Something to brighten the day.

School was hard today, some of those grammar concepts can be hard to grasp.  My teacher keeps on saying 'pan comido!' meaning 'piece of cake!'  And I think to myself 'um, no its not!'  So needless to say when I saw these pretty flowers, I bought them and they brightened my day!  And the wonderful thing about living in Mexico and shopping at markets is that the flowers are only $10 PESOS a bunch.  That's less than a dollar.  You can get a dozen roses for about $2 US, not bad eh?

I like to indulge just a little!  Aren't they beautiful?

Our One Year Update

Dear praying friends,

We can’t believe that its been a year since we first arrived in Mexico City!  We are very thrilled to see how God has led in this first year, and we are excited to see how He will lead in this coming year.

We are in the middle of another session of language classes.  This will be the last for Jason and Danielle is planning to take one more.  Danielle has begun the ‘Intermediate’ level and Jason just finishing it up. 

Last May we took 5,000 tracts home with us (we had heavy luggage!), and we have been handing them out since then.  We often give them to taxi drivers, because we have a good chance for conversation during the ride.  We gave one to a taxi driver a couple weeks ago who seemed particularly interested in a Bible study, please pray that he would give us a call.  We also gave a tract to our neighbor/land lord, pray that he would be interested in the gospel.  His name is Don Jesus, he and his wife are in their 70’s. 

Jason is preaching 3 Sundays a month, but, starting August, he will be preaching each Sunday of the month.  He has learned much and gotten comfortable preaching in Spanish during these months of guest preaching. 

We continue our Thursday evening Bible studies.  We have a few couples coming regularly.  We always have much discussion time because there are many questions!  One young man came a few weeks ago, he is the son of the family we originally started the Bible study for.  He is the first to come from that family so far.  Pray that, in God’s will, we will see the whole family come out and we will see more people attending and learning about our loving God. 

Jason has begun to translate ‘Separated Unto The Gospel,’ another tool we hope to utilize in the future.  As we finish up our studies in the next couple months, we will be focusing on tract distribution, the Bible study and ultimately starting regular Sunday services in our home.  Please pray for us as we end the first phase and start a new one.  We have much to look forward to here in the work of God.

We praise the Lord for supplying our needs before we ask them.  We are being given a van, it is in Canada, so we are planning to drive it down after the fall week of prayer.  We didn’t think we’d be able to get a car for a few years yet, but the we thank the Lord for seeing this need.   Pray for a safe trip for us in October, especially for when we cross the border into Mexico.

 Prayer Requests:

-Awareness of God’s leading

-Evangelistic opportunities and tract giving

-Continued cultural adaptation

-Language fluency

-Bible study and the relationships being made through it

Enjoying our Friday afternoon...

 Just some pics for ya'll to enjoy!

We had such a lovely afternoon.  I was ready to throw my Spanish text book against the wall, well lets just say a little break was in order!  And thankfully we could make it work!  It was SO relaxing!

 We played a little Upwords!  

And here's a picture of the pears growing outside. 

They aren't that good for eating, but they're good for baking!

Adding comfort and personal touches to the house...

Our house is filling up, things are going on the walls, projects are getting done. All, as they stay in Spanish, 'poco a poco' meaning little by little.  

I made these lovely cushions for our dining room table chairs.  We found out quite soon that if you sit around talking at the table, your bum gets a little sore.  So this one has been on my project list since the beginning, and wow, believe it or not, its taken me this long to get them done.  After all that thinking and planning (we bought the materials MONTHS ago), it was actually pretty easy to whip them up.  But I have to admit, the picture is of only one chair, cause I haven't finished the rest yet!  I've still got 3 of the 6 to go!  But at least the two of us can sit in comfort and style!

I chose a nice dark colour for the cushions because I knew I wanted them to be in use for a long time, and the dark colour will hide any stains they may accumulate!  *smart thinking* :)

Wish we could have all our family here so you could see the house and I can play hostess! Love you all!

Slippers!!!

We love things that the grandparents have made for us.  I thought of one in particular, our slippers, because we've been making good use of them since the rainy season hit us.  Gotta keep them feet warm!

New Printer

Sometimes buying particular things can take a long time and some planning when living in Mexico.  Electronics are for some reason more expensive here.  Because of that, we knew that we wanted to buy a printer/copier/scanner/fax machine combo online.  Jason found a good deal.  The only thing was getting it here!  You don't exactly put a thing like that through international mail!  Fortunately our good friends the Goldfuss' went up to Texas for a little summer family time.  And, well, we got our printer sent to an address there in Texas and they brought it back for us!!

Jason didn't want a picture of himself on here.  However, this is what it looks like when Jason is at work in his office.  Now with our printer we can print thousands of invitations, church bulletins, sermon notes, and much more!  Right now, we aren't printing anything quite in that kind of quantity, but Lord willing, not too far in the future we will be printing church invitations.

Keep praying for the Bible study!  We had someone new last night.  He is from the family that we had originally started the Bible study for (and he is the first to come from that family).  They live very near our house, please pray that we will be able to get to know the family and develop a relationship with them.

Celebrating Canada Day and the 4th of July...

Canada Day and 4th of July fun!!  We invited another American family over.  We had a nice time.  Check out the cake I made.  I took pictures in stages.  It *may* be hard to tell what it is, so I'll just give it away- It's Uncle Sam's Hat.  How American, I know.

 Just a bit of watermelon thrown in there- can't have a summer celebration without watermelon and burgers!

 Nooow.... the finished product.  Yup, that's 4 cakes stacked on top of each other, covered in icing.  We had an interesting time contemplating how we were going to cut it.  

We decided to go with a layer at a time.

It didn't feel *quite* the same celebrating what is normally a hot-summer's-day-sort-of-celebration during the rainy season.  It just pours and pours.  Our yard becomes a swamp!  But we had a fun time just the same.  Thankful for my cozy dry house.

*Sorry there's no pictures of us.  I always forget to take pictures 'in the moment.'