We went to church this morning at Houston’s 1st Baptist.  After that we were going to lunch with one of their missions specialists.  The cool thing was the entire service was focused on the nations and the need to bring the gospel to them.  I don’t think any of us GFM’rs made it through the worship time with a dry eye.  Super cool.  And a great way to remind us what the whole point of missions is.  Big time church too.  I think the entire AAC building could fit in their sanctuary.

Later on in the day we headed down to the Toyota Centre to watch the Houston Aeros play the Milwaukie Admirals.  The stadium was only 40% full.  At most.  So after the 1st period we tried to move down closer to the ice but we actually got stopped to show our tickets?  Really?  Are you losing revenue from us?  THOSE SEATS ARE EMPTY!

And don’t get me started on the promotions guy.  You know, the one who gets the mic and does all the giveaways, etc during play stoppages.  They’re annoying at best.  But this guy was incredible.  And not in the good way.  Actual statements out of his mouth.

Bark like a dog!

Make some noise!  (easily 100 times)

RYaoinfioa ishjc oaisjfiaosjcoasdjfsoidjfisodjfsidfjdoifjso!  (seriously, he just started making random grumbling noises)

Sir, just remember that many times, less is more.  Stop talking so much.

It was “bring your dog to the rink” night as well.  And one of the major sponsers was “Scoop le Poop”.  I think you can guess what kind of business they are.  And another sponsor of the team was “The Maple Leaf Pub”.  The logo: the Molson Canadian maple leaf.  Their motto: “When your drinking team has a hockey problem”.  And they apparently have the largest selection of Canadian beers in the city.  Hmmmm, probably not tough.  But boy oh boy do I want to go there.

To end the night we went to a restaurant/ arcade and played games for a couple of hours.  Good times.

We’re exhausted and heading to bed.  More meetings tomorrow.

/RD

Yes, it does smell in here.  But what do you expect when you get four guys in a small hotel room after eating at Chili’s?

Obviously I got into Houston last night.  Sat around at the airport for a couple of minutes waiting for my ride and then,

“There’s my Canadian brother!”

Right, I had forgotten I was the Canadian guy.  (No I hadn’t).

Although, I was actually betting on a Tommy Boy line.  We must’ve quoted that movie a million times last year.  And the fact that the airline ripped my bag got me prepared for “Ugh, did you spray that thing for bugs?”

But oh well.  Being the Canadian guy is what I am.  Besides, we’re in more of a Dumb and Dumber mood this weekend.  Which is good with the amount of farting going on around here.

Gotta be quick though.  Free breakfast downstairs and then we’re heading out to 1st Baptist for church this morning.  My first true mega-church experience.  Then we’re going to the Houston – Milwaukie AHL game tonight.  My first game in the US.  Since I don’t care for either team I am planning on finding the guys on both teams from Edmonton or Saskatchewan and ripping on them.  Should be fun.

So Windham, Dan, Grant, Chino, Ross and myself are hitting the town.  Look out Houston.  And plug your nose when you enter our room.

/RD

(the alternative title for this post was How I Survived Sharing a Double bed with Grant)

I’ve been a little tardy on posting.  Again.  I should really stop apologizing for not posting.  Although, perhaps I should start posting?  The issue is what to post.  I don’t want to write random, useless stuff.  Like how much I love the Calgary Flames (I do), or how much the cold is annoying me.  Which is silly crazy because I spent 30 years living in this arctic wasteland we call Alberta, then left for a winter and now cannot seem to stay warm.  Ugh.

So what are we up to right now?  Well, we’re excited to be starting a new something with a couple members of our church body.  What is it?  Well, that’s what we’re trying to figure out.

First, history.  When we left Airdrie last year to go to Tlaxiaco there were few to no Spanish speakers living here.  I know, there were some, but we had no connections to them.  But when we got back we found that the population had “boomed”.  We keep meeting new residents of Airdrie who come from Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica.  And even in the last couple of weeks at church we have been introduced to another few people who just came to Airdrie and walked through our doors.  Something is going on; the Spanish speaking nations are coming to our town.  (We’ll assume the answer for “Why?” is that there are jobs.  Which is true because a few different companies have actively sponsored their visas to bring them here.  Of course, the other answer to that question is also that God is bringing them here to us.  Cool)

So what do we do?  Well, we have a few young believers.  Some searchers and a pretty good number of “know nothing”ers.  Combine that with this unrepentant urge to plant house churches (thanks MTS) among the nations and you get an idea of what we are thinking.  And doing.

A couple of weeks back we gave it our first go.  Our teacher is a former missionary to/from Colombia.  We have a couple of “missionaries” (white people who are friends with our target culture) to assist.  And I think we have one very good and eager disciple.  The format is vague right now, but we figure it consists of eating together and practicing English and then studying the Bible together in Spanish.  Amongst all of that we want to build into these people a sense of community (or church) that will allow them to grow without our intervention.  And then we can watch them continue to reach out and grab any new arrivals to Airdrie.

The first go was interesting.  But we went.  The one guest was a little unprepared and a little uncomfortable when it came time to talk about the Bible.  He also has a mormon background so we were well aware of the spiritual oppression he must have been feeling.  Pray for “J”, he is definitely fertile soil.

This week, it looks like we’re going to take an evening and just spend some time in prayer and planning for this.  Decide on a loose format, talk out issues as leaders and just take an evening to get on the same page on what we’re doing and who we are targeting.  So pray for us as we pursue this.  We’re in this for God’s glory and for souls saved, and nothing else.

Oh ya, so what do we call it?  Bible study?  Outreach?  Church?  I’m going with church.  Simply because I can find no biblical reason to call it something else.  Forget the term church as a service, and remember that a church is a body or community.  Then it is easy!  So ya, we’re planting a church.  One focused on reaching the Spanish speaking community of Airdrie.  One focused on building community and love for God and each other.

Pray that Christ would build His church in this community.

/RD

Finally got a bunch of new pictures uploaded from our summer.  Go here to see them.

/RD

It’s been a while since we mentioned how our market days have been in town.  Frankly though, they’ve been a little uneventful.  There’s only so much action you can generate walking around a 4 block radius.  Sure, we have a fruit lady: Odelia.  She gives us grapes to munch on and helps us learn the names of various fruits.  Sure, we always stop and look at the movie selections and then remember that they’re all in Spanish.  I almost bought the Simpsons movie in Spanish.  I already have it in English but I think I should have it en espanol as well.  Perhaps next week.

But then I found the greatest thing I have ever seen in the market.  Something I haven’t had in 2 months, the item that was essentially my second most favourite treat besides Coke.  All the guys at work know what I’m talking about!  That’s right…

DONUTS!!!!!

And not the tiny little cake donuts that the good folks at Bimbo try to tell me are donuts.  I’m too smart for them.  I do love their futbol jerseys and will proudly have my wife walking around in one shortly though.

Oh ya, these were full size, actually a little bigger than Tim Horton’s (which isn’t tough any longer) and fresh baked (also unlike Tim’s).  5 pesos for one?  Um, yes please.  Next week, it’ll be a dozen.

But that wasn’t the main event this week.  The Diks family was heading into market for a two o’clock lunch date.  It was 1:30 and we first thought we should just take a cab.  Parking on market day is difficult at best.  Wait I need to emphasize that last statement.  It’s important.

PARKING ON MARKET DAY IS DIFFICULT AT BEST

OK.  We all on the same page?  Excellent.  Remember that.

Of course, being of less-than-sound mind I quickly ignore the thought to take a cab and decide that we can find a spot.  I’m a man!  I can find parking.  So we drive pee-van (still unwashed by the way) into town.  We head for the first location where we usually find a spot.  It’s a narrow (scratch that, what’s less than narrow?  Because that’s what this road is) street with enough space to park on one side and allow traffic past.

We get to the narrow road and there’s a spot!  Jackpot!  I park the van and then notice a, um, commotion behind us.  Some guy in a full size van is having difficulties making the turn and getting past us.  And there is a large lineup of taxis behind him.  Taxis don’t like to wait.  When they have to wait they honk.  Constantly.  Not a pretty sight.  Pee-van is quickly identified as the culprit, which is a false judgment but the easiest one.  I would have gone with “That guy shouldn’t be driving a full size van!”, but that’s just me.

In the end I relent and leave my parking spot and the less-than-narrow road.  Time to go find something else.

We head over to the other side of Centro (the centre) and turn down another road.  Hmmmmmm, there are a lot of wide open spaces on the left hand side of this awfully wide road.  Seems like a good parking spot.  Michelle agrees with me.

I need to emphasize this again.  First:

seems like a good parking spot

And probably more importantly:

MICHELLE AGREES WITH ME

So we park the van and get out.  There is a guy standing there.  I ask Michelle, “Should we see if it is ok to park here?”  Michelle answers “He’d tell us if it wasn’t ok.”  I agree.  I’m also hungry.  We walk away from the van.

So we have a delightfully good lunch, walk around the market, pick up some things and generally just feel good about the afternoon.  We’re loaded down with groceries and kids and decide it’s time to head back to pee-van.  So we head back to the street.  Once we get there we notice how empty it is on the left hand side.  Odd, but we must not be on the right block.  We’ll just head towards the right area.

We get there, no cars.  And not just no cars, more importantly the van is gone.  You heard correctly, pee-van is missing.  Michelle and I realize it right away, we’ve been towed.  Strangely we don’t react.  We both admit we kind of expected it.  It had been a really tough week/day and this was just bound to happen.  So we just turn around and head back to catch a cab home.  They’re really cheap too, 12 pesos for the trip.  Why didn’t we just take one into town?

Back at the base I try to find someone who knows where good vans go when they’re towed.  No one knows.  Um, really?  I’m the first?  In five years, I’m the first?  I find that hard to believe.  But I guess I am.  So all of you who get towed in Tlaxiaco in the future better thank me for paving the way.

One of the head guys, Dan, volunteers (although I don’t know if he was too pumped about it) to go in.  The biggest thing I needed was someone who spoke Spanish.  There was no way Michelle or I would be able to communicate this one on our limited abilities.

Dan and I head in to town.  We go back to where the van used to be; just to make sure that I’m not blind and/or mentally deficient.  Hey, it’s possible and it has happened before.  Nope, no van still.  So we go find a police officer.  We (um, in reality all talking was done by Dan) chat with them and they flag over some other cops.  Ones with big guns.  We (Dan) tell them the van is gone and they assume it is stolen.  We think.  They take down some info and call into the base.  Yup, they got it.  Towed.  I was a bad gringo.

We get escorted by two cops with M-16′s through the market to the President’s building.  Dan talks with a couple of people and soon (very soon!) I am handing over 100 pesos and signing a paper.  100 pesos is dirt cheap.

(I found out later that one of our Church Planting team saw my van get towed and headed over to talk to the same guys we did.  He smoothed over the offense and basically told them I’m an ignorant moron who didn’t know any better.  About right actually)

After paying the money we get escorted by another guy to a waiting police truck.  Dan and I get in and the police man takes us to the impound lot.  Dan has a good conversation with him during the ride.  I’d just like to mention that all of the other members of the MTS here choose to evangelize the various shop keepers and locals; Dan and I chose to talk to the municipal officials and the police.  Haven’t seen anyone else do that!

(quick note.  I just took a break from writing this to go have lunch.  Biscuits and gravy.  Yummy.  Why did I put this in?  ‘Cause I just felt that you needed to know)

So once we got to the impound lot, which was beside the fair grounds, we saw the van!  Whew, all in one piece.  And the fair looked cool.  You know all those traveling carnivals that go to mall parking lots and you look at the rides and realize that there is no way that you would ever allow one of your loved ones and yourself to get on the ride because it just can’t be safe with 50 years worth of grease, cotton candy and vomit sticking to it?  Well all the rides that are deemed unsafe for those are featured here!  Good times.

Back to the van.  We hand over some paperwork to prove that we paid the fine and we’re good to go.  I do a quick walk around and notice only one problem.  There is a puddle of fluid beside the front tire and on it.  Hmmmm, that can’t be good.  But Dan figures it out.  “You got peed on!”

Pee van got peed on again

I can’t believe that happened.  Again.  Why?  I don’t ask for much.  Good food, good friends and a van free from pee.  That should be my bumper sticker.  Or one that says “if you can read this I just got peed on”.  That would work as well.

So the van is back home.  It still isn’t washed.  I think the dogs now stay away because even they won’t sniff that thing now.

Good times.

/RD