CatrachoLandia...

Here are just a few pictures of my Christmas here in Honduras!

Singing in the choir on Christmas Eve...

The kids' part of the service...

And my brother Franklin and I enjoying some Christmas presents (I didn't get a mask for Christmas, I was just borrowing Ivan's!)

Christmas Banquet

Stepping back a little over a week, I have some pictures from our youth group Christmas banquet at Horizonte Queretaro!

The banquet was an evangelistic event - we asked the youth from churh to please invite a non-Christian friend. We figured about 35 or 40 from our church would come, and that maybe 10 would invite a friend. When it came time to buy food and stuff, we had 94 people registered to come!! 85 actually came!

Here are several of the university girls:

Aide, Ana, Whitney, and I

My good-looking little sister Gaby, and little brother Roberto

And, me with friends Dany, Ana, and Kike (KEE-kay)
It was a fun night!

"Home" Number 2

Greeting from Honduras! I arrived safely here sunday afternoon, and am staying with my wonderful Honduran family! I don't have much of a plan for my time here other than relax and hang out with friends and family. I'll be here until January 8.
Hasta luego!!

And Some Good Mexican Food...

... to tide me over while I'm in Central America!!

I actually took pictures of some of my favorite foods here (yeah, I know, I'm kind of lame...)

Here's my very very favorite food - it's called a gringa! The gringa is on the right, it's a big lump of white cheese and BBQ pork all melted together, and some places even add pineapple. It's eaten in flour tortillas. It's really really yummy!
I didn't get a picture of "mole" (MO-lay) which would be my next favorite food... It sounds kind of sick, it's chile sauce mixed with chocolate. It's usually eaten over chicken, or used instead of enchilada sauce!

Here is a "Guajolote" (wah-hoh-LOW-tay), or also called "pambazo" in outher parts of the country. It's a big sandwich. The bread is dipped in really yummy sauce and toasted on a grill. It is filled with meat (I like pork, chicken, or chorizo sausage), lettuce, tomato, beans, jalapeños, and cream. Definitely a good choice in mexican food!
And here's one that would make "health fanatics" cringe even more than the first two foods - the "Elote" (ei-LOW-tay). It's corn on the cob. Now, corn on the cob is pretty good for you - here they serve it boiled or roasted. However, when you eat it the mexican way is when it starts the arteries a'cloggin'. First you put on butter. Then mayonaise. Roll it in shredded white cheese. Squeeze on some lime juice, and sprinkle on some chile powder. There you have your cooked mayonaise on a stick! No really, it's really tasty! The one in the picture was bought on the side of the road out in the boonies. It's the best elote place!!
And I'm sure you're familiar with tamales, but you've probably eaten them with chicken or pork and spicy sauce. I like them like that too. However, since tamales are commonly eaten for breakfast, I usually acompany my chicken and green sauce tamal with a sweet tamal! The pink think in the picture is indeed a tamal. It's stawberry flavored with raisin. My favorite is pineapple flavored! We had gringos here when we were eating these particular tamales at church, and there were two guys looking at the tamales and thought the pink ones looked gross. but I gave them a taste, and they also liked them better than the meat ones! The women were afraid to try the sweet ones... they missed out...

Next Sunday, I'm off to the world of "ketchup is the spiciest thing we can eat." HONDURAS!! I'm very excited about going there... there are even foods there that I enjoy, even though they aren't super flavorful. Looking especially forward to baleadas (flour tortillas with beans, scrambled eggs, and melted cheese), pupusas (gorditas to mexicans, or corn meal patties stuffed with cheese, meat, or beans), and cuajada - my favorite Honduran food (salted curdled milk that's hardened enough to cut with a knife! No, I'm not kidding...).

I probably won't be updating this blog for another 2 weeks or so, so enjoy the 4 posts I did today!!

Merry Christmas!!

State Fair!

The State Fair of Queretaro is going on right now, and I went last night! I unfortunately didn't take my camera in with me, so I have one picture... of us in the car leaving. There are two GIGANTIC expo center-type buildings (think two buildings that dwarf the Jackman-Long at the Oregon State fair) full of really cheaply priced goods! I bought some earrings for less than half the price that they sell them for in the Centro. We (Brisa, Lluvia, Justin, Dany, Aide, Shultz, and I) beat our way through the crowds for about 3 hours of shopping. Then, we hit the rides. I don't think I've been on fair rides in at least 8 years, and 8 years really ages you a lot!! I can't handle rides like I used to! But it was very fun! And, of course, the yummy greasy fair food was WAY overpriced, and Im not supposed to be eating it anyways, so I limited myself to an apple-flavored pop. Fair food in Mexico = french fries, hamburgers & hotdogs, corn on the cob (with mayo, cheese, and chile!), stuffed churros (Mmmm!!), pancakes (yes, pancakes!) potato chips with salsa, and fruit popsicles covered in chile powder. Anyhow, even without food, it was really fun!!

(the picture is Brisa, Aide (eye-day) and me)

And the Winner Is...

CHIVAS!!!!!!!

The Mexican League soccer final was yesterday, and my favorite teams, Guadalajara Chivas, were in it. And they WON! And it was against my LEAST favorite team - Toluca!

Here is my probable new favorite Chiva - Omar Bravo.

Omar and Bofo

Bofo with my as-of-right-now favorite Chiva - Oswaldo Sanchez

Unfortunately, it is very likely that Oswaldo will be moving to Tigres of Monterrey. Such is life.

Where Do I Live??

For those of you who have always thought that it never really gets very cold in Mexico, this picture is for you! heehee! This is me before leaving for my spanish class last week - I leave at 7:15am, and it is COLD. Not as cold as it is in Oregon, but considering that we have NO HEAT in our house, and I have yet to be in ANY building that does have heat, once it drops below about 45 degrees, it gets rather uncomfortable! About 3 weeks ago, there was actually frost on the ground, and people here say that they'd never seen frost in QRO before (although most of the people who live here who I know are originally from Mexico City...) Anyhow, it was dumb of me to leave the majority of my winter clothes in my parents' house... I bought the scarf/hat/gloves here! I like the weather here, it's kind of unpredictable!

Queretaro Nativity

For some reason, I have a fixation with Nativity scenes, Latin American style.
A few weeks ago, to my great joy, they put up a life-sized nativity scene in one of the plazas en downtown QRO. So I had to take some pictures...

Here is the Jesus' birth scene:
And, like all large nativity set-ups in Mexico/Central America, it also includes more scenes possibly based on Bible stories, as well as a typical village scene from the country.

Here are Mexican children doing piñata in their village:

And here is Bernal QRO/creation... Not sure how a lion and girraffe got in QRO...

The three wise men coming to see Jesus: (in latin america, the wise men have names, which I don't remember, and one comes from the middle east with his camel, another from china with his horse, and another from india with his elefant)

And, they put up a "hell" scene too. Not my favorite.

Super Super Heroes - Part 2... And My Not-so-super Immune System

We finished off our SuperHero series in youth group this past saturday with a lesson on Daniel. The hommade video this week was so funny, I thought we were going to have to bring in oxygen for the youth group kids they were laughing so hard! Ok, not really about needing oxygen...

So here are our 5 heroes: La Mole (the big guy from Fantastic 4) - Adiel, Superman - Alex, Spiderman - Dany, BatMan - Justin, and SuperWoman - Whitney.


Now on to a not so fun subject. My failing health. Ok, not really, I'll be fine. But I have had a rather bad illness apparently since september, it just kept reappearing, and I thought I was just getting sick a lot. Nope. But now, after two weeks straight of being sick, I'm on the road to recovery. On Thanksgiving day, I was diagnosed with Salmonella, but sent to get blood work done just to make sure. Yesterday, I went back to the doctor to find out that it was really Typhoid (Salmonella is a type of Typhoid). Thankfully, I had been immunized against Typhoid in 2002, but the vaccination only lasts 3 years. I had enough still in me to keep the illness to a minimum. I feel alot better, but will be on a diet for the next two weeks, and anyone who knows me knows that I'm NOT a diet person. I'm a "street-tacos, ice cream, and pizza" person. I think I'm up to par with being a healthy Mexican now though - I got a new Typhoid vaccination (a must for living here...), and will get "de-parasited" every 6 months. Thats a nice thought, now isn't it! heehee!

All in all, I should be feeling better in the next few days, be ready to eat normal things in two weeks, and I'll be off to Honduras December 17!! Of course being very careful as to what I eat...

Thanksgiving!

Although rather ill, I was able to spend Thanksgiving Day with a bunch of other "gringos!" There were about 25 of us in one house, eating all the goodies of Thanksgiving! I thought that I was the only non-southerner gringa here in Queretaro, but there is a couple from Indiana who I'd never met before... Needless to say, there were a few dishes at the meal that I'd never heard of before, like cornbread dressing (apparently an essential to Thanksgiving dinner), and congealed (CON-gee-old) salad, which is like a creamy jello fruit dish.

Here is our potluck spread:

And one of the three tables we had set up:

Me with the other young gringas - Stephanie, Laura, and Mary.

And to finish off the evening, we sang hymns - IN ENGLISH together!

I ate pumpkin pie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was a great day!!

Part Two

Another full week with a short term team from NPCC in Atlanta!

This team from North Point helped us host a "GroupLink" which is a large meeting of people who are already involved in a small group, and those who are looking for a small group - so those who are looking can find a group that's right for them!

Here is a small look at the conference:

Here is the small group that I am a part of (not the one that I lead), with our new members. We are: Liz, Ana, Claudia, me, Edith (the leader), Sandy, and Sara. Silvia is missing from the picture. Liz, Sandy, and Claudia joined our group during GroupLink.

Every vacuumed grass?? I have! NPCC bought us a blower vac for the buildings and grounds, and I was using it to suck up the sawdust...

The team also helped us put 4 sets of stairs on the stage (stage was unfortunately not ready to be carpeted as we had planned...)
Jan (aka Juanita), me, and JP modeling a new set of stairs.

Here's the whole team: Liz, Jim, Andy, Jan, and Diane.

And me with the ladies at their goodbye party

Then we had a birthday party for Aaron, a Horizonte staff member:

Wow, aren't we mature?! The guy with his tongue sticking out, that's the youth pastor! hahaha!

And Aaron after getting his cake smashed in his face (anyone who is familiar with my blog knows that this happens at EVERY birthday party!)

Last but not least, yesterday we had a pizza and movie afternoon for the university age small groups from Horizonte! Mmmm, pizza!

After moving WHILE the short term team was here, and all the other activities of the last two weeks, I'm grateful that today is a national holiday, which means that I don't have to work either!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Please eat some pumpkin pie for me, as I can NO WHERE find canned pumpkin... and if they think I'm making a pie from a real pumplin, well, I'm not! Have a good one!!

What's been going on the last few weeks - Part One

Ok, I have no internet in my new home yet, so I've completely neglected everything that has to do with internet for about 2 weeks now...

Here's a picture update of what has been going on...

The youth group "anti-halloween" party:
All the teens trying to shove as many marshmellows as possible into their mouths (I WON! 13!)

And here they are trying to pop balloons that are hooked onto other peoples' feet.

We had our monthly church potluck - picnic style!

My Three Houses

Just a little update on me...
We are finally moving this week! And to top that all off, I am living out of three different houses! Most of my stuff is in house number 1, the one I've lived in since I've been here. I now have a bed, a bookshelf, and a dresser and closet that I haven't yet assembled in the new house, and I have all my dirty clothes and a few other things at the Kreveres'. I'm staying there with my friend Ana this week while they are gone. I am loving living in a semi-big house with a roommate! I thought it would be nice to have the van to drive around to move my stuff too, but the more I drive in QRO, the more I'm glad I don't have a car - it's kind of nightmarish, I'm highly suceptible to road rage, and I cringe everytime I see the gas gague lowering. But it has served nicely to use for carting my furniture around.

I'm getting very close to time to go to Honduras for a few weeks too!! I leave December 17, and get back here on January 8. I'm also going to the island of Roatan with my Honduran neighbor Luisa and my brother Franklin!!

Well, it's been a crazy week so far... and it's only tuesday!

Queretaro Driving Manuevers

People say that the drivers in Queretaro drive way worse than the drivers in Mexico City. Hmmm, population 1 million vs. population 20+million? But I think it's true.

Here are some of my favorite driving manuevers that I've seen pulled by Queretanos:

• Wrong way on a one-way street (I'M even guilty of this one! But hey, in a residential neighborhood with wide streets, it's dumb to have the streets only go one way...)
• "Bypassing" stop lights - this is my favorite that the busses do, there is a stop light by my house where the busses kind of edge a little ways into a parking lot entrance so they can avoid stopping at the red light - it's like they're exiting the parking lot!
• Left turn from the right hand lane - This is a favorite of the busses. I honestly think I see it every day.
• "White line? What white line?" - traffic lanes in QRO are very similar to those in the U.S. However, here, those dashed white lines mean absolutely nothing. A street that is two lanes in one direction can soon turn into 3 or 4 lanes - if you can squeeze by without taking off someone's side mirror, it's all good.
• U-Turn on a red light - self explanatory.
• "I put my hand out the window, so it's legal" - you can get from one side of the road to another very quickly if you just stick your arm out the window and go for it. Ignore the horns beeping to the "tune" of an offensive saying...
• And my favorite: Left hand turn from the right hand lane on a red light - yes, I have actually seen it happen!

I have never been in an accident here in QRO yet. It is an interesting experience though to see these lovely driving manuevers on a daily basis.

I still say that Queretaro has nothing on Tegucigalpa Honduras. They have the manuever that I call: "50 mph down-hill on a two lane highway through a residential area, passing someone on a blind curve." But, that is how two guys got killed in front of my house a few years ago... And in QRO, if you DO get in a wreck, it's handled similar to in the U.S. In Tegus, if someone gets hurt in a wreck, you better run and hide or you'll never see the outside of a Central American prison again.

So, now do you have a little bit more respect for those poor vehicles that carry Californian plates? Happy driving!!

Discipling

These are the lovely young ladies that I have been meeting with regularly over the past few months - Lila, Ana, and Lluvia (Lluvia works in the ministry also, she was with us during this picture, she is a good friend of mine). Unfortunately, the picture didn't turn out too well, but you get the idea.

Lila is 20 and works in the mornings and goes to school in the evenings, leaving... well, not much time for other things. But we meet when we can to discuss what is going on with her, and for prayer.

Ana is 25 and moved to Queretaro in August looking for a job. But, God had other plans for her, and she now attends the School of Evangelism at Horizonte. It will be a hard but good year for her I think!

And I meet with Lluvia once a week for a Bible study - I need to have someone who can pray for me and build me up too!

Super Super Heroes - Part 1

Before we get started, I just wanted to mention that I DID post the very few pictures that I took in Oregon on my blog - the one in spanish, in case you want to see them, you can click here...

In youth group, we are doing a really cool series - super heroes of the Bible! Every week, we have a fictional superhero who comes to youth group, and then the study on the real superhero from the Bible. We have had two weeks of the study so far: "Spiderman" - Samuel (the topic was serving God and others), and "La Mole" (don't know what his name is in english, it's the rock guy from Fantastic 4) - David (the topic was "a heart that seeks the Lord.") Each week, Spiderman (a.k.a. Dani) will introduce the fictional hero of the week, here he is with La Mole (a.k.a. Shultz).

Both weeks so far we have made videos of the hero from the movie, and they are really funny! This past week, with La Mole, we paid a city bus driver to pretend to run into Mole in front of the university! There were a lot of angy drivers backed up behind the bus but it was hilarious! (In Fantastic 4, Mole stops a firetruck, so we had him stop a bus...)

The teens have been really excited to come to youth group (I think the funny videos helped draw them in...), and have remembered what the topic of the real superhero was each week. I asked some of the high school girls what we learned about the previous week, and after saying "spiderman," they all remembered that we learned about Samuel and being willing to serve God in whatever capacity He asks!

I think this will be a great series, and we have some really creative people on the youth group staff to make the lessons memorable!

More to come next week: How is BatMan relavant to someone in the Bible? :-)

Before Oregon...

Here, I'll let the pictures more or less talk for themselves... Here's the events of the week before I left for Oregon:

Water-night at youth group, above we are playng American football with waterballoons.

The past month, we did "Dive Deeper" as the theme for youth group - diving deeper into a relationship with the Lord. So, as a way to help the teens remember that concept, we set up the pool at church, and everyone (who wanted to) got to jump in!

Horizonte School of Evangelizm

I went to Bernal (a BIG rock/small mountain outside of QRO) with the school of evanglism students for a team building activity - we all climbed Bernal with one foot tied to the foot of another person!

Success! At the top of Bernal!!

So, that was a packed week before leaving to visit my parents in Oregon!

Ana and Diana

I have about a half a jillion pictures that I could post on this blog today, but I'm not going to - that will have to wait until maybe friday or so once I am in Oregon and somewhat rested!

We'll start with the best first:
Sunday evening, I went to the Centro with Ana for crepes. (I seem to be going for crepes a lot lately!!) Here's the long version of Ana's story that she told me... Ana moved to QRO the middle of August to find a job in industrial engeneiring (QRO is the place to come to find that kind of job!), and was living with a lady from her home town who had also moved to QRO and wanted to rent a room to her. After about a month of job searching, Ana was getting sick of hearing that all the companies want a man, not a cute little 25 year old girl. Her money ran out, and she didn't know how she would pay the lady she lived with rent for that month. The lady said that if she couldn't pay, she'd have to leave in 2 days. Ana is from the state of Mexico, so it's not like her parents can drive across town to come get her and her things and take her to their home. Ana's time at this house in QRO had been anything but pleasant, but she was super unsure about what to do, only having 2 days to find a place to go! During her evening devotions, Ana read a passage in Proverbs that says "I will deliver you out of the house of the woman of strange words, who has forgotten her pact with God and abandoned the man of her youth. In her house there is death." Woah. Out of the blue, a friend who Ana didn't know was still living in QRO called her up and asked her if she wanted to move in with her! So she packed her things and went that very day! Right after that (like a matter of days) Ana took a part time job at some telemarketing company to earn a little money while looking for that industrial eneneiring job. Somehow the Lord spoke to her and told her that she needed to enroll in the Horizonte school of evangelizm at my church (Ana has been attending our chcurch since she came here). So, 3 days before school started, she enrolled. During the first week of classes, Julian and Whitney were getting desperate about finding a young lady to live in their spare bedroom and help with house cleaning and taking care of their girls. They met Ana. Ana needs a part time, super flexible hours job. So she is moving in with them in like a week!

Now to this past saturday night... Ana went home from youth group tired and needing to finish her homework. She came home to find her roommate drunk (which NEVER happens with thie girl). The roommate had just broken up with her boyfriend, and was really sad and decided to bring home a bunch of alcohol to help her forget about everything. Ana talked with her for a little bit, then turned on some worship music while doing her homework (which was for school of evangelism, where the text book is the Bible). Her roommate commented on how the music made her feel better, and Ana read to her out of the Bible what she was studying for school. Her roommate hinted around that she would really like a Bible. On Monday, I brought a Bible to Ana that we have at the cafe for just such and occaision. Her roommate was really excited and wants to start reading a book about Jesus (one of the gospels)!

This is the second roommate that Ana has shared the Lord with - a few weeks ago, she brought another girl who also rented a room from the not-so-pleasant lady to church, and we gave her a Bible, and she really enjoyed coming to church, but her work schedule hasn't permitted her to come back.

Ok, I know this is rediculously long...

Diana, Alma, Aixa, and Pablo have been coming to the cafe for several months, and have become good friends of mine. Diana is a Christian. She met the others at their university, as they are in the same major. Aixa and Pablo are a couple who plans to get married in the near future. Alma is extremely interested in the Bible, and "religious things." As many times as Diana has asked her if she wants to become a Christian, she hesitates, and decides no.

Yesterday, Diana came into the cafe, almost in tears, but happy. She said that that day, Aixa decided to begin a relationship with the Lord!!! VERY exciting!! But, Diana is moving to Monterrey in about 2 months, in fact she left for there today for two weeks. So she is concerned that no one will be there to help Aixa grow in her faith, and to keep working with Alma and Pablo. That's where I come in, she said. I will be here (unfortunately will be gone for a week). I talked with Diana about a study that we have here that explains what the Bible is, why we read it, who God is, who Jesus is, what salvation is, and why we need salvation in Christ. Diana thinks that both Aixa and Alma may be interested in doing that study with me (and probably Lluvia).

Today, Alma, Aixa, and Pablo came into the cafe. Lluvia immediately invited them to the 3-part marriage seminar that will be starting at Horizonte this week. Aixa and Pablo are very interested in attending, AND, we found out that Aixa lives in the neighborhood right across the street from Horizonte! They (Alma, Aixa, and Pablo) also invited me to go to Toluca with them for the day (about 2.5 hours away) because there is a place by there where it snows, and the girls have never seen snow... I hope I can go, I think it would be a good way to get to know them better, because I really just know them from hanging out at the cafe.

So, this was a long and possibly confusing, but I have a really hard time expressing my thoughts in an understandable manner... heehee

Next up, PICTURES from last saturday's wet and crazy youth group, and from today's adventure to Bernal with the school of evangelism students.

Independence Day - Part 2

PICNIC!!

Saturday, after sleeping in until 10am (some of the church staff slept until after 12!!), the church staff headed out to the town of Tlacote, where Edith lives. We brought all the leftovers from the Friday night party at church - three flavors of tamales (including my favorite - sweet tamales with pineapple!!), quesadillas, tostadas, and 10 gallons of "agua" - pineapple and horcahta (we had 20 gallons in total the night before, wow!)

After a good big meal and a game of 3 on 3 basketball, Martin headed up some picnic games.
Recognize this? -
This time, we threw wet sponges, and it was supposedly at the birthday people! Justin and Edtih both had their birthdays on September 16, so that was another reason for the party. But, seeing as Edith is a woman, and turning 58, they decided to give her a break and let her pick someone else to get sponges thrown at them in her place, so we didn't get to throw them at Edith, but at JP insead.

We also had a water relay game in which my jeans got completely soaked, and american football with water balloons!!

Here is the whole group of independence day picnickers:
Justin and Edith with their birthday cakes (Justin turned 30!!)
And Justing after his "mordida" (every birthday person has to take a bite out of their cake, and 99% of the time, someone smashes your face in the cake while you take a bite. However, after 58 birthdays, Edith has learned how to bite her cake and avoid getting her face smashed in it... I was really looking forward to seeing that...!)
It was a beautiful day for a picnic... until about 7pm when a cold wind started blowing and we frantically threw everything in the house and left for QRO, but enroute, we got in a torrential downpour - couldn't even see past the car in front of us on the highway. But we made it home safely - still wet from the water games, and then from the rain - but safe and happy!