November Fun

Now that the wedding is behind us it was time to recover and then get back to our other projects. We definitely are not planning on slowing down any time soon.

We don't have pictures for this but our church is beginning to work on their new property. This required moving of a lot of dirt. In the true Mexican fashion, the plan was to move it all by shovel. Walt spent a Saturday afternoon with the pastor and they soon realized the impossibility of this task so rented a front-end loader. Walt went and helped the day the tractor was there and even wangled an opportunity to drive the tractor and move a lot of the earth himself. Since his farm days, he has dreamed of driving a tractor again so another dream has come true.

The following week more "cubbies" were required for the boy's home as they now have 18 boys living there. So Walt went back, bought more lumber and built the cubbies. You can see the new ones here. The neat part of this was Walt is beginning to replenish his tool supply and bought a brand new circular saw. As more projects come in he may get all his tools back again. Although he has found a Mexican who is related to seemingly everyone here and can get Walt into a fully tooled woodwork shop.

Nancy has not been idle. We thought it would be nice to invite one of our Spanish teachers and his family with their five kids for Thanksgiving. However, the response was that they always like to do something for students from the US that happen to be here so they are not alone at Thanksgiving. So Nancy said fine only to find out that there were eleven students with their families. So the total came to 25 people for dinner. Needless to say, Nancy went all out and did spent several days preparing. Photos of this event can be seen here. Again we learned that when you tell God you are available for service - look out!!!

We "think" it will be a quiet Christmas for just the two of us this year, but who knows what God has in store for us. In a week we are going to Laredo to send packages and, of course, shop. Then in January we are headed for Thailand again, this time with Nancy's sister Joy. Our project there will be to show spend time with our family, including extended members, show Joy around and build an entertainment center for Adam and Cindy's new house. Sean, who went over with Adam and Cindy, has already set up a workshop for Walt.

This week the locals are working up towards Sunday when they celebrate their Ajijic's patron saint, St. Andrew. So each day and night are filled with church bells ringing and rockets going off all the time. Each group, like construction workers, gardeners and so on, have their day to compete for the most rockets. We heard the gardeners have 1,000 rockets. The most we have heard is that in the past the construction workers had 7,000. As we are writing this post, we can hear the rockets continually exploding in the air. ¡Viva México!

The "Wedding"

Well, the wedding has come and gone. We had been waiting for the official photos to arrive to put on our blog but except for a couple, they have not yet arrived. Depending on how much they differ from what we have here, we may put them on a later blog.

The photos that we do have are here*. The first photo is of our picture of Kirsty when she was two-and-a-half, our little baby. The wedding began with Will and Kirsty and Fossil, their dog, arriving the Saturday a week before the wedding. All kinds of small, last minute preparations were handled. Adam, Cindy and Isaac arrived from Thailand on Tuesday. (If you wonder what they are doing in Thailand you can see their blog.) Then the rest of the family arrived on Thursday. Even Nancy's folks came down from Oregon, both are 87 years old. But they came probably not only to attend their grand daughter's wedding but also to check on where Walt has taken their special little girl!!

We had our house full for two weeks with various family members staying here. During the weekend of the wedding we had eleven people sleeping in our house so it felt like there were beds all over the place. The beds are visible in the first set of photos. The rest of the visitors from the States stayed at Real de Chapala, a very beautiful hotel on the lake. Speaking of the lake, it gave our guests a special treat. It is the fullest it has been in over 30 years!! Here are some pictures of it at the lakeside park in our village of Ajijic.

The remainder of the photos give a glimpse of the wedding before, during and after. In a word it was "perfect". The tail end of rainy season took a break for the week, and we had perfect weather. The wedding itself was a pleasant blend of American and Mexican. The food was authentic Mexican prepared and catered by a local caterer. From the pictures you can see that there even was a Mariachi Band entertaining us as we ate. You can hear them here. Nancy made the dress and one of the cakes, and the girls made their own bouquets. Moisés, a pastor and one of our Spanish Class teachers, officiated. He gave an excellent reminder how as married couples whatever seeds we plant will dictate the harvest we will reap. So if we plant seeds of love, respect, affection, admiration and so forth, we will reap love, respect, affection and admiration from our partners. Good words to remember.

The day after the wedding, half of the family headed home. The last of our family left us on the Friday a week after the wedding. It is nice to have the ability to do what we want, when we want. But we sure miss all of our family. We are looking forward to when we can see them all again. It was especially nice to have Nancy's Mom, Dad, and sister from Oregon. It was quite an adventure for them, since Mexicana no longer offers non-stop flights from Portland.

* Just a note of a new feature of Picasa. If you go to the single image per page view, by double-clicking on a particular album photo, you can move your mouse across faces and identify individuals. This is not in the slideshow mode. Or, on the right panel of the album you see "People in this album" and if you "View All" you will see all the people and the number of photos they are in. Click "View All" for any one person and you will just see their photos. Kinda cool!

Independence Day

Well, this certainly has been an exciting weekend for us. Today, dieciséis de septiembre, is Independence Day. However, the celebrations began on Saturday with la regata de globos - festival of balloons. It kind of reminded Walt of the balloon festival in Albuquerque with the exception that these balloons were made of tissue paper and the source of heat is a plastic ring wrapped with cloth and dipped in kerosene. So, needless to say, they were unmanned. They make the balloons in all kinds of shapes, and some are sponsored by local businesses. Here are some pictures of this event. They actually do fly very nicely as can be seen here. Everyone cheers when they launch. The ones that didn't burn up sailed right over our house. You can tell when one is in trouble when it begins swaying back and forth like a pendulum and then the flame touches the side, as seen here. Then they finally burn up totally with the only things falling being the ring and the counterweight (usually a soda bottle filled with water), the rest is simply ashes, as shown in this clip.

Sunday afternoon is bull riding and charro events in the old bull ring and then later there is the parade of the shawls in the plaza. This is where the women come out with fancy shawls and parade around the plaza stage. You can see some of the pictures here. Our friend Ana's mom was one of the ladies in the parade of shawls. Also note that all the villages are decorated for this event. To give a flavor of the mariachi music we have included a little clip.

Monday is rather quiet with the only real event is activity near the plaza ending with the mayor of the village doing the "grito", ¡VIVA MÉXICO! in honor of Father Hidalgo leading the fight for independance in 1817. It was raining and 11 is kinda late anyways so we just saw and heard some of the fireworks - rather subdued because of the rain.

Then it all started all over again today on Independence Day with a parade through the village. We watched the parade and here are a few pictures of this event. The plaza was overcrowded with the locals as they were all there watching the parade and enjoying the day. The parade is made up primarily of charros on their horses and, we think, every school in the neighborhood with all the kids in their uniforms. They all marched very energetically and it was fun to watch. There were the proverbial Mariachi Bands and some of the charros got their horses to dance to the music.

We have only highlighted the events that we managed to get to. There were more charro events, bull riding and roping, soccer tournaments, traditional folkloric dances and more. Maybe we will see more of these in future years. Suffice it to say, four days of celebration for a single Independence Day can keep anyone going a long time! We are sure there are some folks with headaches today....

We are enjoying all the new sights, sounds and experiences.

August 2008 Projects

We have been very busy this past month, as seen in these pictures. We began with building "cubbies" or storage shelves for the boy's in their new home, Casa Hogar. These would provide a shelf for each boy that contains two baskets that are personally theirs. Walt took the design that Scott came up with when he was here as a starting point. Walt was assisted by a missions team that was here from South Carolina. Michael first helped cut and prepare the largest of the two shelf units. He has an interesting story. When asked where he is from, thinking he would mention a city in SC, he said, "Poland". So Poland is sending someone on a missions trip to the US who then connects with a team going to Mexico! Sounds like Poland sees a need in the US for something like this. Michael would like to come back next year with a full team. Brooks helped the next day to assemble the largest unit.

Nancy's creative mind came up with the idea of a painting of a tree, void of leaves, as a way to allow missions teams to record their stay. Each person places a leaf, in the form of a palm print, on the tree with a little note about themselves. This was such a popular idea that Nancy was asked to create a mural for the boys as a record of when they came to Casa Hogar and then if they leave. The Missions Team's tree currently has some three dozen names on it. The boys tree is in their new home. They moved in a few days ago.

We were asked by the staff at JUCUM (Juventud Con Una Misión), the local Youth With a Mission base, to be part of a worship team for students that came down for SST Phase III, basically a three week survival camp. The first week we played for worship both morning and evenings and then the second week only in the mornings. The third week they were busy doing outreach projects, working with local business people and the government. On their last day we invited them all up to our home for their final recap and for dinner. It reminded us so much of our Survival Camp experiences in CA because they presented skits and videos, plus we had to grill forty-one hamburgers on our BBQ. So the training of grilling twice as many hamburgers as a griddle will hold, learned at Survival Camp CA, paid off!

Just as an aside, Walt has also begun to teach bass lessons to an older Mexican gentleman from our church. Is there no end to all of this?

We have also thrown in a couple of pictures to give you a feel of life in Mexico. One day we were driving along the highway and traffic was stopped. A loaded dump truck was stuck in the ditch crossing the highway. Call a tow truck when you have a back hoe handy? They set the backhoe up and very quickly "pulled" the fully loaded truck out of the ditch! Only in Mexico! Also, our first rains hit mid-June. There is a picture showing the storm as it sat over the lake. We are rapidly approaching the yearly average rainfall. We have another 6 weeks to go and the lake is reasonably full. The good news is that the day time temperature dropped from the low 90's to mid-70's overnight. It is always good to get the first rains and, by the way, the rains really do occur at night. Most of the time.

Our First Missions Team

Is it legitimate to call one person a team? If so,we had our first "team" come down to help out in some of the areas we are getting involved in. Three months ago, Scott, from Grace Bible Fellowship, our church plant in CA, felt led to come here and do "something". He came for nine working days at the beginning of July, and each one was filled with more than enough work. We did take a little time here and there just to chill out a bit, for example, on his last day we took a walk through our village of Ajijic.

We arranged for Scott to help out in clearing land for our new church building in Ixtlahuacan, to work in the boy's home, work in the "casita" for missions interns, work in our missionary friends' house and to visit inmates at a local prison. (Casita for "gringos" is a small house on the property of a larger house). The photos show the work that was being done. Obviously we couldn't take pictures inside the prison.

We began by visiting the property to be cleared for our new church building. There were some more membrillo tree stumps that needed to be dug out, which we did. In the mud. Then we went to the house that will be the new boy's home within the next month. Clearly this is the one God wants for them since it is ready for the boys to move in to, doesn't require renovation, and the boys have already been removed from the main orphanage so they NEED a place right now. Since the paperwork still needs to be completed for the acquisition of the property we couldn't work in the house itself. But we took measurements for storage units or "cubbies" for the boys, designed the cubbies and then purchased the materials to build them. We will build the cubbies at a later date once the paperwork is complete. There are some pictures of the new boy's home and one of us eating lunch with nine of the boys. "Mario" is a real sweetheart. Imagine him being out on the street because there is no home for him? After not seeing Nancy for over a week he remembered her name - how touching is that?

While we were at the Ixtlahuacan church property we learned of a new church starting, the first all-Spanish evangelical church in our village of Ajijic. The story surrounding the Mexican who is beginning this church is very interesting. The building is an old restaurant that sorely needed painting. So Scott and Walt went the next day to help our Mexican friend, Enrique, paint the church. It was quite a challenge but we completed the job.

Enrique also asked if Scott would mind coming to a local prison and speaking to inmates. Enrique said he would translate for Scott. About forty prisoners showed up, six of whom were women. Scott did a commendable job sharing his own life and testimony and the inmates really connected with him. It was very touching to have almost every male inmate give each of us a true Mexican hug as they were leaving. It was very moving to see them listen attentively to what was being said, and to see many of them using their Bibles.

The casita we worked on is on the property of a house our missionary friends are renting that is being used for short term missions teams coming to work this summer. The casita, which will house 2 interns, was basically a one room building with a bare and filthy concrete floor, a raw concrete kitchen counter with a dilapidated old sink, a rusted front door, rotting bathroom door frame, a rough wood bathroom door and a kitchen cabinet that was bare plywood that had turned black over the years. In other words, barely livable. It had been vacant for many years. We swept and power-washed it several weeks ago, but it still needed work. So Scott, a master tile layer, put in a mosaic kitchen counter and both Walt and Scott painted the floor, doors, door frames and kitchen cabinet. After completion they both said they could easily live in it. It now is a jewel of a place and the interns, two young ladies, moved right in and love it.

Our missionary friends are renting a house that, in true village style, has windows at the two ends of the house and none in between. So the house tends to be rather dark. This is compounded by the fact that the house interior was painted a dark green. For starters, Scott and Walt painted the ceiling white so that it would brighten the house up a bit. The walls will be painted a lighter color at a later date - Scott, are you coming back to help?

During Scott's stay we experienced the worst rain in our year here. It actually rained during the day! All the arroyos were running full tilt. When water rushes down the arroyos it brings a lot of debris and rocks with it. Anything that catches the debris creates a dam. We have one way to get out of our development and three arroyos merge at the entrance and go through a small gate that became a dam. As Scott and Walt were heading out to work they were stopped because of flooding. But that was soon taken care of the Mexican way - just rip out what is causing the problem. Instead of unlocking the gate and opening it, which they probably couldn't do, they merely drove up with the tractor and ripped the whole gate out. Problem solved!! This was all an exciting time and we had fun. Even with the gate removed, we couldn't walk out of our development for several days because of the water.

When the arroyos run full of water like they did, that means the waterfalls near to our home are running too. So we took an afternoon to go up to the falls to see what they looked like. The challenge was that the pathway and the main river coming down crossed many times. So we had to wade through thigh deep water several times. But when we got to the falls, it was more than worth it. So, while we weren't actually schlepping through the raging jungle rivers to reach people or our house, we were schlepping to see God's beautiful creation in the way of the waterfalls. Worth the whole schlepping experience.

While Scott was here we wanted him to experience a little more of our life in this area. When we went to Guadalajara to get the materials for the boy's home, we took him to Tonala, a special artisan village. We took him of a tour of our village, Ajijic, and on the day of the weekly street market let him experience that as well.

All in all, Scott had a well-rounded and busy time with us. If any one else feels "led" to do something useful for mankind and especially for God's Kingdom, drop us a line!! You will be working hard but be treated like royalty. If you ask Scott you will find that his time was extremely rewarding. He left here a happy camper. As we said after we dropped him off at the airport "he is hooked - hook, line and sinker".

Music in Mexico

We knew that one of the things we were going to get involved in, once things settled down for us, was worship music at a church; after all, we did get a new Roland keyboard for Nancy before we moved. Well, we have accomplished that in our little Spanish church. There had been a worship leader from Guadalajara who had been "on loan" to the church until January of this year. When he left, the pastor and two of his kids, playing guitar, keyboard and drums, took over leading worship. On some Sundays, Pastor Samuel was alone on guitar trying to play and lead at the same time, as well as preaching the sermon. We met with Samuel one day to offer to help out with audio/visual. Then we heard him say, in Spanish to a team of people, "Nancy and Walter will play bass, play keyboard and sing". We know enough Spanish to say, "oh, oh," and within a week we were fully involved, just like old times. It has been a lot of fun, and we are thoroughly enjoying it, as are the other musicians and the people in the church. We usually have 6 singers and a group of worship dancers, as well as the "banda loca" (crazy band, as Pastor calls us)

Originally Nancy was going to play only when the pastor's daughter was not there to play keyboard and Walt was going to play somewhat more often. Well, that changed in a hurry and we are on every Sunday with the two keyboards complementing each other. Nancy enjoys singing again, all in Spanish. What Walt loves is that his Workingman 12 amp is at max gain and max volume, so he needs to get a new amplifier for his big Eden speaker. (Yes, Walt is getting a new toy this week.) He never played that loud even with the jazz bands he has been in. This really is paradise!

We captured part of this in a few pictures. Our church does meet outside under tarps! In the non-rainy season it is all dust and since the rain began three days ago, the dust has turned to gooey mud! But it is fun.

Retired? Hardly

We have now been here for almost a year, and we really only changed occupations, not retired. There are so many opportunities for us to get involved in that we have to be careful which ones we choose. We just want to give you an update of where we are now. Sorry, no pictures this time.

First of all, we finished our four levels of Spanish School and are reasonably proficient. The biggest plus is that people notice we speak with hardly an accent. The biggest issues for us right now are remembering all the vocabulary and verb conjugations. But, "practicar, practicar, practicar", as they keep telling us. As we go through telling about the various things we are involved in you will see that we will get plenty of practice.

Speaking of the language school, in the process of helping them get 501(c)3 status, we have managed to get ourselves on the board of directors and are anxious to help in reformatting of the class materials, with a potential of placing it online, and in promoting the school. For people like us it is the best language training you can get since it is a Spanish language class designed by missionaries for missionaries. So we get a lot of practical application plus the fact that native Mexicans teach phonetics. For anyone wanting to work in a Spanish speaking country, this is the place to learn. The school is Harvest Language School. One of our proteges or "non-biological kids", Jarod Pace, did the website as part of his ministry. Networking with the right people does wonders.

We also teach a Bible Exploration class where we are comparing what the Bible and what New Age have to say. Since this is designed to enlighten New Agers on what the Bible has to say, we do have many energetic and challenging discussions. We are sure everyone comes away exhausted after an hour, but we all come back refreshed and ready for more the following week. This actually is the one English-only project we are involved with at this time.

We have been attending a little Mexican church in the neighboring village of Ixtlahuacan. We knew that eventually we might help out with the worship team in music and the audio/visual aspects of it. But with Spanish class taking up most of our time, we didn't offer to help. A couple of weeks ago we decided to dip our toes in the water and see what we could do. Here, two weeks later, we are fully involved playing bass and keyboard and Nancy singing on Sundays and even at special events! The cool thing is someone came up to Nancy and said that she sang Spanish without a detectable accent. The audio/visual equipment that they have is antiquated, and we have begun to help out getting all of the equipment and presentations and the like up to par. They will be building their own building within the next year and there is a good chance we may be providing inputs on the A/V setup for the new building.

Speaking about building a new church, one of our friends from our church plant in Mountain View sent an e-mail saying he has a "burning" desire to come and help out somehow. Since he is a building contractor in CA we put the word out here. Our task will be to identify the subset of projects that will maximize his stay. Once the church building gets started maybe we can convince him to come back and help there as well.

There is also building that will be taking place soon with a home for boys, Casa Hogar. It turns out that in the village of Chapala there is an orphanage, Love In Action, that is over-filled and the boys are sent back out into the street at age 10. So there is a plan to build a home for boys to alleviate this problem. Clearly there is a great potential for involvement here as well.

Some of you may remember that Walt went on a missions trip with a Christian Jazz Band to Brazil four years ago. Well, we connected with the musical director on, where else, Facebook. We are now in the process of trying to organize a music team of that nature to come down to Guadalajara sometime in the next year. As the host country we would be busy setting up a schedule, hotels, meals, transportation and the like. The beauty of this is that they will come down at no cost to the host country and the musicians are all professional quality wanting to return their talents for Kingdom Work.

Another potential ministry looming on the horizon is in working with a local youth camp. We had mentioned our involvement in the high school camp at our church in CA. Then a couple of weeks ago an e-mail came asking if we could possibly help. I guess 25 years of working at Survival camp and Walt being operations director for 10 years may have some value here.

The lesson we are learning is all those years of training in music, worship leading, Bible Study teaching, camp and all the other things we were involved with were really the training ground for work here in Mexico. So, yes, we have not retired, we have just changed occupations to do the things we were being trained for while we had other jobs. Go figure!!

More drama than I wanted

I just got back from a trip to the US. Don't get me wrong, it was wonderful, it's just that there was way more drama than we are used to down here. Since moving to Mexico, our idea of drama is two hummingbirds getting into a spat, or the neighbor deciding to paint his house lime green with purple trim. But I did learn some important lessons for next time.

It started with a late night flight to Portland. There is only one direct flight to Portland daily, and it leaves at 8 pm. Walt dropped me off at the airport. We noticed on the way in that they were burning the grass around the airport. A common occurrence, but this fire was pretty cool as it was bigger than most. The immigration office at the airport was open so I got my FM3 stamped. A good start.

Sitting at the gate, we noticed that the flight board had a couple of cancellations, and other flight appeared to be delayed. My flight had no information at all. Hmmm. A half hour before the flight, the board changed, and all the flights were either canceled or delayed. When the Mexicana staff was asked, they admitted that the grass fire had gotten larger, and the airport was temporarily closed. Don't worry, everything would be normal soon. Stay around the gate. I went down to Starbucks and got on my computer. Walt had already turned his computer off, but I was able to send my sister in Oregon an email letting her know we might be late. She responded and said to call her when I got into Portland.

I went back to the gate and called Walt, and realized that the minutes on my phone had expired. No cell phone. I looked around to buy a new phone card, and realized that I had left home with no pesos. The store did not accept Visa. The only store that accepted Visa had no phone cards. I looked around at the pay phones, some of which only accepted Latadel cards, and some which took other calling cards. One phone took Visa, but I figured I wasn't that desperate. Then the flight board said that the plane would be 2 hours late taking off. Stay around the gate.

4 hours after we were supposed to take off, the airport reopened. Our plane had been diverted to Puerto Vallarta, so we would have to wait for it. Another hour. Stay around the gate. One o' clock in the morning, the plane came, and we started loading. Half the plane was loaded when word filtered down that Portland airport was not going to accept our plane. By the time we would arrive, their customs office would be closed. So we all got off the plane, and were told to stay around the gate. Or maybe we should go get our luggage, and then come back and stay around the gate. Maybe the flight would go in the early morning. At this point I decided that no one knew anything, and I was going to try to get the next day's flight, so I went down to luggage (the luggage had obviously been unloaded from the plane hours before), went to the ticket counter and cancelled my ticket and made a reservation for the next night. (Are you sure you don't want to wait? My supervisor says the flight may go soon, if you stay around the gate...)

Now to call Walt. I put my ATM card in the machine, and it decided that it had expired, and it kept it. OK, not panicking, no cell phone, no money, no ATM card. I still have Visa. Except that the pay phones only accept Latadel or International calling cards. I found one that would allow collect calls, and discovered that our Vonage phone would not accept collect calls. I was thinking at this point that I might cry...Considered IMing Adam in Thailand, and asking him to call Walt and tell him to come to the airport and pick me up, but decided that was ridiculous...Finally found a phone that took Visa, and made a credit card call to our Vonage phone. I had to call that phone because the Mexican phone was in another room, and Walt would not hear it. Praise God, Walt woke up before the answering machine kicked in. I said, "I'm still at the airport". He assumed I meant the Portland airport, and told me to call my sister. When he realized I was still in Guadalajara he raced to the airport (30 minutes from home)

The next night with pesos in my purse and minutes on my cell phone, I took the flight to Portland. The immigration office was closed, but my stamp was only a day off... got a first class seat, we arrived on time, no problems. Except that my luggage went to Oakland instead of Portland.

More drama to be continued...

More drama, Part 2

Because we had already missed a day with my parents, my sister and I drove straight to Sublimity. Got there at 2 am and went to bed. Of course, I had no luggage, so I slept in my underwear, with my contacts soaking in eyedrops. I'm sure the luggage will be delivered the next day.

Morning came, put on my same old clothes. It was wonderful to see my parents, it had been a year. Late in the morning, my dad came in and said he felt a tightness in his chest. My sister asked if he wanted to go to the hospital, and he said yes. (Dad will never voluntarily go to the doctor) Turns out Dad had a heart attack. Sublimity is a small town, and they wanted him to be under the care of a cardiologist, but the Salem cardiology section was full, so Dad was flown by helicopter to Portland. (He offered to fly it, but was politely turned down.) We followed in my sister's car. We got there about an hour later, and Dad had already had an angiogram, angioplasty, and had a stent put in. We visited with Dad for a few minutes, during which he said he never wanted another helicopter ride, that they were noisy and there was no reason they stayed in the air, and then we went to my sister's house, about 30 minutes away.

We stayed up near Portland for 4 more days while Dad recovered. I bought a few things at Target so I'd have something else to wear. After a couple of days, I could feel the lack of my meds, which were in my suitcases. But all things considered, who cared? My brother Jon came out from Colorado, and we 4 kids and Mom had a lot of fun catching up with each other. Finally Dad got to come home, and we drove him back to my parent's house. At the back door, wrapped in garbage bags, were my suitcases. Dad is getting stronger and feeling better every day. Life is good. Short, but good. The drama of the first part of the trip doesn't seem all that important.

After Oregon, I spent a few days in the Bay Area visiting friends and shopping, and then met Walt in So Cal where we spent time with the kids. We were very glad to get home to the spatting hummingbirds and the neighbor's lime green color swatches on his house. When people ask what we do, I say, we watch the sun come up. We play with the dog. We decide whether to cook or eat out. That's enough drama for a while.

Panoramic View from the Terraza

We continue to enjoy the seasonal changes that occur here in our new home. At this time of year the Jacaranda trees are in bloom. You can see a panoramic and some closeup views here. The panoramic view is a visual of almost the whole "View from the Terraza". You will have to come and visit to see the entire panorama from our terraza.

Other changes? We graduated from Spanish school three weeks ago. The locals think we speak very well, but we beg to differ. There are constantly words we need to use, but don't know. We think it is the fact that the school stresses grammatics and pronunciation, among other things, and that impresses them. If you know of anyone that wants to learn Spanish quickly and to speak well, we highly recommend Harvest Language Center.

Update on Thailand

This posting will be slightly different than the others, in that we just wanted to talk about Adam and Cindy in Thailand. All our postings to date have been primarily about what we have been up to. However, we saw what God was doing through Adam and Cindy with their work with orphans at Christmas and just wanted to share some of that with you because super things are happening there.

In our last post we showed some pictures of their houses that are being built for the orphans. Adam and Cindy currently have five, three girls and two boys, with differing stories about their backgrounds. Suffice it to say these five now have a loving and warm family environment in which they can grow to become model adults. Without this environment, who knows where they would end up. We have come to know and love these five kids in a very special way. In fact, we are "Opa" and "Nana" to them - how cool is that?

Since we were there, the walls have already gone up on the houses as you can see in these pictures. These pictures are several weeks old and probably by now the roofs are on. The work is progressing very rapidly, and it is anticipated that construction will be completed this summer. The plan is that each house, Adam and Cindy's as well as Sean and Prang's, will have five bedrooms with the idea of taking in ten orphans each. The houses are situated on approximately a half acre of land. We already know that there won't be a problem of filling the houses as Adam and Cindy already have five and live in a rented house! If you tell God you want to do something positive - look out!! Adam and Cindy have always impressed us by the fact that Adam gave up a lucrative computer scientist position in CA and Cindy a full-time teaching position in the San Diego school district to follow this call to Thailand.

At this point they have had the land for almost a year. House construction began last Fall by clearing and leveling the land and now building the houses. In a recent e-mail exchange with our kids in Thailand we found out that the land and houses have all, through God's providence, been paid for. However,the driveways, landscaping, including lawns, shrubbery and fencing, as well as necessary furnishing, appliances and garden tools are still needed. Adam and Cindy are like us, in that they love to give but hate to ask. Since we also don't like to ask we are simply saying that here is an opportunity to support an extremely worthwhile cause by helping out and providing the last items of the construction. If you want to take advantage of this opportunity, you can do so by following the instructions at this link.

The "Miracle" of Christmas in Thailand

This posting will primarily consist of pictures. We say "miracle" because we could not have planned or pulled off something as perfect as this. It began with a thought last January, that with potential cheap airfares, we might have Christmas in Thailand with our whole family. First miracle was, after we laughed and figured it would never happen, we actually proceeded. Next miracle was Adam and Cindy said "sure", just before they got three new kids in the house. After this everyone adjusted their holiday schedules and said yes. This was followed by the airfare, because of Christmas, being double the "cheap" airfare but then God miraculously not only provided the additional amount but the entire airfare for ten of us round trip from LAX. Adam and Cindy then got three more kids but continued with "sure", stating that we could all stay in their house. The next miracle was that friends of Adam and Cindy's, Dave and Shirley, offered their house to provide some amount of relief by taking in Jason and Caryn and their two girls. These little miracles continued, but the final one was a real answer to prayer. For the last two months prior to leaving we had tried, in vain, to rent a Toyota Commuter van that would easily accommodate all eighteen of us plus some of our extended family in Thailand. All we could muster up was a minivan for seven people. When we got to the car rental place we only saw a Toyota Commuter van in the parking lot. Inside the gal said, "I am sorry, we have no minivans. All we have is the Commuter but we will let you have it at the price of the minivan". Was that a no-brainer or what? That was followed by the two most wonderful weeks together touring Chiang Mai together. And of course, the overarching miracle is that the whole Heine crowd from North America were able to see for themselves first hand what God is doing through Adam and Cindy on the other side of the world. A real education for them to see what it means to obey God and give up lucrative careers in CA and do what He has called them to do. How good is that? The God of miracles is alive and well and is still doing what He does best - taking care of His own!!

Here is the link to a small subset of the pictures we all took.