God Is So Good, He’s So Good To Me

Dear Friends and Family,

I keep meaning to post and then not getting around to it.  So I have quite a few little updates to give you. 

First of all, our last group that was here, the Consul group from Saskatchewan, Canada, was wonderful!  They have met and formed relationships with many of the Mexicans and missionaries down here, so they were constantly having guests over for dinner.  It was like a week long party in the dorm.  Another wonderful part about this group is Gary and Marlene.  They were down here last year and really fell in love with everything.  They love to bless and encourage and pray for people while they are down here.  I also made some new friends with some of the youth on the trip and got to be reunited with Dennis and Maureen who drove this group down in their bus (he is the bus driver for another one of our groups and is trying to get more groups to employ his services).  Dennis and Maureen are so great as well!  So encouraging to me and always trying to give me stuff (like my very own MagicJack phone that allows me to call anywhere in the US or Canada!).

Another thing that happened during this week that was strange was that I had some problems with my vocal chords.  While my voice remained completely intact and my throat was free of any sort of pain, it really felt like I was straining to talk.  The more I talked, the worse it hurt.  This was no good at all since my job consists of teaching in the morning and then helping with the group in the afternoon (giving the orientation, visiting with the people, answering questions they might have, etc.).  My voice only felt like it was getting worse.  In fact, for an entire day and a half, I gave up speaking all together.  That seemed to help for a while, but then the next week, I was still having some pain and straining when I spoke.  There were a few days when I also felt that I might have had a fever (but I don’t have a thermometer down here, so I can’t say that for sure).  Anyways, I’m sad to admit that I’m still not sure this thing is completely over and therefore and still drinking the hot lemon, honey water and taking the Advils as my mom suggested.  I’ve already had many people pray for me concerning this, but I would ask that you also please pray that God would completely heal me of this and that it would not be a reoccurring thing.

Next on the list of events is my very brief trip to the states to pick up Vickie Millhouse from the airport.  I decided to leave on Wednesday right after teaching Anthonie, spend the evening with my dad’s family, spend the night at my mom’s house, then pick up Vickie the next morning.  As I left Anthonie and went to go fill up on gas, I thought something felt different and kind of weird about my car, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I knew I had to pick up Vickie somehow, so I just prayed that whatever was wrong, God would keep me safe and at least get me to the states.  So I went on my way.  Everything was fine.  I met my family at Pizza Hut and we had a wonderful time catching up on the past few months.  Then we went out for Cold Stone ice cream and headed to Daddy’s house to see the damage that had been done from the rain a few weeks ago.  As we left his house, they were heading for the hotel and I was heading for my mom’s house when all of the sudden (on the freeway) I notice that my car is not slowing down.  My brakes still worked, but as soon as I took my foot off the break I began to speed up to 60mph.  The next exit was where the hotel was, so I decided to pull off there and hope that my dad was still following me.  My car was reluctant to slow down, refused to stop, and sounded like a monster truck rally when I put it in neutral, but God allowed the exit light to be green and I sailed into the nearest gas station, put my car in park, pull out the keys, and jumped out of the car.  My dad was behind me the whole time, which was very comforting to me even though God also allowed me to stay miraculously calm the entire time.  My dad and I switched cars and pulled them into the hotel parking spaces.  He said it was not having a problem anymore, but he agreed to drive it to my mom’s house while I followed him in his car.  The next morning, Norm looked at my car and noticed that there was a huge puddle of transmission fluid on the ground.  He oiled up the accelerator chords and drove it to the mechanic.  Apparently, I had much bigger fish to fry than my little accelerator stickage.  The transmission something or other had broken when I hit a huge pothole (TWO WEEKS AGO!  God only knows how it did not leak until that night) and my struts in the front AND the back were shot.  (Apparently what Norm had done by oiling up the accelerator chords took care of that problem).  So I ended up taking my mom’s van back to Mexico while my car got worked on back at home.  We’ll switch back on Tuesday when I take Vickie back to the airport.  Anyways, right as I pulled off the freeway that one night when the accelerator got stuck, the whole time I was not angry or scared or upset in the least bit, all I could do was REJOICE and PRAISE THE LORD!  You know why?  How many times have I driven back and forth to the states and around here in Mexico?  And my car has always waited to breakdown until I’m within 20 minutes of my house!!  (I don’t know if I mentioned this in my blog, but during Christmas time my alternator went out, again 20 minutes from home).  This has just shown me HOW MUCH God loves me and is willing to protect me.  Bring it on, Satan!  I have God on my side.

Wait a second….There is YET another blessing??  YES!    So, I’ve been praying, and hoping, and looking into getting a couch for my little house so that when I have friends over there would be more places for people to sit, it would be more comfortable, and I would have another place for someone to sleep if they came and visited me *hint, hint* .  Anyways, I’ve been pricing out couches at the Globos and most of them were 1,000+ pesos (about $80+) and I just didn’t have that much money or didn’t want to spend that much money on something I wasn’t sure I would be able to get home or fit into my house.  Well, when I found out I was going to have my mom’s van for the weekend I thought this would be the best time to give it another shot.  Melissa went with me to the Globos down in Lazaro Cardenas (a flee market about 25 minutes south of here).  We asked for prices of every couch we saw, even the ugly, dirty, torn ones.  We weren’t finding anything under 1,000 pesos.  Then finally we found a cool looking futon for 850 pesos (still much more than I wanted to pay), but it was dirty and scratched so we decided to keep looking.  As we were about to give up and go home, we saw two couches off to the side facing each other.  We asked the man how much they were, “800 pesos” he said.  Awww, they were nicer, but not that nice.  But then we heard “600 pesos por el otro” (600 for the other one).  Realllllly….I thought Hmmm…..So I had to try it out.  I sat down and thought “YES,” it may not be a super cool couch, but it IS comfortable.  The only problem now, was how to get it home or at least how to get it all the way to my mom’s van and once we got it there, would it fit?  As I waited and thought through this enigma, the man knocked 50 pesos off the price.  Now it was only 550 pesos!  Half the price of any of the other couches!  So, I knew this was it.  This was my couch.  After some negotiating, the man agreed to bring it to my mom’s van and somehow make it fit.  He came through on his promise and so I tipped him that extra 50 pesos he knocked off.  We brought it home, Melissa and I unloaded it and put it in my house, and now I have my very own couch that I bought all by myself, with my own money!  TA-DA!

 

 

 

 

 

So that’s it!  You are now caught up in all my major and minor life events as of today, Sunday, March 6, 2011.  Wow, how time flies!  Can you believe it is already March 6??