Milpa Alta

We got be be tourists this week in Mexico City... a place that doesn't at ALL look like Mexico City - Milpa Alta.  This is a part of the city that has a very small-town feel to it, in fact, it's a lot of farm land.  Nopal cactuses and chiles are grown in Milpa Alta.  It's also well-known for it's mole (MO-lay) sauce, which is one of my personal favorites!

Here we are looking out over part of Milpa Alta

And these were probably the best mole enchiladas I've ever eaten - black, green, and red moles!

 

Then we were randomly in a mall by JP's dad's house one afternoon and Kikin Fonseca - who used to play soccer for the Mexican National Team - was there...  So of course we had to get a picture!  hehe!

Championships

The Queretaro Major League Soccer team, the Gallos Blancos (White Roosters, yeah, everyone thinks the name is lame) got to the final games of the Mexican League soccer championship this year!  This is a first for the Gallos, only ONCE had the team ever even gotten to the playoffs before, so this was big! 
The first half of the final game (it's a 2-game final) was held on a Thursday night at the same time as our discipleship group, so we used the night as a time to just hang out and watch the game!

Here we are at Brenda's house, enjoying dinner and the Gallos game!

The Gallos lost that first game 0-5, yikes!  We won the second game 3-0, but it wasn't enough, the Santos Laguna team was champion.  But it was fun to see the local team in the finals, and to get a chance to scream at the TV for 2 hours with friends!

Every Four Years...

Every four years, this exciting time comes around in Mexico.  (No, it's not presidential elections).  It's THE WORLD CUP!! 
The vast majority of the world sits in front of TV screens at home, in restaurants, in parks, etc. to cheer on their country's soccer team, or their favorite team if their country didn't go.  Events are rescheduled, school (and sometimes work) is skipped.  (Imagine if the Super Bowl happened once a week for a month, and wasn't necessarily on Sunday evening.)  Mexico is VERY enthusiastic about this event, and so are JP and I, even though we haven't been into regular season Mexican League soccer in the past few years.
Each country that goes to the World Cup is guaranteed three games.  Mexico and the US have both played their three, and will each get at least one more.  We're rooting for both of our countries, as well as Costa Rica (doing VERY well, and is also moving forward) and Honduras (unfortunately did not move forward). 

Here's just a little of the excitement! 

We went to a park in downtown Queretaro to watch one Mexico game.

Cheering on Honduras and USA, watching games by internet

We watched another Mexico game with friends at a cafe

The Best Weekend Ever

We just had a ridiculously LONG but SUPER GOOD weekend!!

Why?  Read below!

Singles Conference
JP and I led a group of 24 young people ages 18 to 36 to Cuernavaca (supposedly 3.5 hours south of Querétaro) for a conference for singles at the Horizonte Church in that city.  About 300 people were in attendence, and we had several EXCELLENT speakers that touched on topics that I know many of our young people are dealing with.  At least two of our young ladies are dating guys who aren't Christians, and this topic was talked about very clearly - God's plan for us NOT to be joined together with unbelievers - and I know that these ladies have been thinking about the consequences of their relationships a lot this past weekend.  One of the speakers talked about SERVING the Lord as a single person.  There are SO many opportunities.  And another speaker talked to all the ladies about taking advantage of singleness to serve and living life to the fullest, NOT waiting around for life to "begin" once you get married.  Even JP and I learned a lot of good stuff to apply to our lives!

The group from Horizonte Queretaro at the conference!

Cristina, Pam, and Ramses

The Food
We ate WAY too many tacos at the conference, they brought in the biggest chunk of meat I've ever seen and between 300 people we finished her off!  :)

The Drive
So, as I mentioned above, the drive from Querétaro to Cuernavaca SHOULD be about 3.5 hours.   The 24 of us took off at about 6am from Querétaro in our car, another small car, and a 15 person van driven by JP.  We stopped for about half and hour just outside of Querétaro, as some other people from Querétaro had car problems (they were following us to the conference).  Then we stopped again for potty and coffee break for about 45 minutes.  We entered Mexico City at about 9:30 am.  This will all of the drivers' first time driving in Mexico City - it wasn't half bad!  But one girl got car sick there and we had to try to find a pharmacy to get some dramamine, and kind of got a little bit lost...  We got to the conference at noon - and hour after it started.
Then we left for Querétaro at about 10pm.  And we hit TRAFFIC at 11pm on the parking lot, er, I mean the highway, that circles about Mexico City.  We were stuck on the circle highway for TWO HOURS!  We ended up getting back to QRO at 3am!  But all arrived SAFE, thank God!

Our fearless pilot!

Bus ride! 

(Maricela, Cristina, Andrea, Adrian, Karen, Pam)

Sleep (or lack thereof!)
I don't do well on little or no sleep.  But between the time JP and I woke up at 7am on friday morning and the time we went comatose in bed at 6 pm on sunday, we slept a grand total of 7.5 hours!  And were driving for 10 of them!!  (ok like 11.5 for JP since he has to drive 45 minutes each way to work!)  But it was worth it!

MORE Changes for Horizonte Queretaro
The church leadership of Horizonte was informed of the following this past week:
Juan, the pastor who came after Martin and had gone back to pastor in Ensenada due to health problems, had left his son, Jonathan, as pastor of Horizonte QRO.  However, Juan's health is getting a lot worse (please pray for him!), and he asked Jonathan to please come back to Ensenada to be the permenent pastor there.  So where does that leave us?  With Kike (KEE-kay) and his wife Paulina from Cuernavaca!  Kike had come several times to QRO en the past few years, and had a burden in his heart for the people here (1% evangelical Cristian!).  He and Pau were praying about starting a house church here when Jonathan called up and asked them to pray about pastoring Horizonte Querétaro.  So on sunday, it was annouced that Kike will be our new pastor, beginning that day!  We're sad to not have Jonathan and Evelyn here, but Kike and Pau are awesome, and we know that they will be a huge blessing here!!

Kike and his wife Paulina

Kike and Jonathan

Soccer
The Horizonte QRO girls' soccer team won our second game on sunday!  Just to top of the excellent weekend!!

Dirce, Alma, Ari, me, and Arely after the soccer game

It's All Over...

Some of you may know that I'm rather fanatical about World Cup soccer.  Well, this is the third year that I've been in a Latin American country during the World Cup... where people actually get EXCITED about the games! 

Of course, I root for Mexico (and Honduras this year since they made it to the Cup, but didn't get very far...).  Sorry folks, USA just doesn't do justice to soccer...  Anyhow, I had the opportunity to spend the Mexico games in really fun ways...

JP and I watched the opening World Cup game - Mexico/South Africa - at home after getting up early for the opening ceremony.  It was a 1-1 tie.

I went downtown (JP had to work!) for the Mexico/France game... the absolute BEST soccer game I've EVER seen... EVER!  Probably about 2000 people gathered in a plaza (Plaza de Armas, the dog fountain one where they put the frogs, for those of you who know QRO) with a big screen with the game on it.  This is a plaza that's right in front of the State Capitol building, and even the governor came out to watch the game!  I didn't take my camera with me, and I took some picture with my phone, but JP is the one who knows how to get them onto the computer and we haven't done that yet...  It was crazy during the game!  My favorite player - Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez - scored a goal and everyone was jumping up and down, and pretty much there was no one actually sitting in the chairs provided by this time...  Then, Cuauhtemoc got a penalty shot, and about 10 camera men were standing up on a huge flower bed trying to get the reaction of the governor during the penalty shot, and people were screaming at them to get down because they completely blocked the screen!!  Finally the governor yelled at them to get down, so they did, right before the penalty shot GOAL.  Mexico won to France 2-0!

And for Mexico/Uruguay, which was a tuesday during church working hours, Pastor Martin brought tamales and cokes for everyone and we crowded into his office (where the best TV reception is!) to watch the game with "tortas de tamal" or tamal sandwiches, show below.  It's just a regular tamal in a bread roll with extra salsa and cream.  It REALLY fills you up!

Unfortunately, Mexico lost.  But we still made it into the "octavos" (eight finals?)

For the Mexico/Argentina game, we actually changed the church services around because we were supposed to have KidStuf program at 1:30, which was the game time, and we knew NO ONE would come to KidStuf then, so we just did KS twice, once in each service, and watched the game on the screens in the auditorium after.  It was such a sad game...  We lost 3-1 to Argentina... EXACT same thing that happened in the 2006 World Cup.  So, that left Mexico disqualified. 

I'm rooting for Brasil now...  I was IN Brasil in 2002 when they won, and THAT was super crazy, you can't even believe it!

Now, go watch some World Cup games, even though your country is disqualified!  (assuming my readers are from USA and Australia!)

Our Other Family

Of course being married, we each have two families - Jessica's and Jean Paul's, which are "both of ours' families!"  And you can throw in Delmer and Suyapa and the boys for yet another family to add to the mix. 

But we have another family here in Queretaro - Yola, and her two boys Alex and Ruben.  Yola has been widowed fro about 12 years.  The boys are about our age, and have been good friends with JP for several years.  Yola used to take care of JP when he was sick (before I came along!), and feed him when money was short. 

We've finally crossed the "walk-in-and-snatch-food-out-of-the-fridge-without-asking" point with them, so I think that officially makes us family.  hehe  Yesterday, JP, Yola and I went to the Centro for the Queretaro Easter Festival to get the yummiest bread in the world, and check out the festivities, after having eaten with them for lunch.  Then we watched the lamest "win" of Chivas (most awesomest soccer team) vs. America (yuckiest team in the mexican league) for the rivalry game.  Chivas won, but it was a pretty pathetic game all around.  Yola, Ruben and I  are Chivas fans.  JP and Alex just haven't learned about soccer yet...  :)

Alex, Yola, Ruben, and my favorite dog ever, Chivis.