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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nOn Saturday the 2nd<\/sup> Pastor Isaias and his wife Sandi and their teenage son drove up to meet with us from Huichihuyan, about an hour or so south of Cd. Valles where we are staying. As I mentioned in the last posting, they are the couple that we hoped would take on the eyeglass ministry in the southern Huasteca region. We spent a lovely and very profitable afternoon with them and were able to show them the program and give them some rudimentary training in optical testing. They were very excited and are planning on establishing a vision ministry in Huichihuyan themselves and perhaps in the future even extending it by training others who can also carry forward the work. I believe that they are an intelligent couple who will use the ministry wisely and who will do a good job. I look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/IMG_0054.jpg\")
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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nTheir visit provided Theresa with an opportunity to field test some of her culinary delights as well in preparation for teaching her upcoming classes to the women in the nearby squatter\u2019s village of Buenos Aires. As I noted last time, almost none of these woman there have either ovens or refrigeration (and most don\u2019t even have a kitchen other than an open outdoor pit for a wood fire). Theresa\u2019s experimentation so far had produced several delicious cakes and deserts as well as lip-smacking pizza, all produced on the stovetop in fry pans. Isaias and Sandi, and especially Pablo, their teenage son showed the utmost appreciation for her creations \u2013 especially the pizza, which admittedly was worthy of any high-class pizza joint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Theresa and I will go to Huichihuyan next week sometime in order to assist Isaias and Sandi in setting up a day of actually seeing clients and setting up a clinic environment for the eyeglass work. They will need further training in the technical part of eye exams as well as setting up the actual running of a program. As always, their ministry will evolve over time and take on their own uniquely personal flavor, but I want to be very sure that they understand the technical mechanics how to properly test eyes before we leave the region. The rest can mature over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunday, unbeknownst to us was \u201cFamily Day\u201d in Mexico. We have a young family here in Cd. Valles that we have grown very close to, and whom I have known since Blanca was about ten years old. In fact, I had worked closely with her mother for many years in the medical clinics of past years where she was one of my close helpers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nWe invited ourselves to their place on Sunday after church in the morning, thinking to simply spend some time with the two of them and their two children. They graciously agreed and said that they would like to invite us out to a meal together with their family and that we would spend the day together. They took us out to a lovely fish restaurant nestled in the mountains to the west of the city and then after the meal explored the region with us all the way to Aquism\u00f3n and to the water springs at Tambaca where we enjoyed geography very different from Cd. Valles, only an hour or so to the north. I have always enjoyed that region because it is always much more lush that here in our area, receiving much more rain than here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, even though we didn\u2019t go to the actual waterfalls of Tamul this time with its usually breathtaking cascading fall of many hundreds of feet, we heard that presently there is absolutely no water coming over the falls due to the extensive drought that has affected the whole region for the past four or five years. We also heard that the waterfalls of Micos, a usual tourist destination closer to the city of Valles is now almost dry as well. What we have observed is that the Valles River which runs through the city is extremely low, almost to the point of disaster. At Tambaca we saw that the usually abundant torrents of water that normally gush out of the base of the mountain at the headwaters had completely dried up except for one or two little fountainheads partly downstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nPlease pray for rain. The region is close to disaster in many places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Monday was spent in preparation for Theresa\u2019s upcoming class on Tuesday, and in shopping for all of the supplies that she would need to teach it. Her ideas were established and her recipes were all written down and prepared and she was satisfied with the products that she had produced beforehand (as was I after enjoying her samples). We spent the evening visiting another young couple with their four handsome young boys and drove back home to try to get some sleep before the day began in Buenos Aires with the women there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday (yesterday) was a smashing success. There were about thirteen women in attendance at Theresa\u2019s all-day baking classes and amazing culinary delights were produced and happily consumed by the women and their children. Any of them who were able to read and write took notes; others watched or took pictures on their cell phones (or did both). Over the course of the day there were four pizzas produced, a \u201ctres leche\u201d cake, a chocolate iced vanilla cake, a pan of rice crispy squares, a pan of corn flakes squares, individual carlotas for each of the women, and caramel popcorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nBy the end of the very long and extremely hot day everyone was happy, full, and prepared to continue experimenting in their own homes. Most of the women in attendance were very new believers and a part of the little church which has grown up in Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/figure>\n\n\n\nLast evening after Theresa\u2019s marathon day of teaching we had a wonderful visit with another young family with whom we have connected over the years and came home very, very thankful that the little house that we are renting has an air conditioner in the bedroom. Yesterday the thermometer in our little Mazda indicated 39 degrees C. I don\u2019t know that this is the hottest that it has been since we arrived here in Mexico, but it is the first time that I have thought to note it specifically. Hot is just hot!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, as mentioned in the beginning, we must prepare to leave for a five-day missionary trip into the mountainous Pame region with Pastor Javier Santos where the little fledgling churches will be visited and encouraged in their faith, and the local leadership will be built up and encouraged. Javier and his ministry team make this trip every two weeks whenever possible. We are blessed to be able to go with them again today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We continue to ask for your prayers for us personally as well as for the ongoing work that it so faithfully moving forward here in this central region of Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your fellow laborers in Christ,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Steven and Theresa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blessings and greetings from both Theresa and I. Of necessity this will be a very short update since we must prepare to head out for the Pame region again shortly after noon and so far nothing is ready. Nonetheless, even though we will be gone for five days, for us personally it really only means […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4227"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4289,"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4227\/revisions\/4289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vitwministries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}