As many of you may know, Erma, the woman that I had be living and working with over the past year and a quarter, passed away. Here’s the email I sent out from her office account the morning of her passing.
“It is with great sadness, but inexplicable peace, that I report to all of you that this Easter morning around 8AM, Erma went to be with the Lord. She was walking up to the early morning Easter Service for the Mission Church and other surrounding churches at the top of a hill in Valle Tranquilo. On the way up, she had a heart attack and was not able to be resuscitated by the doctor, Pastor Avitia. As we kept saying, what better way and time for her to go than serving the Lord on the day we celebrate His resurrection and life. Please keep her family and friends and all the people that she has touched down here with her life in your prayers. What a great example she has been to all of us, serving the Lord to her dying day. I can hardly believe it’s true.”
Even though I had moved out from the foundation, I still saw Erma at least once a week either at the Mission Church or at our friend Hector’s church. For Easter, Erma had offered to let Hector’s church use her bus to transport the congregation to Valle Tranquilo for the sunrise service. I picked up my friend Carmen and met them down at the church. As I loaded the bus, I saw Erma and greeted her with a smile and a handshake (she was sitting or else we would have hugged). She seemed very happy that morning. I remember that morning before I got there, I had kept praying that things would not be awkward between us. God answered my prayer. Anyways, once we arrived at Valle Tranquilo, I hurried up the mountain with some of the kids. About 15 minutes later, I saw some unusual commotion with Victor, Hector, Pastor Avitia, and some other people. I wondered what was going on, but was not too concerned. Then Victor came over to me and in his broken English said, “Erma is dying.” The way he said it, I thought I had misunderstood him. I said, “What?” “Erma is dying,” he answered. But how could that be? I had JUST seen her 15 minutes earlier and she was completely fine! “Wait, what??” I tried to clarify. “Erma is dying. We need to go.” When I saw the looks on some of the faces around me, I realized it was true. The next thing I know one of the women came over to me and hugged me and was saying, “Se murio, se murio,” “She died, she died.” I was unsure if she was dying or had already died, so I went over to where I saw some people (including Victor) loading into Hector’s van to drive down the hill. They had confirmed that she had died. I asked if there was anything I could do to help and they asked if I wanted to come with them. So I jumped in the van as well. As we headed down the hill and off the the mortuary where they had already driven Erma’s body, Victor said one thing I could do to help would be to go back to Erma’s house and start making calls to tell her family and then send out an email to all her contacts to inform them of what happened. WOW. Me?? Call her children and let them know that their mother has died?? It was really weird though, I kept feeling like I should be nervous, I should be trying to get out of that hefty responsibility, I should be trying to run away from this, but no. God gave me an inexplicable peace and strength to suck it up and do it.
We arrived at the mortuary where my friend, Carmen, was sitting next to Erma’s body in the car in which she was driven to the mortuary. I went over to comfort Carmen and hold her hand as she held Erma’s hand. This part was a little scary for me. I had never seen a dead person before, let alone someone I knew, but I knew I had to be there for Carmen. We just stayed there for about a half an hour crying, holding hands, and talking about how this was the perfect day and perfect way for her to go. A little while later, it was decided that there was nothing else Carmen and I could do there to help, so we headed back to Erma’s to start making calls. I was having a difficult time getting a hold of anyone since it was Easter Sunday morning. I finally got ahold of Michael, Erma’s grandson whom I’ve met, and told him the news. He couldn’t believe it and even thought I was joking. It was really sad, but I’m glad it was Michael, someone I knew, that I got to tell. From there, he said that he would get ahold of his mom, Judy, and they would tell the rest of the family. After all the family had been informed, I sent out the above message to the rest of Erma’s email contacts. It was a long day, but Carmen stayed by my side all day and God gave me the strength and peace to get through it and to do what I need to and could do to help.
The following day, my wonderful friend, Hannah, volunteered to drive up to the states with me to go pick up Judy, Paul, Michael, and his fiancé, Renee. On the way up, we found ou
The following day was the other funeral service which was followed by the ca
She was a wonderful woman who had done wonderful things for the Lord. She touched a lot of lives. This has been very evident this past week.
Praise the Lord! May this glorify His name.
I still love her and am praying for her ministry. It was just my time to go.
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.
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 
