Everyone can now rejoice.  There are a bunch of pictures posted up in our gallery section.  Just go visit the Tlaxiaco November 2008 section.

Click here to go to the pictures…

Quick summary of what you’ll see:

1. We took two road trips in the space of a week and a half.  First to Oaxaca City (about 2 hours away) to pick up our 180 day tourist visas.  The next trip was to Pharr, Texas (22 hours away) to cancel these visas and then get new 180 day visas to last us the remainder of our trip.

2. Early one morning Oso and his family woke up to a couple of inches of grey water (sink and shower drainage) on their floor.  It was discovered that the apartment drainage system had clogged and backed up into their place.  So we spent the next eight hours locating the pipe (ya, it seriously took us that long to find the right pipe) and then another four hours repairing it and the two sewer pipes we, um, located with a pick axe during the search and rescue process.  The one phrase you didn’t want to hear all day “Found It!  But I’ve got some bad news…”  Needless to say the pipes are now marked.

3. American Thanksgiving – Did you know that they celebrate Thanksgiving in the US?  Although it is quite late, kind of close to Christmas don’t you think?  Well, just to make the Canadians look bad (we LOVE 2nd place in Canada) the Americans held their own party.  And we played football and ate too much.  Sounds a lot like Canadian thanksgiving.  Chelsey took all the football pictures and did a great job.

4. House building – a few of us went to finish building a house for a lady in one of the local churches.  Not a large place (it is Mexico) but it is a nice location.  Sorry, no pictures of the outside as I was working too much.  Stop laughing.

And then some random pictures of the centro area in Tlaxiaco and of the kids and family.  And some of the crazy goose that used to attack us but once I almost hit it with the van it decided to start protecting our van from everyone else.  No more pee-van!  We have a guard goose.  (And I think it is also using it as a strategic place to protect his mate who is sitting on a nest across the road.  But mostly protecting us)

Enjoy!

/RD

We’re back home in Tlaxiaco.  And it does feel like home.  It’s just nice to be back.  And that was way too much driving in that short of a period.  I’ve done that much before (more really) but this was a little different.  I suspect that it was because of the round trip nature. And that it was for a silly reason (renewing our visas).  And oh ya, Katria spent the last two days screaming.  And that girl can SCREAM.  I guess it is understandable when you are pushing through 5 teeth and sitting in car seat for 4 out of 5 days and 12+ hours each day.  Ya, I think we would all scream.

But what an easy trip overall.  We prayed for a couple of key things:

1. Vehicles to run – Both us and the Windhams (www.windhamsinoaxaca.blogspot.com) were driving up in our vans and loaded with our familys (and Lindsay from Red Deer!)  We did not want a break down and PRAISE THE LORD both vans ran perfectly.  We gave them each an oil change in Texas as a thank you.  David washed his van too.  He obviously loves his van more than we love ours.

2. Kids to survive – Windhams have 4 kids (ya, I know.  That’s a lot) and we have three.  That’s a lot of kids and a lot of time in the vans.  Only 1 car sickness that I heard of and overall all the kids rocked.  Except for the screaming Katria thing which we already discussed.

3. Police to leave us alone – In certain areas of the trip, gringos like us are not appreciated.  I don’t know why.  They may see a lot of the ignorant ones and just decide to stereotype them all and then attempt to take whatever they can from them.  Usually money.  From just north of Poza Rica to just north of Tampico is a pretty annoying place to drive as a gringo.  The roads are brutal and you’re always watching for cops while they watch for you.  If they can, they will pull you over for an “infraction” and make you pay the “ticket” even though they never present a piece of paper.  Really?  I didn’t know it was a law that you can’t drive a black van in the right lane on Saturdays.

But the police left us alone for the most part.  There were a few examples of them pulling someone else over just in front of us, or somehow completely not seeing us even though we were right in front of them.  Total God thing from what we could percieve!  The two times we actually spoke to the police they let us go through with no issues.  And one of the times we deserved a ticket!  I owe David big for that.  Even the military overall didn’t bother us much.  Usually they pull us over every time and make everyone get out.  This time we only got pulled over twice and I was the only one that had to get out at one of them.  The other time they chatted for about 1 minute and then let us go.

So we got our visas for another 6 months, which is exactly how much time we have left here.  No super duper funny stories.  It was sure nice to spend an hour on the beach this morning though.  We dipped our feet in the Atlantic ocean today, and in three weeks we will be at the Pacific.  Cool.

OK, one reasonably silly story.  We’re on our way this morning planning to find a restaurant for food.  I am not very good at choosing places down here and I radio back (oh ya, we were using CB’s to talk) to David that he can feel free to choose a place and tell me to stop.  He radios to me “Sure.  Uh oh, you’re getting waved over.”

Sure enough, there is a guy in the middle of the road in what appears to be an official uniform pointing at me and waving me to the side of the road.  He also points at David and waves him to the side.  So we pull into the lot and park, expecting to have to talk our way out of a situation.  Except that we’re parked in front of a restaurant.

And that’s not a police uniform, he’s a waiter.  Oh.  I guess we’re supposed to eat here!  Good breakfast though!  The manager spoke good english and insisted on translating for us (we could have gotten our orders in without him, seriously!).  We found out he learned English in Milwaukee of all places.  Good times, and kind of funny how I declared I suck at picking restaurants so God just waved us into one.  What did He know that we didn’t?  Probably something cool, He is God after all.

American Thanksgiving at the base tomorrow.  They have to outdo Canadian Thanksgiving last month.  They should pull it off since there are more of them and they had more time to plan.  And all the stuff we just brought to them.  I don’t care, I’m eating pie tomorrow!

/RD

Oh ya, some other stuff to update people on.

1.  THE HOUSE IS RENTED!  We got a renter in place this week.  Total God thing we believe as the renter and situation we got just appears to be inspired by Him.  Thanks for everyone’s prayer in this.

2. Fundraising – is coming along very well.  We still need more support to be able to pay for monthly expenses and tickets home.  But we know God will provide.

3. Oaxaca trip last week – the trip went really well and we got the work done that we needed.  And we got to eat at BURGER KING!  Yummy.  The pictures are on the camera and will get posted.  How many times have I said that and then never posted them?  I’m going to guess about 4.  I will get them up one day though.

4. Base sewage and other plumbing – we got to spend 12 hours (a couple of days before our 22 hour drive to Texas) locating (harder than you think), digging out, breaking (oops) and fixing some sewer and grey water lines for the base.  That was a long day of “worship”  Pictures forthcoming (that’s #5)

/RD

Up at 1:30 AM in Tlaxiaco, Mexico.  Arrive at 11:00 PM in Pharr, Texas.  Nothing but driving in between.  That was our day yesterday.  With three kids no less.  And we survived.  Are we stronger because of it?  Not a chance.  Did we get a hot breakfast and all the hot water showers we wanted today?  YES!  Do we have to drive back tomorrow?  Yes.

At least we’re taking two days to get back this time.  Not as insane.

So ya, we’re in Pharr, Texas today.  Since Mexican immigration wouldn’t give us a long term missionary visa we needed to leave the country to cancel our tourist visa and get a new one.  They are only valid for 180 days so our next visa (getting it tomorrow) will last us till the end of our time down here.  Seems worth it to drive all that way for just a silly piece of paper.  Right?

The drive was an amazing example of how God answers prayer.  The Mexican police (not the military) are legendary for their, um, treatment of gringos.  They don’t like us.  Especially in a couple of specific areas.  But a lot of people prayed that the police would be blind to us, and they sure appeared to be as such.  Or there were specific times where we could see they had just pulled someone else over and they couldn’t get us.  There was one time where we were about to turn into a legendary area for police action and we saw some waiting.  So we stopped for a minute to decide what to do, then watched them drive away.  But not just drive away, they pulled out, faced us for about two minutes and then drove away.  It was like they didn’t notice us at all but how could you not notice two vans full of gringos?  So ya, really cool how much God was with us.

The kids were also fantastic.  How do three kids (and 4 in our friends van) all just stay happy all day when stuck in a van?  God, that’s how.  And yes, God did give us DVD players in our vans.

Today we’re just relaxing by the pool, doing some shopping and just plain enjoying being able to flush toilet paper down the toilet for a day.

/RD

Thank you to all who have recently given funds to us.  They are extra needed this week as we have to make a couple of long distance trips.

First, we are going to Oaxaca City on Wednesday to pick up our tourist visas.  We had applied for a longer term missionary visa but that was denied.  So our tourist visas are still needed.  Please pray for safety on the drive and a quick visit to the immigration office.

Next, since our tourist visas will not last our entire time down here (they are only for 180 days) we will need to leave the country and then reenter to get a new 180 days.  To do that we are packing the family up this weekend (leaving at 0100 Saturday morning) and driving non-stop to Texas.  It’s about a 20 hour drive and we plan to go all the way in on shot.  So hopefully we will be there by late evening.  Please pray that our vehicles (we’re going up with another family carvan style) will run perfectly, that there will be no run ins with the local police (they can be interesting) and that there will be no troubles at the border going into the US or coming back into Mexico.

Thanks everyone.

/RD