Texas Track and Field

They are serious about their sports here in Texas. Brittany cleaned up in three more events this past weekend in the district Junior Varsity Finals. Normally she runs in the freshman events but her times have been quite good and so she was moved up to J.V. She's really been having fun and the medals are just bonus!

What I think is really cool are the high school sports stadiums here. The stadium where Brittany competed this past weekend as well as her own school stadium are both huge! My guess would be that they hold 15-20 thousand people each and there are a lot of school stadiums here! Well, track season is over for this year. I'm not sure what we are going to do for this budding young athlete when we get to Mexico City. I'm sure there will be good athletic clubs there.

Friday Night Lights

"Friday Night Lights" is the name of a movie about highschool football in Texas. Yet for us in deep south Texas, Friday Night Lights is when the Bible students, language school students, and missionary kids at RGBI go to the outdoor multi-purpose sports facility and play soccer. Sometimes we will also play street hockey and basketball. Many nights the latin students will bring out guitars and drums and just sing. Petra (the one in the middle looking exhausted) is wearing the jersey of the UNAM Pumas, a favorite soccer team of many Mexicans. Only 26 more days of language school and soon after we'll be moving to Mexico City. Pray for us as we find the best way to bring our things to Mexico and that all of us in our family will finish our time at our various schools well.

Rainy Day in Reynosa, Tamaulipas Fronteras, Mexico

We spent the afternoon in Reynosa today, the Mexican border city just across from McAllen, Texas. This picture was taken on the first street in Reynosa that parallels the Rio Grande River. We had lunch at McDonalds, drove around the perimeter of Reynosa, and visited two small shopping malls. The one shopping mall was very modern and spotless. Its anchor stores were Sanborn's and H-E-B. Sanborn's is a famous restaurant in Mexico that has an attached department store. H-E-B (pronounced one letter at a time, not "Heb") is a large grocery store chain that we also have in Texas. The Soriana's in Reynosa (like a Mexican WalMart with a grocery section) features several areas where you can sample food such as yogurt or our favorite, freshly grilled tortillas filled with -- a mildly spicy chicken stew. Sounds a bit odd but we really like these full-sized samples. It turned out to be Ahava's lunch because she was too distracted by her toy, the playground, and other Mexican children at the McDonalds who had earlier "prevented" her from eating her little hamburger.

Our two little girls had a ride on the carousel at the mall - it wasn't West Edmonton Mall but they still enjoyed the ride. Marcel sat on a bench with little Ahava to wait while the big girls went into a costume jewlery store. Another dad with a toddler sat beside Marcel and struck up a conversation in Spanish. The other dad is from Veracruz but is currently working in Reynosa. The older girls offered to "help" their dad practise Spanish using this wait-on-the-bench-while-we-shop-for-jewlery technique but Daddy declined their gracious offer.

La Rapidita

Since basketball season finished Brittany joined the track-team and it appears to have been a good move. In four track meets she placed in all but one race and has brought home nine medals! She runs in the 4X200m, 4X100m and 200m individual. Next week she begins triple jump and long jump too. In two weeks she is off to the district races here in Edinburg, TX.

Space Cadets for a Day

During our recent trip to Houston, to get Marcel's mom at the airport, we took a trip over to the Johnston Space Center. That is Emma at the large logo in the visitor center. It was neat to see real space suits, satelites, rockets and movies. There were many activities but the tour of the technical part of the facility was preceded by a four hour wait. Though we wanted to do the hour long tour we did not want to wait so long. The aviation bug is still alive in Marcel...he was like a kid at a candy shop absorbing all the technical lingo they speak. Marcel once worked on a "unique" C-130 Hercules operated by NASA years ago while at Northwest Industries in Edmonton.

Snake in the House

No its not a worm...its a snake! Brittany is holding a three inch Texas Blind Snake. These are very tiny snakes that reach about eight inches in length. They hunt ants and the eggs of insects. Their mouth is so small that they can't bite people. They are a good snake to have around the house but not in the house. They live under the concrete slabs of homes but when it rains very hard, as it did this past week, they crawl out of their holes and enter warm dry houses. When in the house they will often breed and lay eggs. With time you'll have many of these snakes in your home. The other night we were moving some furniture around, lifted our rug and found the little critter. It's likely a yearling and thus likely did not lay its eggs in the carpet.

New DJ in South Texas

This is Ahava, our three year old. Today her daycare took a field trip to Radio Esperanza. The radio station is on the campus of Rio Grande Bible Institute where we are learning Spanish. The radio station has a great outreach ministry through-out south Texas and north-east Mexico and it is very popular. It is the radio station that we prefer to listen to here. You can listen to it as well by going to http://www.radioesperanza.com/ Click on Escuche En Vivo, and you will hear great Latino worship music.

Ahava is "scooters" about scooters

Our three year old, Ahava, is crazy about her scooter. She's pretty good at riding it, too!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-173187553164727793

Our Church

This is a picture of the church we are currently attending; Iglesia Biblica Cristiana Maranata n McAllen, Texas. Frank Ortega is the pastor and he is an excellent expositor of the Bible. The worship, for the most part, is contemporary and one can see many hands raised and hear many "gloria a Dios." The people are very friendly and we have joined with them in several outreach events that have seen success.

Raising Money for a Fiesta

This our friend Nadine who is from Nicaragua. He is a Bible college student here at Rio Grande Bible Institute and also one of Marcel's tutors. He has become a good friend and we are excited to see Christian growth in his life. In this photo he's cleaning our truck to raise money for the graduating students the of Bible college. Every year the graduates go and have a little fiesta and some fun at a place nearby to celebrate the completion of four years of hard academic work. Past classes have gone to San Antonio and South Padre Island. I don't know if they have decided where they will go this year but I'm sure they will have fun.

Toothless Wonder

This stage in life is too short for how cute it is.

This is Kirklyn missing a whole lot of teeth.

Science Fair

Petra recently won her school's science fair project. She, with dad's help, made a wind tunnel and two airfoils (wings) and proved that deep chamber wings produce more lift than low chamber wings. She was invited to compete in the city science fair and won first place in the engineering division. She has now been invited to compete in the regional science fair project in Brownsville Texas in March.

Religion on Parade

The procession that you see to the right that is blocking the rush-hour traffic in Monterrey is that of "peregrinos" or pilgrims. This would be a religious procession that will take all or some of the people you see here on to one of the many catholic basilicas in Mexico. Some of the people on these pilgrimages will travel across the country to Mexico City to the Basilica of the Virgin Guadalupe. If you look closely you'll see that many of the people are dressed in native costumes.

Monterrey, Nuevo Leon Mexico

During the Thanksgiving weekend in November our family, along with another student family from Alberta, travelled to the northern Mexican city of Monterrey. We had great opportunity to practice our Spanish and bask in the rich culture of this country and enjoy their well-known delicacy: Cabrito (roasted young goat).

The picture to the right is of the Bishop's Palace that sits on a large hill in the middle of this city. You can see for miles.

Snake-o-rama Emma

Here is the fearless Emma with a three foot Indigo Snake (non-venomous). In the sub tropics there are a huge variety of reptiles to keep us entertained. Every evening the walls of our house have Mediterranean House Geckos on the siding and a few times we have found them in the house. Friends on campus have had the Texas Blind Snake come into the houses and cars during the night after a rain. Near by at local parks we can see alligators and large Diamondback Water Snakes. Next month when the weather really heat's up Marcel is going to a rattlesnake round-up near by.