From Sea to See...

Visitors and Vision...

This last week we had some busy days. Monday and Tuesday we had home school and did a good housecleaning because we had company coming.

Wednesday we had the pleasure of meeting Stephen and EJ from Ponoka, Alberta. They were down in Southern California visiting one of our missionaries and doing the tourist thing. They were given the opportunity to come down to Mexico and jumped at the chance. We had them over for lunch and got to know them a bit. After that I (mike) took them out with Wayne and Jean Freeland (YUGO Missionaries at head office in California) to catch a vision for what God is doing in Mexico. We toured the Grace Children's Home and visited a bit with the kids while we saw the new Education centre. I took the tour with them and "wow" what a project!

Grace children's home is an orphanage run by YUGO in Tijuana. We currently have 2 "homes" on site- one for girls and one for boys. (Click here for more info)
The third major building now being built is the "education center" it is a 3 story building with one floor for staff housing, one for mission teams dorms and one for arts, computer and English education for the children. In Mexico public schools, kids only go for half a day and have limited educational opportunities. This will give them expanded opportunities to excel and break out of poverty cycles that so many find themselves in.

Once we took Stephen and EJ through to the small balcony on the top floor, you could see the entire neighbourhood, including the property we just bought next door. The next phase of the vision is to have a home for babies, and one for senior citizens as well. In Mexico there is no pension or old age security, if your family cannot take care of you (and in an impoverished land with much violence, sometimes there is no one left to take care of the elderly) they are left with little or no means of living. We also found that there are many babies who are in temporary shelters run by the government with up to 45 kids and only 2 staff to care for them. The idea then is to have these homes close to one another so that the seniors can help care for the babies.
On that same new property is going to be a church building with a gym, kitchen and large sanctuary. Kind of a community Centre church where we can serve the community in all areas of need: physical, spiritual, emotional and relational. This is where our family will be serving in Mexico! It was exciting to see some others catch the huge vision for this "neighbourhood" of up to 200,000 people (eventually).

Then on Thursday we got to use some free tickets given to us to visit SeaWorld (Praise God!) with friends of ours, Michael and Tina Sauers. We have been good friends since Elijah was about 1 year old. Our kids and theirs are like cousins and it was great to get to spend some time together with them. Sea world was nice, the kids loved petting dolphins and bat-rays and getting to see the shows, as well as ride some pretty cool rides too! Wednesday night found us in Mexico again out for tacos with the Sauers.

The Sauers kids did really really well with the strange sites, smells and food- as well as with eating outside (like a typical taco stand) in the cool of the night. We ate till our hearts were content or our mouths burned and came home to get everyone ready for bed. We don't have a small house, it is a double wide mobile home, but it certainly wasn't meant for 10 people for very long! But we fit 5 kids in 1 bedroom (2 beds and a floor). Mexico does not seem to have an "off" season for fresh fruit and vegies and we had bought a lot of fruit in anticipation of the guests. They were very happy(especialy almost 5 year old Abigail) with a fruit salad for breakfast chock full of fresh, inexpensive strawberries from San Quintin, about 400km south if here. It was a treat for all of us!

Friday we took them all to a Mercado on wheels to see the sites and smell the smells. No one was particularly curious enough to eat any pig snout, but Michael Sauers convinced most of us to try a piece of Chicharron (deep fried pig-skin). It was not a fan-favourite, but lots of points were earned for adventur-some-ness!

After lunch we went to Grace Children;s home with the Sauers to give them a chance to catch the vision. They were deeply moved by the experience and would like to see if they could bring some Prince Albertans down to Mexico for some Ministry time sometime. the kids at Grace are very much loved and very well taken care of. But when these little beautiful kids come up to you, a complete stranger, and ask to be held and to be pushed on a swing or to just go for a walk with them holding their hands, you can't help but be a bit emotional...

From Sea World to Seeing a vision that God has for the children of Tijuana as well as the neighbourhood of Porticos / Santa Fe. It was a good week! We wish we could have spent more time with both Stephen and EJ and the Sauers, but we were blessed to have a Canadian connection once again, even if for a few days!

God bless you all! Thank you for partnering with us and if you'd like to come down and catch the vision with us for a few days, or a week or more- just let us know and we'll do our best to make it happen!

Until next time...

Your Missionaries in Mexico

Mike and Shar