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!