Not a Veteran Yet!

Recently I was reading some blogs from new missionaries who have just moved to Mexico and Central America.  It was interesting to see the things they are struggling with.  I want to tell them that in 7 years, they will look back and feel like pros in the same areas!  One person mentioned that they were waiting in line in the bank for 20 mintues...  I go to the bank with a book and a Coke because I know I will not be out in 20 minutes!  (trying to set up a USA/Mexico online transfer account, I spent 10 hours over the course of 2 months in the bank, and I didn't get the account set up successfully!  Side note - I went in to try again with my Mexican citizen I.D., and it took about an hour TOTAL!)  And then there's the language learning.  I'm so grateful that God allowed me to start learning Spanish when I was 14, and I was conversational by 4 years later!  Learning on the field must be difficult!

Some things about life as a gringa in Latin America are old hat now.  But I have light years of learning to do yet!  Living in Queretaro, I feel like I have a lot LESS cultural aspects to have to deal with, I mean come on, we can FLUSH our TOILET PAPER, have hot water showers, have better internet that JP and I currently have in the U.S., and I don't stick out like a sore thumb from being blonde and freakishly tall! 

BUT, I have so much to learn when it comes to the MINISTRY aspects of it all.  Sometimes we have to do things that we don't want to do.  And I'm not good at that.  Sometimes I don't want to meet with another young lady who is going through rough times - it's not comfortable.  Sometimes I don't like to be at dinner with another couple while they tell us why they think Christian churches are harmful to the traditional culture - it's disheartening.  Sometimes I would rather not have foul-mouthed beer-drinking young professionals over to our house and listen to them talk about their latest relationship failure - I'd rather go to tacos with friends from church and hear about the youth conference they went to in Mexico City. 

But we live in Queretaro to help people come to a relationship with Christ.  And when one person accepts Christ, it really does make it all worth it! 

New missionaries - hang in there through the culture and language struggles!  That gets better!  Remember why you are where you are.  The hard times, uncomfortable-ness, disheartening convesations, and frustrations are worth it because God allows YOU to play a part in changing eternity for someone else!

Amistad

The main thing that I knew I would miss in Mexico during our time in the States was our awesome friends.  (You thought I was going to say tacos, didn't you!)  Amistad (ah-mee-STAHD) means friendship. 
Things change in a year (or 15 months most likely, by the time we get back).  We missed the wedding of Pam, one of my best friends, and her new husband David.  Our good friends Phil and Sandy, and Ruben and Brenda are having babies in the next couple months.  They weren't even pregnant when we left.  I see Facebook pictures of our friends having a great time all together, and we aren't in them.  It's been hard. 

But God has provided for us in that area during our time here.  We have the most awesomest small group ever!  We were just three couples for a few month, and now a new couple has joined, and a single young lady has been attending too, taking our total up to nine!  I feel blessed that God has brought these people into our lives!  When we first started going to a small group, I told myself not to get too attached to everyone since we'll be leaving to go back to Mexico.  Well, I got too attached.  But that's ok.  I know we'll have to leave, but we'll see them when we come to visit (and when they come to visit us, hint hint!)

Here's a few pictures of good times we've had as a group over the past several months:

When we went to see the midnight showing of Avengers when it came out:
(Note Brooke's big bag - it was full of trail mix and other snacks to take into the theater.  JUST like we do in Mexico!  haha!)

 

Making smores in the backyard (JP learned Reeses peanut butter cup smores here!)

 

And most recently, FryDay - where the guys all got together and fried all kinds of junk!

Frying Twinkies:

 

Fried stuffed jalapeños (I got to try these and they were GREAT!)

 Frying in the garage!  Us girls went hung out with the kids and ordered in Olive Garden that day - Yummy!

We also pray for each other and look at the Bible together!  (It's just not condusive to take pictures of that!)  We've been looking at 1 Corinthians the past couple months, which has been a good learning experience. 

I am so thankful for our friends in the States.  Yes, it will be hard to leave now.  But they'll just have to come visit!  :) 

The One About Colorado

I said that I'd tell about our Colorado trip, and never did, so here it is!  :P
We spent a week with Walt and DiAne in Colorado Springs.  Two families hosted us in their homes while we were there, and they were extremely hospitable and nice to us.  Walt and DiAne took us to the USA Olympic Training Center, Compassion International, Focus on the Family, the Garden of the gods, and other fun places around Colorado Springs.
Then we had an intensive three day "business as ministry" training. We plan to use this program in our ministry in Queretaro.   It was an excellent training, the leader took lots of time personally with JP and I to go over questions we had. 
It was a really great week!

 

"Blobsledding" at the Olympic Training Center!

 

Us with Walt and DiAne at the Garden of the gods!

 

Navigating an "Olde West" ghost town!

Lessons from My Ear

If you didn't see about our time at International Teams, scroll down to the next post, or click HERE to see some pictures!

The last few days at I.T. were a little rough, due to an ear infection I had coming on.  I'd never had one before, but ended up going to two urgent care clinics, getting a shot for pain (I NEV.ER. request a shot, but the pain won out this time!), and missing out on some of the fun that could have been had during our stay with Justin and Lluvia.  God blessed me with a few hours of good time to spend with them though - we hadn't seen them in over a year, so it was great to catch up and talk about good times!

Word to the wise - NEVER get on an airplane with a perforated ear drum.  Seriously.  Dude.  But that's what we did.  And I think God taught me a lot from that experience.  This may sound exaggerated, but I have never experienced as much pain for such an extended period of time as I did with this infection.  And on the plane from Chicago to Portland, I couldn't think straight.  All I could do was cry out to God that He would make it stop.  I remember that one of my college professors said one time that during a particularly painful child birth she decided to use that time to praise God that she was having a baby, and praise Him for who He is.  And that scenario came to my mind.  And I started to sing (in my head, not out loud!) praises to God.  Sometimes the pain was unbearable, and I cried, and I think JP was close to tears a few times, and the kid sitting in front of us definitely thought I was off my rocker!  But the phrase that kept running through my head was "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord."  I can't find that exact phrase in the Bible, although I'm sure something similar is there.  But I just knew that God was in control - He has the power to heal and the power to not.  It's His to decide, and if He decides not to heal when I want, I will still praise Him. 

Then I kind of hoped that after that revelation God would instantly heal my ear, but He didn't.  The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.  A lesson - or TRUTH - that I will never forget.

We spent uncomfortable two weeks in Salem (I kept telling myself my ear was on the mend even though all signs said it was not) before getting BACK on an airplane to go to Colorado (will post more about that soon!).  I thought I was healed enough to go to Colorado, but apparently not.  The plane ride was a killer again, and our friends Walt and DiAne who hosted us in Colorado Springs changed our plans to go to Breckenridge to take me to the doctor, which ended in a minor surgery to get the *fungus* out of my ear.  The doctor was afraid that it had penetrated into the bones in my ear (I freaked out when I heard that!), so he put me under and cleaned it up, and it wasn't near as bad as he'd thought.  Then the rest of the time in Colorado was quite pleasant, since my ear quit hurting three weeks after it started!

Here's me and the nurse post-op in the hospital.  They gave me a Coke to wake me up!  :)

I T July!

So, considering that it's been like, a LONG time since we've written, and we've had a TON of stuff happen in that vast stretch of time (which is only 3 months, but seems like we had a year's worth of stuff going on), I'll do some pictures of what went on during JULY.

 

We spent the month at International Teams in Elgin Illinois (about 30 minutes north-ish of Chicago).  JP did 3 weeks of training - his "official I.T. training" for being officially a missionary!  And I did kind of a refresher one week course - it's what they offer for new missionaries before coming to the longer training - JP took this in April.

 

So here's our time in pictures!

 

JP and I in downtown Chicago.  You can't spend a month in Elgin and not make the trek to downtown Chi-Town.  hehe

 

 

I was SUPER  happy that Franklin (one of my brothers from Honduras) and his wife Kendra were able to come visit!  Fran had never been to the US before, and Kendra is from Michigan, so they spent a few weeks with her family, and were able to meet me in Chicago for a day (JP had classes and couldn't come).

 

I took a lot of the classes with JP, so I was able to get to know all the other missionaries in training, like Michelle and Chris (with us below) going to Uganda!  We had lots of fun times getting to know the other missionaries and hanging out.

 

We went to "La Villita," which is pretty much Northern Mexico transplanted to Chicago, with Jay, Julianne, and their kids.  They are going to an undecided location in Latin America, and wanted to experience as close to Mexico as possible with some real live mexicans - us.  :)  It was a great day - the busses were problematic, as none of us had any idea how to use them, but we ate at a place that *almost* tasted like home, and found "elotes" (el-OH-tays) (mentioned about 100 times in previous blog posts, and pictured below!)  JP and I were thrilled, and Jay and Julianne and kids have a new favorite food!

 

 

JP with Suzie and Scott at I.T., getting his diploma.  As you can tell, everyone is very serious around I.T. heehee!

 

It was an amazing month!  We topped it off by getting to visit Justin and Lluvia and their baby who served with us in QRO for 6 years (they were there a lot before I came too!). 

It's all about your perspective

You better have at least 10 spare minutes if you're going to read this blog post, because first gotta read THIS.  It's quite possibly my favorite post from my favorite blogger, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary (lives in Costa Rica).  It doesn't matter that she's my favorite blogger because that's the only blog I ever read, right?  hehe

Now that you've read that litte gem from Jamie (what?! you still haven't?! well go read it!), lemme tell you about my situation.  The other day I had had enough.  Just enough.  I'm not exactly sure what specifically I had enough of, but I'd had enough of whatever it was.  It all came to a head when I realized that absolutley ZERO of the bajillion allergy medications I've tried over the past few weeks worked.  I live in Mexico; I don't GET allergies anymore.  Until those little cotton nightmares started floating out of the trees by the Willamette River.  I knew I was in trouble when JP said one day, "What is all that?  It looks like snow."  Yep, piles of the cotton thingies.  AND the signal that my allergies are going to flare up at any given moment.  AND, I'd never lived in Oregon since pseudofedrine became a prescription drug.  I just knew all this was going to make for a miserable time. 

JP and I have been living "out in the country" at a great little cabin that was made specifically for missionaries to use while in the States.  Cool, huh!  It's a bit far out of town (with gas prices at over $4 a gallon, it seems like it's on the moon!), but it's a great place.  I was starting to get irritated at the distance we had to drive to reach civilization.  Now, I grew up in Salem, but was done with small towns the moment I set eyes on Queretaro, population 1.5 million.  I always thought that if we ever move back to the States permanently, we'd live in Seattle.  It just sounds cool.  It's big, and very Northwesty.  Although I may develop seasonal depression after about 3 days in constant rain...  Anyhow, I SWORE that I would NEVER live in a small town.  Salem is the absolute smallest I could handle.  So I may have been moping around feeling sorry for myself because we live so far outside of the city.

That's when the allergies came on full steam.  I cried.  (yeah, that just made my snotty, sneazy mess even messier)  I hated being "out in the country" where I have to drive a LONG time (like TEN minutes! gasp!) to even get to a pharmacy. 

Then, JP looked out the window and said, "We are SO blessed to actually get to live out here."  What?!  What are you talking about?!  Don't you see?!  My ALLERGIES are KILLING ME!  And YOU aren't the one who has to DRIVE all the time to get us places!  (Drivers' license situation to be fixed soon!)  And he was just so happy, so content to be living where we are living.  Because we get to see Mt. Hood from our house.  Because we have cherry orchards that change colors all the time right outside our window.  Because we can hear frogs outside at night instead of neighbors' disco-club-music.  Because God gave us an almost free place to live where it's just the two of us living in one house. 

So I felt like a moron.  We ARE "SO blessed to actually get to live out here!"  JP had the perspecive on the whole situation that I needed.  God TOTALLY provided everything we needed for our time in the States.  We really couldn't ask for a better place to live.  And I was complaining about it all. 

Well, God's given me a break over the past two days from my allergies, so that's helped my attitude a lot.  But I've also realized that I can't always be the pessimist.  I need to see the GOOD in our situation instead of the BAD.  And there's like a million times more good things in our living situation than there are bad things anyway, so that shouldn't be too hard!  God's good at getting my attention and making changes for the better in my life!

God Provided

We've officially begun the process for JP's residency and citizenship!  So we get to stay here for longer:

We've also been living at this great place in a cherry orchard for the past month!  God pretty much has supplied all we need.  Can't complain about that!

Other People Like Me

It's been hard to be in the States for the past 5 months.  Nothing bad has happened or anything, but I'm just not very gringa-ish anymore.  Like maybe I don't "fit" here.  (<-- definitely requires "finger quotes" with the word "fit") 

Anyhow, another missionary friend, who's been in the States for almost a year, had this excellent idea to get together all the missionaries, former missionaries, and future missionaries from our church, and just... hang.  We've met twice now, and it's bee neat to see what God is doing in everyones' lives.  We have people who are back in the States somewhat permanently, others who are back and going to move to a new country, others who are in the process of becoming missionaries, and some who are called to be missionaries, and JP and I who are just in a weird place.  And everyone has stories of how God is working in their lives.  (Well I suppose we ALL should have those stories!)  But it's been cool to get to know more people like me, who may be just a little out of place, but want to follow what God has next for them!  :)

Rules of Visiting Others

In Queretaro, anytime I make a time/date to go somewhere with someone, if it's more than 24 hours before the event I will contact them to confirm our meeting.  People expect it.  If a friend and I decide on Sunday that we'll meet for coffee on Thursday night, someone must confirm that on either wednesday or thursday or it won't happen.  I usually text a "see you tonite at 7!" on thursday afternoon, and shortly get the reply "Starbucks in Jardines, right?"  That means we'll both be at Starbucks in Jardines at 7ish.  The majority of our outings are sponaneous in Queretaro - 9:30pm on Wednesday night after church, whoever is still there when the church is being locked up may hear "we're going to tacos in Tejeda, see you all there in 15 minutes!" and some people show up.  Or sometime between getting to church on sunday morning and the time the service ends, we're magically set to go to the "Airport Corn and Gorditas" (about a 40 minute drive into the countryside for the best corn on the cob and gorditas EVER).  Sometimes a 8pm phone call for something totally unrelated ends up in us going to friends' house for snacks and a movie immediately after hanging up. 

So, because I know that pretty much everyone who isn't a college student in the USA plans outings in advance, we've been calling people maybe 3 to 10 days in advance of meeting with them.  Then I call them the day before the event.  And most of the time I get, "Oh, can you guys not make it?" or "Did something come up for you?"  Maybe the fact that I call to confirm raises questions in their minds about our availabilty?  I'm confused...  So then we quit confirming and just showed up at peoples' homes when we hadn't spoken with them for a week.  And they were expecting us!  Amazing!  If I asked someone in Queretaro to come over a week from now, and I didn't hear from them and I didn't call them, I wouldn't expect them be there. 

I guess I'm just in the process learning my own culture all over again, this time as an adult, as I'd never been an adult in the United States before! 

Hey There!

I don't think I'd ever hit the mark of not having blogged for two months.  Well, two months of no blog flew by in February, so I think I owe a post. 

As you (should!) know, we're in USA now.  We have lots to accomplish before moving back to Queretaro - hopefully sometime the beginning of 2013, like, less than 12 months from now... we hope!  But we'll just let God be in control of that one!

So SUPER quick, here's what we've done since coming to the USA!

Celebrated our first Christmas in the USA!

Went to Disneyland!

JP saw snow for the first time!

Went to visit friends in Atlanta and Nashville!

Spent an entire day in the snow in the Cascade Mountains!

God provided all we needed to do all we've needed to do so far.  We've stayed in 7 different housed since leaving our house in Queretaro, and have had the needed transportation to visit the people we needed to visit and go the places we've needed to go. 

What's in the future for us?

JP will be applying for US citizenship, and starting English classes at the local community college.  We'll both be going to International Teams' training in July, and another ministry training in August!

We're also trying to get our financial support up to 100% during this time so we can be fully funded and move back to Mexico once our other tasks are complete!