We were invited to celebrate in a Mexican Weekend tradition- Carne Asada. Our landlords own the house across the street from us and they have used it as a weekend home for years. The last few years they just come up every other weekend for a couple hours on Saturday to water their garden and look around. This Saturday we were going to have lunch together- Carne Asada.
It started with Abuela (gramma) Salinas putting a 5 foot long 4x4 piece of wood jammed into a BBQ ( no propane needed!) with some paper and cardboard to get the fire going. After she had the fire going she took out 2/3 of the pillar, whacked it on the BBQ to get the most burnt parts off- then took this smoking 3 foot beam to the dirt road and put it on the ground to snuff itself out. Then she added charcoal.
About 30 minutes later she was putting thin slabs of steak on the BBQ cooking up a storm. Thankfully the water truck came by in the midst of this- he sells tortillas too and you can't have any Mexican food without tortillas- so she bought 2 kg of fresh, warm tortillas (for $2.20- about twice the cost of the grocery store's fresh tortillas). The thin slabs of steak cook quickly and in about 5 minutes we had 15 or so cooked up to eat. With it we had beans cooked with ham, a mild tomato salsa and fresh chiles... all put onto tortillas... But first, you need to rip up the steak with your hands to put in the tortillas. Here we are tearing up meat with our bare hands feeding the kids and ourselves and none of the other people are eating. They seemed to want t make sure that there was enough for us first. So they start tossing 4, 5, 6, 7 slabs of meat on our plates- "Eat Eat!!" After that- they joined in and we ate till our hearts were content...
We've seen people having carne asada parties on weekends around, but this is the first one we've been invited too. The folks speak some English and so we can communicate in a mixture of Spanish and English. It is a typical scene here on "La frontera"- the Border... English and Spanish mixed together to form a third language, Carne Asadas outside on a windy- Santa Ana day, fixing house problems together (like the outside waterpipe (for garden watering) that just popped off. One neighbour gets glue, the other finds out how to turn the water off form the road, we sandpaper the pipe and glue it back on hoping it sticks...
It was a good afternoon. They have a 7 year old boy "Angelo" (who is bigger than all of our kids- even 9 year old Elijah) and they went looking for snails, lizards and whatever else they could find among the cactus. When our kids first met in November there was very little communication, but now they are all able to make themselves known in English, Spanish, sign language or through a parent interpreter.
The big activity for the kids today was snail capturing. I have never seen as many land snails as we have here. if you water the garden or we get a good rain, snails come out from all the nooks and crannies looking to do whatever it is snails do. After things dry up, the snails go into a kind of hibernation until the next rain. The kids found about 10 of these snails and began putting them into a plastic peanut butter type jar. Jacob took the lid off, presumably to give the little critters some air and left them in our living room. I don;t have to tell you how fast snails are, because before anyone knew it- 2 had escaped. The snail search was on. One had slithered his way up the TV screen and was easily captured, while the other had made it to the top of the TV and was almost down the other side. Thankfully, all the escapees were caught and we realized we needed another home for them.
That's when Shar set up our new terrarium. Which is basically 2 sticks a few rocks on the bottom, and plastic ducktaped to the top of an aquarium. All the currently live snails are stuck to the top of the plastic ceiling. We have lettuce and grass in the terrarium for their culinary enjoyment and 2 recently deceased snails still in there to remind them what happens when you try to escape... :)
We'll try to figure out some way to incorporate this into our homeschooling curriculum!
I (Mike) am off to Ontario on Wednesday for 12 days. I will be speaking at one church and connecting with friends, family and supporters while in Ontario.
Please pray for safety driving as it will be my first winter driving since November- and March in Ontario is lots of freezing and thawing, typically.
Please pray that I'll make good contacts with folks whom we missed last time in Ontario.
Please pray that the folks who have been supporting us would be encouraged by my report.
Please pray for more partners in Ministry. We need about an additional $500.00/ month to pay for health Care. We currently only have SaskHealth health care as our supplementary care is nonrenewable outside of the country. Our Saskhealth runs out in June and we need that additional support to stay on the field!
Please pray for Shar and the kids back home here in Mexico while I'm gone that things will go smoothly. Shar is still a bit unsure about the Mexican driving norms...
Please pray that I could secure a faithful Spanish teacher. I have tried 3 so far and none of them show up on a regular basis!
Thanks for praying!
Until Next Time,
Mike for the family...
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