, but you can almost feel it in the air.
We’ve had a total of five hours plus homework with our wonderful language tutor Ivonne! We were so blessed to find her, she really is a gift from God. She’s helped us make some connections in our language learning and we’ve made some leaps in conversations! We are thankful. We’ve stopped the lessons for now, will practice some more and get comfortable in our new stuff and then hopefully hire her again. We went over to her house for a visit yesterday afternoon and met her daughter who is off to Puebla at the end of July to begin four years of training as a chef! Ivonne will miss her terribly, but knows it’s what she wants and needs.
Ivonne sent us home with some mangos and with a couple of packets of milk gelatin and the recipe to whip it up. I’ve seen it served here, but have never tried it. She says it’s fabulous and that once we’ve had it, we’ll never go back to regular water gelatin! If we love it, we’ll have to let her know, because you can’t get it here, but if we want it she can get us some when she delivers her daughter at school in Puebla next month! How nice is that?
The Lumppios surprised us with fresh, hot, homemade cinnamon rolls for my birthday breakfast! Pretty impressive! They were a wonderful gift to receive. Thanks to them, and to everyone else who has sent their best wishes, e-mails and cards! 55! Can’t believe I’m 55!
We are so blessed each and every day and we thank God for that and for you!
Monday, June 19, 2006
Our first team visit!
What a whirlwind, what a blessing! We had our first team visit these last few days and it was a complete and total blessing for us and for the communities in which we serve. The team was lead by Kathy and Mike and included Josh, Julia, Michael, Lindsey, Brittany, Amber, Aaron, John and Nate. They are an awesome group of folks from Minnesota Valley Free Lutheran Church.
They had breakfast at our house each day and then closed the day either with dinner out or food ordered in at the Lumppios, followed by a time of Bible study and sharing. Their days here were completely jam packed!
Friday morning they were off to the neighborhoods in La Cruz to deliver invitations and tracts to the people they met. They were inviting people to the municipal plaza to see them perform a drama, a puppet show and sing hymns and choruses in Spanish.
Later in the day they got all set up in the plaza and started to draw a crowd almost immediately, Nate deftly prepared balloon critters that delighted kids and cops alike!
They did a fine job with their performance, which was followed by a salvation message delivered by Pastor Jose. It was all so well received and the crowd had grown so much by the end that they decided to run through the whole thing again!
At the very end they also offered free face painting to the kids and entertained them all by blowing bubbles while they were waiting in line, giving the rest of us more time to speak with as many people as we could. We also ended up attracting a local dance team that was getting ready to practice in the plaza, so we had a good crowd of teens! Nice cross-generational mix! The kids did such an awesome job and through both performances they attracted about 150 people! One of the kids was giving the bust of Miguel Hidalgo a bath while he waited for his family!
Saturday brought a repeat, as we canvassed the neighborhoods of Ceuta, inviting them to the church later in the day for the performances. The kids did a great job, adding crafts to the mix here as well as the balloon critters, face painting, bubbles and their fine performances. The salvation message was issued by Pastor Ismael. There were more than 60 children and more than a few adults and teens in attendance. It was an awesome time. Lidia was able to have an extended talk with some of the former youth group members and was encouraged by their response to her invitation to return to church. Please keep that in prayer!
Sunday, they attended and participated in church services here in La Cruz and in Ceuta, giving everyone more time to interact with people they’d met in the previous days. It was a completely blessed time.
And, no, we didn’t work them totally to death the whole time they were here! There was time for afternoon rest, shopping in our downtown and at the MZ. They explored the myriad of Mexican snack foods. The discovered the joy of agua frescas.
We even worked in a visit or two to Playa Ceuta!
They sampled some of the local cuisine at our favorite restaurants and had some meals with Pastor Jose and his wife and with the church in Ceuta.
We got them on the bus this morning for Mazatlan, where they will rejoin the rest of their team and minister there for a couple more days before returning home. We will miss them!! They were such a pleasure to host and a joy to be around. They worked together so beautifully even though it was the first mission trip for many of them.
They were a blessed break in our routines of learning language and culture too! They left us with many wonderful goodies from crafts to medicines to bibles, tracts, gospels of John and they also brought us chocolate chips, graham crackers and Jiffy corn muffin mixes! Woohoo! These are great folks that enriched our lives as we interacted with them. Their impact will be felt in our communities for a long time to come. Thank you MVFLC and thank you Jesus for sending these folks to La Cruz and Ceuta!
They had breakfast at our house each day and then closed the day either with dinner out or food ordered in at the Lumppios, followed by a time of Bible study and sharing. Their days here were completely jam packed!
Friday morning they were off to the neighborhoods in La Cruz to deliver invitations and tracts to the people they met. They were inviting people to the municipal plaza to see them perform a drama, a puppet show and sing hymns and choruses in Spanish.
Later in the day they got all set up in the plaza and started to draw a crowd almost immediately, Nate deftly prepared balloon critters that delighted kids and cops alike!
They did a fine job with their performance, which was followed by a salvation message delivered by Pastor Jose. It was all so well received and the crowd had grown so much by the end that they decided to run through the whole thing again!
At the very end they also offered free face painting to the kids and entertained them all by blowing bubbles while they were waiting in line, giving the rest of us more time to speak with as many people as we could. We also ended up attracting a local dance team that was getting ready to practice in the plaza, so we had a good crowd of teens! Nice cross-generational mix! The kids did such an awesome job and through both performances they attracted about 150 people! One of the kids was giving the bust of Miguel Hidalgo a bath while he waited for his family!
Saturday brought a repeat, as we canvassed the neighborhoods of Ceuta, inviting them to the church later in the day for the performances. The kids did a great job, adding crafts to the mix here as well as the balloon critters, face painting, bubbles and their fine performances. The salvation message was issued by Pastor Ismael. There were more than 60 children and more than a few adults and teens in attendance. It was an awesome time. Lidia was able to have an extended talk with some of the former youth group members and was encouraged by their response to her invitation to return to church. Please keep that in prayer!
Sunday, they attended and participated in church services here in La Cruz and in Ceuta, giving everyone more time to interact with people they’d met in the previous days. It was a completely blessed time.
And, no, we didn’t work them totally to death the whole time they were here! There was time for afternoon rest, shopping in our downtown and at the MZ. They explored the myriad of Mexican snack foods. The discovered the joy of agua frescas.
We even worked in a visit or two to Playa Ceuta!
They sampled some of the local cuisine at our favorite restaurants and had some meals with Pastor Jose and his wife and with the church in Ceuta.
We got them on the bus this morning for Mazatlan, where they will rejoin the rest of their team and minister there for a couple more days before returning home. We will miss them!! They were such a pleasure to host and a joy to be around. They worked together so beautifully even though it was the first mission trip for many of them.
They were a blessed break in our routines of learning language and culture too! They left us with many wonderful goodies from crafts to medicines to bibles, tracts, gospels of John and they also brought us chocolate chips, graham crackers and Jiffy corn muffin mixes! Woohoo! These are great folks that enriched our lives as we interacted with them. Their impact will be felt in our communities for a long time to come. Thank you MVFLC and thank you Jesus for sending these folks to La Cruz and Ceuta!
Tuesday, June 6, 2006
A pretty great week, praise the Lord!
Ralph is doing much better, still a little lack of energy, but I think we both feel that a bit more now with the weather so hot and muggy. Temps consistently in the low to mid 90s with humidity anywhere from 50% to 75%. I got all hot and sweaty just making breakfast this morning and I didn’t even cook, just bagels with cream cheese and mangoes!!
Pastor Jose is doing much better too, and we are thankful. His spirit and outlook has definitely improved!
We did have a tiny bit of rain on Wednesday last week, just enough to put the wipers on for a couple of minutes. It was funny though because we noticed later that you could see the little impact craters of each rain drop in the dirt. Thundershowers have been forecast for more than three weeks now, not one has materialized. The big thunderheads roll in, hang out for a while and roll right back out.
Our cop friend Juan Manuel finally sat down for 90 minutes of chat and Bible reading. Most of our conversations with him have been on the go, when we see him in town or as he passes by on his work shifts or on the way to the super or taking Cruz to and from her job at the MZ. They just live half a block from us. But the other night he stopped, parked and came in and sat down!! It was a blast. He was in the army for six years, then plain clothes investigator for the state police (FBI equivalent) in Culiacan for eight years, but he said there was just too much violence. And though being a cop here is still dangerous (drugs mostly) it is still “tranquillo” compared to Culiacan.
I struck up a conversation with Rosario as she was waiting for the bus in front of the house, she came over to admire our flowers and we just chatted away while she waited, finally Ralph came out to let us know that the bus wasn’t running that day. I hadn’t even noticed!! She would have had a long walk home, about 10 blocks in the blazing sun. Her son is our back window neighbor, but he was at work with his truck. So we said we’d give her a ride home. She was very surprised that we’d offer but took us up on it. She insisted that we come in and wanted to feed us tamales, but we’d already ordered tamales from Pastor Jose, so we just stayed and visited for a while. She has a beautiful house with gorgeous tiles, huge beautiful laquered wood furniture, etc., and she was so nice. She told us all about her family, total of 10 kids, all close by here. She has two conures (little parrots) and two dogs, one of them completely hairless! Had a great time with her, finally had to take off, but she sent us home with pepper plants from her garden! Then later in the evening Candy and I were out front chatting and this pickup comes around the corner and up the road with an arm sticking out of the window holding a bag…it was Rosario with a bag of mangos for us!!
In potting up the pepper plants for the garden I discovered where our homeless gecko had moved to…the pots stored under the stairs. When I picked them up I startled him and he jumped from the pots to my bare foot. He stopped, kinda trying to figure out what he landed on for a few seconds and then scooted under the water barrel. We had a gecko living in our circuit breaker box, but the workers made him leave when they put the new one in a couple of weeks back and the new box is closed rather than open like the old one, so he couldn’t get back into his house and had to find a new one.
And our house geckos have a baby. We discovered him in the kitchen last night. So tiny I could have mistaken him for a bug, but nope! Baby gecko!
Ralph went over to Judi’s for his haircut this morning and her mom and dad sent him home with a bag of mangoes…going to have to make some sorbet I think to preserve them all. Even I can’t eat that many mangos, as much as I love them. They are small mangos, they fit in the palm of your hand, super sweet too because they are ripened on the tree.
And Ralph got his little surround sound system hooked up this morning, we needed an adapter and cable that we couldn’t get here so we got them while we were in Mazatlan yesterday. Now we can compete with the neighbors, music-wise! We have about 50 channels of music on our satellite, so he’s presently got it on “Ultimate Oldies” and he and Pastor Jose were rockin’ out on the patio!
We hired a Spanish tutor to help us with the finer points of sentence structure, verbs, tenses. We’ve just had two hours with her so far and it’s already made a world of difference! She sweet and funny, and is a teacher at the Prepatory School, basically high school. She really is a gift from God for us.
We had our team meeting in Mazatlan yesterday, and at Mary Ann’s suggestion we BBQed at Bosque de Cuidad park. Huge park with very shady picnic areas with grills and loads of kids toys to keep the girls busy. Our meetings are now once a month and include worship and communion, much better format for us all I think. Here are some pictures from our lunch in the park.
Gracie J on the big slide:
Ralph trying to talk Gracie L into the big slide, she eventually went, but only if he went with her!
Darwin’s masterpiece:
Chowing down!
Gracie J taking it easy after a lot of playing:
Thanks for all your prayers and support…we are so thankful for you all!
Love and Blessings,
Ralph & Chris
Pastor Jose is doing much better too, and we are thankful. His spirit and outlook has definitely improved!
We did have a tiny bit of rain on Wednesday last week, just enough to put the wipers on for a couple of minutes. It was funny though because we noticed later that you could see the little impact craters of each rain drop in the dirt. Thundershowers have been forecast for more than three weeks now, not one has materialized. The big thunderheads roll in, hang out for a while and roll right back out.
Our cop friend Juan Manuel finally sat down for 90 minutes of chat and Bible reading. Most of our conversations with him have been on the go, when we see him in town or as he passes by on his work shifts or on the way to the super or taking Cruz to and from her job at the MZ. They just live half a block from us. But the other night he stopped, parked and came in and sat down!! It was a blast. He was in the army for six years, then plain clothes investigator for the state police (FBI equivalent) in Culiacan for eight years, but he said there was just too much violence. And though being a cop here is still dangerous (drugs mostly) it is still “tranquillo” compared to Culiacan.
I struck up a conversation with Rosario as she was waiting for the bus in front of the house, she came over to admire our flowers and we just chatted away while she waited, finally Ralph came out to let us know that the bus wasn’t running that day. I hadn’t even noticed!! She would have had a long walk home, about 10 blocks in the blazing sun. Her son is our back window neighbor, but he was at work with his truck. So we said we’d give her a ride home. She was very surprised that we’d offer but took us up on it. She insisted that we come in and wanted to feed us tamales, but we’d already ordered tamales from Pastor Jose, so we just stayed and visited for a while. She has a beautiful house with gorgeous tiles, huge beautiful laquered wood furniture, etc., and she was so nice. She told us all about her family, total of 10 kids, all close by here. She has two conures (little parrots) and two dogs, one of them completely hairless! Had a great time with her, finally had to take off, but she sent us home with pepper plants from her garden! Then later in the evening Candy and I were out front chatting and this pickup comes around the corner and up the road with an arm sticking out of the window holding a bag…it was Rosario with a bag of mangos for us!!
In potting up the pepper plants for the garden I discovered where our homeless gecko had moved to…the pots stored under the stairs. When I picked them up I startled him and he jumped from the pots to my bare foot. He stopped, kinda trying to figure out what he landed on for a few seconds and then scooted under the water barrel. We had a gecko living in our circuit breaker box, but the workers made him leave when they put the new one in a couple of weeks back and the new box is closed rather than open like the old one, so he couldn’t get back into his house and had to find a new one.
And our house geckos have a baby. We discovered him in the kitchen last night. So tiny I could have mistaken him for a bug, but nope! Baby gecko!
Ralph went over to Judi’s for his haircut this morning and her mom and dad sent him home with a bag of mangoes…going to have to make some sorbet I think to preserve them all. Even I can’t eat that many mangos, as much as I love them. They are small mangos, they fit in the palm of your hand, super sweet too because they are ripened on the tree.
And Ralph got his little surround sound system hooked up this morning, we needed an adapter and cable that we couldn’t get here so we got them while we were in Mazatlan yesterday. Now we can compete with the neighbors, music-wise! We have about 50 channels of music on our satellite, so he’s presently got it on “Ultimate Oldies” and he and Pastor Jose were rockin’ out on the patio!
We hired a Spanish tutor to help us with the finer points of sentence structure, verbs, tenses. We’ve just had two hours with her so far and it’s already made a world of difference! She sweet and funny, and is a teacher at the Prepatory School, basically high school. She really is a gift from God for us.
We had our team meeting in Mazatlan yesterday, and at Mary Ann’s suggestion we BBQed at Bosque de Cuidad park. Huge park with very shady picnic areas with grills and loads of kids toys to keep the girls busy. Our meetings are now once a month and include worship and communion, much better format for us all I think. Here are some pictures from our lunch in the park.
Gracie J on the big slide:
Ralph trying to talk Gracie L into the big slide, she eventually went, but only if he went with her!
Darwin’s masterpiece:
Chowing down!
Gracie J taking it easy after a lot of playing:
Thanks for all your prayers and support…we are so thankful for you all!
Love and Blessings,
Ralph & Chris
Sunday, May 28, 2006
A little bit of everything
Ralph has been ill off and on for most of the last two weeks and he's been very frustrated by it. Missionary stomach has returned and he's also lost a lot of energy. Additionally, he has been suffering from a skin rash on his shins, back and stomach. Pretty miserable time for him. He's beginning to feel better today, but still has a ways to go. Please keep him in prayer.
Pastor Jose has been very discouraged this week, even coming to tears a couple of times during church. We ask him how he's doing, if there is anything we can do and he always says he's fine and nothing to do. Please keep him in prayer as well.
The church will be hosting a team from Minnesota in June and the two small bodies in La Cruz and Ceuta are stretching a bit in an effort to plan for them and to host them. It's a big task, so please be praying as they prepare over the next two weeks. The team will be here June 15-18 and they plan to do some puppetry and some street ministry as well as participating in Sunday services here and in Ceuta.
Two sweet little ones turned two years old this week and we were invited to both fiestas! Ivana, the daughter of our neighbor Judith (the woman who cuts Ralph's hair), had her fiesta last Saturday. She was dressed up as Belle from Beauty and the Beast and she had a great time. Her family had a huge party. There were so many kids there they had two piñatas because one wouldn't hold up for all of them to have a few swings at it! They served a nice meal, soft drinks and cake and jello (no ice cream, melts too quickly). Every party guest got a bag of sweets to take home with them. Ralph was disappointed because our workers were still here and he couldn't even make an appearance at this party.
And even though he didn't feel all that well, he didn't miss Gracie's party on Tuesday! It was Tom and Lidia's first official "do" since arriving in Mexico and they were a little nervous about doing it right. Boy, did they ever do it right! All the kids had a blast and Gracie's party was all about Tigger. Orange balloons, Tigger cake and pinata, even orange jello! They served these great hot nachos too, really fabulous, tasty beans, meat in a great sauce and two kinds of cheese on top! And of course, sent everyone home with the requisite bag of sweets! Perfectly done.
We bought a small air conditioner for use later as the summer heats up and hired Jacobo's handymen to do the installation and to add another circuit and some extra outlets in the house. It was a very long day, the guys were here more than 12 hours, sprayed a small amount of water and concrete into the living room in error, initially hooked up the new circuit incorrectly and generally made a huge mess. But we have the new circuit, six new plugs in the living room, three in the bedroom, one for the air conditioner (and a hole in the wall for the a/c unit) and one for the washer on the patio. We were able to get rid of four extension cords and two power strips! Woohoo! Plus it's so nice to just walk up to the washer and run it...not to have to open the kitchen window and run an extension cord through it for power!
In the midst of all of this we managed to tick off a couple of things for the visa list: we got our lovely black and white photos taken on the way to Gracie's party and also had the same place make the copies we needed of stuff. Slowly but surely we are making progress on this. Also, if we can't get it all together before our tourist visa expires, we DO NOT have to leave the country and come back in. We can either pay a fee and apply for an extension of our tourist visa, or we can apply for our FM visa without all the materials, then they will just wait for the rest of the stuff. We are mostly waiting on Pastor Lupe now, and the letter he had to write to Religious Affairs in Mexico City, and the official response from them. This is a continuing item for prayer.
And, after nearly four months in La Cruz we finally got our first telephone bill! Praise the Lord. Up to this point we've had to wander downtown and give the local payment guy our phone number, he'd call Mexico City to find out what we owed and we'd pay him and get a receipt. Never an itemized bill. If we can get one more paper bill from Telmex, then we can get online and get copies of the bills we missed and view and pay future bills online. That will be great. We've already discovered that we are being charged for stuff we didn't order, and those things are coming off on our next bill. It certainly helps to actually see what you are paying for!
We also got a new pack of Pastor Bill's sermons from Sue and Bob. Thanks guys!! We really enjoy getting these, certainly miss his great sermons!
For the next three weeks WMPL will be training new mission candidates in their Briefing Course in Minneapolis. Please keep the staff and participants in prayer as they complete this important step in their mission journey.
As always, we continue to need prayer for language and culture learning!! With Ralph's illness we didn't get out to practice as much as we would have liked, and any time not practicing is a setback. We hope to make up for lost time as he is feeling better.
Thanks so much for your notes, cards, prayers and support. We couldn't do this without you!
Pastor Jose has been very discouraged this week, even coming to tears a couple of times during church. We ask him how he's doing, if there is anything we can do and he always says he's fine and nothing to do. Please keep him in prayer as well.
The church will be hosting a team from Minnesota in June and the two small bodies in La Cruz and Ceuta are stretching a bit in an effort to plan for them and to host them. It's a big task, so please be praying as they prepare over the next two weeks. The team will be here June 15-18 and they plan to do some puppetry and some street ministry as well as participating in Sunday services here and in Ceuta.
Two sweet little ones turned two years old this week and we were invited to both fiestas! Ivana, the daughter of our neighbor Judith (the woman who cuts Ralph's hair), had her fiesta last Saturday. She was dressed up as Belle from Beauty and the Beast and she had a great time. Her family had a huge party. There were so many kids there they had two piñatas because one wouldn't hold up for all of them to have a few swings at it! They served a nice meal, soft drinks and cake and jello (no ice cream, melts too quickly). Every party guest got a bag of sweets to take home with them. Ralph was disappointed because our workers were still here and he couldn't even make an appearance at this party.
And even though he didn't feel all that well, he didn't miss Gracie's party on Tuesday! It was Tom and Lidia's first official "do" since arriving in Mexico and they were a little nervous about doing it right. Boy, did they ever do it right! All the kids had a blast and Gracie's party was all about Tigger. Orange balloons, Tigger cake and pinata, even orange jello! They served these great hot nachos too, really fabulous, tasty beans, meat in a great sauce and two kinds of cheese on top! And of course, sent everyone home with the requisite bag of sweets! Perfectly done.
We bought a small air conditioner for use later as the summer heats up and hired Jacobo's handymen to do the installation and to add another circuit and some extra outlets in the house. It was a very long day, the guys were here more than 12 hours, sprayed a small amount of water and concrete into the living room in error, initially hooked up the new circuit incorrectly and generally made a huge mess. But we have the new circuit, six new plugs in the living room, three in the bedroom, one for the air conditioner (and a hole in the wall for the a/c unit) and one for the washer on the patio. We were able to get rid of four extension cords and two power strips! Woohoo! Plus it's so nice to just walk up to the washer and run it...not to have to open the kitchen window and run an extension cord through it for power!
In the midst of all of this we managed to tick off a couple of things for the visa list: we got our lovely black and white photos taken on the way to Gracie's party and also had the same place make the copies we needed of stuff. Slowly but surely we are making progress on this. Also, if we can't get it all together before our tourist visa expires, we DO NOT have to leave the country and come back in. We can either pay a fee and apply for an extension of our tourist visa, or we can apply for our FM visa without all the materials, then they will just wait for the rest of the stuff. We are mostly waiting on Pastor Lupe now, and the letter he had to write to Religious Affairs in Mexico City, and the official response from them. This is a continuing item for prayer.
And, after nearly four months in La Cruz we finally got our first telephone bill! Praise the Lord. Up to this point we've had to wander downtown and give the local payment guy our phone number, he'd call Mexico City to find out what we owed and we'd pay him and get a receipt. Never an itemized bill. If we can get one more paper bill from Telmex, then we can get online and get copies of the bills we missed and view and pay future bills online. That will be great. We've already discovered that we are being charged for stuff we didn't order, and those things are coming off on our next bill. It certainly helps to actually see what you are paying for!
We also got a new pack of Pastor Bill's sermons from Sue and Bob. Thanks guys!! We really enjoy getting these, certainly miss his great sermons!
For the next three weeks WMPL will be training new mission candidates in their Briefing Course in Minneapolis. Please keep the staff and participants in prayer as they complete this important step in their mission journey.
As always, we continue to need prayer for language and culture learning!! With Ralph's illness we didn't get out to practice as much as we would have liked, and any time not practicing is a setback. We hope to make up for lost time as he is feeling better.
Thanks so much for your notes, cards, prayers and support. We couldn't do this without you!
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
The many languages of Mexico
On being multi-lingual: The language of words
Many thanks to all of you who have sent us cassette tapes so that we can record “Palabras de Vida” (Words of Life) and other Gospel messages to distribute to the families in the camps we visit. Since we don’t own a cassette player/recorder, we asked Darwin to duplicate some for us, but he did us one better!! He loaned us the dubbing machine that is on loan to him from Gospel Recordings (with their permission, of course!). He also brought us many original tapes for the many languages of Mexico. This isn’t all the languages, mind you, but many of them. Thought you might like to see exactly how many languages there actually are! We knew there were a lot, but goodness…when he arrived with the tapes I was astounded.
The language of worship
The work in the camps is certainly winding down for the sultry summer months. Campo Santa Lucia is completely shut down for the season, but we were blessed to be invited to a send off worship there last Friday night. Jose, Ralph and I went out and said our farewells to the families we’ve been visiting as they head back south to their homes and families in Guerrero. We then we attended an outdoor worship with the small band of believers in that camp singing and praising the Lord. As an added treat for us there was a US missionary visiting from a tiny town in Jalisco (9 hours south) and we were able to visit with him for a bit too. He was happy to see us, he hadn’t spoken English in months!! We gave him our e-mail and Skype information and hope to keep in touch with him.
The language of service
We walk by these mural walls as we walk to the post office, and they were really beautiful, but had become quite faded and dirty. This week as we were driving through the neighborhood we saw teams of youth cleaning and restoring the murals. They are now so vibrant and beautiful again that they brighten up the entire neighborhood! Not sure who got this all organized, but God bless them for a lovely bit of work!
The language of music
We both love music, which is a good thing because we are pretty much surrounded by music much of the time here. We hear it in our own house, of course, at the camps, in the stores, at the plaza and in church. We also hear it from the cars and trucks that pass by, from the dances at the nearby social club and from the neighbors’ homes as well. You know I’m fond of the banda style of music that was born and bred here in Sinaloa, but I have discovered that I do have my limits!
Dia de La Cruz, May 3, we were awakened at 4 a.m. by loud banda music coming from La Cruz Plaza up the hill. By 8:30, they were still going strong so I walked up to see what was what. Turns out it was just a celebration by construction workers before heading out to work for the day. They had placed a nice bouquet of flowers at the base of the cross near the fountain and they broke up shortly after I arrived and went off to their various jobs. We also noticed many of the construction sites around town had fresh flower crosses to celebrate the day too. Nice music, but a tad too early of a start for us! These kids were at the plaza watering the flower arrangement when I went by again later in the day and they posed for a picture. Now whenever we see them in town they all greet us! (This group falls into the language of friendship and learning below!)
Then this week our three neighbors across the street banded together and had a huge party, every parking spot for blocks around was taken and they hired, guess what? A huge banda group to play for the party. At first we thought it was great, we thoroughly enjoyed the front row seats to the free concert, and we had the Lumppio girls that evening, and they were dancing and enjoying it too. But after more than five hours, we’d had enough of the music that I otherwise enjoy. Overdosed on the language of music!
The language of friendship and learning
Jose and Ralph continue to practice language with each other and it is amazing to hear them communicating and laughing and learning together. Jose is even picking up a bit of English along the way.
In the last two weeks I’ve been visited by both the Avon lady and the Jafra lady. I’m allergic to so much stuff that I’m chicken to try perfumes, lotions and makeup, but I had wonderful long conversations with both of these women and had a blast. Even got a compliment on my Spanish from the Jafra lady! Yes! I am encouraged when even strangers can understand me! Praise the Lord for the gift of language learning!
We’ve also met a couple more ladies in town during our visits. Sylvia and Letty. Two more people to visit with in our travels and practice our Spanish with. Although our other practice people still visit with us, it’s nice to expand to a couple of new folks too!
The language of love
This is one that we are intimately familiar with! The love of God and fellow Christians. The love we’ve shared in more than 34 years together. The love of our families, friends, prayer partners and fellow workers. It can be quite overwhelming at times, and is metered out in perfect doses, just as we need encouragement! Praise the Lord!
The Mexico Field Team in front of the downtown Mazatlan church: Mary Ann, Pastor Lupe, Chris B (HQ), me, Cristina, Lidia, Ralph, Gracie L, Tom, Darwin and Gracie J!
In Him,
Ralph and Chris
Many thanks to all of you who have sent us cassette tapes so that we can record “Palabras de Vida” (Words of Life) and other Gospel messages to distribute to the families in the camps we visit. Since we don’t own a cassette player/recorder, we asked Darwin to duplicate some for us, but he did us one better!! He loaned us the dubbing machine that is on loan to him from Gospel Recordings (with their permission, of course!). He also brought us many original tapes for the many languages of Mexico. This isn’t all the languages, mind you, but many of them. Thought you might like to see exactly how many languages there actually are! We knew there were a lot, but goodness…when he arrived with the tapes I was astounded.
The language of worship
The work in the camps is certainly winding down for the sultry summer months. Campo Santa Lucia is completely shut down for the season, but we were blessed to be invited to a send off worship there last Friday night. Jose, Ralph and I went out and said our farewells to the families we’ve been visiting as they head back south to their homes and families in Guerrero. We then we attended an outdoor worship with the small band of believers in that camp singing and praising the Lord. As an added treat for us there was a US missionary visiting from a tiny town in Jalisco (9 hours south) and we were able to visit with him for a bit too. He was happy to see us, he hadn’t spoken English in months!! We gave him our e-mail and Skype information and hope to keep in touch with him.
The language of service
We walk by these mural walls as we walk to the post office, and they were really beautiful, but had become quite faded and dirty. This week as we were driving through the neighborhood we saw teams of youth cleaning and restoring the murals. They are now so vibrant and beautiful again that they brighten up the entire neighborhood! Not sure who got this all organized, but God bless them for a lovely bit of work!
The language of music
We both love music, which is a good thing because we are pretty much surrounded by music much of the time here. We hear it in our own house, of course, at the camps, in the stores, at the plaza and in church. We also hear it from the cars and trucks that pass by, from the dances at the nearby social club and from the neighbors’ homes as well. You know I’m fond of the banda style of music that was born and bred here in Sinaloa, but I have discovered that I do have my limits!
Dia de La Cruz, May 3, we were awakened at 4 a.m. by loud banda music coming from La Cruz Plaza up the hill. By 8:30, they were still going strong so I walked up to see what was what. Turns out it was just a celebration by construction workers before heading out to work for the day. They had placed a nice bouquet of flowers at the base of the cross near the fountain and they broke up shortly after I arrived and went off to their various jobs. We also noticed many of the construction sites around town had fresh flower crosses to celebrate the day too. Nice music, but a tad too early of a start for us! These kids were at the plaza watering the flower arrangement when I went by again later in the day and they posed for a picture. Now whenever we see them in town they all greet us! (This group falls into the language of friendship and learning below!)
Then this week our three neighbors across the street banded together and had a huge party, every parking spot for blocks around was taken and they hired, guess what? A huge banda group to play for the party. At first we thought it was great, we thoroughly enjoyed the front row seats to the free concert, and we had the Lumppio girls that evening, and they were dancing and enjoying it too. But after more than five hours, we’d had enough of the music that I otherwise enjoy. Overdosed on the language of music!
The language of friendship and learning
Jose and Ralph continue to practice language with each other and it is amazing to hear them communicating and laughing and learning together. Jose is even picking up a bit of English along the way.
In the last two weeks I’ve been visited by both the Avon lady and the Jafra lady. I’m allergic to so much stuff that I’m chicken to try perfumes, lotions and makeup, but I had wonderful long conversations with both of these women and had a blast. Even got a compliment on my Spanish from the Jafra lady! Yes! I am encouraged when even strangers can understand me! Praise the Lord for the gift of language learning!
We’ve also met a couple more ladies in town during our visits. Sylvia and Letty. Two more people to visit with in our travels and practice our Spanish with. Although our other practice people still visit with us, it’s nice to expand to a couple of new folks too!
The language of love
This is one that we are intimately familiar with! The love of God and fellow Christians. The love we’ve shared in more than 34 years together. The love of our families, friends, prayer partners and fellow workers. It can be quite overwhelming at times, and is metered out in perfect doses, just as we need encouragement! Praise the Lord!
The Mexico Field Team in front of the downtown Mazatlan church: Mary Ann, Pastor Lupe, Chris B (HQ), me, Cristina, Lidia, Ralph, Gracie L, Tom, Darwin and Gracie J!
In Him,
Ralph and Chris
Friday, May 12, 2006
Quick update!
Thanks so much for your prayers for Francisco and his family. After more testing and a visit to specialist, the new doc could find no sign of the heart and kidney difficulties that had been diagnosed earlier (which resulted in the referral to him!). Praise the Lord! He does, however, have TB but that is treatable under a free government program, and he can get the treatment here in La Cruz. He lives in Tayoltita, a few miles south of here, but it shouldn't be a problem to get in and get his meds.
Also, our friend Ted's surgery on his knees was reschedule to July when he came down with pneumonia, however, our friend Carolyn's back surgery is still scheduled for May 17, so please continue to pray for her and her husband and for the health care folks who'll be caring for her before, during and after the surgery.
Please continue to pray for the visa situation. We found out on Tuesday we needed to pay an extra $400 pesos for the two letters that Pastor Lupe needs to write to get the ball rolling. That's been paid, but it just begins the process really.
Praise that Maria Luisa seems much better and is up and around more. She and Jacobo are getting ready to take off for her doctor visits in the states soon, so her improved health is a plus for their travel time. Pray that the doctors will find a solution for her health/vision problems.
Praise that Presidente Fox did not sign the new drug legislation. He had previously told the congress and the media that he would be signing the bill, but after intense pressure from other countries, including the US, he decided not to sign!!
Last, but certainly not least! We have happy news to report on the home front: two of our nieces have announced their engagements!! Billie Jo and TJ will marry on July 7, 2007 in Olympia, and Amy and Dan have announced their intent to marry during their winter break from school this coming December!! Amy and Dan are both in Bible school in Portland, Oregon, but the wedding will take place either in Shelton or Olympia. So, two unexpected but happy trips to the states coming up. We are so happy and thankful for these two matches made in heaven!! Praise the Lord!!
Love and blessings,
Ralph & Chris
Also, our friend Ted's surgery on his knees was reschedule to July when he came down with pneumonia, however, our friend Carolyn's back surgery is still scheduled for May 17, so please continue to pray for her and her husband and for the health care folks who'll be caring for her before, during and after the surgery.
Please continue to pray for the visa situation. We found out on Tuesday we needed to pay an extra $400 pesos for the two letters that Pastor Lupe needs to write to get the ball rolling. That's been paid, but it just begins the process really.
Praise that Maria Luisa seems much better and is up and around more. She and Jacobo are getting ready to take off for her doctor visits in the states soon, so her improved health is a plus for their travel time. Pray that the doctors will find a solution for her health/vision problems.
Praise that Presidente Fox did not sign the new drug legislation. He had previously told the congress and the media that he would be signing the bill, but after intense pressure from other countries, including the US, he decided not to sign!!
Last, but certainly not least! We have happy news to report on the home front: two of our nieces have announced their engagements!! Billie Jo and TJ will marry on July 7, 2007 in Olympia, and Amy and Dan have announced their intent to marry during their winter break from school this coming December!! Amy and Dan are both in Bible school in Portland, Oregon, but the wedding will take place either in Shelton or Olympia. So, two unexpected but happy trips to the states coming up. We are so happy and thankful for these two matches made in heaven!! Praise the Lord!!
Love and blessings,
Ralph & Chris
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