Church/Iglesia

I'm sure a few of my church friends in Canada are wondering about Church here in Mexico.

Let's see.... where to start. Well, the people are absolutely wonderful. We have been welcomed here with open arms - no clicks ( that I can tell) or negative feelings at all - not that I expected any, but literally everyone at church makes a point EVERY Sunday to say, "Buenos Dias Hermana" with a gigantic smile on their face. You truly feel welcome here. They are so enthusiastic, they often forget that I don't understand, and the children who go to a bilingual school (that we may send Colby to) are anxious to show off their English skills - until we ask them a question, then they panic a little - they weren't ready for that!! Then they give up and speak spanish at full speed. My response, "Uhhhhh.... lo siento, no entiendo." (Sorry, I don't understand)

There are a few men in the ward who speak English fairly well, so they often check in with us and update us on announcements, etc. that we almost asuredly missed. Most importantly, our Obispo (Bishop) speaks some English, enough that we can communicate. He used to live in the US, but is out of practice, so he's forgotten some vocabulary. Bill actually does really well with his Spanish, I'm still catching snipets here and there. None of the active women speak any English, but they want to learn, they told me, in spanish of course, we should do a class and teach each other. I'm all for it, I just need a few more basics before I tackle something like that.....

Contrary to what happens at some other barrios (wards), or so I hear, this barrio starts exactly right on time. Refreshing! Everything is done by the book. Fantastico! I actually understand Sunday School pretty well because I follow along in my English scriptures, so I know what they are talking about. I didn't bring my Joseph Smith book, so R.S is more difficult. They've asked me to pray (oracion) twice. The first time I finished the prayer and no one moved, so I had to say 'amen' the way they do so they would recognize it. The second time I knew how to end the prayer so they would know it was over. It made me giggle a little. Tells me just how little English they recognize, and how much I have to learn.

The other cool thing, I think, is that for 8 months, this little barrio didn't have any missionaries serving in their area. None. The week after we came back, the Mission Pres. announced in Sac. meeting that he felt impressed to once again place Elders here. Hmmm interesting. Fortunately for us, one of the Elders is from California, and helps us with translating. He's even gone to Primary with my boys to help them understand what's going on, especially the first 2 weeks.

Everyone brings their own hymn books here. There are no hymn books in the building. So every Sunday, one of the members gives us theirs to use - and the really nice part- it's always someone different. We HAVE to take to time to go back to Veracruz to the distribution center to get a few things......

The building only has AC in the main chapel/multipurpose area. The chapel doesn't have fixed benches, but stacking chairs. The pulpit is a very narrow area that will only hold, maybe 10 people along the wall, but it is raised. The congregation area has 4 folding curtain thingys (like at home) that close at a corner to make 2 classrooms in that same space. So after Sac. meeting, the men start moving chairs to one classrom for Sunday school. The rest of the building has I think about 6 classrooms then some offices, none of which have AC. R.S. meets at the oposite end, and there is a VERY small kitchen.(and yes the men get the AC for that hour!) There is no gym/multipurpose room, but outside behind the chapel is an outdoor concrete pad with basketball hoops and volleyball posts. The whole property is gated, so you can't even park in the parking lot if the church isn't open. The parking lot is also tiny. Maybe 10 cars can park in there, but it is never full. Most people walk or bus to church. I think I've only seen 6 or 7 cars in the parking lot on Sunday. Now having described all this to you, it is clean, well kept and maintained. They are proud of their building and church, much like a child showing off his stick people drawing as if it was Picasso. The good kind of pride. For many of them it is the nicest place for them to be and perhaps their only chance to have any AC all week. They are rich in spirit, they don't look miserable when life is tough, they are truly happy to be at church and to be blessed by the spirit there. I love these people already.

Sorry I don't have any pictures, next activity I will take a few pictures.....

Leafy and Cole the Lizards

Ahh Today's adventure. Ok seriously. Almost every day is a new discovery or adventure here! So this day is Lizards. We have two iguanas that live outside my kitchen window. The border of our yard is a small canal. They sun themselves on that canal almost every afternoon along with a baby one here or there. So the kids are always looking for these guys. Lucky for the iguanas, as soon as the door to our house opens, the iguanas disapear, so the kids have learned to watch them from inside the house. Leafy (named by G) is always sitting directly in front of the window, but Cole (named by C) sits further down, which makes picture taking difficult. We think one might be female, but since both are sheding their skins right now, we are waiting until they are finished to get a better look at the colorings, etc.

Whew! a pet I don't have to explain to my children CAN NOT LIVE IN THE HOUSE!

More adventures tomorrow......

Our new family member - Tius ( Tee-us)

Our beloved dog, Zeus passed away about a year and a half ago. C hurt badly for a very long time after Zeus died, and wanted another dog. As we already knew we would eventually move to Mexico, we told him we would get another dog when we got a home in Mexico.

Well, when we had been here exactly a week, we got word that a friend of a friend of a friend knew a guy in Xalapa who had a 6 month old boxer pup that he couldn't keep anymore. This whole "friend of a friend" thing - is the primary form of marketing and communication here in Mexico. Word spreads faster than the spead of light- that's another story. Anyway, off we went to Xalapa which happens to be the state capital.

I had been to Xalapa before when I was here on our first research trip in 2006. It is a beautiful drive as Xalapa is straight up into the mountains - only a 40 minute drive on a modern 4 lane freeway. The temperature and humidity drop as well making it a very comfortable temperature. We actually turned off the AC in the truck and rolled down the windows all day.

So off we go on this crazy wild goose chase in search for the owner of this puppy. Why a goose chase? Here's a lesson on the social structure in Mexico. Bill's assistant put out the word that we were looking for a boxer puppy. A school mate of his went to University in Xalapa and knew of someone in his neighborhood who had a puppy. Unfortunately, this person doesn't have a phone ( or it is currently disconnected), so they called another neighbor and asked them to tell the puppy's owner that we would be coming to Xalapa tomorrow to see it.

So we head up to Xalapa with Bill's assistant, Eric; his school mate; Manuel, and our whole family in a pick-up truck -king cab of course. The fun part is that we were told it is all arranged. Uh hah - arranged Mexico style. Anyway, we arrive at this school mate's place and walk to a nearby store that is a very small pet store where the puppy was supposed to be. They were surprised we were coming. The message never got to the intended party. Somehow (I never quite figured this connection out) the pet store people and the person with the dog were connected - don't think married - but anyway. She started trying to find this guy who just happened to go work in the next city of Puebla who knows where and won't be back until 7pm. It's like 10am.

Now I'm thinking that this might not happen. C and G are so anxious and excited. Bill tells them we will give them some time to try to find him, but that we won't wait around all day until 7pm - we have better things to do. Besides, this is one puppy, not even a litter. He might be the dumbest and most hyper one of the litter. No thanks.

In the meantime, we hear about another friend who knows someone who has a litter of puppies. Off we go in search of the friend. We wander all over Xalapa and find the friend's place. They they drive and we follow them to the someone who supposedly has puppies. Yah, actually..... no puppies. We make a stop at the mall (very nice almost as big as Veracruz city with lots of great shops that I will have to go back to visit another time......) and Costco for hotdogs. We ended up buying a few items at Costco too.

So we decide to go back to Manuel's place one more time to see if the girl at the pet place found the guy with the puppy. (are you confused yet?) Turns out he's on his way back from work and will meet us in an hour. We hang out at Manuel's place (he had spanish cartoon network which kept the kids entertained) for of course more than an hour.

Ok, now OBVIOUSLY Bill really wants a puppy because there is no way we would have wasted this day otherwise. Ugh. Anyway, the guy finally shows up. Bill checks him out, tests his personality, aggression, features, and we try to test his intellegence. Then we decide I get to take him for a little walk away from all the people, excitement and kids to see what I think. Is he smart enough to be well trained? I watched him carefully - how he reacted to me, his eyes, etc. I decided, miracles of miracles that this one dog would do the trick.

Here's our new pooch.
We all loaded back into the truck with the dog at my feet so I could keep him out of trouble. We decided we would change his name as he didn't respond readily to the name they were using, and we really didn't like it - "Pinky". Yeah, I didn't get it either. So C finally picked Tius. Ok, what's with the weird name? Hmmm..... another whole story. Here's the really short version. We have a friend with that name as his last name. Bill and I both really like that name but it never seemed right for our kids. So, I guess it was meant for the dog.

Here's the best part. C has been absolutely amazing with the dog. We told him this was his dog. G hadn't earned that right because he hasn't learned the proper treatment of animals yet. So this is C's dog. C normally is not a go-getter. Getting C to do chores causes me infinitely more work and stress than to do it myself. He procrastinates, daydreams and forgests. The dog is a completely different matter. He had blown me away with the commitment C has toward his dog. I am actually writing this a full 2 weeks after we got the dog and I haven't heard him complain about taking care of his dog.

Most Mexican dogs live outside - they are also filthy. We didn't want that. So Tius has had to be house trained. C has cleaned up every mess - totally - without complaint - during this learning process. He takes Tius out several times a day, feeds him and most importantly plays with him to keep them both busy.

C is a pretty happy child. However, I can't say I have ever seen C laugh so much as I have seen him laugh in the last 2 weeks. Like I mean ROFL all day long. There is so much joy and laughter coming out of that child it's often actually annoying. He is singing constantly when he's not laughing. The death of our first dog was really hard on him, but I don't think I realized just how sad and heavy it has been for him until now. Tius has lifted that cloud that I don't think any of us really knew was there until now. I am truly happy and proud of him at the same time. He is doing such a great job taking care of his dog and is so happy to have his very own dog.

G is helping too, and a little miffed about not having his own dog. It's a good lesson for him. The only family members who are slower to adjust are the cats. They are not impressed. They are much to old to have to train a new puppy where his place is in this family. So they make themselves scarse and when the dog discovers their hiding place, a lot of hissing is involved. Over the past 2 weeks that has settled down somewhat. Tius is still a pup and wants to play with the cats who of course want nothing to do with it. So we still get some hissing and a couple swipes here and there. But they will at least allow him to get within 12 inches before they start growling.

Tius has decided that C's suitcase/dresser (for now, we are using their suitcases as dressers until we find what we want) is the perfect bed for him. Somehow it doesn't look comfortable, but it's his favorite place to go. I had to put a stop to it because all of C's clothes were full of hair. Ugh.

Mucho Cangrejos (crabs)

Today's adventure - crabs! C wasn't feeling well today, so Bill stayed behind while G and I went to the playa (beach) to take photos of the day's progress.

One of our workers had his family at the beach enjoying the breeze, and had caught some crabs in a bucket (yep, just like the saying). G was so excited! Real Crabs! The family was so entertained by his enthusiasm the children took G to show him how to catch them.
They were, of course, experts and G was anxious to jump in. They burrow in the sand next to our retaining wall, so they are easy targets. They poke at the little burrows with a stick and get them to come out fighting. Next, they either gently step on them, or cover them with half a soda (pop) bottle to trap them. Then they grab each claw so they can't be pinched and tada! Crab caught. G had so much fun! The crabs are smaller than the ocean ones, though they can get as large as a man's closed fist. The smaller ones are actually better eating (we found out later) because the exoskeleton is softer, and when you boil or fry them - you can just eat the whole thing. They showed us how to clean them (I'll spare you that pic) and prepare them for cooking. G saved 2 from being killed and cleaned to keep as a temporary pet.

Ok, why a pet crab? Well, I decided why not, they can learn more about them, and C would have the chance to see them live. They cut a slit in the side of a 2 litre bottle, bend it and pop the crab in. The lid comes off, and the crab can't reach the claw outside of the top of the bottle, so no one gets pinched and they get to watch these crabs roll bottles on the floor like hamster wheels.

Our cats were very curious about the seafood smelling popbottles that rolled around the floor, but only curious. Maybe they were too old to really go after them. The next day, we let the crabs go, They will be dinner another day.