A Very Sad Goodbye

Just over two weeks ago, we said a very difficult "See you later" to Karen Wind's little baby boy, Miguel, as he peacefully passed in the middle of the night into Jesus' arms in Heaven.  I've never seen such a little casket.  He was only 9 months old.  It is comforting to know that he's with Jesus in a new, perfect skin, but that still didn't easy the sting of our separation from him for the rest of our earthly days.  Please keep Karen and Alex (her other son) in your prayers.  Miguel, you will be missed for the time being, but praise the Lord, we will see you again someday!

What Is This??

 

A friend gave me this fruit(?) that someone gave to her.  I thought it was a watermelon, but when I cut it open it looked like this! 

I thought maybe it was an unripe watermelon, but when I smelled it and it smelled like cucumber!  I still don’t know what this is, but it definitely tasted like cucumber too, with a little bit of a jicama-y texture.  Any ideas of what this is?  It also had these huge, pumpkin-type seeds inside that had a very interesting taste to them as well.  I am baffled.

Tuesday Nights at La Gloria

We visit the church La Gloria two times a week, Sunday afternoons and Tuesday nights, for their church services.Both times I am in charge of the kids.Sundays I teach just the younger kids (the guys from the Bible Institute are teaching the older kids), and Tuesday nights I teach everyone.It’s been kind of difficult to keep the attention of these kids of all ages (20 or so kids from about 3 to 13 years old).It’s been tough to say the least, but more recently I’ve been trying to come up with some sort of craft or game that we can do together, but that can be adapted to any age.We’ve made collages from magazines about the different characteristics of God (strong, kind, loving, etc.),...

 ...we’ve done a fish puppet craft out of a paper bag when they learned about when Peter found the money in the fish’s mouth to give to the tax collectors, and we’ve had a tower building contest when they learned about the tower of Babel.

I’ve also decided to start having Bible story movie nights on the nights when I’m just too exhausted to teach or when I’ve had no time to prepare anything. The night we did that it went really well, I was so surprised how the 40 min cartoon was able to keep the attention of almost all the children for almost the entire film.

  

Oh What A Beautiful Morning!

I’ve been trying to go running in the mornings.  Here are some of the beauties that get me out of bed every morning :]

Aren't they cute??  So even though I kind of have to hold my breath and run really fast during this part, it's fun to say Buenos Dias to these little amigos :]

Windy Season

So, we have a windy season here in Mexico.  Needless to say, it is not our favorite time.  The wind comes and goes and yes it can be nice to help your clothes dry faster on the line, but if it hasn’t rained recently having dry clothes caked in dust is not worth it.  Also, you have to make sure you don’t just leave light things just lying around or not properly staked into the ground or else things like this will happen….

Whoopsies.

Learning to Let Go...

I am such a control freak! I try and think/hope that it's not really true, but it's times like these that I realize I REALLY am.

I get so weird about stuff that usually I would personally rather spend days or even weeks on a project doing it little by little by myself (so that I could make sure that everything was exactly how I'd imagined), rather than asking for help or allowing someone to help me.

But I know that this is not at all how God intended the body of Christ to be. He wants us to work together, to learn from each other, to grow in our patience, to ask for help and to offer help. He wants us to work together.

I knew that. And I also knew that painting the classrooms at La Gloria was something I wanted to do for the kids. But I also knew just how much more it would mean to them if they were able to be a part of it. And honestly, how much are they really going to care if there's a little green here and there on the white ceiling or if the brush strokes on the base boards are not perfectly parallel to the floor. They probably won't even notice. And look at their faces! They had a BLAST and kept asking for more and more jobs. Even after about 6 hours of painting they did not want to stop!

I personally learned SO much about patience, what really matters and what really doesn't, how much kids are capable of doing, when it is ok to say no to them, how helpful it can be to have kids to a base coat and then quickly go over it with a second coat, etc., etc., etc.

It ended up being SO much fun, not just for the kids, but for me too! I'm so glad that God moved my heart to accept help. It was totally worth it.