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The Glories of the Glorietta

Known as "Round abouts" in some places, these types of intersections are very popular here. It is hard to see from this photo, but this glorietta near our house has two lanes and traffic signals on it. People here drive really fast and don't hesitate to cut in on you or honk at you if you are not going as fast as they think you should. It's a bit hairy at first but you find yourself flying right in there without much thought after awhile. There is a four lane strip in the middle with arterial roads on each side of "Deiz y ocho de Marzo", the bigger of the two streets meeting here.

Eduardo and Annette

Here is a photo of a birthday party at our house for fellow missionary Andy Clark (on the right with the Kojack haircut). Eduardo and Annette and their family came over to enjoy some "Tres Leche" cake (three milks cake). I love it!

We have become pretty good friends with Eduardo and their family; they live right across the street. They have 4 children; Sophie 12, Karen 9, Eduardo 7, and Daniel is a newborn and made his entrance about a month ago. (You can see the portable baby crib in the background.) They have spent time showing us around the city and various points of interest.

Please pray for Eduardo as his mother is terminially ill. He has been going to work every day and staying with her every night at the hospital. She is a diabetic and has a virus on her brain. Pastor Rafael Santana and I were able to go visit her recently. Pastor was able to read the 23rd Psalm with her and to talk with her about placing her trust only in God. She is only 57 and is understandably fighting feelings of bitterness about having her life cut short. We were able to pray with them and continue to pray that the Lord will pour out His grace on her.

Big Mac

It's amazing what a few bags of dog food and a few months can do!! "Kenz" is a great dog and loves to retrieve. She is pretty wild due to not having any place to run right now except when I go jogging or the kids and I take her to the mountain. She actually got ran over by a car a few months ago but thanks be to God she was hurt very little. Very sore for a few days! We love her a lot.

Jethro Bodine and the cement pond

In our May newsletter I mentioned going to Autlan for a few days. One of the things we did was help Pastor Antonio pour the floors in 2 of the bedrooms of his home. It was a great time; just me and Brent doing some father-son time and Brent got to play with Nahum who is his age. (Daniela, Pastor Antonio's daughter, is sitting next ot Brent in the photo.) Pastor Antonio's wife fed us well; her homemade flautas are awesome! Good Spanish practice as well as learning more about cement finishing the Mexcian way. Pour the gravel and sand and cement into a pile and mix thoroughly. Bake on high for 30 minutes. No, wait that was the cake receipe. Let's see; oh yeah: add the right ratio of buckets of water once you have made a "pool" for it. Then mix thoroughly and either haul it our in buckets through the window or into the wheel barrow and down the hall. Piece a cake. I am looking forward to fellowshipping more with Pastor Antonio once we get to Autlan.

Mountain Biking

There is a neat guy up the street named Victor. He has two boys, Koke and Estaban. Victor is an avid mountain bike rider. Victor and Estaban talked me and the kids into going with them one day to the "Bosque Primavera" or "forest" outside of town.

What a workout! Jessica began to think it was a cruel joke after awhile. She said it reminded her of the guy who was beating himself on the head with a hammer. Someone asked, "Why on earth are you doing that!!??" and he replied "Because it feels so good when I quit!!"

Preach it, hermano!

It has been a real priviledge for me to get to preach on three different occasions at Palabra Fiel Iglesia Biblica here in Guadalajara. We have been studying Ephesians in the Sunday School hour. I have done a message on Eph. 2 ( one of mi muy favorito pasajes) and Ephesians 4. I also spoke on Mothers Day about Mary's Magnificant in Luke 1. No, I am not preaching in Spanish yet; Pastor Rafael is translating. We can't expect people to come to church to be tortured can we? :)

You will notice Dane ,Christian, and Morgan singing on Mothers day also. Yes, they can do it in Espanol!

Nice School Bus, Eh?

I can't believe my last blog entry was in February!! I feel like I am in college again and having those dreams like I use to have where I was behind on my studies and finals were tomorrow! Language school has been alot more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Praise God today I took the finals for level 3. August 8th school will be over and a group of 13 are coming from my home church of Bethany Baptist in Salem, Oregon for a 10 day missions trip.

OK; about the airplane: here in Mexico there are small schools everywhere but I have yet to see the traditional yellow school bus. People either give their kids a ride or walk them to school. (We live 3 doors down from a school and every morning and afternoon there are a bunch of cars looking for a place to park so they can pick up their kids. Parking is a valuable commodity and there are also no big parking lots common to schools in the U.S.)

One day we were on our way home from language school when we saw this "Bus" parked in front of a school. I came back with the camera just as it was driving away. It said "Limosine" on the side and it looked like they hired it for a field trip or something. Pretty cool actually but VERY wide! Visibility for the driver wasn't too hot either.

The Virgin of Guadalupe

Even in Oregon I have seen how devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe many mexican people are. You see the stickers on the cars, the tatoo's, etc. It is even more so here. It is very much intertwined with the identity of the nation. I decided to read up on it a bit and to try to learn something about it. I found an interesting article about it at Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe

I took the photo at the park near our house. Please Pray for Mexico; that God's Word will be exalted!! Ps. 138:2

Names written in the Lamb's book of Life

In a recent post I was saying how much I have enjoyed getting to know the believers at "Palabra Fiel" Bible church. There is Pastor Rafael and his wife Myrna, Jose Eduardo and his family, Arturo, Rosie, Coco, Martie, Pepe, Gustav, and many others that I haven't quite got the names down yet. Andy and Jesse, our fellow Tecate Missionaries, and their 3 girls have been attending as well.

We have been going through the book of Ephesians in Sunday school. It has been a good time. I can understand a whole lot more Spanish than I can speak, that's for sure! I would say I can usually understand maybe 60 or 70 percent of what is being said. I have been encouraged to see the love for God's Word here! Pray for this church as Pastor Rafael works full time as well as preaching on Sundays and leading the Tuesday night bible study.

Harvest Language Center

Jessica and me are taking classes right now at harvest Language Center. ( Jo'ell has been staying at home to continue homeschooling the other children.) We have really enjoyed the school so far. Our fellow Tecate Missionary, Andy Clarke, has been taking the classes with us. (see photo; he is the one with the close haircut!) The classes are small so there is good interaction with the teachers. It is ran by Jeff and Lisa King, who are from the U.S. and have been in Mexico for over 10 years. They are active in church planting also. They have a heart to see missionaries get trained to serve in Mexico and other Spanish speaking countries. Jeff and Lisa both teach and there are 2 other teachers: Pastor Moises Rodriquiez and Senora Chayo. The program uses what I would call the "old schoool" approach; they teach grammar, phonics, verbs and vocabulary. this is in contrast to the approach some schools take of just teaching converstational style Spanish. We will learn the rules we will need to know to speak the language well. This will be necessary for communicating about more complicated concepts like bible truths. Not for the faint of heart! Thanks for praying that we conjucate our verbs correctly!!

Lord, show us a sign

It is amazing the power a sign has. We were walking down the sidewalk near our house the other day and one of my friends noticed a sign for a church on the front of a building. It said "Palabra Fiel" or "Faithful Word". The name sounded good so we thought we would give it a try. We were excited to find a vibrant fellowship of about 30 people. Last Sunday was our 3rd Sunday there and their have been several visitors during this time who have came just because of the sign. One of the ladies who is a member is a new believer who sought out the church as she was going through some issues in her life that caused her to seek God and to want to know the truth about Him. She did not feel the answers were in the religion she had. She is now alive and growing in faith (Col. 1:9-12). I will post some more pictures of the church as we get them. The believers there have recieved us very warmly and are quite patient with my "baby-talk" Spanish! It is exciting to know that God has some among every people who are His!

Don't bite the hand that feeds ya

Friday Jan. 18 was a WTM day: Welcome To Mexico. Jessica and I had gotten home from Language school and we were all getting ready to eat lunch. A guy about 20 years old was knocking on the gate. He wanted to wash the car for $3 . I was in a great Friday afternoon mood so I decided to say OK. I talked with him a bit while he worked, wanting to practice my Spanish. He told me he was married and his wife was in Chicago, and that he had a 4 month old girl. While we were talking, Morgan came home on her bike. She said "Dad, I can't get my bike through the gate." I had opened half of the gate and pulled the car forward so he could get around it to wash it. I told her to just leave it on the sidewalk. When he finished I paid him and gave him a Gospel of John booklet. He left and went up the street knocking on the neighbors gate looking for another job. As I was in the kitchen I saw him on the other side of the street looking over towards our house but didn't think much of it. A minute later Brent suddenly yelled "Hey, that guy just took Morgan's bike!" Brent and I went tearing out of the house after him. He was at the end of the street just about to round the corner. I yelled at him( my mistake) , thinking he would drop the bike and run. Instead he jumped on the bike and pedaled away! Brent and I tried to catch him but to know avail. Later when my neighbor Hector got home he helped me report it to the Police.

I guess another lesson learned. It is not the first thing we have had taken since we were here. I am not used to being so "on-gaurd" all the time. I was in total shock and mad as a hornet that this guy would do that to me right after I went out of my way to try to help him. And to do it right under our nose like that was truly amazing to me. Vince Lombardi once said "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." I have been thinking of a modification to that along the lines of "Poverty can make theives out of some people." Solomon warned of the dangers of both prosperity and poverty in Proverbs 30:8,9 : "Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me niether poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain."

I believe in the total depravity of man and I guess I just got a rude awakening to it's real life impact! Jeremiah warned that " the heart of man is decietful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it? " Just another reminder that their are many lost people here and those are the ones Jesus came to reach. Pray for Arnulfo ( at least that is the name he gave me) that he will be under conviction and that he will read the tract I gave him.

Hikin' up the Mountain

Our street is on a bit of a grade, and at one end is "Mount Tesoro." One of Brent's buddies, Saul, offered to show us the trail so I went up it with them. It was a great view of the city. I wish I knew how to take a 360 degree photo. It is amazing to look down on 8 million people; twice the population of the State of Oregon in one city! It made me think of how many people there are that do not walk with the Lord. As I finished up my Bible reading for 2007 in the book of Revelation, it brought me again to grips with what it will be like when God pours out His wrath on the earth. It really adds a sense of urgency to getting out the Good News!

English Classes

We were able to travel to Autlan in December to spend some time with our fellow missionaries, John and Elizabeth Rodgers. They showed us around the downtown area. Communities in Mexico pride themselves in their nativity displays. It was cool that people get into it and nobody gets uptight about it being in the City Square.

The highlight of our trip was getting to set in on three different English classes at La Roca Coffee house. Jessica and I will be teaching level 1 in August. It is a GREAT opportunity to develop relationships! I can't wait!

For now I am going to focus on Spanish! First day of class tomorrow!

New Puppy

Today was a good day in this Dad's life, as well as for all the kid's. I had promised them a dog about 4 years ago. Today I finally delivered on that promise! Yeah, I know, pretty late. We were planning on going to Ireland at the time I made the promise. Ireland requires a 3 month quarantine on dogs brought in to the country. So I told them that as soon as we got there we would get one. The "there" turned out to be Mexico! I think this pup will be a great thing for our kids right now. I confess to being a dog lover myself! Thank you, Lord! She is a Golden Retriever and I think Brent is going to name her "MacKenzie."