A Good Morning to You To!!
I feel like Theresa and I are floundering with broken wings in the information age. Have you ever seen the histrionics of a whippoorwill with its wild and daring broken-wing display as you approached too close to its nest? That would be Theresa and me at present.
We arrived back to Cd. Valles on the 5th of November to a very, very busy household. However, we also arrived back to no internet connection – hence, the feeling of flapping wildly with a clipped wing. Our lifeline to the outside is 100% through the internet. Things run differently as soon as you cross the border into Mexico. One cannot so easily simply pick up the phone and call. There has been a rather roaring silence from our end.
We still are not completely back on line. We can get on sometimes, but within minutes we get kicked off line. Oh well…hopefully we can eventually get this hiccup resolved as well.
It has been a long time since my last entry, and for that I apologize. I have meant to keep much more current, but there have been several things which have prevented this over the past two months.
Our Latest House Guest
Of course, as you all know, Theresa and I were back in Manitoba for several weeks. Due to our haphazard internet access from our Manitoba apartment, and our rather less-than-consistent schedule while there, some things fell by the wayside. Emails and blogs were some of the things that were moved aside and took second priority.
As I already mentioned, Theresa and I arrived back to Cd. Valles two weeks ago to an even larger than normal whirlwind. Things always move at a rather intimidating pace around here on a normal day. However, this time we also arrived to a houseful waiting for us. Winston Penner, and Cleo and Char Yoder – teachers for the Project L.A.M.B.S. Bible School – had arrived in Cd. Valles a week before us. We had told them that we were coming later than originally planned so that we could be with James and Jessica when they received Jessica’s oncology report on the 29th of October. This was no problem with them, but it did put a finite deadline on our return.
Everyone was fine when we got here, and I would venture to say that we were only marginally missed at all.
Theresa and I both spent the first couple of days upon returning in cleaning and reorganizing everything in the staff apartments. It is amazing how much dust and dirt accumulated over the weeks that we were gone. Also, since we had moved many of the household things into our bedroom for storage while we were gone, we needed to reorganize everything simply in order to use our room again.
LAMBS Graduates
The two weeks of Project L.A.M.B.S. courses went extremely well. Fred Erb also arrived on the 9th of November, and the teachers were very busy in both teaching and taking care of administrative business related to the continuation of the program. A beautiful graduation was held on the 13th for L.A.M.B.S. students, as well as for the graduating student of Instituto Biblico Interdenominacional Luz le las Naciones.
LAMBS Graduate with Certificate
Theresa and I took Cleo, Char and Winston over to Tampico on Sunday so that they could catch their plane home on the following early morning flight – the only one north daily. The 100 mile trip to Tampico sounds easy until you know what the roads are like. There are many bone rattling and suspension wrecking potholes and “topes” along the way.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week we spent hours in meetings with Ezequiel, Veronica, Fred, Theresa and I. We had a years worth of business to plough through, and future plans and visions to develop for the continuation of the work of Voice in the Wilderness Ministries here in Cd. Valles. It went well, but as meetings always
Meetings in Progress around Steven and Theresa's Kitchen Table
go – it was draining and left one exhausted at the end of the day. None-the-less, we covered much ground, and I believe that we all felt that much has been accomplished.
The result of all of this though, is that I now have a ton of work to do to get everything organized and into proper order. I took a picture of the state of my work desk as it appeared this morning. I am beginning, slowly, to hack my way towards the bottom of the mess. There is much to do in the weeks and months ahead, and things are exciting and moving in a good direction. It is obvious that God is moving, and that much is happening. I will try to keep you informed along the way.
Apparently things have been fairly stable here in Cd. Valles while Theresa and I were gone. However, the same is not necessarily true for the nation in general. Yesterday I took Fred Erb to the airport in Tampico to catch his early morning flight back to Canada. Since we needed to leave at 3:00 am in order to be there in time to catch his flight, I dropped him off at the airport and headed to the Burger King parking lot which was close by, and got a couple of hours of shut-eye so that I would not fall asleep on the drive home. I was awakened to the very close staccato of semiautomatic gun fire just around the corner from where I was sleeping. Apparently there was a shoot-out in process at about 8:45 in the morning in Tampico, and I just happened to be where the action was taking place. People were running for cover and waiting out the gunfire. After it was all over I got out of the van to look around a bit, and someone yelled that there had been a shootout (no kidding), and that I should get out of Dodge fast. I decided to take his advice, and drove off without any further incidents. I made it home without any more excitement except the horrifically bad road to keep me entertained.
Tomorrow Ezequiel and Veronica leave for a ministry conference in Merida, Yucatan. This will certainly be a grueling bus ride for them – I suspect it will be at least thirty hours of not-so-comfortable sitting to get there, and then the same to get back.
There is much to report, and much to look forward to. It is exciting, and the coming months and year ahead promise to be busy and blessed.
I will keep you informed…
