Pastor Francisco is Official

Christ Lives Bible Church in Ecatepec celebrated the installation of their very first pastor, Pastor Francisco! He and his wife Adriana were prayed over and commissioned for their first pastorate as the first national pastor of Iglesia Biblica Cristo Vive. This church is now 12 years old and is still growing and maturing. Ecatepec is a suburb of 3 million people in the NE of Mexico City. For this special day, former NAB Mexico missionaries Royce and Sue Baron returned to join the congregation of the church that they had coplanted with Moises and Carolyn Ruiz. Angel and Leti also came as they were the first founding members of the church. Moises explained what an installation service is all about as it was the first time that the congregation had called a pastor. Angel and Royce both preached. At the end of the service, we enjoyed a taco potluck - yum! My new favorite tacos are filled with a cold nopal cactus salad. Surprisingly good. I also made a new friend on this Sunday - Sara, the little 7 yr old niece of my girlfriend Sandy. Sara couldn't believe that I actually know her Auntie Sandy. She happily chattered to me and I responded based on the few words that I caught as she sped along in Spanish, smiling the whole while.
Please remember Pastor Francisco and Adriana in your prayers. They have three young girls, one of whom had a new cast on her arm after slipping on their tiled stairs and breaking her arm. The church is located in a poor neighborhood and plan to pay Pastor Francisco $500 US dollars each month. His house rent is $200 and I am amazed at how they manage with just $300 each month for food and everything else they need. Also pray for Pastor Francisco's preaching skills. He has been attending a seminary in Mexico City to strengthen this weakness. His family have been involved in the church life for about 3 years so the congregation has all ready grown to love them for their wise and freely given pastoral counsel.

Love and Respect in Bernal Queretaro Mexico

Marcel and I spent our first weekend away, without the kids, in about... four years! The girls were fine and enjoyed their time with a french-canadian young woman who teaches at their international school. Thank you Miss Julie!!
We went to Bernal, Queretaro, Mexico which is about two hours NE of our house. We have spent several months praying and asking/compelling/begging/nagging our church plant contacts to go on a marriage retreat weekend with us. Previous dates never worked out but finally, two couples could go! One wife became sick on the Friday but she and her husband set off from their home on the next morning at 6:30 am and arrived in time to join us for breakfast at 8 am!
The location was beautiful. Bernal is a little colonial town, full of charm and little shops. It is famous for a huge rock formation that Marcel thinks looks like a lava flow formation. It very much reminded me of Devil's Tower in Wyoming, the rock formation in the movie "Close Encounters". It was so hot that we passed on the 2 hour climb up and back down but we hope to return and enjoy the hike on another day.
Our hotel room exterior
and interior.

The theme of the weekend was "Love and Respect" with biblical teachings about men loving their wives and wives respecting their husbands. We also watched the movie "Fireproof" which fit perfectly with our theme. The two ladies that came with us really opened up. They and their husbands enjoyed the weekend and I believe that their marriages will improve as a result of having attended this retreat.
Before driving home on Sunday, we wandered through the little town. We saw a large graffitti mural of a famous former soccer player from Argentina snorting cocaine through a straw. Quite the subject matter but the artisty was impressive none the less.
We also saw a beautiful woven tapestry depicting a scene of Bernal but it cost $4,000 pesos so we admired it and continued on our way. Marcel bought a small bookstand and we bought 4 different crosses for wallart. The buildings' architecture and painted exteriors were beautiful. We also admired some colorful Mexican handcarved dining room chairs that filled a little restaurant.

On the drive back home, we passed a grain elevator complex and some tall green barley fields. For a few minutes, I felt a little at home again. (These pictures are for our grain farmer friends up north.)

Once we got on the main highway, one of the men began to ask questions, wonderful spiritual questions about salvation and various bible stories. He told us his spiritual background and explained his scepticism regarding a large "Christian" church in Mexico City where the pastor had published a book on tithing and seemed to teach nothing else. This experience had, obviously, put him off anything Christian yet God sent another professional Christian coworker into this man's life. Carolyn, Marcel, and I prayed while Moises was used by God to speak the words this man needed to hear. We've known his wife since September and he surprised us by coming to our Valentine's Banquet. We really enjoyed getting to know this man during this weekend and we had many fun times of laughter together.
We again invited him and his wife to our Sunday evening church services in our home. The other couple hugged us goodbye and invited us to their home for a BBQ next weekend. Please keep praying!

Mexico City Advertising

Advertising in Mexico City can be a little different than back home. A favorite method is to decorate an entire vehicle like we do with city buses. The interesting part is that they cover three vehicles with the exact same advertisement and then drive the line up of the three vehicles down the road. Today, we saw 5 small cars decorated with a Hannah Montana advertisement for the new season of shows on the Disney Channel. I'm a slow draw with the camara so we only caught a photo of the two vehicles at the front of the procession. I guess the thinking is that if one vehicle with advertising is eyecatching, how much moreso are 5 vehicles all together! If you double click on the photo, you can have a closer look. The bus in front of these cars is also covered with an ad for Pizza Hut.

New Vehicle

Tired of being pulled over by the police (40 times since we arrived here not including federal police and army check stops) we decided we needed to purchase a Mexican vehicle with Mexican plates that will not draw the unwanted attention of the Transito (Transit Police). The new minivan is a 2003 and we got a fairly good deal from some friends that have been helping us in the church plant. We also had a very special relative in Vancouver give us a very generous check toward the van's purchase...Thanks soooo much! It's nice to have a vehicle again that has automatic windows and air conditioning. We will continue to use the old Suburban that was originally a Telus telephone company truck but only we it's really necessary - like when we need to pull the mission trailer. The top picture is our licence plate from the State of Mexico where we live (there are 31 states in Mexico and one Federal District, kinda like Washington D.C.). The images on the plate are from the Heroes of the Revolution and are put on this year's licence plates to celebrate next year's 200th anniversary of Mexican revolution. I've got to say, Mexican plates have a lot more panache than the plates in the US or Canada.

The Day of Love and Friendship

Our Valentine's dinner pictures have finally been recovered from the depths of our computer. (Thanks Brittany!) In Mexico, Valentine's Day is known as the "Day of Love and Friendship." By far, the most commonly sold Valentine's items were: yes, balloons. We sure couldn't afford them though! $8 for an 8 inch balloon and $14 or more for a larger one. Multiply that by five girls and we decided to pass on that idea. There were balloon vendors on every corner rather than just the usual spots on weekends in the parks and outside popular family restaurants.
We had oh so much fun with our neighbors during our "formal" dinner at our home! Our fancy dinner menu plans got scaled back considering the economy and though some unchurched people were surprised that we didn't serve alcohol, everyone was content with the homemade lemonade that Carolyn Ruiz made. The evening was a success. We haven't laughed that hard for a long time. We knew that some of our friends were teasers but wow. For example, while we were playing the "Newlywed Game", Marcel asked the question "What color are the sheets on your bed right now in your house today?" The wife would describe in detail the three color plaid while the husband would falter with "kinda bluish" sort of answers. Other husbands were yelling out possible answers to "help", things like "Just say that they're black because she never wants to do the laundry!" My, my!
The most difficult question to get a matching husband/wife answer for was "Where did you share your first kiss?" Surprisingly, only one couple had a matching answer! We were having so much fun that the atmosphere in the room was really happy. A few people were annoyed/embarrassed that their spouse didn't answer the same way but everyone turned it around into some sort of joke and we kept having fun. "Wrong" answers are completely what makes the game so entertaining! When people couldn't remember, we'd say, "Just make something up." They hadn't played this game before so they thought that suggestion was just ridiculous and it is but it's just a game.
We were grateful to have Angel come and speak. He and his wife began the Christ Lives Bible Church in Ecatepec along with the Barons and the Ruizes. They are now helping with another church plant in a different part of Mexico City but graciously helped us for the evening. Angel made a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet to go with his devotional. His topic was "A Love that Blossoms" and we learned how the Bible's teachings on forgiveness apply to a marriage. Angel is a very good speaker. He's animated and able to use Mexican examples and expressions to illustrate his points. People were interested and filled all their blanks in. One man folded his paper and tucked it into his shirt pocket to take home. Such are the small evidences that we are slowly getting through with our message.
Our next event: a marriage retreat at the end of March. We hear that the location is special in that it is a place in Mexico where there is a giant rock. Our neighbor was amused to have climbed all the way to the top to find: a pop/soda machine! The new mystery is not about the huge rock but how the machine was placed on top... Sounds like something interesting to check out.

Some Visitors

We had a few visitors here in Mexico City. Chemo (pronounced Chay-mo) and Amanda along with their two children Estrella and Emmanuel. They are living at the retreat center helping with a little maintenance. Chemo is originally from the state of Vera Cruz on the east coast of Mexico and Amanda is from Wisconsin. They had to move to Mexico for a little while to help expedite his application for immigration. Our daughter Ahava and Estrella have become real buddies and play for hours on end. They are so cute to watch together.