more pics

This is Caleb, Jacob and Shar at the San Diego Science Center. They have a free day once a month so we had a homeschooling field trip up there. The boys all enjoyed it, though, believe it or not, it doesn;t really even come close to the Edmonton Science Centre! Here they are working at building a tornado!







This big one is our Mexican Moose dog. The little one is the neighbours dog (who looks an awful lot like Moose). The neighbour dog (I call him Moose Jr.) comes down to visit first thing in the morning until late at night. Sometimes he even stays over night. We usually feed him, water him and clean up his poop out of our backyard. It sure doesn't sound like he's the neighbours dog, does it...
We might have two dogs now, we're not sure...







Mexican transportation system.

This is Missionary Cindy's truck. My family follwed in our van over hill and dale as we were taking these kids to a central church for a meeting about kids Backpack program. 56+ kids need sponsors (at US$100 each) to help them go to school in the fall. It costs roughly $100 for tuition, uniforms, shoes, backpacks and school supplies for the local public schools. Many kids in these colonias don't go to school because in a family that maybe make $400/ month, $100 at once is out of reach- esp. if they have 2 or 3 kids! Lots of times kids take turns going to school. 1 goes one year and the next the next year, off and on... If you can help with the BackPack program by sponsoring a child- or partially sponsoring a child, please contact YUGO Canada at the address, email and phone number on the left of this BLOG!




some pics of a few of the kids who need sponsors!

Pikchures

This pic above is one of the bugs we accidentally killed...
It is a "Tarantula Hawk" or in Spanish, "El Diablo" (the devil!). It flies around like a huge bee looking for tarantulas. When it finds them it injects a paralyzing poison into the spider. Then it takes him back to the "Devil Den". From there it lays its eggs in the moist, paralyzed, alive body of the tarantula. After they hatch, the larvae eat the tarantula alive and then fly off looking for a "surrogate mother" for their own babies! Cool, eh?



Below, this is Caleb and a new amigo he met at one of the churches we went to to get information on kids for the new "Backpack" program. In the poorer areas of Tijuana, folks cannot afford to send their kids to school (new shoes, uniform, school supplies {books, pens etc.} tuition costs (even public school has tuition). So lots of kids don't go to school, or siblings go every other year until old enough to work (11-14...). So one of our missionaries, Cindy Reid, is starting a back pack program where we can sponsor a child for US$100.00 to send a kid to school for a year. It doesn't sound like much to us, but when someone works 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for $400/ month- that $100 is the difference between eating and sending a kid to school- especially if you have 2 or 3+ kids...




This little fella (about the size of the palm of my hand) is a genuine wild tarantula. We found him in our front yard last weekend. He lives under a piece of wood. We've decided to keep him wild, because all of the other bugs we capture to look at eventually expire...


This pic is of a Jerusalem Cricket beside an exotic Mexican Fruit called a "Platano". It actually looks, smells and tastes just like a Banana! :)

Fall Plans

We are off to Canada in a Month (June 13th). We bought plane tickets last week and we fly into Edmonton on June 13th arriving at Edmonton Airport at midnight!

We will be going to Loon Lake, Swan River MB and Prince Albert SK the first couple weeks there. Then Shar goes for surgery while the boys and I go to Bible camps. I am speaking at 3 camps in Saskatchewan in July...

While we have our tickets, we don't yet have anything set for transportation. We have had a few people give some short-term offers and another with a promise to get something together for us if nothing else works out or to fill the gaps form the other offers and one person in Alberta with a vehicle, but not positive that they can part with it for the time we are there yet.

So please pray for those "up in the air" parts of our plans!

FALL PLANS

About a week ago I was in San Francisco, CA for training. I got into contact with a group that has material available for training pastors in the developing world. It is an incredible resource that enables African, Asian, and Latin American churches train leaders exponentially to meet the need in these fast growing areas of the Church! all across the developing world, people are coming to Christ faster than they can be discipled- the result is a need to have pastors and church leaders to be trained in God's Word so they can disciple the people responding to Jesus offer to pay the price for our sins, free from any of our own works!

The need is evident here in Mexico as we seem to have lots of small, struggling churches with Pastors and leaders eager to study God's Word!

Soon after I came to the final conclusion that this was what we were called here to do, I found this mission that offers low cost materials for training pastors

The next week I spoke to one of our fellow missionaries who works out in East Tijuana. She was saying that there was a US church that was looking for training for the pastors and churches they work with out in those Colonias. I told them about the training I was getting and it seems to be a good fit- so we have about 10 pastors and leaders ready and excited to take the equivalent of 1 years Bible College / Seminary Course in 20 months, 3 nights a week. The only text book they need is the Spanish NIV Study Bible and for each course they need a workbook.

The thought is that after taking the entire course, and a small training course, any of the Mexican pastors would then be qualified to teach the course to between 10 and 20 others. The training multiplies!

Please pray for us as we venture into this area. I need to improve in My Spanish a lot by then, and being in Canada won't help! I'm going to need to take some intensive, one week Spanish lessons in Ensenada. There is a cost of about $500 / week for these courses, or 30% less if I pay for 4 weeks up front.

We also need to raise an additional $300.00/ month for gas expenses to train the pastors in E. Tijuana. It is about a 100km round trip, 3 days a week. Please pray that God will provide those needs!

Thanks for Praying and being partners in this ministry. Your prayers and financial partnership are enabling the Mexican Church to be able to Disciple the many people who are responding to the Good News that we don't need to pay the price for our own sins, that Jesus paid the price with His death and beat sin and death with His resurrection!!

Together we are Discipling the Disciplers!!

God Bless,

Until next time,

Mike and Shar

Visas and Stuff

When we first came down to Mexico last August, we applied for a tourist Visa (FMT) which allows us to stay in the country for 6 months. It costs about CDN$25.00 / person.

We let that one run out, which technically left us as illegal migrants IN Mexico for a few months. Now we need the next level of Visa, the FM3. It allows us to live in the country for up to a year, but we cannot work for a Mexican company and we cannot preach with this visa. It is likely to cost us about $1300.00 for one years visa. (for the whole family). It is needed to be able to import our vehicle down to Mexico. We need to do that because our Saskatchewan Plates and Insurance runs out in August and with us not living in SK anymore, we can't have SK plates. (I think it's the only province where that is the case... they want to avoid haivng young people live and work in Alberta (where insurance is expensive) and have SK insurance (where it's cheaper for young people).

It is quite an excercise in patience to get this done. So far we have had 3 appointments with the person who is doing the paperwork for us (and translating). We need to go again tomorrow, and hopefully then we can actually have an appointment with the Immigration officials. There they will decide if our kids need to pay for their FM3's. If they do, we'll need to make 2 more appointments to get that done. We have no idea how many other appointments we will need after that, but I'm pretty sure it will be no small number!

After that, when we return, I will need to apply for an FM3 Religious workers visa. Currently it needs to be done in Mexico City, so we need to hire a lawyer in Mexico City to do the application for us. apparantly, though, there is a chance that this summer or fall they will changes the regulations and allow it to be done through the office here in Tijuana or Rosarito.

Please pray that these things go through, because there is always the chance of being denied a Religious workers visa. There are still a large amount of Roman Catholics in Mexico City who oppose Evangelical work in Mexico- Pray that God intervenes.

I need to go to church now, but I'l be posting again later today or tomorrow about a meeting we had regarding our future ministry direction- some exciting stuff! Looking forward to sharing it with you!


Until next time,

Mike

Mexican Moose

A dog story....

Just before we moved into our most recent abode, we found a puppy that attached himself to us. We named him “moose” because we thought he would be very big. It turns out, 8 months later, that he is just a medium sized dog with some pecurliarities about him.

Moose likes bones.

Most dogs like bones, i guess. But Moose REALLY likes bones. He seems to be able to find bones too. We've only given him one bone, but if you looked in our yard, it looks like some creepy cow graveyard. Moose has brought back half cow skulls, back bones, hip bones, other bones of unknown origin.. His most recent acquisition was some kind of canine skull. There was no skin on it, thankfully, but the teeth are in good shape and you can still see flesh from the roof of the mouth.

We collected all the bones in the yard and put it in one spot so we could see them all together. It is quite impressive. I'm thinking in a couple of months we could build our own cow structure like you see at the dinosaur museums...

But for now- it just looks like a warning to potential burglars that this dog is not worth messing with!!

Rodent dog

The other day I was leaving early for some trainng classes and I found a dead mouse in the yard that moose had gotten in the night. So I called the boys out to see. They laughed when they saw a huge Stuffed Mickey Mouse in the yard- head in tact, but body had the stuffing ripped out of it- literally-- all over the yard.

One evening i opened our door to the most awful stench I have experienced in a long time. It was coming from something fluffy on our porch...

It used to be a squirrel. But it had run into a car- or the car ran into it, anyway, it was squished. And moose thought, for some reason, that we'd like to see it.

So I got out the shovel, held my breath and turned that stinky rodent into a flying squirrel into the canyon below- at least I thought that's where it went. Later on the next day while I was out- the squirrel came back for a visit. Shar found it this time, and not wanting to repeat the experience, she tossed it far enough into the canyon that even moose won't be able to get it.

I wonder if anyone lives in the canyon???

Garbage dog...

Not only does moose like bones and rodents, but he LOVES garbage. The stinkier the better for him. I wouldn't mind so much if he would go up the road and tear apart some garbage somewhere else, but the little rotter doesn't just tear up the trash, he steals the bag and brings it home!

So 2 or 3 times a week (usually around garbage day) Moose comes back with a bag or two of garbage and has a feast. -- the leftovers are spread around the yard and the boys have an enjoyable time cleaning it up!

Shoes.

I don't know where he finds them. I don;t know why he likes them so much, but this moose dog will bring back shoes once or twice a week. Not pairs... only singles.

Some are obviously well used, others not so much...

What do we do with our bone collecting, dead rodent dragging, shoe stealing, garbage thieving dog?

Try not to get kissed by him--

until next time,

Mike

Shar's Hip

We were just thinking today...

Some folks haven't seen us much in the last year or 2 and maybe need a play by play on why we're going for surgery for Sharlene in Saskatchewan in 2 months.

Shar has hip dysplasia. If you google it, you'll find more references to it for dogs than people! It is a congential condition (she was born with it) and in some kids they find it early and are able to work on it so that it does not need replacing until into senior adulthood. They didn't know Shar had it when she was a kid.

When Elijah was born, Shar's left hip started to hurt during and after pregnancy. We read that it was normal and likely due to a "loosening" of the hip during pregnancy. It never really got better and would espescially hurt when she put Elijah on her hip and walked around.

After 2 more kids, the hip would ache sometimes, but not alot and not very intensely. When we moved to Loon Lake, SK (2003) She went to the Dr. who would give her cortisone shots saying that it was bursitis. It only got worse, but it was not painful all the time, just mostly after a long day on her feet.

Think of a circle that starts in your inseam, and goes around the upper part of your leg to your lower behind area...

In 2003 Shar would occasionally get pain in the mid behind region (Back pocket area) - only deep in the hip joint.

By 2005 Shar was getting pain there almost all the time whether she was on her feet lots or not.

By Spring 2006 she started using a cane, but usually only after work, or after walking lots, espescially on stairs or hills. The pain also started to spread occasionally to the mid part of the hip- around where your cell phone sits.

By Fall 2006 the pain was in both of those places all the time and would occasionally spread to the lower-inseam area ( front pocket area) when she worked lots. She would use her cane after work about half the time.

By Winter 2006-2007 the pain was in her back end and cellphone part of her hip all the time and most of the time in her inseam. She used her cane almost all of the time and the pain was constant and throbbing.

Since March, She is in contant pain, has trouble getting throughout the house without her cane and lots of times has trouble sleeping because of the intense, throbbing pain.

July 9th she goes in for hip replacement surgery, which is good, because if we waited until next year, there is a good possibility she would be unable to walk by then, it has progressed so rapidly in the last year.

We covet your prayers as we return, as Shar ges for surgery and recovers in Turtleford at our friends the Stein's house.

We are thankful that we were able to keep our Saskatchewan Health Insurance for this time so that we are able to go back and get the surgery! Praise God that we have good dates, a place for her to recover and something for the boys and I to do in the meantime (Camp-speaking!)

Blessings until next time,

Mike





By

Tostilocos

What an interesting title, eh?

We went to the beach today (Sunday, after church). It's the first time we've been since the kids and Shar went in March, while I was freezing in Canada. All along the beach on warm, busy, weekends they have folks selling stuff. One guy walks by with multiple cowboy hats on his head and kites; another sells corn in a cup with lime, salsa and mayonaise; another rents beach chairs, and others sell coconuts, mangos chips pop etc. etc.

Shar wanted to try tostilocos. There are many variations to this, but basically you open a bag of tostito chips (nacho chips work too) and put a bunch of stuff in, mix it with lime and a hot salsa and you have tostilocos...

I went to get some for her and the lady at the cart asks "With everything". Now it's tough being the odd person out here and after a while you just tend to not ask "What IS Everything"- we just say "Si"...

Here is a list of everything...

1. Jicama ( a turnip-like crunchy vegetable with little flavour of its own)
2. 1 full lime squeezed over top.
3. salt and cayenne pepper
4. raisins covered in Tamarind (very very sour fruit)
5. peanuts covered with something we don't ask about.
6. cucumber
7. more lime (1/2 lime)
8. Hot salsa sauce (little bit)
9. then the crown on top- Pickled pig skin.
10 Then more (lots more) hot salsa on top of that-

This is all in the chip bag still- this little chip bag went from practially weightless to about 1/2 pound of goodness covered in pickled pig skin

Elijah's watching all this and when he saw the piggy skin go on top he yelled out- I think that's pig stomach!!! EWWWWWW... and ran to tell his mother...

By then it was too late, the deed was done and paid for, I had to give it to shar to eat...

She tried it (what a trooper) and then after 4 or 5 pieces of the hog-flesh, asked me to please find a place to put it. I found a garbage can off the beach, gently jetissoned the pig-hide, and the rest was pretty good... now we know that next time we get tostilocos, we'll ask it without pig parts.

until next time,

mike