Done!

I FINALLY have all my documents to be able to leave the country and to go to the U.S.  I'm all set on my documents now for TEN years!  Yay!!!  (With the exception of my driver's license... which I probably need to get a Queretaro one but won't yet because it's another expense and we'll just wait to get it until we get back from the States.)

El Bajío

El Bajío (bah-HEE-oh) is the region of Mexico that we live in.  It includes the states of Queretaro, Guanajuato, and part of Michoacan.  This statistic was just shared with us in church on Sunday: this region - along with neighboring states of Aguascalientes and Zacatecas - is the region in LATIN AMERICA that is least evangelized.  And we live here.
 

Below is a map of Mexico with these states colored:

Queretaro is blue

Guanajuato is purple

Aguascalientes is red

Zacatecas is green

Michoacan is brown (the eastern-most part of Michoacan is considered part of the Bajio)

We've actually met a LOT of people who had never heard about salvation in Christ!  So many of the people we come in contact with (with the exception of those at our church!) believe that by being good, participating in the sacraments (baptism as a baby, eucharist, confession, confirmation, etc.), and praying to the saint of their church or city, they will be saved and go to heaven.  It has been sad to see so many people believe that, even though they don't have a relationship with Christ that they will go to heaven.  And we know that Jesus says: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."  John 14:6

God has been giving us some amazing opportunities to share the Message of Salvation with those around us (these testimonies will be in our upcoming newsletter).  Please pray that God will open the hearts of those we share with, that they will come to know Christ as their Savior.  And pray for us too, that we may have the boldness to speak the Truth to others!

View of Queretaro at night

Getting Ready

This week we started making preparations for our trip to the States.  It's still almost 6  months away, but we both absolutely loathe moving.  So we're getting stuff ready for our first garage sale in a couple weeks - selling stuff that we don't use much.  We'll have another one in November for about half of our furniture that we're selling.  It's weird to think of us not living in our house anymore.  It's not actually our house, but it's the only home we've had as a family!
We're looking forward to this adventure of exploring the United States, which will include visits in Oregon, Chicago area, and Atlanta area, and it looks like JP will get his first trip to Disneyland!!
Please pray for us as we continue to make preparations for 6 months away from Mexico - where we will keep the furniture that we're not selling, what to take with us, and where we'll stay for a few weeks after we turn our house over to the owners, where we'll stay in the each city in the States, and what our transportation situation will be like!  Wow, that's a long list!  But we're very excited to take off on this journey of sharing our ministry vision with others!!

Resumé

Our friend, Alma, and her husband have been coming over to the house recently to work on Alma's resumé.  She went to school with JP and is looking for a job.  JP and Max, Alma's husband, were making fun of the picture she put on her resumé (here you have to put a picture of you on it), and told her she should change the picture. 

Unbeknownst to Alma, Max and JP DID change her photo.  To this one:

And, instead of going home and opening up her resumé file before sending it to potential employers, she just attached the file as it was when she left our house.  Oops!!  After sending it to one potential employer, she opened the file to see Krusty the Clown in place of her picture!  At least she only sent it to one place... and we figured, hey, maybe they'll call her for an interview just out of curiosity!  hehe!

Mexican!

On Friday, I officially became a Mexican!  My "birth certificate" was given to me (emitted on March 22nd, not sure why they didn't contact me sooner!), and says I'm from Mexico City!  Which is funny, because people from Mexico City ALWAYS ask JP and I if we're from "provincia," which means from anywhere in Mexico that's NOT Mexico City.  hehe! 

I'm getting my passport soon, and went in yesterday to get my "voting credencial," which, besides being what I need to show when going to the polls, is the primary form of ID for Mexicans.  And, unfortunately, I'm "supposed" to get a Queretaro driver's license too, but we'll see...  I have several Mexican friends who have a valid license only from the USA, and haven't had any problems...

Anyhow, we're excited for my double-citizenship!  No more paying residency, nor 4-hour visits to Immigration! 

Catita

Catita is a 72 year old woman who lives in a really little town about 40 minutes north of Queretaro.  She goes to church at Horizonte (Yes, she travels all that way EVERY sunday, and tuesday for women's prayer meeting, and saturday for her small group!).  Catita lives in a taco stand.  Yes, a little metal building that's about 7ft X 5 ft.  She sells candies and pop.  She asked us a while back if we could paint her stand.  We went out and looked at it, and sure enough it needed painting, among lots of other work!  It was last painted with water-based paint that we knew would turn all rusty when the rainy season starts...

So we asked people from church if they'd be willing to help out with some money to get Catita all set up.  We gathered up paint supplies and asked our friends Pepe and Juan to help us out.  Pepe has a paint spray gun that gets oil based paint on metal done in a jiffy.  Juan is a welder, so we brought him along to help fix the roof leaks. 

JP, Pepe, and Juan figuring out exactly what needs to be done...  JP is stopping up leaks in the roof...  Catita says she wakes up in the middle of the night to sweep water out of her house when it rains.  She sleeps on the concrete floor with blankets.

Sanding the water-based paint

We had some real quality OSHA-approved tools to work with :)

The ladder that we borrowed from a neighbor:

Catita said she wanted her stand painted RED.  Pepe chose the color and when we opened it up we just about died, it was a flourescent bright pinkish-red...  We didn't want to paint it that color...  But when Catita saw it she said it was EXACTLY the color she wanted! 

The door to the taco stand had a big gap in it.  It was really difficult to figure out how to fix it because Catita needs to be able to open the door from both the inside and the outside.  Juan figured it out, and we're pretty sure the door won't leak now! 

Catita is looking on ask Juan works.

Goofing off

The finished product:

But wait, there's MORE! 

Since Catita sells candies and pops to make a living, we decided to help out by buying her lots of stuff to sell!  Some of the youth group people donated candies and money to this whole operation.  I had a blast picking out candies at the market to give to Catita!

Checking out the new candy supply...

This project took a whole lot longer than we expected - we were there with Catita in the little town of "Pie (pee-EH) de Gallo" (means "rooster foot!") all day.  But it was really a lot of fun!

Catita's situation still isn't ideal...  She lives in a TACO STAND!  And her 8 children don't seem to want to help her out very much.  We are unsure of where Catita takes a bath and goes to the bathroom.  She's always well groomed, and has clean clothes and keeps her taco stand clean inside.  I unfortunately had to go to the bathroom while we were there, and, being a woman, I can't exactly just stand behind a tree to do my business!  She said that she usually goes up a big hill behind the stand to go to the bathroom, but she asked a neighbor if I could use theirs.  You have to understand something about small-town folk in Queretaro - they are generally not very willing to share things or be hospitable to people they don't know.  The neighbor very reluctantly let me use the bathroom...

Catita is somewhat of an outcast in her town.  The people call her a "witch" because she doesn't have and alter to Our Lady Guadalupe (the preferred saint of Mexicans) in or by her house.  It's very clear that Catita doesn't worship Guadalupe, she worships only God.  Please pray for Catita, that she will continue to be strong even in the persecutions in her town, and that God will continue to provide for her!

You and You

In Mexican Spanish, we have two different ways to say the singular "you."  "Usted" (oo-STED) is the formal way, and "tu" (pronounced like "2") is informal.  Usted is used for: people who you don't know who are older than you (or over 40ish), people in authority (polititians, teachers, bosses, etc.). 
Then there's the whole thing of other spanish-speaking countries that have different rules for the use of "tu," or even don't ever use it, or use "vos," and lots of other things that we don't do in Mexico...

Anyhow, JP and I have been going out with one of his college professors to hang out and to share about Christ.  He's only like 7 years older than we are, but being JP's former college professor, he's automatically "usted."  In fact, we wouldn't dream of calling him anything else.  (That would be like going up to a college prof and being like, "hey what's hangin' dude!?" 

So, in one conversation between the teacher and JP, JP had the confidence to share with him that without Christ, he would not go to heaven.  While true, that's kind of a risky thing to say in a friendship!  But, instead of getting upset or offended, the teacher said he'd think about what JP had said and start reading the Bible that we gave him.  Then he told JP to please call him "tu" because they're now friends, not a teacher and student!  This might not sound like that big of a deal to English-speakers but it totally is!  We gained a lot of confidence with the teacher that day! 

The State of the State

Queretaro is the state in Mexico that has the most people who worship death, or satan.  There are a lot of churches here, and each one is dedicated to a saint - I think that's pretty normal to hear "St. Matthew's Church," or "Church of Saint Thomas."  But in Queretaro there is a "Church of holy death" in a town right by where JP works.  People make pilgimages from the city to the church.  One Christian girl from the US who came to study at the State University here was living with a family who told her "we worship death."  Before I moved to Queretaro, I would have imagined people who "worship death" to be creepy-scary-looking people who are outcast by society.  But not here.  That family that I know that worships the Santa Muerte is super "normal" - they have a cool house, good jobs, and the woman makes and sells yummy tamales in the house in the evenings.  I was going to put a picture of La Santa Muerte (holy death), but I don't want that on my blog.  But if you want to see what it looks like look it up in Google images.

Please pray for the people in the State of Queretaro.  Of course not all worship death.  But so many are lost, and worship things other than God.  Approximately 1% of the population of this state attends a Christian church.  And how many of those people actually have accepted Christ?  The family who I teach english classes to has an altar to their favorite saint set up in their living room.  Queretaro also has the highest rate of suicides in the country and the highest rate of single moms.  It would be a stretch to say "we're suffering for the sake of Christ," because Queretaro is (in my opinion, and the opinions of many queretanos!) the most beautify city in Mexico!  But even though this city SEEMS to be in good shape - athsetically, economically, politically - we are actually in a really poor state of being.  That's why JP and I are here.  And that's why we ask for your prayers - for us as we work with people here, and for the people we minister to. 

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

Birthdays and Parents

JP and I had a couple of special days in February...  We both turned 30!  JP on the 20th and me on the 23rd.  My parents were down here for a week too!

Here are some pictures of the fun birthday week!!

Barb and Rick in Mexico City

JP and Jessica in Guanajuato

Us at our birthday party - we had 35 people in our house over the course of the evening!!

Some of the girls from the birthday party!