Pastor Jose

It's been an interesting month or so for church here. For some reason, the two or three other women that used to come sporadically haven't been here in weeks…don't know why, no one seems too. And then Gloria and Mimi left for several weeks of family visits all over northwestern Mexico. Not only does this mean no music for the services, but it also means Pastor has been alone at home for the better part of a month. I think he was pretty happy at first, having the house to himself, no real schedule with the family. But I think the novelty has worn off now and he's looking forward to them coming back. Should be mid-August sometime. He's not quite sure.

He's also cancelled church a couple of times, and the other times it's just been us, him and Adolfo. One Sunday it was just us and him and he gave a 45 minute sermon on the evils of alcohol and drugs and sex outside marriage. Huh? Must have been practicing that one for another audience!

Plus, his foot has been bothering him quite a bit again. It got all discolored and funny looking, even getting a bit of fungus on it. He went to a specialist in Culiacan, who told him it was really nothing to worry about. So he's not worrying. I should probably follow his lead. Please keep him in prayer, as he has been lonely with his girls gone and also for the healing of his foot. Thanks.

Gully washer!!

In the case of being careful what you pray for, we got a big lesson this week. We’ve been in a drought here for a long time and even though we love the dry, sunny weather, we’ve found ourselves praying along with the local folks for rain. Rain to irrigate the crops that will be planted soon and rain to fill up lake El Salto for the tourist fishing season that buoys the economy here.

Boy oh boy, having a stalled tropical storm even remotely close to your neighborhood gives you lots and lots of exactly what we’ve been praying for: RAIN! Tropical storm Emilia got stalled just for a bit over the tip of the Baja peninsula and dumped rain on us for over three days. It turned the far side of our street into a little mini raging river for many hours at a time, but it always stayed on that side of the street, so we never had to deal with that muddy flow. It filled our patio with about two inches of water, many hundreds of gallons, but never crept into the house. We used the broom to sweep out as much water as we could, as our patio has no drains.





The rain soaked the wall in the guest room down about two feet from the ceiling and also under the window in that room and started leaking through the corner of the kitchen, but that was it as far as the house goes thankfully. Our landlord checked it out, says not to worry it will dry out just in time for the big rains coming in August and September. Yippee.





Our water company’s pumps were flooded out by the Rio Elota, and so our whole neighborhood has been without water for more than two days. They promise it will be back later this afternoon. Praise the Lord, showers and dishes tonight, laundry tomorrow!

Tom and Lidia had actual flooding in their guest room and lost their internet connection at one point. They spent a sleepless night on Tuesday trying to keep the water at bay so it wouldn’t invade the rest of the house, Tom on the roof with a squeegy pushing the excess water off and Lidia and her friend Ingrid mopping and soaking up the water that did get inside.

Thankfully on Wednesday they located the cause of the flooding, two drain pipes on the roof had been cut off during the reconstruction and those two holes let the water pour into the house and out through the electrical outlets in the guest room. They consulted with our friend Layo at the big ferreteria up the hill from us, found a guy who came out and took a look. He installed some extra joints on the pipes, bringing them above the water level on the roof and presto! No more flooding! And for only $20 pesos! Praise the Lord.

In the midst of all of this our letters from Religious Affairs arrived in Mazatlan, so this morning Tom, Ralph and I journeyed south and picked them up from DHL and delivered them to immigration. They accepted them (yea!!) and told us to come back in a week for our visas! Praise the Lord!

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, whatta week, whatta God. Thanks for your prayers.

Cosala

Okay. We are supposed to take one day a week off away from the ministry, but we aren't very good at it. Since the camps are vacant for the summer a lot of the ministry presently happens on our patio and in the neighborhood surrounding the house. Even if we say we are going to take a day off, ministry somehow creeps in...it's just part of our everyday life. We have resolved to try harder to get away, and in that spirit we took an afternoon off and drove out to Cosala, a small pueblo about 50 miles east.

The road to Cosala is a far cry from the straight autopista between here and Mazatlan...get on, peg to 110 KM/H or so and hit the cruise. Autopilot the whole way. BORING. Not so this road! It's a lovely two-lane black-top, very curvy and hilly as it climbs in and out of foothills of the Sierra Madre.



We were slowed a bit while a cattle drive in front of us cleared the road. By the time they got the last beef into the trees there were four cars stacked up behind us! Ralph let them follow for a bit, then left them in the dust as he enjoyed the challenges of this road!



The challenges included a new Spanish word: Derrumbas. Didn't have the dictionary with us and we had no idea what it was, just that we were entering Zona Derrumbas. Didn't take us long to figure it out though. Zone of collapses!! There were two pretty large rock falls blocking the lanes in two spots through this area. Had to slow way down and go into the other lane to avoid them. Note to self: Don't drive this road at night or in the rain!!!



We marvelled at the thousands of yellow butterflies all along the roadway, they were truly amazing and very busy with all the wildflowers along the road. With all the rain we've had lately the hills have burst forth in green with splashes of wildflowers here and there, absolutely beautiful!



We got a great, shady parking spot near the plaza and got out and wandered around. There are unexpected little fountains and bronze busts of favorite sons and daughters of Cosala who've gone on to fame of one sort or another.

The town is self is pretty small, and is much more old fashioned than La Cruz. It has tons of tiny, winding streets made of stones and concrete. There's a nice mix of hotels, shops and restaurants, a history museum, lots of little vending stands with food, snacks, souvenirs, a lovely plaza and two Catholic churches!






The "new" Catholic church is about the same vintage as ours in La Cruz, but it is larger, and much nicer.






After exploring for a while, we found a spot to have a quick lunch, then wandered a bit more, exploring the central market, which also happens to be where the local buses stop. Cosala is the end of the road, so there is a lot of bus traffic getting people to and from the larger towns along the roadway, back out to the libre and autopista (free highway and pay highway). The town doesn't have a local bus route as far as we could tell, but does have a lot of taxis to haul you around if you wanted. There's even a small local airport!

We decided we'd better get back home and got a bit turned around getting to the one road that exits the puebla! It took us a few minutes and a few helpful townsfolk to get us on the right track and out of town, but we made it. We had a thoroughly enjoyable time and will likely explore some of the other small communities around here sometime soon. Including a refuge for tortoises that's around here somewhere close. Soon as we figure out how to get to it we'll go out there!

A little family update

We recently had a new addition to the family: Elleah was born to our cousins Kiesha and Josh and what a cutie she is!! She's doing fine and looking great. We are thankful for this wonderful new addition to the clan!




Our grandaughter, Savannah, recently graduated from pre-kindergarten and it was a very big deal. I know I'm pretty prejudiced on this subject, but isn't she just the cutest?



And this week Ralph's cousin Matt went home to be with the Lord. He was a wonderful, loving guy and he will be sorely missed on this earth, but welcomed with great joy in heaven! He was wheel chair bound and living in a nursing home, however he remained quite active, wheeling himself along the exercise trail in his town, participating in his church. He loved to get post cards and letters and we've tried to be faithful keeping in touch with him in this way through the years. We are thankful he's gone home to be with his Lord and is free of the things that bound him while he was here with us! Praise the Lord.

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