Better late than never!

WOW! A lot has happened in the past month in our lives. Here is a brief summary of these 5 weeks or so. We spent a week in the El Paso-Las Cruces area for Thanksgiving. What a blessing to spend the holiday with my sister Gayle and her family, especially because we are not sure when we will see them again. This photo shows my nephew Joe and Jose Luis in the back and my sister and I sitting in front. I do not have a photo of the whole family together. But here is a fun photo of Elijah, my niece Ana's little boy - he is such a sweet little guy!
After returning back home to Creel, we began to do some much-needed work on our house. Due to the impetus & help of another missionary, we stripped and painted our kitchen & bedroom. I have always been a fan of colors and am so blessed, thankful, and appreciative to have color on our walls and not the dull and dirty white of before (to be honest, we had not painted the house since we moved into it in August 1998). Thank you, Ester, Jasmine, & Allan, for your gift, your work, your encouragement, and your patience with us all. I really love my red kitchen wall and I pray for you all daily.

We received 2 short-term groups and took them to different communities so that they could share the gospel and give out food, candy, and toys. What makes this spiffy in my opinion is that these groups were Slavic-Americans who came to share Christ with the Tarahumara-Mexicans and were hosted by people from the USA & Mexico.

Finally, we were really blessed to have our friends Aaron & Sybil visit from BC, Canada. How special it was to share this time with them! Thank you both for making our home brighter, our bellies fuller, and for touching our hearts with your love.

Here is a photo of part of the desk & shelves that Aaron built for Jaynie's room - just in time for school to begin again after a few days off for Christmas (and due to Jaynie's cough). I just cannot express our gratitude with sufficient words - Aaron & Sybil do God's work & bless all who they encounter. We hope that the Lord will bless them as they have blessed us.

New tires!!

Praise God, we have new tires on the truck! Thanks to some very generous friends, we were able to buy 5 new tires (1 as a spare) AND replace both the interior & exterior terminals on the front passenger side. The truck drives like a dream. The roads around here are so very hard on vehicles. We thank those who made this possible!

No, donkey, no!

Many Tarahumara people value their animals above other things. One woman I know told me that her animals were more important to her than her own daughter because the animals helped her in many ways - fertilizer, barter for other things, sign of wealth. A little over 2 weeks ago, Dona Lola, who is 70 years old at the least, was giving salt to her donkeys. The donkeys were more than ready to eat salt and they knocked Lola down trying to get to the salt first. I probably should mention that Lola was putting the salt out on some rocks, and when she fell, she fell over the rocks and onto her left arm. It was not pretty! Jose Luis was in San Luis Majimachi at the time and he brought Lola and her son Mario out, and then they all went to the hospital in Samachike in Dwayne's big truck. On the way to the hospital (about 1-2 hours away), Lola began to joke about how onery the donkeys were and how they should take care of her and not the other way around! She was even laughing :) In Samachike, Dr. Mike set her arm and put in some pins. Jose Luis took her back to the hospital last Mon. for a check up. The pins will stay in her arm until the 1st of Dec., but she says that it hardly hurts any more. We pray that the Lord will use all of this to open Lola's heart to His love and truth.

Thank you, John Piper!

Living in the mountains of Mexico is a great experience. However, at times I miss good Biblical teaching in English (we do receive good Biblical teaching in Spanish). I have acquired the habit of downloading Nancy Leigh DeMoss' daily radio program called "Revive our Hearts." I also like to look at John Piper's website (www.desiringgod.org) regularly to read his sermons & articles. This week when I checked out his site for new items, I saw a blog mentioning that during the month of November the audiobook Desiring God could be downloaded for free. I checked out the site, and, after registering, I was able to download the entire unabridged audiobook free. If you would like to get it, go to http://christianaudio.com/desiringgod and just follow the steps listed. Let me know what you think after listening to it!

Kal Ho Naa Ho

"Tomorrow may never come" is a Bollywood movie that some friends of ours brought back from India. Our friends spent 6 months there investigating possibilities for going back as missionaries. They began learning the language and spent some time studying history, culture, etc. This movie is, I've been told, very typical of the Bollywood movies - over 3 hours long with several musical numbers thrown in for fun (and lots of energetic dancing). Although it has a couple of scenes that we skip when we watch it and it is in Hindi, it is an okay movie. I must admit that it is a tear-jerker. Watching it with Jaynie was a great opportunity to discuss some basic beliefs held by Hindus & Moslems (there are references to these beliefs in different parts of the movie). Also, it shows some of the differences between the people of the different regions or provinces of India. I must admit that I now want to watch more Bollywood movies as long as they have subtitles in English or Spanish (so I can understand the story!). And, this is a great way for us to remember our friends as they prepare to return to India next spring as missionaries.

Tarahumara discipleship

A couple of weeks ago, another pastor (Bro. Ernesto) who works in Creel and a couple of Tarahumara villages asked Jose Luis to share with some of the Tarahumara Christians and others interested in learning more about God. We spent Fri. evening through Sun. afternoon, Oct. 16-18, with about 13 Tarahumaras (10 adults) and the pastor, his wife, and 2 other Mexican missionaries who work with Bro. Ernesto. On Sat. morning, Jose Luis shared his testimony in Tarahumara and every single Tarahumara in the room was crying by the time Jose Luis finished. Following his testimony, Jose Luis shared the plan of salvation as presented in the book of Romans (the "Roman road") and 3 Tarahumaras accepted Christ as their Savior & Lord! (the others had already accepted the Lord). What a special time! Then on Sat. afternoon, the whole group went with us to Los Manzanos for Bible study. On Sun., we all went to San Luis Majimachi for church in Tarahumara (mostly!). We were privileged to participate in what the Lord is doing here - how awesome is that?
This photo shows part of the group at the Bible study in Los Manzanos (outside of Crucita's house).

Time to catch up!

Well, I have certainly not been very diligent at updating this blog and I apologize for that. There are no excuses. We have been busy, but no more than normal. We have gone through our share of health challenges, but also no worse than other people. So I will try to catch up over the next couple of days. Jaynie wanted me to post a photo of her new pet - Lulu May! We have had her for 1 week exactly and Jaynie really enjoys taking care of her kitten. Lulu has adjusted well and has survived being surrounded by the 3 dogs living at our base (Wishbone, our toothless wonder dog, can't do much more than scare her). My hope in getting Lulu is that she will grow up to be a great mouser. I don't like it when mice invade my home! Thankfully, we have not had any mice inside for a few months now.