Whatta week! Whatta God!

Wow! We spent a thoroughly frustrating day faxing things and being on the phone with various people on Monday, getting nowhere!

We found out Tuesday morning that we needed to go to Mazatlan right away and get something in writing from immigration regarding our grace period as our FMTs had expired. Durrrrrr. That's why we were at immigration on July 6, we knew our FMTs were expiring and wanted to have something official in hand!! We had the document from them showing they'd received our documents and thought that would be enough, but NO! RA was adamant! They needed a letter from the immigration office. Okey-dokey, how tough could this be? Immigration had our money, they had a complete set of paperwork, they had granted us a grace period to get the letter from Religious Affairs. We go, we get the letters, we fax the letters, we mail the letters, we go home. So the six of us jumped in the truck and off we went.

Our new home: the immigration office in Mazatlan!



We had called in advance to make sure the guy we needed to see would be in the office, and found that he was due back about the time we'd arrive. Perfect! Even though he wasn't there when we got there we were able to talk with others. They talked about it, they thought about it. They couldn't write the letter, it would be illegal for them to do so. We needed to get a new FMT. Can you issue them here we asked? Certainly, but not if yours is already expired. Have to go to the border and get a new one there. Arrrrggggghhhhh! The woman who had been so helpful to us on the 6th and 7th tipped us off to hang around 'til three, as the guy we need would be there then and maybe we could appeal to him.

So we hung out and ambushed the poor guy in the parking lot. He understood what we needed but he was late for a meeting and promised to review our file and see what he could do. He wanted us back first thing in the morning. Hope springs eternal. The alternative was completely unappealing: run to the border, killing a week and a grand, running right up against the end of our grace period and a myriad of questions about the new FMT being dated after all our other paperwork in both agencies/cities. Would we have to forfeit everything so far and start again?? Didn't even want to think about that.

After praying and talking about whether to spend the night or not we decided to head home and start out early the next day for our hopeful review, just me, Lidia and Ralph. Tom and the girls would hold down the home front. We sent out an e-mail asking for prayer!!!

We had a huge thunderstorm that night, a few power failures and we spent the night in prayer and turmoil. What was God saying? If we didn't get the letter we'd have to leave the country for sure, the question in our minds was: Should we come back? Basically didn't sleep all. Up at 6, collected Lidia and we were off again.

Our guy was in the office when we arrived and had reviewed the file. There was nothing that he could do. Again it was repeated that it would be illegal for him to write the letter. Why then was another arm of the very same government requiring it? Sorry, can't help. Ralph threw up his hands and headed to the truck. To say that we were discouraged is an understatement!! By this time both Lidia and I are crying. We decide to call RA AGAIN (Telcel really loves us this month) and see if they have any ideas how to get this done.

The guy in RA says that perhaps this man does not have the authority to do this, but his boss does. Perhaps he doesn't know that because he is new. Could he talk with him? Lidia runs the cell phone upstairs and hunts down our guy, who is busy looking for our files to prepare our exit documents. The two government guys talk, there is a lot of yes, but, yes, but, yes, but, then a lot of yes, yes, uh huh, yes. The immigration guy hangs up and says he'll have to check some things out and make some calls, can we wait? Let me see...yes we can wait.

He comes back downstairs...yes the letters can be written, HOWEVER, if we do this when the paperwork goes to immigration in Mexico City there is a chance that we can lose everything and get a letter asking us to leave the country. The reason: the expired FMT. We tell him we need to think and pray. We do that, and call our guy in RA again. Totally not true. When immigration received our documents on the 6th, they effectively stopped the expiration of our visas. If immigration in Mazatlan had sent our documents to their office in Mexico City they would have likely arrived before the expiration of the FMTs, and even if they did not they would have just issued a letter exactly like we were asking for now. Giving us time to get the letter from RA. So, we decide to go for it.

Miracles abounded. The guy's heart and mind were changed, the letters are written! We are now crying for joy! We sign for the letters and head downtown to a public fax. Ooops. The letter doesn't have the grace dates in it. Back to immigration, Praise the Lord, the guy is still there, they fix the letters and give us a closer location to fax. We call to confirm RA got them and they are okay...yippee and Praise the Lord! We are good to go.

Now we just need to throw the letters in the Mexpost fast mail and include a prepaid Mexpost fast mail return envelope!! Back downtown to the post office, get a great parking space and rush into the post office. Sadly, can't do return pre-paid postage on fast mail. So we are off to the only other place that can do it, DHL in the Golden Zone, but Praise the Lord, we get a parking space right at the front door. They are closed for comida, but will return at three...we wait in air conditioned comfort at the VIPs across the street and have a snack.

DHL opens, but they don't deliver to La Cruz, so we go to plan "B" and have them deliver back to the office in Mazatlan. We can just pick them up when they arrive and run them over to immigration.

All day the enemy kept throwing stuff in our path, all day God just swept them away. We felt joy, we felt relief, we are so thankful that we serve such a powerful and awesome God!!! He acted in such a personal way for us, clearly showing that he is OUR God, clearly showing that he has us here for a purpose. The enemy will likely continue to try to discourage us and get us to leave, but we just need to remember this day when the Lord acted so mightily, so personally, so wonderfully!

We put the Gaither's Atlanta Homecoming in the CD player and all three of us sang all the way home...and one of the songs particularly struck us: Somebody Touched God. That somebody was you guys! We are so thankful.

Praises!

First of all, Happy Birthday Erv!

We are so thankful to everyone for all of your prayers...particularly over Ralph's health. The anti-parasitical drug made him very ill for two solid days and nights, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? In this case it was true. He's been better every day and feels like his old self again, getting back into the swing of things. You just don't realize how much being sick all the time affects you until you begin to get well again, my what a wonderful difference! Praise the Lord!

Praise also for so many generous gifts in recent weeks. We now have all of our ministry supply needs met at this point! We have Bibles, New Testaments, Gospels of John, tapes, CDs and tracts and we are thankful to have them and to be able to get them into the hands of the folks who are so hungry for them. Thank you all for heeding God's call and getting these gifts to us!

We are also thankful for your prayers regarding our adjustment to the ever increasing heat and humidity! We are doing so much better, now we can hardly tell that it's 99 but feels like 108 because of humidity! We have the energy to get out and get things done and are thankful for that. If you ever want to see what our weather is doing you can go to http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/MXSA1944_f.html and check it out. As I write this at 10:45 a.m. it's 88, but feels like 95!

We are also praising God that our water situation has improved! We have gone from having water two days out of every nine to having water every day again! What a great blessing that is, particularly for me!!

The weather has brought out a new fashion accessory: the sweat towel/cloth. Must have for outings during the day or you will just drip sweat all over the place. We wondered why people were carrying these towels all of a sudden, but now we know. Never have we lived in such humidity that we actually drip sweat, even standing still or sitting down.

We are drinking a ton more water and I've also made a big jug of jamaica and have at least one glass of that every day! You can buy the blossoms at the fruiteria for $20 pesos and it's enough for about 4-5 gallons. If you buy an agua fresca at the plaza it's $10 pesos for a regular size cup. We still will treat ourselves when we are downtown because it's a good resting point and a great people watching spot, but it's nice to know I have a big cold container in the fridge whenever I want it!

I've also been experimenting more with Mexican cuisine and really enjoying it. This past week we've had pork in adobo sauce, chicken tostadas and chicken in a spicy/peanutty sauce. So far, that's my personal favorite. Ralph loves them all. This week we'll be having meatball soup, with green olives inside the meatballs and another pork dish. It's certainly a yummy way to learn about the culture.

We spent last evening visiting with about a half dozen families in the neighborhood, testing the waters to see if there's a group interested in doing a neighborhood Bible study. Lots of positive response, but no firm commitments yet. We'll keep praying and visiting and seeing what God will do with all of these folks. Please pray with us about this.

Humor of the day...Ralph followed Tom into a bar today in front of several witnesses. A scandal would surely follow except that it was a bright blue metal bar holding up the awning at Pollo Will where the guys stopped to pick up lunch after doing the faxing. It gave everyone at the restaurant a good laugh and Tom is none the worse for wear...perhaps a small bump on the head!

And last but not least, please keep our immigration issues in prayer.< style="font-weight: bold;">immediately fax copies of our unexpired FMTs to RA in Mexico City. Of course, we turned them into immigration in Mazatlan on the 6th and no longer have them and they are no longer "unexpired" at this point. I had copies of only the unpaid version (I stupidly copied the paid version for immigration, not keeping a copy for us!) and I only had the front, not the front and back as requested by Lupe and RA. So off we go to Tom and Lidia's to gather Tom's stuff and get it all faxed. We decided to fax what we had of the FMTs and the copies of the new application showing immigration had received our documents for the FM3s on 7/6. The guys ran off to Miscellanea Letty's to fax the stuff. We were to wait 30 minutes and call RA to make sure they had what they needed. When we called they told us to call back at 4:30, and when we called at 4:30 no one would answer the phone! So we are still having great difficulties with this process, trying to stay legal. We'll try the phone again tomorrow and keep you posted. We are rapidly closing in on our grace period and aren't sure what we'll do if we can't get the letter from RA by the early days of August.

Thanks for your prayers.

Love and Blessings,

Ralph & Chris

Illnesses, immigration, customs and other fun stuff!!

This is the first anniversary of this blog…my how times flies!!

As you know we've been in Mazatlan for a couple of days trying to get our expiring visas and car permits renewed! It's been a very interesting couple of days and we appreciate that you all have prayed us through it to this point!

First of all, illnesses. Ralph, Lidia and Tom were all ill with diarrhea, poor Lidia even vomiting once on the drive down. Cristina, Gracia and I held our own praise the Lord. Ralph was still having problems this morning and afternoon and is now taking an anti-parasitical drug, with hopes of curing his continuing problems with diarrhea.

Now to the praises! In spite of everything we were able to get to immigration early enough to try to get the process done and actually got quite a bit done. We were quite blessed to have a very sympathetic worker, she was just a jewel! Her boss however was not, and she felt that he might not help us because we didn't have the letter from Religious Affairs. She encouraged us to plunge ahead anyway and deal with him later in the day, which we did. She looked over what we had, told us what we needed to do for each of the three applications. We needed three new letters, because the letters we had prepared in advance were addressed to the old head of the office, and now there is a new one and it must be addressed to the new person! Additionally we needed several more photocopies of things (immigration loves photocopies) plus three applications typed up and a total of 27 copies of a blank form for payment that could be bought at most stationery stores.

We thought this would be a huge hassle, driving all over town, but this lovely immigration lady directed us to a small copy place down the block from the immigration office where for $75 pesos each we got all we needed, including the blank forms that we needed in order to make the appropriate payments!! What a deal. In less than an hour this second lovely lady had moved her car out of her cochera and set up a table and chairs for us to wait, she took all the information and went to work. It was truly an amazing, stress reducing thing for us all. Plus we could leave the car at immigration and walk there, another stress reliever! The only bad news during this phase is we called Religious Affairs while we were there and found that they still did not have the required paperwork from Lupe! Yikes! But again we just plunged ahead. Praise God for these two wonderful women!

Back at immigration with all of our stuff in hand, the boss had decided that he couldn't help us. First he wanted us to come back two days before the visas expired, then he just flat said they couldn't do anything without the letter from RA. We pleaded, he said no again. Then we brought in the question of the expiration of the vehicle permits...our trucks could be confiscated! He just looked at the six of our sad little faces and said he'd have to help us and would at least receive our documents. They could do nothing further, but that would be good enough to go to customs about the cars! Praise the Lord!

So, we finished up the paperwork shuffle, and in the examination of all of it the immigration lady discovered that Ralph and I had somehow entered the country without paying the tourist visa fee in January!! She was convinced it wasn't a problem, but we'd have to pay it now. An extra $420 pesos, but worth it to get everything squared away! Now the lady was using the blank forms we'd just bought to print out the payments we'd need to make.

All of us starving by now as it was 1in the afternoon by this time. But in order to get the form we needed for customs, we needed to take our cash and forms to a specific bank and pay the fees and return to immigration by 2. No problem, it was all very close! We didn't take mid-day traffic in downtown Mazatlan into consideration, nor the busy lunch crowd at the bank...and there was no place to park. So, bless her heart, Lidia volunteered to jump out at the corner and pay everything while we circled the block. Woohoo! Home stretch now.

Twenty minutes later, no Lidia, so I finally jumped out at one of the turns to see what was up. Bummer, she spent 20 minutes in line only to have the teller explain that she had far too many payments and she'd have to join another line...arrrrgggghhhhh!!! She'd just gotten to the new teller! The clock's ticking, the guys and the kids are still circling, starving, anxious! Out I go to explain that it should just be a few more revolutions! At six minutes to 2 Lidia jumps back in the car, we head straight to immigration, she jumps out and runs in and I jump out and run down to the copy place again because I need new copies of the newly paid for tourist visas for the file. By three we finally had our single page each that we needed for updating the customs folks on our change of status for us and the trucks! We are giddy, perhaps from hunger at this point but we rocket over to customs, get a great parking place and Lidia & I jump out to get the coveted official stamp that will prevent confiscation! Now we are really in the home stretch...

SCREECHING halt. A very official young man told us the form from immigration was not enough. We needed a letter for each vehicle, we needed photocopies of our original holograms for each vehicle, we needed photocopies of the form from immigration, we needed copies of our tourist visas! We had just surrendered our tourist visas at immigration and no longer had them. He basically gave us a huge brush off. But he did give us a sample letter to use, informed us that the person with the stamp had already gone home and to try to come back tomorrow with everything he needed! We were pretty crushed.

We decided to eat and rest before trying to get anything else done. We tried to celebrate everything that had been accomplished so far in the day. We still needed to get additional copies made, find a cyber cafe to do the letter and swing by the church and talk to Pastor Lupe regarding the RA paperwork. We found a great parking spot just around the corner from the church, with a cyber cafe on the same block...praise the Lord.

Turns out the second mailing of the letters was also returned because Religious Affairs now requires an additional paragraph in the letter stating that our mission group is responsible for our funding and not the church and that the church is responsible for our moral character while in the country! So Lupe had already redone the letters and sent them off earlier in the day on Thursday, so we paid him another $100 pesos for the express postage and made our way to the cyber cafe and got our letters done and printed and copied!

At last, back to the hotel...basically 11 hour day with one meal, but we got our stuff done as much as we could. We took a little break before bed and visited a lovely plaza near the hotel and had dessert and watched people and listened to the music. It was just the tonic we needed to end the day.

This morning we were up early again and back at customs with all our paperwork. All six of us decided to go in this time, and we found a new guy at the desk. He looked at what we had, said we didn't need any of it now, he took a copy of each of our letters, gave it the official stamp and then gave us his name and phone number in case we got stopped and got into trouble. When we get our actual FM3, we are to come back with all our copies and a new letter and we'll be okay! That was it...we were out the door inside of 20 minutes! What a difference a day makes, not to mention a night of prayer.

We watched the girls at the hotel while Tom and Lidia went out for brunch to celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary, then we checked out, hit Walmart and Sam's and headed home. We were here by a little after 5!!

So essentially, we are in a state of official limbo right now. We will continue to bug RA in Mexico City about the letter we need. As soon as we get it we must make another trip to Mazatlan to "officially" start our process. They are simply holding everything at this point, waiting on the RA letter. Then they will advise us when to come back in and pick up our visas, and then we get to go to customs and become officially official with them as well.

Your prayers got us through these two days, but there are many issues that we still need prayer for. We are thankful you are willing to continue to pray! It will be such a blessing to get this all behind us!!

Love and blessings,

Ralph & Chris

Okay, God brought us here but…

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.

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!

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!

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