Mexico Trip Updates

Headed Home

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:11:23 -0700

From Jason-

"It's not a team of greats, but a great team!" This thought ponders thru my head as we, (Jeff, Kegan and I) drive 72 mph past Huntington Beach, California! We just dropped off Katie and Rick at Katie's parents home in Costa Mesa! And to the best of our knowledge, Debbie is in the air flying above us, racing us back to Jefferson County.

Yesterday afternoon we said our last good bye to Edgar, Olga and family, then we started our 3 hour drive back to Ensenada! We managed to take a small scenic drive out to La Bufadora, seeing the amazing views. The team then sat down for shrimp, fish, and steak tacos. Even at La Bufadora we ate until we were full and then order more food! ;) As we walked back to the van, we got talked in to boosting the Mexican economy, by buying a few souvenirs.

Arriving at pastor Julio's place around 7 o'clock, we just fellowshipped with the Wido family, Lupe and a few others. The Wido's are such a good family, very welcoming and willingly to serve! Around 11 pm we all retired for the day and headed to bed!

Summary as follows... project is finished, lots of food and often, good laughs and plenty to smile about, lots of driving and Settlers of Catan, learning Spanish and sad goodbyes. But remember "it is not a team of greats, but a great team" that succeeds.

-Jason

Ps. All of your prayers were greatly appreciated!

Monday Blog

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 09:20:02 -0700

From Rick-

We started the day in Papalote and ended the day in Ensenada. As long as we were done with our work project (which we were), this was our day to see old friends and take it easy.

Last night we stayed in Edgar & Olga's home in Papalote next to the church. They made breakfast for us before we headed out to see some of the work happening in the Papalote area. We saw the new construction on the Papalote sanctuary and met with Pastor Ramon. With the rapid growth of the church, they are nearly out growing their not-yet-completed addition. They also don't have enough chairs to seat everyone. Ramon commented that he was happy to have this problem. The Bible Institute, which is next to the church is also planning to expand. They recently bought a neighboring lot for future construction. A few blocks away they are planning an additional home for missionaries Dwight & Sarah Hires, with connected apartments for guests or teachers who travel to the area.

A few miles away in Nueva Era, a smaller town (if Papalote is like Culver, then Nueva Era is like Metolius) one of the Bible Institute students started a new church. Edgar & Olga have helped with this plant too. It started three years ago with a tent. Then it moved into an old school bus, and now they have a new parsonage/church building. It is a small house with one big open room on the first floor, and bedrooms upstairs for the pastor. The church plant has about 30 people now. It was neat to see a church grow from its infancy.

We started heading back north after visiting with several other friends, Bible students, church leaders, and missionaries.

At this point, I need to insert an important and rare event- we actually skipped a meal during the long car ride back to Ensenada. Somehow we made it to dinner, with only a few snack items in the van- cookies, carmel corn, trail mix, crackers, more cookies, some chips, various other half-eaten items, and a case of Gatorade. Somehow we were able to suffer through it. Just in time for dinner, we ended up in La Bufadora for some fish and shrimp tacos with a view of the ocean. We bought a few small gifts and headed back to our home-away-from-home, the Lomitas FMC with the Wido family.

Upon arriving at the church and Pastor Wido's home, we discovered that when our team left the day before, I drove over their water main and cracked the pipe. They've had no water since yesterday, thanks to me. Fortunately, we had Kegan, the exemplary Deschutes Valley Water District employee. And even more fortunate for Kegan, just as we set out to fix the cracked water pipe, an Ensenada water utility employee arrived with the correct parts and tools. Although, to his credit, Kegan held a flashlight for the service guy. He should probably get time and a half for that from DVWD, since today is a holiday in Mexico and it was dark out. Throw a little something extra in your next water bill for Kegan.

A few games of Spanish Scrabble later, we are off to bed. Pray for a quick border crossing and a safe day of travel tomorrow. Debbie gets dropped off at the airport in San Diego in the morning. Katie & I go to the Los Angeles area to see Katie's parents and Lea. And Jeff, Jason and Kegan begin the long drive home.

For the team,
Rick

Sunday Blog

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 09:23:33 -0700

From Katie

We got us some Church today! We went to two church services today- one in Ensenada and one in Papalote. The day started with another great breakfast and then off to church. The Lomitas church has great music and it was a lot of fun to sing the songs we knew in English while everyone else sang in Spanish. We also learned a couple new songs in Spanish. And I was serenaded "Happy Birthday" in front of the whole church and prayed for.

After church, we packed up the van and headed to Papalote to take Edgar home and attend service with the church there. The drive was beautiful! So green with wildflowers from all the rain this year. All the road construction is complete and the bridges are in working order. We arrived in Papalote about 10min before the service started so we got out of the van and headed to the sanctuary.

The sanctuary has been extended but is still under construction. There are two other groups from Oregon here as well- one from Bend and one from Stayton. There was a lot of music in this service. Many people sang specials including each age group and one from the Bend group. We tried to convince Jeff to sing for them, but he declined. Of course there was another serenade of "Happy Birthday" to me luckily there were others on stage with me this time. Here they have a nice tradition of the birthday person giving them a peso for each year of age. Watch out, Rick really liked this tradition so you may hear about it again when we return... There were about 275 people there and probably 100 were kids. When the kids left for Sunday School, the church cleared out! Pastor Ramon preached and translated his own sermon into English. It was amazing how he made it flow and didn't stumble. We all were very impressed.

After the service, we took Edgar and his family to the Old Mill for dinner. It's a very cool restaurant right on the bay, but we couldn't really see it since it was already dark. The food was great and we had a good time getting to know Olga, Edgar Jr and Sarah better. Now we are at Edgar and Olga's house getting ready for bed. Turns out the team is staying in their house and they are staying in one of the empty dorm rooms. Didn't know we'd be kicking them out... Looking forward to a great day tomorrow touring Papalote and then driving back to Ensenada.

-Katie

Saturday Blog

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 09:23:17 -0700

From Jeff:

Today, it is with great joy that I get to inform you that we finished our part of the project. As all projects go, it led to new projects and lots of head scratching. The walls were not as square as they could have been, which started the head scratching three days ago. After a lot of thinking, discussing, debating, thinking, discussing and debating some more, our fearless leader Jason convinced us to just start on one side with the foam and see where it ends up. Luckily for us Pastor Julio was there to fix our little problem. All the head scratching could have been avoided by just asking the owner of the church. Our big problem was that the foam was against the wall on one side and in 48 feet we were 7 inches off the wall. So on to project #2. Rick, Katie and Edgar were off to town to find foam molding to cover the gap, three stores later they were able to find the material. We do not know if we will be able to install it on Monday but we have the material and will leave it in the more than capable hands with the Wido family.
Now on to the real reason that we came on the trip, the daily food updates. Breakfast consisted of cheese quesadillas. beans and, of course, sunny delight. Lunch was shredded beef sopes, beans, rice and mexican orange juice (sunny delight). For dinner, we convinced the Wido's to take us out to eat. A few bad roads, a couple of averted wrecks, and we ended up at a taco stand that only served carne asada and adobada. Needless to say we all ate way to much and now are suffering for it (at least pretend that you are feeling sorry for us).
The final update I have for today is that Pastor Wido's car has been found, well so to speak "found." It was confirmed that it is in a junk yard with no tires, battery, stereo or radiator. Julio will not be able to get the car until Tuesday. We all celebrated with them when the call came in. Hopefully, all will go well getting the car back and they'll quickly be able to get it back to working condition. We are looking forward to worshipping with our Mexican friends tomorrow. Language seems to have no boundaries when God is involved, and that is truly something to get excited for.

-Jeff

Friday Blog

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 09:22:47 -0700

From Edgar-

Hello brothers and sisters in Madras, today was a very fun day, it was less hard working and more celebrating, We finally finished laying the last board in church!!!! Although we still need to do the kitchen, we were planning on having pastor Wido to put in the last screw but he wasn't available at the moment, I will explain later. Our day started with a very "mexican" breakfast, it was scrambled eggs with bacon and pancakes, yum,yum, after a plate full of bacon we had to get away from it because as soon as it was near us we would just start eating all over again. But even before breakfast we had a devotional time shared by me, it was about weaknesses, as odd as it may sound according to God's word if we are wise enough to leave our weaknesses in the hands of God it could be turned in our strengths (2 Corinthians 12:8-10), isn't God great that he uses us in spite of our weaknesses?

After work and work, the lunch time came, my oh my, we had breaded shrimp with white rice and salad, all made by sister Lupe, Debbie helped in removing the shell of the shrimp we had so much that even Jeff felt he had one to many but yet at the same time he said he could go for more. Afterwards, and to shake off the sleepy mood that we were in after such a nice meal, we played a little bit of volleyball and some soccer of course, we mexicans had to do some showing off. Although we found out that Kegan is quite a goalie but it has to be said that a woman beat him, Leslie, pastor Wido's daughter scored a goal. Then back to work we went....

While we were working Debbie and Coty (pastor Wido's wife) went downtown Ensenada to buy vacuum cleaners they found two nice vacuum cleaners but they had to return to get a new one as it seemed like one didn't work properly. So off to downtown again in Coty's car, they go to the vacuum store for 30 minutes, they go to the parking lot and surprise, no car. It's very sad to have their car stolen as they had it only for a year and they just recently bought new tires for it, let's pray that they can recover their car. But the good news is that they got two new working vacuum cleaners, so pastor Wido had to go and pick up the ladies and that was the reason why he couldn't put up the last board with the last screw.

After a while, we went to have dinner at a place called Tlaquepaque, but for some reason Jeff couldn't say that name so he kept on saying Tecate. Nice mexican food, we made Kegan have a red pepper, not too hot at first but after two he was very hot and had to have a salt and lime to lower his chili level. Americans drank Tamarindo sweet water for the first time, they didn't know what it was and I guess you guys will not know, I don't even know if it translates to english. I asked the waitress if she had an actual tamarindo so they can taste it which she did have one so I handed it over to them, very acid at fist but i think they liked it.

After a nice dinner we went to have churros and mexican ice cream and then up the highest hill of Ensenada we go, since we had clear skies, it was a nice view of the city and the bay area as well. After that we headed back to the church and I'm writing this letter to you guys, please check my spelling and let me know what I wrote incorrectly. By the way, enjoy the pictures, the first one Jason and Kegan are laying up the last board in the church, Nice!!! But please don't pay attention to my belly, I promise I will be fit when I'm in Madras. The second picture it's everyone on top of the highest hill in Ensenada, everyone is there it's just not clear because it's very dark, isn't it a nice view? Thanks everybody for your support to this church and to me too, may God Bless you today and always and good night.