We've had an interesting December!
Let's start off with the latest news and work backwards to the beginning of the month!
Jan 1 I left the house early to say good bye to our Canadian families who were here doing missions with us. I noticed that Junie, one of our dogs, didn't come out to greet me when I opened the door- which was highly unusual behaviour for her... I knew something was up, and I was pretty sure what it was. Under the house, behind the washing machine was little Junie- barely more than a year old- giving birth to some puppies!!
I called Sharlene to come out to help them, because I needed to go meet the teams right away! She rescued some wandering puppies and brought Junie and the pups up to a safe place to finish the birthing process. When all was said and done- there were 10 pups in all! Sadly, there are only 6 left, but those 6 seem to be doing well with a little supplemental "milk" we are feeding them every couple of hours... Because it is so cold outside (down to 4C-8C at night and only up to 14C in the day....) we are keeping them inside the house- right now in our bathroom so they stand a good chance of living! Feeding time is a little bit of a frenzy as there are 3 white pups (though both parents are black with brown spots....) who look very much alike. There are 2 almost identical black pups and one golden-brown one- like his grandmother... We need to juggle them around to make sure they all get fed...
New Years Eve was a typical Mexican celebration at our house with enchiladas, snacks and sodas along with the traditional new years eve bonfire and Fireworks show! Now the fireworks aren't like the safe-Canadian ones we have-- these are made in china with varied speeds of fuses that basically shoot single charges high up in the air and explode. Very cool! We had a couple of them (both lit by the Fehr family from Nipawin...) that were a little short fused. It's always a little more exciting when you don't know if it's gonna blow up in your face or not!!
Prior to New Years and the puppies we had angels hanging around with us. At least that's what Dolores and Daniel and their 2 kids called some of them. We had 3 families staying at a house close to us doing various ministry projects throughout the almost 2 weeks they were here. Daniel and Dolores did not have a bathroom. So Reg, Wes and Brent built them one. I think they were hoping for an indoor toilet, but these fellas had bigger plans and they put in a shower stall, sink/vanity, toilet and even an on-demand hot water heater! When they were all done (after 3 full days of work) Dolores had tears welling up as she told them they were like angels sent from God. She'd been praying for a small bathroom for 5 years since they had a house solid enough to put a bathroom in and now they had a big one, complete with hot water! They were very, very thankful!
The kids and moms worked doing some priming, painting, insulating and a bit of drywalling at Pastor Ramiro's new church. Ramiro is hoping to get the day care room and sewing shop finished soon so they can start these ministries in his desperately poor community. This team went a long way in helping them get that going!
A few of the teens learned how to put on rolled roofing- and completed 3 small roofs in 2 days- ensuring that the Leonardo family (brickmakers that got burned out- from Ramiro's church) would have something relatively solid and dry to live in for some time!
A couple days were spent putting together Christmas boxes for kids in a church and a small mission in the poor Colonias of East Tijuana. The two churches could not have been different from each other! The one place had mostly kids from an after school club who have learned how to behave well in circumstances like this. This church has 2 shifts of after and before school clubs where kids form the neighbourhood come and spend the half of the day they are not in school. They get fed, learn the Scriptures, get help with homework, have computer time and some phys-ed time as well. It is an incredible work run almost entirely by this Mexican church.
The second place is a small mission by the railroads. This community is primarily made up of single moms and their kids in extreme poverty. over 100 kids showed up- most of whom do not go to the missions Sunday school program or, likely, to school at all. So crowd control was a concern. It seemed like controlled chaos, without the control! When it was time to hand out the cake, we set up a line and passed the cake down the "stairs" to the 100+ awaiting children. Someone noticed that some of the kids were taking multiple pieces of cake and passing them out over the walls to the neighbourhood kids waiting outside!! There really was an element of control, but you'd need to see the area to know how difficult it is. It is a scrap-wood shack built on top of a hill-about 25 feet below, down a rustic pathway was a flatish type area that could maybe fit 30 kids or so well. We had 100 kids, and 30 adults or so in this place and we were shoulder to shoulder almost the entire time! It was balls of fun and the kids were very happy to receive their Christmas gifts and we got the opportunity to share the story of God's greatest gift of all- His Son Jesus Christ! Both ministries were exciting in their own ways!
The day before that we shopped for building supplies and packed 215 Christmas bags/ boxes. The folks we had down with us were exceptional workers and even the youngest kids were involved in doing something!
Christmas day we spent together for the afternoon- making a Turkey-feast and heading to the beach. It was a bit too cold to swim- but that didn't stop the Canadians!
Christmas Eve in Mexico is the real celebration day. So we called up Pastor Martin (YUGO Mexico head dude) and asked if there was something we could do that day. He hooked us up with a teen boy orphanage run by the social services and a home for abused women run by the same agency. It was a blessing to share Christmas dinner with these folks and to give them some gifts. The hopelessness was palpable in the boys home. What a huge difference between this place and even the most spartan of Christian run orphanages we've been in. We pray that we were light in those places that day.
The first full day we were all together we went to Vision B orphanage in Tijuana. We took all of them out to a McDonald's for lunch (What an ordeal to order and pay for 45+ people! We Canadians were somewhat shocked to see the kids sitting in the seats in the play area, quiet as mice waiting for their food. When it arrived they prayed a prayer that kinda sounded like an army drill and then dug in- and played quietly afterwards in the play area. This was one extremely well behaved group of kids.
After lunch we went to the park. There are really 2 big parks in Tijuana and this is the biggest one. It has a small zoo made up of the personal collection of animals of the former mayor of Tijuana. This was where the kids really blossomed- with the soccer balls, the Frisbees and rolling down the hills of grass. Grass is a rare commodity here and when they get the chance, kids revel in it! It was a real blessing to play with these kids! Later on in the Week the Rivetts from Swan River went grocery shopping and bought almost $500 worth of groceries for the kids from money raised in Swan River this past November for this purpose! Praise God!
Monday morning the 22nd of December we found 3 excited families doing their grocery shopping for the week in National City, CA. We had to cross over to the states the night before and so stayed in a local motel that night. We'd left with very little notice to get our van that's being imported over the border to go through the process. That meant we'd left the little walkie-talkie radios at home... oops. Trying to get 4 cars through the border and into a crazy traffic situation would prove to be difficult. Especially when the Karstads from LaRonge got "Red-lighted" at the border and had to go over for inspection. They had 1.3 tons of stuff in their car- It was loaded with donations, gifts, personal clothes, groceries, 6 people and things not yet found! When the border guy opened the door and saw this... he yelled out "Babies!?... go!!" and off they went! I'm sure none of the kids would have admitted to being the babies they were talking about, but nevertheless-- it got them through! Unfortunately the Karstads missed the turnoff and went to Downtown Tijuana. It's not as fun as it sounds, apparently, for first timers. We got a phone call on my cell saying they were lost. The cell phone immediately lost signal and we did the only thing we could do- kept driving! We found a place to pull over on the toll road and waited. and waited and waited until we got the second phone call... "We're on our way there!!" Now you've heard the song "it never rains in sunny southern California" ??? well, generally it's basically true for sunny Baja California too- but this December it rained! And rained and then rained again! We got4 or 5 inches of rain in about a week and a half- almost double what we got all year 2 years ago! So we waited in the rain. Eventually we were all reunited and off we went to lunch at a nice, dry, warmish sit down restaurant.
Welcome to Mexico!
