Trip to Chihuahua 2016

Since leaving Chihuahua 5 years ago, we have tried to keep up the connections with the people there, especially with the church leaders and those we worked with while we lived in Delicias. Our last visit there was 2 years ago, and this last week we made the 15 hour trip back up that way.

Prepare yourself for a long post with lots of pictures :) 

We took with us our Intern, Jesse, who needed to cross the border in order to renew his visa and then was going to attend the Conference youth camp. So that meant we were in El Paso, TX, where we took a couple of days as a family and did some shopping (school supplies are cheaper up there!).

Then we headed south into Chihauhau where we began visiting. We stayed in 3 different homes over the week, all people we knew well, and so we felt pretty at home. And I have to say that the boys did so well the whole trip long! We visited on average of two different people or homes per day and they loved it all. So that is a huge help when doing these kinds of trips, as it does become tiring towards the end.

Our first stop was in Chihuahua City, where we attended a church service, as it was Sunday. This is the church where the pastor couple of many years, Aldo & Rebeca, both passed away from medical complications a year from each other. A young couple, Victor & Claudia, that had been part of the church for many years (sister to Rebeca) stepped up and became the new pastor couple, and we were thankful to see that the church is doing well and is growing! It was a blessed morning there together with them.

Victor also became the new President of the CEMM Conference (the Conference of 14 churches in Chihuahua) 3 months ago, and asks for prayers in this new role. The Conference has several strong leaders that overall are working well together and so the support network is in place. 

After a lunch together, we drove another hour to arrive in Cuauhtémoc, where we joined John & Lorna Wall for supper. They were missionaries with the EMC for many years, working with the Low German people in Chihuahua, and are now pastoring a church in that area. We always love to see them! We also met up with them one more time later in the week. A bonus for the boys was that they had their 2 grandsons over, who are the boys age.

We then headed just up the road to spend the night with Jason & Jessica, our friends from Chicago who just moved to Cuauhtémoc 2 weeks ago. They had been studying Spanish here in Guadalajara and now are going to begin their ministry with their team in Chihuahua, so we got to crash at their place!

The next morning we met with Walter and Susy, pastor couple in Cuauhtémoc. We always love to visit with Walter and were able to meet his new wife. His spirit and attitude are contagious. You may recall hearing about his wife Chepina, who was killed almost three years ago.

(picture borrowed from Walter)

From there we continued our drive, one hour more, to get to Santo Tomás camp, where Jesse was to spend 6 days. We got him settled and then headed another hour to arrive at Soto Maynez, with Juan Carlos & Claudia, missionary couple with the Conference. 

This was one of the highlights for the boys as they have kids their age and they took us to a farm ;) Our city boys need to get out into the country!!

While we were there we also went to see the church that they are in the process of building. Juan Carlos & Claudia will actually be moving up to Juarez in a couple of weeks to begin a new church plant there.

We also spent an evening with some of the church group, at the home of Oscar & Lupe, who will be leading the Soto Maynez church. 

 After two days in that area, we headed 4 hours east to Delicias! This is where we lived for two years, helping in the church 20 minutes out of the city and teaching the Bible within the city with new groups. We stayed with Antonio & Lety, pastor couple of the church.

The weather here was hot!! I mean, it was hot everywhere, but Chihuahua City and Delicias were about 40 degrees....I guess your body does adapt when you live in it all of the time. 

So we spent some time with them as a family...

And also attended their mid-week church service to meet up with those we knew from the church, and then met up in the city with Mario & Lorena and Benita, some that we studied the Bible with in Delicias.

We also met up with Orlando & Laura and their girls. They are a pastor couple from an Independent church in Delicias, and they became good friends and a good support to us during our time there! 

Orlando also helped Dallas manage the world of government and lawyers :) While in Chihuahua we needed to make a correction to Brady's birth certificate, which we had to do through a lawyer. Orlando knows a trustworthy one and he is now working on the paperwork for us! We are so thankful. We didn't know if we would be able to do this, as it's a process that takes months and has to be done in Chihuahua.

(picture borrowed from Orlando)

After a couple of days in that area, we headed an hour back to Chihauhua City, where we stopped to visit Pepe & Juanis and their son Giovanni. They are the pastor couple at one of the churches there, and Pepe recently underwent brain surgery to remove a tumor. They are so thankful for the way he is healing and that no memory was lost! He is re-learning how to walk and talk but his spirit is positive and it was an encouragement to visit with them. They were a couple that took an interest in us when we lived there and had us over several times, as they were one of the closer churches to Delicias.

Back to Cuauhtémoc, where the boys and I stayed with Jason & Jessica while Dallas continued into the mountains to the camp to pick up Jesse!

Jesse got to know the youth from the different churches and became "one of them" for that week. Some of the food, culture, and Spanish is different in Chihuahua than in Guadalajara so it was a learning experience.

The next day we got up bright and early to begin the 15 hour drive home! We all love road tripping so we had a good time.....but I was ready to be at home again! Stepping into your home after a time away is always refreshing. 

 Continue to pray for the Conference in Chihuahua as they work together as a group and as they seek to build the churches and start new churches. We were encouraged to see what God has been doing there in the north and we hope that we were able to encourage those we visited as well.

June's cell phone dump and joys

It's that time again...where I realize I haven't kept up with the blog and so you get a slew of topics to read about! 

June has been a good month so far. We have been excited to see a couple of people that we are ministering to show a deep desire to know God, and it is evident as they study the Bible with our groups. Pray specifically for a young man who is searching for what God wants for his life and studies with us on Fridays, and for a mom friend who studies with me on Wednesday mornings and is just grasping so many of the truths of the Bible lately!

And so, the pictures. 

Dallas still loves his mountain biking :) it's been a really good way to meet guys, as they work long hours during the day and do this in the evenings or on weekends, and we also meet and get to know the families. Proud Canadian jersey going on there.

At the beginning of this month we had a visit from a pastor couple in one of our churches in Manitoba! What a blessing. We feel humbled and privileged that they would visit us and we enjoyed the 5 days together with them. It encourages us, and it's also a great way for churches back home to connect with our ministry and experience first hand what they are supporting. So come on down! 

 If you're friends with us on Facebook, you'll already have seen our party pictures. Paulina, a girl in our cell group that you have heard much about (she visited Canada with us last summer), graduated from high school!

Dallas and I were invited to her grad banquet, which started at 9:30 pm. Supper was served at 11:30 pm, and we got home at 3:00 am. We were tired but it was kind of fun to be up late...I do like to be up late but it's been a while since it's been that time of night :)

Also on Facebook you'll have seen this picture. There are two weeks of school left so we've been having "end of year" parties lately. When you have 3 kids in school here, where people love to get together for any reason, you have a lot of things to go to! These are all moms from Brady's class.

This last week, Brady's class could take their pets to school for the first hour, so one girl took her pony. I wasn't there but moms share everything on whatsapp.

I'm not sure what's happening, but Brady has been on a dish washing kick lately. And so has Paulina, so the 2 of them put themselves to washing dishes. Literal translation from Spanish, which is how it comes out sometimes!

Our intern, Jesse, has been a lot of fun to have around and work with, and he and Dallas do some interesting things when they're together....

This was last week and they were keeping an eye on the clouds to see if they might just hold a drop of rain. Waiting for rainy season to begin. They look a little fluffy to me.

Since then, we have actually had some rain everyday and it's so nice after the long dry months.

In July we will be traveling up to Chihuahua to visit the pastors and churches there, and Jesse will be going with us to work at the camp for a week. Our CEMM Conference of churches there do a youth camp every summer.

We will also be crossing the border with him so that he can renew his visa, and we mostly look forward to this trip! It's a long 17 hour drive to the border but we enjoy it and the boys also look forward to seeing the friends that they had when we lived there. They don't remember them from 5 years ago when we lived there, but more so from when we visited a couple of years ago.

So, that's the pictures so far this month. There are of course many more little things I could tell you about, but we'll leave it at that. Next week I plan to do the "A day in the life of..." so that we can follow each of the boys around for a day :)

GDL Living: Are you still learning Spanish??

 I'm sure most of you would know what this word says:

I'm not even gonna translate that one for you!

But how long does it take to learn to speak Spanish fluently?? 

It all depends, I would say. Some people are better at capturing languages, some learn it as a child, some learn it as an adult, and all of those things play into it. 

Out with some friends the other day

But if we want to communicate here in Mexico, it's a must to learn Spanish. There are soooo many people here that we connect with that know English, almost every person we know, knows at least some English. But it's not their heart language, and we really want to connect with people in their heart language (and we just simply love the language!).

I started learning Spanish when I was 4 years old, when my family moved to Paraguay to church plant with the Spanish-speaking Paraguayans. So that means that I've had 28 years of Spanish under my belt! whoa... that sounds like a lot now that I write it. In those 28 years though, I lived 8 years in Paraguay, 14 years in Canada, and now 6 years in Texas/Mexico.

In actuality, I still feel all the time like I am tongue tied and constantly second guessing my grammar. It doesn't stop me from speaking and I know that I over-think it a lot of the time, and I love it that I was able to learn it at a young age as it is generally harder to learn a new language as an adult. 

I don't like the feeling though of saying things in the wrong way, so I often ask people how I should have said something or get them to help me with vocab for new things that I don't talk about often in Spanish (like words that you use at the dentist!)

or before I go somewhere, like the dentist, I often look up the translation of words I don't know on google :-) Like how to say retainer, space maintainer, etc.

Dallas with a guy from his biking group on Thursday evenings

Dallas learned some Spanish in small bits and pieces when he was in college...he took a 6 week course, and then a couple of years later he took some evening classes in Manitoba. He really started learning it though 6 years ago when we went to study Spanish full-time before moving to Mexico.

So it is an ongoing process! The important thing is to be able to connect with people and explain yourself (and the gospel) clearly. We make fools of ourselves, have to admit that we don't know as much as we wish we did, and keep going.

I love speaking in Spanish, it's such a fluid language and I personally like the intonation of it also. Someone made the comment to me last time we were in Canada that I speak English with a Spanish accent. I thought about that and I think it's more so that I sometimes speak English with the Spanish intonation.

And our kids....are all learning Spanish at such a young age! Carter was 2 when we got here and the other 2 were here since babies. People in Chihuahua couldn't believe Carter's Spanish this summer when we were visiting there, and I love his confidence with it (when Dallas and I aren't there....for some reason he doesn't want to speak it when we're around...).

Yesterday the dentist asked Carter how much Spanish he knew and Carter gives him this look like the dentist was strange, and said "everything!". I don't think he quite knows everything but it's amazing how he's picked it up just from being in school and playing with his friends. Logan and Brady also understand a lot and Logan speaks well already too. Brady just started school so I know he'll start speaking it more and more!

So, moral of the story. If your bucket list includes "Learn Spanish before I die"....time to get on it!

Summer Trip 2014: Part 3 ~ El Paso & Home

{see Part 1 here and Part 2 here}

We left off Part 2 with our time in Chihuahua. We had to get back to El Paso by a certain day to return our rental car. It was already Thursday at that point, just a few days before the boys were supposed to start school.

And it was Brady's 4th Birthday! It was special to be driving through Chihuahua City exactly on that day (more to come yet on Brady's birthday).

After visiting our agency when we arrived in El Paso, we had to decide what to do again! Our paperwork had to be re-started because of some things that had happened at the customs, so we knew it would be till at least the Wednesday of the next week. We debated leaving our van there and flying home but that would have meant Dallas flying back up to the border and driving down later with the van once the paperwork came through.

So...we ended up deciding to wait it out (mostly because it was cheaper to stay, assuming the van would be ready in a few days).

This was honestly not a very relaxing time, as at that point the boys should have been starting school and we were so eager to just get home already, and we felt so unsure of what we should do. And at the same time, as a family, it was a good time together.

They boys were so relaxed the entire trip, and Dallas and I were able to just enjoy being together without the busyness of regular life. Everyday that we waited, we did some things with the boys, and then every afternoon we checked with our agency to see if the paperwork had come through that day.

We also ended up buying several school supplies that we could find there that were the same as here in Mexico, so it would be ready when we got back, bought a clipper to cut the boys hair so they would be ready for school (buying the clippers was cheaper than taking the 3 to a hairdresser! ha!), communicating daily with our cell group and friends back in Gdl, and Dallas did some work on writing articles and Bible study prep. So while we felt like we were wasting our time by waiting, we tried to make the most of it!

I am so thankful for the family God has given me - Dallas, our 3 boys...

Once the next Thursday rolled around, our agency told us that the customs agents were telling her it would be minimum another 2 weeks. So it was either leave our van there to wait on the paperwork and fly home, or cancel the entire thing and just go.

So Friday morning, we were on the road with our van!

 You do what you can but when you can only do so much, you have to make a decision. We feel that all along we made good decisions with the info we had, and that last week we were praying to have a clear answer as to what to do, as it often felt ambiguous. When we were told at least 2 weeks (rather than 2 days as before), we knew we should cancel and go! So it was good to have clear direction at that point.

Even though it was disappointing to have been gone that extra time and paid extra money to stay there longer, I think that the important thing is our testimony before others and our attitudes, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in. I will admit my attitude was not always the best when I got stressed about what we should do and feeling useless being away from Gdl for that long, and I am continuously amazed by Dallas' peace and trust in God in situations like this. We are good combo I must say :-) And we saw God's hand in so many little things both in El Paso and Chihuahua, that we can't not be thankful for the trip regardless of this outcome.

That concludes our Summer Trip 2014! We are now meeting up again with everyone here in Gdl, we were so ready to get back into the swing of things and the boys started school on Monday ready to go. My house is in sore need of some cleaning and there is a ton of laundry to do, so it's on to that this morning!

This mama has started up biking...again

 This morning Dallas, Brady, and I went out for a bike ride in the park! It is about 5 km to the park, around the park, and back to our house, with hills, so that's enough for me at this point.

For Dallas...it is a little joy ride, and he is pulling Brady in the trailer never mind. But I do want to do some exercise at least, so we have been going out twice a week together in the morning. It only takes about a half hour so we still have plenty of time left in the morning for other things which is good. Dallas is a good sport and goes at my pace, and it's also a good time for us to hang out together and talk!

So many people here that we know seem to be into running, and that is just not my cup of tea! I believe that if it's something you're going to keep up, it needs to be something you also enjoy, therefore the biking.

Running also hurts my food like craaazy...I have this problem with my foot/leg/hip on the left side and have been seeing doctors here to figure out the problem. We've ruled out any bone issues so now it's a matter of finding a good traumatologist to help me out. The biking does make my hip sore but not the foot at least.

Are you wondering why Brady is wearing long sleeve pj's and has a blanket wrapped around him??! It's b/c it was 19 degrees and cloudy when we went out this morning. Cold, I know! :-)

When over 30 degrees is the norm this time of year, 19 is cool and Brady loves to "be cozy".  We have had some rains lately, which is abnormal as our rainy reason usually starts later June, but the rains cool things off a little.

Brady though says the ride in the trailer is boring and would rather take his little bike for a ride...which would definitely take us more than 1/2 hour...

For old times sake, here is Brady and I almost 3 years ago! This is how we used to bike, with Brady on my back and Dallas pulling Carter and Logan in the trailer.

And here are Carter and Logan in the trailer about 4 years ago! This was when we lived in Delicias, Chihuahua and Dallas biked Carter to school everyday as it was really close to our house. 

 And....one more from when we first got the trailer, when Carter was a baby :-) Here he is about 5 mths old and taking a little nap as we biked around Steinbach.

Kleefeld is back!

 Our home church in Canada, Kleefeld EMC, has visited us in Mexico twice already! Every 2 years they have been bringing the youth group (grades 11 and 12) for a week over their Spring Break on a missions trip. We feel so privileged and happy that they choose to come here!

4 years ago they first came to help us with our ministry in Delicias, Chihuahua. Our ministry there was quite different than it is here in Guadalajara, but what I loved that year was that our Mexican friends opened up their homes to host the youth! I know the youth still communicate with their hosts and we were thankful that they got to experience that hospitality.

2010 in Delicias

 The neat thing for us is that we know most of the families of these youth, although it makes us feel rather "old" when we have to ask who their parents are :-) even though their parents are still older than we are. And most of the youth leaders that come were in the youth group when we were leaders back when we lived out there!

This pic below was taken during a Kids Club we did with the youth. Dallas and I went to this park every Saturday and invited all of the neighbourhood kids. I'm pregnant with Brady in this picture.

Carter and Logan in 2010 :-) Carter was 3 and Logan was 1 1/2.

And then 2 years ago, in 2012, the youth came to see us in Guadalajara! That was also a memorable trip as pretty well everyone could super sick towards the end of the week, but Kleefeld always seems to have a great bunch of youth and we loved the whole week. 

2012...my mom came as a leader also that year!

We are so thankful to our church and to Peter, Associate Pastor, who sees the ministry here as something they want to support and for the effort they make in coming to help. It is always so good when people come with good attitudes and excitement, and our prayer is for the youth to leave having seen that this is something they can also do in daily life back in Canada! Reaching out to your neighbour or your friend with the good news of Jesus is not just something that is "easy" in another country (b/c it's not any easier!!) and we love to see people catch the vision of making disciples wherever they go.

So that is something you can pray together with us...that the youth would catch this vision. We also pray that our church plant here would be strengthened through the ministry of the youth, that the events and things we have planned for the week would draw people in and make them interested in knowing more!

I think I forgot to mention that the Kleefeld youth are coming this week :-) So the prayer requests are for this week...they are on their way, right now, to Guadalajara and will be arriving during the night tonight. Pray for the 11 youth and 3 leaders that will be with our missionary team over the next week!

{side note....our van is still in the shop but the good thing is that we now have the 15 passenger van that we have rented for the youth group. So, we have some transportation at least! Thanks for your prayers}