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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The big move and a week filled with blessings!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blessings to you all!

So much going on

To say it’s been busy lately would be an understatement:

The weekend following our field conference in Mazatlan, the youth group from the Mazatlan church visited both Campo Ceuta and the church in La Cruz. The entire traveling group amounted to more than 20 people and the kids performed music and dramas and gave their testimonies during the two day visit. It was great to see the team as organized as they were and so pumped up to share their Savior!

Setting up

Singing praises to the Lord

Christian drama

Then Ralph and Darwin spent two afternoons and evenings visiting at five different camps. In most cases they set up a table outside and the people came to them. They were able to talk with a lot of folks and they distributed a lot of tracts, Gospels of John, New Testaments and Bibles. Kind of their last effort in the camps for a while as the Jacksons are leaving for furlough and then will be working with the churches in Nogales and we’ll be moving on to Mazatlan.

We had two of our praying partners in Mazatlan at the same time, so we spent time visiting with both the Moores and the Krumlands, both visiting from our home city of Olympia!! What a blessing these folks are to us, so faithful in their friendship and their prayers for us and God’s kingdom. What a privilege to spend time with them.

While in Mazatlan we learned that Tootie and Alton returned home to Minnesota due to Tootie’s illness…she’d been hospitalized in Mazatlan for more than a week. They decided to cut their stay short and return home to their own doctors. They will be missed, and we look forward to seeing them next winter! Please pray for her continued healing.

We also had an adventure in going to pay the rent and deposit on the new house. We needed to meet the landlady at her house and it was in an area of Mazatlan that we weren’t familiar with, but we were armed with a map and instructions and thought we’d have no problem. We ended up getting lost! We pulled into a small street with cars parked on both sides, just barely room for our truck to pass. We stopped to get directions from a guy on the street, and while that was happening a police pickup pulled up nose to nose with our truck, requiring us to back up to get out of his way. The guy who was trying to help us with directions offered to direct as we backed up and parked along the curb. He directed right into a parked car! While I stayed in the truck and prayed, Ralph got out and talked with the cops. They were completely unconcerned about the wreck, they didn’t ask to see any of our papers or anything. The damage to the other car was a cracked tail light, none to ours. The other car was a very old and decrepit Datsun, so they simply wrote down our name, address and phone in a little spiral notebook and then proceeded to give us directions to get where we were going. As we understood it, the owner would contact them if he needed to. Amazing.

When we finally got into the general neighborhood of where we were going we decided to park and just walk until we found it. Much less stressful. The first guy we asked had never heard of the landmark we were seeking, so we continued down about three doors and there was another guy and when we asked him he pointed to the corner and there it was!! We asked at the little creamery that served as the landmark and they walked us directly to the house we were looking for. We were almost 90 minutes late and our new landlady was gone by the time we arrived. Bummer. But her family sat us down in the shade of their patio to wait as they were sure she’d be right back and she was. We paid our money, got our receipt, got the keys, had several questions asked and answered and were on our way again! Here are some pictures of the interior of the house…it hasn’t been cleaned yet, so pardon the dirt.

The kitchen, double sink, cabinets! How cool is that?

I’m standing in the dining room as this is taken of the living room, the kitchen is to my left. First doorway to the left is a tiny half bath tucked under the stairs, tall people BEWARE!! Then there are the stairs to the second floor and then the front door.

The bath, large shower with the sink in a separate compartment outside the bath. Toilet seats are completely optional here, but we’ll be buying a couple!

The master bedroom with a spot for the air conditioner and a nice window. The closet is to the left. There’s a ceiling fan, but it’s busted and missing a couple of blades. We are going to pirate blades from this one to fix one in the bedroom across the hall and then buy a new one for this room.

Our house in La Cruz has no storage at all, this house has a closet in each bedroom!!

We hope to get moved in over the next week or so…

Last but not least, please continue to pray for little Kitzia. Looks now as if her surgery to remove the tumor behind her right ear will be sometime in October after she turns one. Praise the Lord they don’t have to do it now, it will be much safer when she is older! She and Candy visit nearly every day…here she is sound asleep after a big morning out with mom in her stroller!

Thanks so much for your continuing prayers.

The death of Don Luis

Our neighbor across the street died during the night on Tuesday. We saw the funeral SUV arrive early Wednesday morning and the funeral home awning went up in front of the house. Later in the day we heard it was Luis who had died. We didn’t really know him, he’d been sick the entire year we’ve been here. We were never really clear what as ailing him, it was never brought up. He’d have his good days and his bad days. He spent a lot of time sitting in the rocker out in the yard, just enjoying his garden and his family. If they went anywhere in the car they’d always smile and wave as they went by.

After a couple of days of non-stop company at the house the funeral was yesterday afternoon. The funeral SUV was back and the large crowd of mourners walked behind it from the house to the cemetery. There were three pickup loads of flowers. He was the patriarch of a large family, but the one’s we knew the best were his wife Yolanda, daughter Judith and granddaughter Ivana. Please keep the family in prayer as they adjust to life without him.

Life here on earth is so fleeting…are you doing what God would have you do? Anytime anyone around me passes any more I think of Pastor Andrea’s sermon about the dash, the little symbol between the numbers of your birth and death. Mine are 1951-???? What are you doing with the dash God has given you?

Blessings to you all.

The house hunt…

What a stretch for us personally, culturally and in language and navigation in and around Mazatlan!!! We’ve now been to neighborhoods that we never knew existed and we met a lot of nice, helpful people in the process! Interestingly enough, people rarely wanted to tell us up front what the rent was, when we would ask they would say “you have to see it”, even when we explained that we have limited resources!

Carmen and Genaro really wanted us in their neighborhood if possible, so they took us to see several houses, all of which were either too small, for sale rather than for rent or Carmen declared the neighborhood as “no bueno”. She was frustrated that she couldn’t find anything close to them. Our attitude was “God will provide”. We ended up taking off and looking on our own. We had several adventures over two days.

One experience was asking at a small neighborhood store if they knew of any houses for rent, which they did, a yellow house within sight of the store, owned by a lady named Carmen who lived just up the street from the house. So we ventured off, peeked through the gates of the potential rental and tried to find the owner. Another little store on the block was called Carmelita’s so we knocked and sure enough she was Carmen with a rental. Turned out it was a tiny studio apartment above the little store! The OTHER Carmen was across the street to the left…so we were off again. This Carmen invited us in and introduced us to her daughter and her brand new, 15th grandchild, a darling 13 day old little boy! We visited for quite a bit and then she got around to the house…$4,000 pesos, well above our rent cap! Bummer. But wait! They have another house, presently occupied, but she thinks the Canadian who is living there now plans to leave soon. She would find out and then call us and let us know when we could look at that. Alas, she never called us back!

Then we had the phone number of a lady who had a house for rent in an area that was new to us…when we called she sent her son and son-in-law to meet us. We waited for them for about an hour and the house was really nice, but again, significantly above our rent cap!! But they also had another house, a smaller two bedroom in another neighborhood. Currently being renovated, but very nice. So off we were following them a few kilometers through new territory to the other house. Nice older neighborhood…and walking through the door I was thrilled! Beautiful old floors, brick arch between the living room and the kitchen/dining room. The kitchen and bath were being completely renovated and brought up to date, the first bedroom was fairly spacious. We were excited…maybe this was it. But when we asked where the second bedroom was they just said, oh I guess it only has one bedroom! Three rooms is not big enough. So we were on our way again!

Our best adventure God saved for last…we found two houses in a neighborhood near Carmen and Genaro, but across the highway. The first house was a duplex owned by a nice Christian lady named Yolanda, but it was way too small, muy, muy chica!! The other house was just two doors down and the neighbors across the street knew the owners and offered to call them for us. They couldn’t meet us just then but would call later to arrange a time. In the meantime we had a nice visit with Roberto and Virginia, who made the call for us. Really lovely people. They’ve lived there six years, been married for 18 years. They allowed that there are very good neighbors, not a lot of parties and its very quiet. They love it. They are both teachers, and in fact he used to teach at El Bollio, which is a little pueblo just a little bit outside of La Cruz. They told us how nice the house was, even though it needed work, and how nice the owners were. Really doing a sales pitch! But, the owners never called back and we finally had to leave…we went back to the hotel hoping they would still call, but they never did.

We continued to pray about what to do: stay another day and keep looking or head back to La Cruz. As we prayed this house kept coming to our minds so we thought we’d run back out there and take another shot. Again, Virginia made the call and yes, the owners had tried to call us but didn’t realize that our cell was long distance for them and couldn’t make the connection! They agreed to meet us, and again Roberto and Virginia entertained us while we waited.

The house is very nice, and so is the family that owns it. It’s been empty for a while, owned by the brother who was disabled in an accident and can no longer live there. We loved the house, it has kitchen cabinets and a bathroom with a sink!! And Sandra, the owner’s sister, was trying to explain that the kitchen cabinets were set up for a small stove and that you could not cut the cabinets for a big stove. Not to worry, we have a small stove. She was apologizing for the condition of the house because it was dirty, the dining room floor is unfinished, they were painting, etc. As we continued to look we kept asking how much…and finally she told us and it was way above our rent cap. Arrrrggggghhhhh!!!

We were sad and discouraged, but as we talked she decided she wanted to call her mom and talk it over with her. Since part of the house (one bedroom, one bath and sun room) are unfinished with concrete floors and no fixtures, and since we will not be using the little store front that is built into the back corner of the house she thought perhaps they could drop the rent a little. Then Sandra told her mom we are Christians and that sealed the deal for her mom. They dropped the rent to just below our cap!!! Praise the Lord! We now have a home in Mazatlan! We are going to pick up the keys later in the month and can move in any time after March first! We can scarcely believe that we are moving again but God has definitely paved the way.

This is a view of the house, the unfinished part is above the cochera, all along the outside wall to the back, basically half the upstairs. All along the orange front is the cochera and a small patio. There is a living room, small dining room (concrete floor), kitchen, half bath and service porch downstairs and two finished bedrooms and one finished bath up, plus the unfinished space. You can see the tiny little store front at the back of the house. The hole in the wall by the side window upstairs is for the air conditioner. The stairway is curved and tiled and has no hand rails so pray we don’t crash too much on the stairs!!

Thanks so much for your prayers as we struggled along, particularly these last five months. We thought we wouldn’t make it, and on our own we could not have…we need our Lord and we need your prayers! Bless you for praying for us!

The conference was a success!

Thanks so much for your prayers for our conference last weekend. We had a lot on the agenda and were able to get through it all and have time to share devotions, worship, pray and have communion too. We even had two meals together! Even while Lidia was sick all weekend. God is good, she endured and is doing better.

Taking a break:

We did all the normal business type stuff…how to deal with the archives, scheduling vacations for this year, reviewing and approving all the treasurer’s reports, tweaked the by-laws. We also elected new officers for the coming year: Darwin will continue as Field Director, with Tom as Vice-Director, Mary Ann as Treasurer and Lidia as Secretary (with a promise from me to be her backup!). Each family gave a work report for the past year and each person gave a personal testimony.

The biggest news/change is in work assignments for the coming year. The Jackson’s will be on furlough part of the year, much of it in Washington State. When they return in the fall they will be living in Nogales and working along side the churches in the state of Sonora, training the existing pastors and looking toward an additional church plant there. The Lumppios will continue here in La Cruz, concentrating their efforts on the church, town and camp at Ceuta with Tom continuing his language study. We will be moving to Mazatlan to continue our language and culture learning and will also volunteer at some of the local orphanages as well as participating in the church in Mazatlan as opportunities arise. Yep, you read that right, we are on the move again.

You know that we have been praying about why God had us here, particularly since last October. You have been praying along with us!!! You all know we were frustrated. But, we should have known that God is faithful, He does have a plan, and that plan is being revealed to us now. We are so thankful that we serve such an awesome, patient God. This is such an answer to prayer for us!! The orphanage thing had been on our hearts for a long time, but it is definitely outside the box for WMPL and the church here. God worked all of that out in His time. Golly, that hushing up and waiting and listening thing seems to have worked pretty well.

Know that this change was no small thing…it required approval by our office in Minneapolis, the church here in Mexico and all of our team members. The first hint we had about the changes God had wrought was when our Personnel guy arrived a couple of weeks back and let us know that HQ had been praying about this since last fall same as us and they were now ready to talk to us, the church and our team about it! We were so blown away! After much prayer all we can say is Praise the Lord and wow!

So, since we had planned to stay over in Mazatlan after the conference to visit with our neighbors from Olympia, Ted and Mary Louise and with Jan, retired WMPL missionary after 35 years in Mazatlan who are visiting now, when our team gave their final approval this past weekend we decided to try to house hunt a bit too. I’ll write more on that later, but we just had to say thank you so much for your prayers!! You are such a blessing to us.

Please pray for the COMIMEX Annual Conference 2007

This weekend will mark our first real conference since we’ve been here. The six of us will hunker down for two days of meetings covering a wide variety of business for the field such as:

reviewing job descriptions and electing new officers

reporting on what’s been going on the during the last year with each family

doing some strategic planning

tinkering with the field goals and by-laws a bit

getting our new and/or continuing job assignments for the next year

getting vacations for the next year at least penciled in on the calendar

discussing items like rent caps, mileage reimbursement and the disposition of the field archives as the Jacksons prepare for their home furlough

We’ll also have time for devotions, worship with communion and for breaking bread together. We certainly need your prayers during this time as there is a lot to do in just two days!! This will also be the first time all six of us have been together for any real length of time, so there will be significant opportunities for strengthening our bonds as a team.

Please pray also for the littlest members of our team: Gracie J., age 6; Cristina L., age 4 and Gracie L., age 2. They will be spending the two days with a loving sitter from the Mazatlan church. It is our prayer that they will have a wonderful two days together as well.

Though this is not related to COMIMEX business, please pray also for little Kitzia, Candy and Luis’ little daughter. She has some type of tumor behind her right ear. Dr. Maldonado is in the midst of doing some testing, including a biopsy. We hope to hear the results of that within two weeks. This little one was just born on October 9th. We appreciate your prayers for Kitzia and her family as well.

Blessings to you all…thanks so much for your prayers and support!