Clearing Out The Ministry Budget

We were expecting guest on Sunday afternoon for only one night, however we received a text Friday sometime in the morning that said due to circumstances completely designed by God, they were making their way back by bus from the coastal areas of Oaxaca.  As Sam picked them up at the bus station after a long slow trip on winding rain soaked roads, Hurrican Carlotta began to hit the Pacific coast of Oaxaca, Mexico.  By Saturday morning the very road they traveled the day before would be impassable!  We serve a great God and as a bonus we got some extra time with our friends.

Despite the use of the word "minor" in reference to damage by the news agencies in the U.S, we have learned that many have lost homes, electricity is out in many areas and water and food are short.  The village of Pluma Hildago in particular lost two young girls in a mud slide, many homes, is still without electricity, is having food shortages and as many as 1200 are living in shelters.

At this moment we are planning to make our way down to the coast through the passable roads near Port Escondido and around to Pluma if at all possible.  We will take as much rice, beans, vegetables and chicken as our cooler, van and/or ministry (and probably some of our personal) budget can handle.  We have no idea what the next several days hold.  Please pray with us as we seek God's direction.

Our goal is to show the love of God both physically and spiritually.  If you are interested in helping please go to our wed site and make a paypal donation.  But most importantly, please pray!  Pray for safety as we travel, pray for opportunities and open doors, pray we would have a spirit to serve even when we are tired, pray for our children as they accompany us and serve along side us.  Thank you!

http://www.means2harvest.com/letters-blog/hurricanecarlottareliefevangelismproject

http://oaxaca-digital.info/desbastada-pluma-hidalgo-por-el-huracan-carlotta/

UPDATE:

We had everything loaded and the kids buckled in before 10:00 a.m. this morning and just as we began to pull out Sam noticed a the smell of radiator fluid.  The men made attempts to fix it all day.  I think it will be fixed in the next couple of hours, but we will have to delay our trip until tomorrow, which we all feel is God's perfect timing.  Thank you for your continued prayers.

Tidbits from the Means

We've slept in 10 beds in 21 days!

 I got to take the ALSO (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics) course and I really enjoyed it AND I passed!

We take our heavy duty blender that would power a small lawn mower everywhere we go and drink green smoothies on the road.

 If you are a missionary on the road and you have the opportunity to cook for your family, have you considered McCormick's pre-measured spices. Then you get some flavor without buying a bunch of herbs you either have to leave behind or find room for in the car.

Another travel trip: Freeze your water bottles the night before your trip. Use these to keep your cooler cold instead of a bag of ice. You'll have cold drinks all day and no ice melting and watering down your lunch meat and cheese. No one likes soggy lunch meat and cheese!

Josiah and Sam had a great time driving this 1987 Jeep down to the border for our missionary friends in Chiapas. They were by far the oldest car rollin' down the road. They rocked the retro, father and son style.  Altogether about 830 miles, probably something Josiah will never forget.

Each child has a carry on size luggage, which they can pack a least ten days worth of clothes in and they are responsible for keeping it neat and orderly at all times.

When all the kids where little I always followed a simple rule from the time I woke up until I fell asleep. "Do something to improve a room every time you enter or leave." I don't know when or why I stopped doing that.

Our family motto is, "Remember as far as everyone else knows, we are normal." No seriously, I'm sure our real family motto is much more spiritual than that.

I think a child bringing you flowers they picked is one of the best things in the entire world.

Each of our children has moved at least as many times as they are old. Including 3 countries and 2 years in an RV. Man, I miss the RV!

Although Sam and I have been married over 16 years. We have only lived in the same house together maybe 13 years or less, due to military duties.

Haden (age 5) says he wants to travel the WHOLE world (his emphasis on world, not mine). He wants to go to China and Berlin and hear their languages, but he does not want to go to school there, because he wouldn't know how to answer the questions.

My kids LOVE going to our home church, Gospel Light Baptist Church, in Rogers, AR. They love the music and the preaching and the singing and the classes and the wonderful people they know pray for us. An undiscribable lesson in appreciation.

"Where's My Water", which Haden affectionately calls "Swampy", is awesome!

Also our kids can not figure out why our home church rarely singing, "Send the Light" and almost every other church we go to sings it all the time. Some of you won't get that one. :)
 
We had the privilege of presenting our ministry at Victory Baptist Church in North Austin while we were in the US. A nice lady who had spent some time in Mexico spent some time practicing her Spanish with me. After she left Hannah said, "Her Spanish is pretty good." I said that she was part of their missions committee. Her job was to speak with the missionaries to Spanish speaking countries and that this church didn't support missionaries unless they could speak the languages well enough. Bahahaha! You should have seen her face.

 I am just beginning to realize, that we are raising third culture kids and that they are not experiencing the mission field the same way Sam and I do, and somehow by some miracle of God's grace we are able to create some sort of stability from within our little family unit that keeps us all grounded

 In less than two weeks we will move to Oaxaca, Mexico and we have no plans to ever leave Oaxaca!

And that's a little bit of how we roll folks!

A Lesson in Civil Authority

Sara Elizabeth over at A Mama’s Story, is doing a series on home birth and midwifery.  I was very honored when she asked me to answer some of her reader's questions.  This was especially time appropriate as in June we will be moving to Oaxaca to begin our own ministry and midwifery will be become a bigger part of that ministry.  Just last week Casa Compassiva, the birth center I will be helping with, had one of the mothers they are serving trust Jesus Christ as her personal Savior.  While Church planting is our main focus, we are excited to see what ministry opportunities midwifery will open up in Oaxaca.  And being totally honest, I am looking forward to attending births, prenatal and postpartum visits on a regular basis again.  

We are currently in the U.S. for the next 2-3 weeks to renew our visas, car registrations, and for me to be able to complete some of the requirements for recertification of my midwifery.  This past Thursday and Friday I was able to attend the ALSO (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics) course in Corpus Christi, TX.  I really enjoyed the course, the case studies, the hands on practice and all the evidenced based information, but best of all I passed and learned new things, while concreting other skills!  :)  

The trip up to the border went very smooth.  We had everything packed, including food for the trip, the night before and we made it to the border in record time, without getting pulled over even once.  Once we reached the immigration office on the Mexican side we realized we had left 3 of the 7 passports and our Mexican visas in Encarnacion, 10 hours drive away.  We could not cancel the visas, and we weren’t sure if we would be able to cross to the U.S. side without our passports, plus we had almost no identification for Haden.  Sam thought he might have a scanned copy of his birth certificate in his computer.  We had copies of the passports and visas we were missing, but not his.  And my class started in Corpus Christi, a 4 hour drive away, early Thursday morning.

After some deliberation and calling back to Encarnacion to locate the passports.  We decided to try to go in and cancel the Mexican passports with the copies we had and then try to cross the border.  A national pastor was willing to ride the bus all night to bring us our passports by the next morning.  We could not cancel at the bridge with the copies because it was not the same bridge we had entered, but we did learn they could be cancelled without everyone present at the other bridge, so we decided to try to cross and Sam would come back the next morning and retrieve our passports and cancel the visas.  

As we approached the entrance to the bridge we were pulled over by Mexican police for  “speeding”.  We were already a little up tight about trying to cross without our passports and not looking forward to the wait on the hot bridge without air conditioning.  After quite a bit a talking, we moved toward the bridge.  As Sam was placing what paperwork and documents we had in order, he could not find his drivers license.  He jumped out and ran back across to the Mexican police to retrieve it.  They said they had given in back.  Meanwhile, I was trying not to get to a gate without Sam, much to the irritation of the people behind us.  When Sam returned very sweaty and out of breath, it was without his drivers license.  At this point, I had reached my stress limit and felt a constricting panic in my chest at the idea of trying to explain to the U.S. border authorities why we did not have three passports, and now Sam did not have a drivers license.  I rummaged around the car, remembering Sam had given the Mexican policeman a tract and there was his license neatly tucked in with all the tracts.  

Hannah mentioned she had no trust for anyone in civil authority and I assured her the U.S. side would be different.  Much to her surprise the U.S. authorities were professional and followed their protocol for this situation.  And we all breathed a sign of relief as we entered the U.S.  After watching the movie “UP”, we often start out trips and other adventures by crying out, “Adventure is out there!”  Sam began the chant and everyone followed along, but promptly stated that they were ok without anymore adventure for awhile.  There is actually even more to this story, but I'll stop here.  Praise the Lord for his ever present hand of protecton!

Because we were not busying enough, while we were packing and I was doing last minute studying for the ALSO course, the girls and I sewed some cute dresses.  You can see them at the top of the post.  Have a great week everyone!  

And of course I'm linking up with A Mama's Story!

An Authentic French Meal, Even in Mexico

The ingredients for Pot Au Feu are so "basic", "from scratch", "whole" that we can find them even in Mexico.  However, while the ingredients are simple, excluding the veal and oxtail, I didn't even bother with those, the process of creating Pot Au Feu is....um...well...not as simple.  Two days, brine soaking, bouquet garni, multi pot not as simple to be exact.  So why would one go to the grand extreme of creating this rather extravagant dish.  Perhaps a very important guest or an elegant party. Truth be told, I'm not sure how I landed exactly on Pot Au Fue, I must have been quite hungry and overly energized from a good nights sleep or stout cup of coffee.  The kind that makes you feel you can take on the world and you pretty much do until the three hour expiration on energy runs out.  That's why I stick to the green smoothies, much more consistent on their energy output.  Anyway, I've wandered far from the main point.
We were studying the country of France in school and the lesson plans suggested making the flag of France from colored construction paper, which was the same activities we had done several countries ago.  They did a great job on those flag by the way.  I'll post pictures of them below.  I gave them no guidance, only a photo of the flag and construction paper in those colors and all four made the same flag in a different way, which I thought was pretty cool.  As much fun as flag making is, the French flag is not exactly a challenge, so I thought it would be more fun and educational to create an authentic French dish.  So with the word challenge in the back of my coffee fueled mind and google at my fingers tips (this is a dangerous combo), as I said I may have been a little hungry too, making the famous and very complicated meat heavy dish of Pot Au Feu appeared upon my screen as a great idea.  After all didn't some other chic make a whole cook book of French food and blogged about it.
So we first found all the ingredients we could at the market and stores, than we sent Sam to the butcher for the meat.  I ended up going with the brisket, short ribs, and beef bones, leaving out the veal cuts.  I did put the oxtail on the list, but sadly, even with charades this could not be ordered.  Then we created a brine and soaked our meats overnight.  Then we cooked our meats and bones with our herbs and spices and water until we had the most fantastic tasting meat and broth you have ever tasted, I'm actually being very serious here, it was good.  Then you remove the meat and cook the vegetables in the heavenly broth.  THEN you serve it with a French bread, of course, and a variety of sauces you've also made while waiting for all this brining and cooking and removing and chopping and cooking.  While we ate we shared some of the facts about Europe and France we had been learning with dad.  Huh, maybe I should rename this post homeschool overkill: when mom gets more excited about the unit study than is really necessary.  Well anyway, it made three absolutely delicious meals.  Which was really surprising because the food in France seemed somewhat bland to me when we visited.  I guess we picked the wrong restaurants or just order the wrong things.  And really, I've tackled much larger culinary feats for much less honorable reasons.  Click the link to see the bonappetit.com recipe we mostly followed.

We used cabbage from the garden.  Isn't she a beauty!

Homemade "French" Bread

Pot au Fue: literally meaning pot in the fire. 

It was recommended to serve in with a French mustard.

Looks humble, but it is absolutely heavenly.

OK, sorry about the million pictures, but I'm sure the grandparents won't be complaining.  The flag of Norway is supposed to be robin red, royal blue and white.  However, I only had pinkish, light blue and off-white, being the ubber organized home schooler I am.  Anyway, any homeschooler will have enough imagination to work with this small setback. 

And finally, I think they were supposed to be cleaning their room.  I'm not sure if this is Ferdinand the Bull or the Texas Longhorn.  Until next time, Blessings from Mexico.

Excited to be doing a link-up with my good friend and one of my favorite bloggers, Sara Elizabeth, over at A Mama's Story.

"Fun" Mexican Style

Update:  If you are looking for the corn silk remedy, it is at the bottom of the page.  ;)  Welcome to my blog, hope you stay and look around.

So, here is some of the "fun" we get to deal with living outside the U.S.  Today the electricity goes out.  Sam goes and checks and it has been cut without notification of any kind.  He goes into the electric company, who conveniently cut it right before their closing hours.  Being the second time we've dealt with this, he bypasses the line and goes to the supervisor.  He explains that our electricity has been cut and we have not paid the bill, because we have not received a bill, that it is the responsibility of said supervisors to make sure our bill is delivered and we would like to have our electricity reconnected.  IF the electric company cannot find our house to deliver the bill, but they can find it to cut the service, how long do you think it will take for them to find the house to reconnect it?  I know, about a week and that will be with Sam going in every morning and reexplaining to the same supervisor where our house is.  Said supervisor explains that there will be a work order created to reconnect now that we have paid our bill, we only need to pay the 80 peso fee for reconnection, for the second time.  Sam explains he will not be paying the reconnection fee since it is their fault not ours and he already paid a reconnection fee once and explained where our house is and wonders how they can find the house to cut the electricity with no notification.  She explains the electricity will not be reconnected without paying the fee.  We have electricity tonight and we did not pay their "fee", I will not continue the story as to not incriminate anyone.  This whole process of course took a good part of the middle of the day, a huge chuck of Sam's study time.  Bless his heart, I sure do love him for dealing with everything so well.

On another front, I guess the water company has decided that water will only be supplied during the evening and night hours.  Would have been nice to have a heads up, so I could have adjusted my showering, clothes washing schedules.  Still I'm grateful for electricity, water, internet and such other luxuries.  They seem to have cut the electricity to some of the apartments next door also and 80 pesos will be much harder on their budgets than ours.

We love being here.  We love our friends here.  This afternoon Hannah and Lena went over to a church ladies house and learned some new crafty stuff.  The boys had friend in the backyard helping them make a fort.  I'm not complaining at all.  It was a little discouraging and frustrating, but we're not complaining.  I just thought you might be interested in hearing some of the interesting things we deal with from time to time.

In more news, we sport green mustaches at are house instead of the traditional white ones.  :)

 The boys' fort they have been building in the backyard with the neighbors.  Quite impressive!

 Also, not all, but much of my herbal knowledge is obsolete here in Mexico.  I'm having to learn new natural and herbal remedies.  For example. My go-to advice for a UTI in the U.S. would have been cranberry tablets, which are easily purchased at the health food store.  Cranberries aren't easy to find here and most cranberry juices are loaded with sugar, which would defeat the purpose of using them for UTI.  My new Mexican remedy for UTI is fresh coconut water, oregano tincture and corn silk tea.  That's right, the "pello de elote" made into a tea or better yet an infusion.  When I told the vendor I wanted the corn with a lot of silk of the ears, he did not seem surprised.  I learned it is also good for heart problems, edema and to dissolve kidney stones.  I will have to discuss with one of the Mexican midwifes to see if it is contradicted in pregnancy, as it seem to have some natural diuretic proporties.

Image courtesy of kai4107 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net