Messages

Sunday, March 26, 2006

A quiet Sunday

We don't have many quiet days, but thought we might try to take one today.

We spoke via Skype to our former exchange student, Tine, in Norway and caught up with her a bit. She'd just gotten home from her job as a paramedic in Oslo and was about to go have dinner with her sister and her sister's fiance. She was just waiting for her boyfriend to get off work and join her. He's also a paramedic. We've been praying about whether to meet her and her dad in Florida in November when they come for vacation. We haven't seen them in nearly three years and it would be nice to spend some time with them again. We'll see what God has in store for that possible reunion.

Then we had church here in La Cruz, and Pastor Jose was in fine form. We sang some of the older hymns including At the Cross and A Mighty Fortress as well as some newer choruses. The service was over before we knew it and we had a nice time of fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We've begun to gather twice a week for English/Spanish lessons with one another and are enjoying that time together as well. We are certainly feeling the bond with our new church family. Praise the Lord. Thank you for your continuing prayers for Pastor and his family.

Turns out the church we visited while in Minneapolis for Briefing Course and our Directorate interview has their complete Sunday services online!! So we can watch and listen from our home here. That's a great bonus for us too. We really enjoyed that church and their staff and have friends who attend there too! Maybe we'll see them someday on the webcast!

We are also patiently waiting to receive a package of Pastor Bill's sermons from our home church too...miss his preaching!! Miss our church family there too...

Much to Ralph's dismay I have acquired a taste for Banda music, which he doesn't care for. This week I discovered there is a 24 hour a day Banda station on our satellite, Bandamax!

Here's a brief description of Banda: Banda ("band") refers to the form of music played by large brass ensembles that first appeared in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa several decades ago. A typical banda ensemble features trumpets, trombones, tubas and percussion instruments, and may include keyboards. String instruments are used sparingly, if at all. Banda sounds somewhat similar to American Big Band music, but with a distinctive Hispanic twist.

It also ties in with the cowboy culture I've admired since I became a fan of the Professional Bull Riders years ago, as most if not all of the bands I've seen associate themselves with cowboys. Want to listen to a snippet? http://sg1.allmusic.com/cg/smp.dll?r=20.asx&link=x1xv19skeqjzi63mfquz9im

Thanks for your prayers for our continuing language and culture learning here. Our Spanish continues to improve, and I was quite thrilled to walk into city hall this past week, ask for a map, get directed to an office, actually find the office in the building, talk with the staff there and come away with a map of La Cruz! Could not have done that two weeks ago! We are also continuing to meet new people each week and that is always interesting. Building relationships as we go.

And the additional language skills has helped my search in the markets for spices and things like baking powder and baking soda. Canela is cinnamon, albahaca is basil and sal de ajo is garlic salt! (gotta have sal de ajo to make my cousin Julie's "Heart Attack Bread").

The markets in general are great learning experiences, we've gone thoroughly down the aisles in most stores, on the hunt for things we're used to buying but can't find here. For a country that runs on corn, we can't find corn meal for muffins! Tons of corn flour, but no meal or muffin mixes so far. And it was tough to find Worcestershire sauce, though we finally found a small bottle at Walmart in Mazatlan. Chocolate chips...they apparently are scarce and we haven't seen them at all yet. The only chocolate chip cookies we've had since we've been here are ones that Mary Ann made with chips someone sent her! No Skittles either...both Ralph and Tine will have withdrawals as we were her source up to now because they aren't available in Norway either!

We've both struggled to find our medications here...Ralph has settled into a substitute, but equal med, but is taking two a day rather than one because they don't come in the dosage he needs. Mine has been tougher to find. After weeks of having people tell me mine wasn't available in Mexico at all I ran into a doctor at the post office and in our chat with him I mentioned my difficulties in finding the goofy stuff. The spelling was just a little off in English from the Spanish and was causing part of the confusion, so he wrote it out in Spanish for me. It also is mostly distributed in a compound here, rather than solo, and with all my allergies I wasn't up to the challenge of experimenting with a compound. I was at last able to get a month's supply of the solo to tide me over until a shipment from an online pharmacy arrives. Please pray for prompt delivery of that order!

We are also expanding our knowledge of Mexican cuisine, visiting more and more of the local restaurants as we walk through town. Now that we are healthy again, we are getting braver about experimenting! I've gotten away from a soda at lunch and now try to have something more Mexican, such as Jamica (cold tea made from Hibiscus blossoms), Horchata (interestingly creamy cold beverage made from rice and almonds) and sangria...grape juice and I don't know what else, but it's definitely yummy. Given the option of comida Americana or comida Mexicana Ralph will vote for Mexicana every time. Got to get a good cookbook and expand my repertoire of authentic Mexican cooking. This is not the stuff you get at most Mexican restaurants in Washington! But we do miss some of our favorites from the best Mexican restaurant in the state: El Nopal in Olympia! Hi guys!!

Our quiet little town will have an important visitor on Wednesday at 12:30, presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrado will be appearing at our main plaza, giving a campaign speech. He's steadily been tops in the polls so I would imagine there will be people from throughout the district who will show up to hear what he has to say! Not sure if we want to go and listen or avoid the crowd. We'll have to see.

Ralph walks down the block to get his Cokes and he always stops to visit with the teens and the younger boys playing soccer or baseball in the street. They've gotten into a routine of high fiving, low fiving, five on the side, etc. These boys used to totally ignore our greetings as they passed by our house, but now, they not only greet us, but often initiate the greeting. Progress indeed! I remember when we first moved in I was taking out the trash one afternoon and I heard the crack of a bat and saw the ball whizzing my direction. It dropped just behind me and rolled down to me. When I picked it up, I think they all thought I was going to keep it and they were quite surprised when I pitched it back to them. Who knew that was the beginning of budding friendships with these kids.

The work at the camps continues to be interesting and exciting...and we have gotten some notes from folks who are sending us tapes and Bibles to use in that ministry. Thanks so much!

Thanks to all of you for your prayers and your support...been able to get through the bumps in the road because of you and we are grateful.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

A national holiday today

Today is Benito Juarez Day in Mexico, and everyone has the day off. Schools and government offices are all closed. Sr. Juarez was a Zapoteco Indian who got a law degree and rose to power in the late 1800s. He was a councilman, judge, governor and eventually president of Mexico. He is still revered today as a hero for the work that he did for the poor and disadvantaged. You can read more about him at: http://www.mexonline.com/benitojuarez.htm

Have a great Benito Juarez Day!

Blessings,

Ralph & Chris

Friday, March 17, 2006

Sights and sounds

Living in the heart of a small farming and ranching community is always interesting. We are a town:

where the population swells with thousands of migrant workers during the growing season
with no car dealerships, but two tractor dealerships: New Holland and John Deere!
with no fast food, but plenty of food options from street vendors to full blown sit down restaurants and everything in between
that is hemmed in on all sides by acres and acres of crops in various stages of growth, some just planted and others ready to be harvested now: a wide variety of peppers, potatoes, cucumbers, melons, tomatoes, onions, corn, jicama, watermelon and much more
where a man walking around with an unsheathed machete doesn’t even raise an eyebrow, and I’d guess just about anywhere in the states the cops would use a taser and/or pepper spray to subdue him before he was arrested and hauled off to jail
where you can wake up to a parade, or to a cattle drive through town, depending on the day
where a beautiful hand-made saddle hangs from the tree outside a local store and no one would think of bothering it unless they wanted to buy it

where your electric bill is hand-delivered to your house by an electric company employee
you pay your electric bill by walking into the office, swiping your bill in front of the bar code scanner, putting your money (paper and/or coins) in the appropriate spots in the machine and getting your change delivered in a tray at the bottom, clinking like a slot machine jackpot!
where you awake to song birds each morning, and sometimes to the neighbors chickens crowing!
where there are two postal employees: one mans the post office and the other delivers mail on a motorcycle with leather saddle bags for the mail
where the vast majority of the businesses close for comida (lunch) between 2 and 4 each day
where visiting with shoppers is considered to be part of the service in each business
where you can buy a mango on a stick or a few nice, fresh dates from a street vendor

where a fruit drink is just as likely to come in a plastic bag as in a cup, just add a straw and you are set to go
where loud booming brings us outside just in time to see unexpected fireworks from the carnival that visits town…beautiful light show!
where furniture vendors set up on the plaza to sell their handmade wares
where your flower garden blooms even in winter!

This week has been one of the best ones so far on so many levels.

We’ve both been healthy. Praise the Lord!

Our Spanish is improving and we are able to communicate and learn more and more. PTL!
We did have a cattle drive down our street, but by the time I heard it and realized what it was and got my camera I just caught the very end of it. Ralph said there were more than 100 beef on the hoof!
We also had a carnivale parade with a lot of floats and women of every age dressed up in beautiful gowns and riding on the floats, some guys too. Everyone had eggs filled with confetti that they were throwing at each other and cracking on each other’s heads.

We discovered a tiny lizard on our patio.
The landlord rented the small upstairs apartment to a guy without a car, so we get the extra cochera to park in, turning our cochera into an additional covered patio! We celebrated by purchasing two metal rocking chairs to sit in out there.
A neighbor brought her plants to me for safekeeping while she visits in Puerto Vallarta. Praise for the budding friendship and relationship building!
Another neighbor brought us each a chocolate covered frozen banana with sprinkles that she made herself.
We got our internet service and had a video chat with Greg, Darane’, Savannah and Nick! Woohoo! We are thankful…
We called several family members and a few friends using the internet calling service, Skype.
We also got our first pack of mail from home and were able to do our taxes!
We got our kitchen cupboards (Genaro made them!) and the guys put them up in the kitchen and I put stuff away at last.

Next week: The bookcase (also made by Genaro)! We may get completely unpacked yet!

Ralph has been so excited at the openness of everyone they meet at the camps, everyone wants to learn more, they want Bibles, New Testaments and Gospels of John! They want to sit down and study right away, they want Gospel tapes in their languages! It’s amazing. The guys are welcomed with open arms by the workers, but the other night when they returned to Campo Santa Lucia the guard that was there didn’t want them to visit or even to stay unless they went to Campo San Juan and got specific permission. So they prayed their way over there and were shuttled about to loads of people, handing out tracts the whole way and finally got permission to visit both of those camps any time they like. Next week they’ll be going out much earlier, around 2 or so, hoping they can spend more time with the various groups of people.

We made a prayer request to our prayer team this morning for cassette tapes, a tape copier and the Spanish language materials that we’ll need as we visit. There are thousands of people…God is so good to gather them all up here and send us to speak with them and share the love of Christ! We are proud to serve Him!

We’ve begun learning the Evangelism Explosion materials, from a Spanish language booklet and CD and hope to work through the material quickly and be able to begin using it soon.

Thanks for your prayers and your continued support of the Lord’s work here…

Love and Blessings,
Ralph and Chris

Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Nearly two months in Mexico!

Wow, we’ve already completed our first month in La Cruz and we are sneaking up on the completion of our second full month in Mexico…seems hard to believe.

This has been a week with lots of ups and downs. On the upside Tom and Lidia and the girls have been with us since last Thursday and they were excited at the prospect of getting into their own home again. They left the states on January 20th, and are anxious to get settled. Sadly, the deal on their rental house fell through and they were without a home here. But they now have two prospects, one they could move into right away and one that could take a month or more to finish. They should find out today…they are hoping for the one they could have right away because the other one would mean that they’d need to live temporarily in a small apartment or hotel for a month and they’d like to avoid that if they can.

We also had lunch in Mazatlan with a retired missionary couple, the Knutsons and our neighbors from Olympia, the Krumlands! What a blast! The Knutsons come to Mazatlan for two or three months each winter and then return to Minnesota…the Krumlands usually come for about a month. We had a lovely lunch and a great visit. The Krumlands are on their way back home now, but the Knutsons will be here another month, so we may see them again.

This week Ralph and I both caught some kind of 36 hour bug…thankfully we had it at different times, but man, were we ever sick. It kept Ralph down for two full days and me for a day and a half. Thankfully, we are both doing fine again.

While Tom and Lidia have been here she’s been helping us with our Spanish too and getting us more formally set up on the immersion method we’ve been using, Brewster! It’s so wonderful to expand our Spanish so much more quickly and in a more formal way. I actually was able to ask about a temporary water outage and be completely understood, and using full sentences too, not just the individual words that I know strung together well enough to be understood. It felt great.

Ralph and Darwin went out to Campo Ceuta again last night and spent some time working with brother Ismael. He wants to start visiting some of the parishioners who have dropped out of church of late and see what he can do to get them back, so that may be on the agenda in the near future. On a whim, they decided to see if they could locate a camp that they’d heard about but had never been to, and they located Campo Santa Lucia. The people were very warm and welcoming and the guys actually had a couple of different crowds going as they walked through the area talking with people. The guard approached them wanting to know what they were up to and when they told him said he was glad that they had come and could come any time!! So they began to take orders for Bibles and Gospel tapes and will return next week to distribute them and to get to know these new families a little more. Please keep brother Ismael and the people of Campo Santa Lucia in your prayers.

As we get to know Pastor Jose more and more he revealed to us that he had a serious injury to his leg about 17 years ago and hasn’t had any trouble with it until the last few months when a cyst developed and he had to have surgery. It’s been a struggle for him to get up and going again after this surgery, but he has persevered with the help of God. He wants to get out and visit more, so it’s likely that he and Ralph will go together and just visit perhaps one or two families each day until Pastor is fully recovered. He’s a bit discouraged over the length of time it’s taken him for recover. Please keep him and his family in prayer.

And, Praise the Lord! We did get our phone installed last week! We can only call locally for the first month, but once we get that first bill we can sign up for a package that will include long distance!! The phone installer got my hopes up by asking a friend of his to bring the modem up from Mazatlan on Wednesday and he promised he’d be back by on Thursday and install the Internet! I was so thankful and excited, because I’d been told it would be another month and five days for the Internet installation! But he never called or came back and the modem never appeared either. I was crushed.

Then on Saturday, a different TelMex guy came by and said he’d be installing the Internet that afternoon! Yippee!! I was thrilled. Then he called later in the day and said it was hooked up, and to just install the modem…which of course we didn’t have. So they ordered it and we should have it by Friday…maybe. The Lord must be working on my patience or lack there of on this one. We miss the kids so much I just want to see them. This is our biggest struggle, not being able to use the video hookup to see the kids.

This has been a good week, and we feel blessed, even getting up and finding we had no water in the building this morning didn’t seem to phase any of us…the six of us are just rolling with the flow! We just left the dishes in the sink and we’ll all bathe and do laundry when we have water again, which they tell us will be later today. At least we are all grubby together and we can laugh about it!

Thanks so much for your prayers and support…we appreciate it so much.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Critters, Camps, Road Trips and a Parade

We are both doing so much better health-wise, it’s just amazing. We thank you all for your prayers in this regard, God is so good to restore us to health and we are thankful, thankful, thankful. I have a bit of a cough and cold, but that’s it.

Darwin came up on Wednesday afternoon and he and Ralph spent the evening out at Tayloltita and Campo Ceuta. They held a Bible study with a family in Tayloltita and only the men came. Please pray that the women would also come to learn more about God’s Word. Perhaps when Lidia and I get out there we can encourage the women to participate more. Please ask God to show us how to involve the women in the studies.

After the Bible study and a meal with the family they traveled over to visit with brother Ismael to encourage him. He pastors the church at Ceuta. They had a very lively conversation and visit with him, he’s such a nice guy with such a large task before him. Please keep him in prayer.

We’ve also been blessed this week to make several new acquaintances in town, particularly the family that runs the Loncheria Blanca, a small lunch counter in the walk-through market place downtown. Great food and great company, a perfect combination! They are Consuelo and Yadira, Isadoro and Fernanda (age 8) and son Kevin. They are so friendly and helpful and so encouraging in our Spanish acquisition. They even got their customers involved in our language learning!! Later in the week Isadoro happened to be in our neighborhood for his job and he made a quick stop to visit for a minute!

In our travels this week we’ve also met Janet at the nursery and Rafaella, a neighborhood woman, and finally we met the husband and son of Candy, our neighbor! He works odd hours and we’ve seen him come and go sometimes, but finally formally met him. He and their son are both named Luis Francisco. And we also met Veronica at the hat shop where Ralph finally got a hat to shield him from the sun.

As we walk different routes back and forth downtown we’ve discovered a foot long iguana that suns himself on a big pile of rocks…he’s pretty much ignored us and everything else and just sits perfectly still as we and everything else go by. But one afternoon this week as we were walking by he turned completely around to watch us and started head bobbing. We weren’t any closer to him than we’d ever been, and wondered what was up with him all of a sudden, but as we were trying to figure that out a dump truck came by startling him into cover. Guess we’ll have to check him out more this week.

Speaking of critters, we also had a visit from one of the neighbors’ chickens a while back. While we were eating lunch in the kitchen she just walked herself right through the patio and living room and into our bedroom. We kept hearing these weird noises and discovered her exploring. She was stubborn and didn’t want to leave so we ended up having to sweep her out with the broom. I think she was highly offended because she hasn’t been back.

Some of you have wanted the latest update on our cohabiting spider. We debated for days about what, if anything, to do about it. We wondered if whatever it was feeding on might be worse than the spider itself. We thought about whether it was making a nest, or even if it was actually a baby and a bigger mom might be nearby. We finally decided that it had to go and got some spray for it, but then of course we didn’t see it for a while. But when Ralph got home late from the camps on Wednesday, there it was, so he gave it a dose of spray before he came to bed. He didn’t mention that to me, so imagine my start when I got up to use the bathroom a little later and caught a glimpse of this big spider running into the shower! He’d never left the toilet tank in my presence before, and man, was he moving quickly! Needless to say, Ralph got up and finished him off.

Friday was “Dia de la Bandera” or flag day and we had a wonderful parade downtown! Student groups from nearly every school in the district, kinder to university, each had a little group marching in the parade. Some had their fanciest uniforms others just their school uniforms, many had drum and bugle corps, even the tiniest kids! It’s was a great display of patriotism and youthful enthusiasm and we had a great time taking it all in.

We also decided to drive up to El Salto, the famous bass fishing lake…and it’s beautiful and full of people who would like to take you out fishing. The lake itself is way down because of the time of year…after the summer rainy season it will be back up to it’s normal levels. The level doesn’t seem to affect the number of people fishing at all. They say the bass there have reached 30 lbs.…no I’m not kidding, but I think they are. That's nearly as much as our granddaughter weighs!!

We went into Mazatlan to do some shopping and got wild and crazy on the way back and decided to take the “Libre” rather than the “Cuota”, free vs. toll road. There is a toll road that runs all the way from Nogales to Mazatlan, and that’s what we took as we drove down here. We’ve taken the toll road each time we’ve gone to Mazatlan as well, and people advised us against taking the Libre, but our neighbors do it, so we took the plunge. It’s a beautiful drive, but takes quite a bit longer as it is strictly two lane blacktop with lots of trucks and busses to slow you down. And it’s only 80K rather than 110K, so that slows you down a bit too. But it’s a nice, curvy, hilly road that’s a fun ride. And the Cuota is $95 pesos each way to Mazatlan, or about $20 total for the toll. We’ll probably continue to do a mix of the two roads.

Please continue to pray for our language acquisition and for phone and internet service and for Tom and Lidia and the girls as they prepare to move to La Cruz next week. Thanks so much for your prayers and your support.

In Christ’s Love,

Ralph & Chris

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

More news from La Cruz

As we continue our settling in process here we continue to discover new things…

Pastor Jose's wife makes and sells wonderful tamales everyday at their home. They are quiet different than I've had before because they have meat and veggies in them, but they are really good!! We bought a bunch for comida (lunch) on Saturday and really enjoyed them.

Our neighbor Candy says if we like the beach at Ceuta, we should check out the beach at Celestino, a little south of us…she says its even nicer. So we are going to try to make some time to get down there and check it out.

We have another neighbor that we just discovered on the weekend…a spider as nearly as big as the palm of Ralph's hand that lives in our bathroom. Our bathroom is small, but we don't mind sharing with him so far. He's completely non-aggressive, and runs when he sees or hears anyone coming. Completely not interested in us. He's flat and brown and not hairy, which people tell us is good, and not to worry too much about him. Mikey, want to move him outside for me??? Just kidding. Mike was my official spider mover at work when there was a big one in my office that I didn't want to deal with.

We've gotten to the point that we see Pastor Jose nearly everyday in our travels, he's out and about a lot and so are we, so we cross paths. We've been to his house a couple of times, he's been to ours once so far. He's a sweet man, great sense of humor too. We are enjoying getting to know him and his family.

Carnival begins this week, so that's a big point of prayer. There has already been a lot of pre-carnival partying in town, and everyone says that will just increase as they days go by. We are thankful we aren't in Mazatlan right now, they are home to the world's third largest Carnival, right behind Rio and New Orleans. There is concern that because New Orleans has cut back that Mazatlan's celebrations will be even bigger. Please keep that in prayer, February 23-28.

Last week we were pleased to see about 100 or more youth marching down the two main streets of La Cruz in support of families and against drugs and alcohol. Pretty amazing to see all those kids, and some adults turn out. We thanked them as we saw them, and took a couple of quick pictures.

Tom and Lidia and the girls were up over the weekend and were blessed to find a house to rent on Sunday evening! They are very excited and plan to move up on March 5. We look forward to having them as neighbors in La Cruz, they aren't all that far from us.

We are excited that next week after our team meeting in Mazatlan that we'll be having lunch with some retired missionaries, the Knutsons, and the luncheon invitation has also been extended to our neighbors in Olympia, the Krumlands!! We are looking forward to visiting with them!

We have been struck with “missionary stomach” this week and have both been feeling lousy…and combine that with a severe case of homesickness to make it even worse. We need prayer in both these areas. I would ask that you also pray for our telephone and internet access. If we could talk to the kids or see them I think we would be doing better, but we can't use our video setup from the Internet cafe, and we have had another delay in getting the phone, and can't get the internet access until the phone is installed. They told us two weeks, and that has passed and when I checked on it this morning they said one more week…seems like forever.

Overall life is good, we are learning more every day and meeting more and more new people. Even another El Salto guide, Julio. We are thankful to the Lord and to all of you for your faithfulness. Love and blessings from warm and sunny La Cruz!