Of Projects and Jellyfish

We have not posted a blog for two months because of all that is going on with projects, travel and the like.

In May Walt was busy making shelves and cabinets for the Boy's Home, Casa Hogar, and bookshelves for the language school we attended, Harvest Language School, a language school designed by missionaries for missionaries. Thanks to them we are beginning to feel quite comfortable with our Spanish. The bookshelves and cabinets are shown here.

At the beginning of June we went to California for Katie's, our boarder for the last two years before leaving California, wedding reception. While we were there we had six very full days. We got to see all of our family, except for our Thailand bunch, and through the auspices of Facebook got to see most of our friends that we have not seen since leaving. We spent the first day in Monterey with Eric and was the only place we managed to get pictures. The only picture we got of Eric was this one. The other pictures we got were videos of some interesting creatures at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Here is a video clip of a jelly fish moving through the water and here is a video clip of a luminescent jelly fish that we found very interesting. Then we couldn't help but be mesmerized by seahorses as shown in this video clip. Then we saw the most amazing seahorse that looks like vegetation moving through the water. You can see that here. We found out Saturday morning that in front of our hotel was the Sunnyvale Art and Wine Festival. Kirsty had flown up the evening before and instead of going to Andrew and Gretchens place as planned, we told them to meet us at the festival. Then we saw a bunch of our FBCLA friends at the reception Saturday night and our GBF friends on Sunday since that is where we attended church. Then Sunday afternoon Nancy had worked out via Facebook to have friends drop by at Red Rock Cafe. A friend saw this discussion on Facebook and told us that she was planning a surprise birthday party for her dad, a friend of more than 40 years, and invited us to come. So, to our pleasant surprise, we saw a host of old friends at that party.

When we returned to Mexico, Walt got busy building three cabinets that our pastor had asked for to store materials for the children's ministries. The added wrinkle was they wanted cabinets with locking doors. The cabinets are shown here.

June is also the beginning of our rain season. To show the difference a bit of rain makes we took pictures of the mountains behind our house a few weeeks before the rains and then a week or two after they began. The difference is clearly evident in these photos.

The rains also had a major impact on our church "under the tarps". Last Saturday night we had a major storm come through and when we showed up at church, the tarps were all down on the ground and because of the ropes holding the corners up, it looked like a huge above-ground swimming pool. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures but when we showed up Sunday morning for band rehearsal there was no way to get it repaired by the time church started. So we jammed everyone on a terrace. Good news is the new church facility is almost complete. Our little congregation, old church tarps and new facilities are shown in these photos.

While Walt was building the cabinets for church, Nancy was asked by the pastor to make some backdrops for some drama that they were going to do at the new facility. Nancy was responsible for painting a scene of the earth, Heaven's Gate and the door to hell. The earth scene, which because of last minute glitches, never got used, was essentially the view from our terrace. These backdrops are shown here. The interesting thing about this drama is that it was intended for outreach into the community. They had just got the roof of the new facility in place a week ago, had concrete floors, no walls and no electricity. But the idea is, "we have a facility, lets use it!" Electric installation was completed one hour before the beginning of the first service. There were three planned on 20, 21 and 22 July. Nancy's backdrops were key to the play and are shown in use, with views of the first meeting - pretty much packed out, here. The premise of the whole drama was whether we made the right decision on earth, the earth scenario, with regard to admittance to heaven, Heaven's Gate backdrop, or to be relegated to hell, doors of hell backdrop. On Tuesday night, 21 July, we had the worst storm we have seen here, incredible wind and hailstones the size of large peas. Two minutes after the service began the power went out and wind-blown rain began tearing some of the canvas walls down and flooding the concrete floor. But the tenacity of these folks was evident as we continued on and completed the entire service. For a while lights were run off a car battery until power was restored after the drama had begun. A real lesson for us, its the message and not the building that counts.

Speaking of the building, we can't begin Sunday morning services yet at the new site because there are no bathrooms. We are sure the pastor would be very appreciative if he had some additional funds available to build those so we can get on with it. Instructions for helping out in any way possible is in our April 4 blog. Just remember to designate "Church in Ixtlahuacan" on the tax deductible donation check.