Birthdays and Stuff

I'm starting to get bad about taking pictures. We just had three wonderful ladies from NPCC in Atlanta come this week to help Iglesia Horizonte launch a new childrens' program. I think it will be wonderful once we get it off the ground! I also had my first taste of what it's like to be THE translator for a group of people. Two full days of constantly translating between the NPCC ladies and the Horizonte people, it was difficult. We have FOUR more teams scheduled to come this year, and are looking into a fifth one!

Yesterday was JP's birthday! Yes, he is THREE days older than me. We didn't have a cake or party or anything though, we are having a "TripleCumple" or tri-birthday party, this saturday - JP turned 26 on the 20th, I turn 26 on the 23rd, and Adiel (the youth pastor) turns 29 on the 25th. And we may possibly have a party on this friday night too, we'll see!

Ok, I feel like life will fall into a somewhat normal routine here this coming week... for a while at least. I like the feeling of "normal." Although, the School of Evangelism folks are off to Chiapas this monday, so I will lose Ana for a month, and we'll all need to pitch in extra with cleaning and maintenence that the students usually help with. Please be praying for the youth group trip to Chiapas, as we are wondering if we will even have enough people to fill a bus to be able to go. The next intern to our ministry will arrive in a little less than a month from Australia. And I'll be off to Aguascalientes for a conference the beginning of April. That's a little bit of what is coming up for a while.

Happy birthday to all the people I know who have birthdays this week (which is like 7 people!!)!

Chaos... But In A Good Way!

I think we had a record turn out for youth group last saturday night! It was our valentine's day celebration since it was the saturday before valentines. We had some typical youth group games, and a candy exchange. There were even several teens there who had never been to youth group before, but just had been to church on sundays a few times. We had right at 40 students, plus 6 leaders! That pretty much packed out the cafe where we hold our youth group! (Horizonte youth meets at Global Grounds, the cafe that is a hang-out for university students monday through friday). It was crazy!!
Anyhow, it was amazing to see so many kids involved this past week! Please be praying for our upcoming trip to Chiapas - a 15 hour bus ride from here - with the youth! We are hoping to fill an entire bus (the more people that go, the cheaper it will be per person!) so that would be 45 people!!

Lambies!!

What is a "normal" breakfast for you? Cereal? Toast and juice? Eggs and bacon? Pancakes? If I were to fix any of those things for people in Mexico for breakfast, they would be satisfied just as well as you. I've heard lots of gringos comment that refried beans are weird to have for breakfast, but my DAD even eats them for breakfast here, so they can't be too terribly weird.

So, this past monday (a national holiday - Constitution Day), I was invited by several friends to go to the town of Coroneo Guanajuato, about 45 minutes from QRO. They told me that there's yummy barbeque there. So I'm thinking barbequed ham, pork, or even steak. Meat with eggs is a common breakfast here. Imagine my surprise when they told me that we would, in fact, be eating "sheep tacos." I seriously thought they were kidding, or that maybe we'd be eating them for lunch (this particular group of people is well-known for their jokes). Nope, we arrived, and each received a free sheep taco... at 9:00 in the morning. I had two more, covered in onion, cilantro and hot salsa. I can't say that sheep is my favorite meat, but it was alright. However, I think I'll be content to stick with BBQ pork, beef, or chicken if I eat BBQ outside of Coroneo...

How Did THAT Happen?!?!

So, last night, Mexico vs. USA soccer game. In Phoenix, but about half the crowd was either Mexican or at least rooting for Mexico. Mexico has a REALLY good national soccer team, it was almost the same team they sent to the World Cup earlier this year. But something went wrong somewhere because they played TERRIBLE. And the refs were't biased either...
We showed the game on the projector at Global, and quite a few people came to watch. To watch USA pound Mexico 2-0. Soccer is the only sport that I won't root for USA in, but I think that's justified, because hardly anyone likes or cares about soccer there. And here, it's life! How many people didn't know that this past June was the Wold Cup, or that didn't know about the Mexico vs. USA game yesterday?? EVERY TV in the shopping center where Global is had the game on. It was BIG here.
But it was fun to watch!

Mom and Dad

My parents came to visit me last week too, and we went to Guanajuato for a day:

We hung out in QRO for the week, and I dragged them to my favorite restaurants, and to some of my activities here. I think they enjoyed it though! And, they got to meet JP. :-)

Bye Guys...

After four years in Queretaro, Julian and Whitney and their girls moved back to the U.S. last monday. At Horizonte, we had a big going away party for them, because we'll miss them a bunch!!

Here is Whitney, Talya, Micaiah, and Julian:


Julian with his junior high boys group, and the new group leader, Juan:

We pulled out the "Pegale al Pastor" (hit the pastor) game again, and stuck Julian behind it since he is the one who always invents weird stuff like this!

The aftermath:

And the junior high boys group giving a big thank you (GRACIAS) to Julian and Whitney from the whole church: