Mexico – Page 12 – My Thought Spot

Fair at Xmatkuil

We went to the fair this afternoon. It is the state fair and lasts for 3+ weeks. We have been able to go to it every year since we have been here. That makes this our 4th time. While many of our friends despise the fair, we enjoy a few particular things there. This is the last week, so we had to get the 45 minute trip to the fairgrounds in today.

One of the things we like to do is ride some of the rides. Or, at least our children enjoy them. My wife and I are fans of big rides. These at the fair are quite tame for us. Our daughter is just three years old, so she is not into the thrill rides yet. She is perfectly happy on a merry go round or a train that just goes in circles. Our son’s tastes have matured over the years. This year he asked to be able to ride a roller coaster. He previously decided that he was not a roller coaster kind of person.

I like roaming around in the area where they sell trinkets. Not that we ever buy anything, but it is fun to see what kind of junk they are selling. We did get a cool “old time-y” picture done one year. I really wanted to do another one of those this year, but I never saw the man that does them.

We then wondered around in the hand crafts area along with the area for small animals. Our daughter was thrilled to see the chicks and ducks. Kids are so easy to entertain at this age.

We can remember each of our trips to the fair based on the mobility of our daughter. First trip she was just 6 months old. We carried her and pushed her in a stroller. The second trip she was still small enough to carry most of the time and she walked some. Last year she was on a leash, but walked on her own. This year she ran around like she owned the place. She was still bouncing of the walls when we left after 3.5 hours of playing around.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great day with friends. The morning started with football. Not the kind you watch, but the kind you play. A group of 17 men and boys gathered at one of the local parks for some touch football. We left the ladies and girls to put the finishing touches on the food for the feast we were going to have later in the day.

When we got to the park we were surprised to see that it was quite full with school students competing in a nationwide track and field event. This is not really a park as much as it is a full sports complex. There is a soccer stadium along with baseball diamonds, tennis, racquetball, and handball courts. There are also a couple of weight rooms, gymnastics rooms and a 1 kilometer dirt track that goes around the inside of the surrounding wall. Many other sports types are practiced and competed at this complex.

After we found a place to play ball (the outfield between two baseball diamonds), we had a great time. No one was seriously injured.

Before the ball game I had gotten my desert ready to go in the oven. I made a braided coffee cake sweet bread. I was super pleased with the way it turned out. I got it all ready to go up to the final rise. My wife then tossed it in the oven for me to bake while we were playing ball. She still had her carrot cake to ice, corn and sweet potato casserole to cook and potatoes to smash. She stayed busy while we had a fun time.

When we got to the other missionary’s house, we unloaded our loot and added it to the feast. We had 10 families consisting of 48 people, if my count is correct. Each family was to bring a desert. I know several who brought two. That means there were at least 15 different cakes, pies, cookies, fudge, sweet breads and other sweet goodies to wash down the 3 huge turkeys and fixin’s.

We then sat around and talked and watched football for the next several hours while the kids ran around in the back yard. For some reason the kids were hungry and wanted more food before we left while the adults will be satisfied for a few days to come.

Here’s to wishing you a happy Thanksgiving as well as a wonderful holiday season to come.

Church dedication

The reason I took the wild bus ride to Tampico was to take part in an exciting week at one of the other Deaf churches here in Mexico. This is a church that was started by an American missionary who is also Deaf himself. The church celebrated their 8th anniversary this week as well as ordained their new pastor. He took over as pastor during the week. The missionary will be with him a few more weeks and then will be leaving Mexico to visit his supporting churches and pray about where God would have him go next to start a new work.

I had a great time in Tampico. I met several people from First Coast Baptist Church, including the pastor. Pastor Edwards and family were missionaries to Kenya. I was able to grab an interview from him and his wife for Missionary Talks. There were also a few of their Deaf from church along with an interpreter and her husband. A couple of other special guests were there. One participant was Allen Snare. I did not know he was going to be there. Allen has been a good friend of mine since back when we both had much more hair, almost 20 years. Because of our ministries, we have never spent more than a week at a time together and we always spend a lot of time catching up on each other’s work.

During the week’s activities we had an opening service in which close to 50 attended. There was even one service early in the week where we had about 75 people. This church normally has 20 to 40 people in attendance on a regular basis.

The church was also celebrating their 8th anniversary. I was able to be at their 5th anniversary a few years back and have built a good relationship with the people.

The missionary, Jim Walterhouse, who started the church was pleased to have the building completed. It is not totally done, but it is very usable. The church people now have a building that they can work on to completion. While we were there we applied plaster and paint to some of the walls. I took part in some wiring and plumbing to help get ready for the weekend.

The final major activity of the week was the ordination of the new pastor. I was honored to be a part of Francisco’s ordination counsel. We were not able to go through the legal paperwork this week to officially organize the church. Otherwise, we would have also done a church vote and installation of Francisco as the pastor. As it is (and this is just a technicality) he is the pastor of the mission. Until it is officially a church, they will not vote on him as pastor.

I got to spend some time in downtown Tampico. In my many trips to the city (more than 10), I have never had the chance to roam around downtown. It was fun to hit the tourist market. I spent so much time interpreting for all the other visitors that I forgot to do any shopping of my own. I would have liked to pick up a few gifts for my kids. Our part of Mexico is so different from the rest that there are neat souvenir items that the kids would have enjoyed. I guess I will have to go back again.

The missionary there will be leaving the church completely to Pastor Francisco by the end of the year. I will still be back there on a regular basis though and keep up a good relationship with the church. I have only known Francisco since July, but we have built a friendship with one another personally. He is planning to spend a week with us and our ministry in the spring.

53 hours on a bus

I have a pile of stories to share from my 53 hours on buses this last week.

It took 27 hours to go from Mérida, Yucatán to Tampico, Tamaulipas, México. The return trip was just 26 hours. I won’t bore you with all the details in one post, but will try to pick some of the highlights to share over a little bit of time.

I was going up to Tampico for a church’s 8th anniversary. We also did quite a few things in the packed weekend. We held an ordination counsel for the new pastor and a special service. I have been through all of that as the one being ordained (yes, I am Rev. dpeach). But this was the first time I have gotten to sit on a counsel and fire off the questions. We also did some final work on the building hooking up the water and installing some bathroom fixtures. There was quite a bit of final plastering work and painting that went on during the week as well. I managed to be involved in more administrative tasks this week and skipped out on the painting. A good thing since I did not take painting clothes with me.

The trip up was to be a straight trip on one bus. The first bus had a leak in the roof’s emergency exit and had to be traded out when the rain started. I never knew what the problem with the second bus was, but we eventually moved to a third bus. They were all very nice buses and therefore I did not mind the move.

We stopped 11 times on each trip, up and back. These were mostly short stops of 30 minutes or less. That is pretty good compared to my time on Greyhound buses that stop at every dinky town.

The trip home was not as enjoyable as far as the bus equipment was concerned. To start with, the bathroom door, though it would latch, it would not lock. There had been a repair done to the door jamb that necessitated the disabling of the lock system.

After trying to use the bathroom and hold the door closed (in case someone tried to barge in), I tried to wash my hands. A push of the water spout resulted in one drop of water falling out of the faucet. There were no paper towels and the toilet paper supply was pitifully low.

At my seat, the dome lights did not work. One of my goals on this trip was to catch up on a good bit of reading. I ended up spending a few hours reading with a flashlight. I was thankful that I thought to bring one.

The air conditioning on all the buses was too cold. So cold, in fact, that I wore a thick T-shirt, a long sleeved dress shirt and a sweatshirt. I still froze. I had planned to bring an extra pair of socks to wear on my hands as mittens for the trip back home, but forgot to grab them out of my suitcase. I moved around to 3 different seats that were available at any given leg of the trip and all of them had broken vent cut-offs. It was miserably cold.

Did we get to change buses on the trip down? No. Not even after someone bathed the bathroom in puke. They simply cleaned it up at one of our stops and we kept going.

Even though the trip was one hour shorter on the way home, it seemed much longer.

I am in touch with the earth

I at least have an earth ground anyway.

Today my electrician friend and I ran a ground wire from my electrical box all the way to my office. It would be nice to think that my house has grounded electricity, but alas, it does not. I have been battling with wonky electricity since we have been in this house the last year and a half. Of particular difficulty has been with recording. I get a lot of electrical noise through the computer and the mixer.

I couldn’t convince my friend to let me run a grounding rod outside my office and just tie onto that. He insisted we go all the way to the electrical box. I am sure he is right and I am better off for it, but it sure seems like a lot of work. I think any ground has to be better than what I had. He was not persuaded.

So now (after several hours of work) I am in touch with the earth. Well, this is making one huge assumption. We assume that the electrical box is grounded. We were able to determine that our neighbors (on both sides) had good earth grounds, but were not able to run the definitive tests we needed at my house. Here’s to hoping!