"Bella" - a Great Movie!

Most of the believers I know are always on the look out for a good movie to watch. I recently heard an interview about a movie titled "Bella" on Family Life Radio. Directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde of Mexico. With Eduardo Verástegui, Tammy Blanchard, Manny Perez. I took Jo'ell to see it with our friends Robert and Traci. It was an intense movie. It involves an ex pro soccer player and a waitress; I'll leave it at that. For a preview go to http://www.bellamoviesite.com/ . Leave me your thoughts in the "comments" section if you go see it; I would like to know if you liked it.
At the showing for this movie there was a preview for a movie coming out in March of 2008 called "Under the Same Moon." it is about a mother and son from Mexico separated from each other; it looks pretty good. As a newbe in gospel work in Mexico I am trying to learn as much about the culture as I can. This movie might help. Check out the trailer for it at www.foxsearchlight.com/underthesamemoon/

Getting settled in Guadalajara

We are enjoying getting settled into our rental house here in Zapopan, a municipality within greater Guadalajara. They call neighborhoods "Colonia's" and ours is Pinar de la Calma. It is a narrow one way street where people park on both sides of the street. There some things that are different than our neighborhood in the Oregon:

Bottled water truck comes twice a week and knocks at the gate.

Neighborhood vendors abound and sing their product jingle as they walk up the street.
We get tamales, pastries, flowers and honey sold on our street on a regular basis.

The garbage truck comes twice a week and it's free!
The drivers have a cowbell on their belt to let you know they are coming.

Churchbells from up the street are heard on a regular basis.

We are enjoying it very much. I am glad the kids are making friends. The neighborhood is pretty quiet right now with a lot of people gone for the holidays. My friend Hector is in California and should be back next week. I am looking forward to seeing him again. He has been a big help in showing me around the city.

The Trip

A friend of mine asked if we had any car trouble on our trip down. The cars ran great though the trailer we were towing behind the Explorer was too heavy for the little V6 and it had to work hard to get it here. The bumpy roads and the weight in the trailer were too much for the axle, though, and one side bent. Thankfully it got us here. The latch also popped off the back door as we were driving. Praise God nothing fell out!! Made for an exciting view for Jo'ell as she was following me! We paid a wide variety of prices for gas, the lowest being about $2.70 and the highest $3.70. I stopped in one place out in the middle of nowhere in Arizona and was going to gas up until I saw the price was $4.69. I decided to try to make it to the next town! They had a sign taped to the front door saying if you didn't like their price to go somewhere else, so I obeyed.

It was a blessing to meet up with Alfredo and his friends in Laredo, Texas to drive down with in Mexico. The photo above was about 3 am when we stopped for some coffee. There were no Circle K's around but we found this little store. It did the trick and kept us going till 2 pm the next day!