Dearest Friends and Family,
Hello to you all. Here I sit at the Mexican village using Elena's computer because my "works word processor" is not transferring from there to my blog with the "copy" "paste" method so if any of my wonderful, helpful, computer whizzes like Doug, Gabe or Tara would like to email me suggestions on how to make that work please, please do as I would love to use my computer and not have to use Elenas. gracias.
Being here is pretty incredible. It is about as primitive as I have ever lived in. I guess the first thing that stands out is there is no "electricity" or "heat"…so….we wear our jackets a lot these days. Jason said it is "cold" only about 2 months out of the year and temperatures can get up to 110 degrees in the summer time. The sun did come out today and so it warmed up to a nice 60 degrees. I think it was about 20 degrees when we woke up. You just learn to wear layers when it is cold and then lessen those layers as it warms up. Drinking a lot of hot tea helps too.
The other thing I have noticed is that the making of each meal is quite a process that takes about 3 to 4 hours from start to finish. So while the men work in the fields or do construction, the women are cooking and doing laundry literally all day long. It makes me appreciate so much the little convinces that we have at home like "hot water running out of a tap" or "refrigerators" or "dish washer" or having an "oven" instead of having to cook over an open fire etc…The kitchen is a "happening place" and can be a lot of fun because we all have to work together and everyone has a good attitude usually.
Just to catch you up since I last wrote we could not take our van and trailer into Mexico since we did not have the original titles to each so we decided to walk across the border to Mexico with all our stuff and then take a bus. First we scaled down from 2 bags to one, put our sleeping bags onto our luggage handles and then threw our back packs holding our computers onto our backs and off we walked over a one mile bridge in a long line dragging "our goods" behind us like a long line of gypsies. It was hysterical and ALOT of work but a lot of fun since we were all in it together. The biggest bummer was not being able to take the 6 bags of baby clothes, children's crafts, the big, beautiful flannel board and all the other wonderful things we had planned on giving to Jason and Nicole's orphans and widows. We left the van and trailer of stuff at a friend of Jason's house and Jason will slowly try to get the stuff across the border. Maybe some time in February.
I thought the bus was gonna be like an old school bus filled with women holding live chickens, kids sitting 2 to a seat, and the top of the bus loaded down with all kinds of stuff including the kitchen sink but guess what…I was wrong!!! The bus was a first class "grey hound" type of bus that had its own little banyo (bathroom) in the very back. It also showed American Disney movies with spanish words being spoken over American dialogue. They showed about 4 movies and Dossie and I sat right underneath the one screen. This made it a bit hard to sleep and The Hannah Montanna Movie was not exactly what I wanted to see. It was such a contrast to "the world going by" outside my bus window. We truly do live in "Disneyland" compared to much of our third world nations.
We left by bus at 4 pm on Saturday afternoon and arrived at Jason's village at around 9 am Sunday morning. It was so wonderful to finally get there and hug Elena and Nicole and meet all the beautify people there. They fed us sweet bread and watered down sweet coffee for breakfast and then showed us around the place. The children and ladies were very shy and laughed a lot as we greeted them. After meeting each one I asked where the 2 guitars were that needed strings put on them. (I had to leave the guitar behind in the van because I could not carry it on the bus with my luggage) I remembered to grab the guitar strings at the last minute so once I found the tow guitars I began stringing them. One of the guitars was a "classical nylon stringed one" and the other was a "steel string acoustic". The classical guitar's neck was so bowed that once the strings were on it they rose about one inch off the fret board creating quite "an out of tune" sound when playing the chords. The acoustic guitar was much better and sounded great when I finished stringing it.
I then began to play some songs in the kitchen and all the kids came a running with their mamas. They laughed and smiled as I used their names in each of the songs I sang. I would say "bonita" and then a girls name and then say "wapo" and then follow that with a boy's name. Bonita means beautiful and wapo means handsome. The kids just laughed and laughed with delight and asked me to sing the song over and over again. I played till my fingers tired and my throat got dry and then Dossie brought in all the long balloons and the pump so we could make all the kids balloon animals or crowns. That was a lot of fun too. They loved all the animals we made but their very favorite thing was pumping up the balloons real full, then squinting in anticipation of the big "POP!" that followed. Then they would laugh and laugh and laugh.
After that it was time to get lunch/dinner ready so I got all my "stuff" off the table and made room for the girl's cook team to come in. They made delicious potato, carrot, and pasta soup with homemade tortillas. It was very yummy and warmed us right up. Oh…by the way…they do have solar power here and when the sun comes over the mountain and shines down upon the village it creates many watts of power to charge computers and cell phones wonderfully. They just do not have internet here in the village so we have to go to town for that. That is why we cannot "blog" everyday. So we will try to blog as often as possible. Please text as much as you'd like. It is free and always so good to hear from you. Text cost us around 50 cents to send so we will send them sparingly.
Jason and Nicole are very amazing, self-sacrificing people. They have 2 beautiful children, Sed who is their son who is 15 years old and Jasmine their daughter who is 9 years old. They are all amazing people with a ton of love and long suffering in their hearts. The load they carry by themselves blows my mind. They have taken in 3 single moms. The first mom Carla, was 12 when she had her first baby then had another baby when she was 14. Now she is 15 and needs much help in her mothering skills since she is still only a "kid" herself. The other mom, Julia, is Carla's sister and she is now 18. She has a little girls named Melissa who is 3 years old. The 3rd single mom's name is Didre and she has a 1 and a half year old little boy named Louise. I do need to tell you that Julia and Didre just got married to 2 wonderful godly men who have taken up their little ones as their own. Please pray for Carla as she can be very, very hard on her 2 boys Pablo who is 1 and Carlos who is 3. They are beautiful (bonita) boys with lovely smiles.
Ray and Ashley, I have thought about you two a lot while I have been here. It would be so awesome if Jason and Nicole had another married couple to be here with them. Anyway…its just a thought. Maybe you could come for a visit some time. You would love the food. Healthy and delicious.
Well dear ones we are about to start "worship" here. People from the local villages are here to listen as Jason shares and we sing together and study the Bible. Please continue to pray for us that we would love, and serve and give to the uttermost and do all our Father wants us to do. I love you all very much!
Love,
mala
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