Mundo and Carmen Perez, their daughter Berenice, and their sons Fernando and Emmanuel. incredibly gracious hosts. sweet sweet people! we stayed with them from our arrival on thursday until Tuesday morning, when he and his father in law drove us into the state of Mexico, to the city/town of Chimalhuacan, where we stayed with Isidra and Norberto Manzano until the following Thursday morning. 

the sign says 'today's fresh chicken' ... and how! it was good to see the old carnicerias again --  

so here we are doing the pose in front of the fountain near the ... legislative palace in Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, Mexico. more pictures to come ...  

gee... it's a rodeo ... at the hacienda next to our friend Valentin's house ... but for the life of me i can't remember the name of the town it's near ... this is the merging of three different pictures ... which i though was kinda cool.  

this was a few days ago ... that's my winter coat on my chin ... :-)  

the sanctuary of Jerusalem Church, looking all pink and beautiful!  

the view from our front yard on friday evening. pretty awesome!  

today was a good day. got the message done shortly after 1 AM, which is actually EARLY for me. came back in the morning and had to add a few finishing touches to it. interesting thing, in sitting down and reading through it again, there were parts that i didn't remember writing. hmmm ...

anyway, the message is on the emmerton messages blog linked to the right here, if you want to read it. there were a few variations from the manuscript, but not many. Leslie thought it was good. that's always a good sign. i thought when i first started doing this that she would be the person i'd go to to sound off ideas, or read parts of the messages TO to find out if they 'clicked' or not.

turns out we don't do that so much. it is a part of her worship to NOT be a part of the sermon preparation. and it turns out that it's part of my discipline of ... listening ... i guess, to not bounce ideas off people when i'm preparing a sermon. i chat online with jay or a couple of my other friends while i SHOULD be writing the sermon, but aside from a few general ideas ... or a couple of pure copying instances (thanks, jay:-)) most of what ends up coming from the pulpit is what comes together between me and God over the course of the week or couple of days while the text is "perking."

anyway ... the morning went well. after church, i ran the kids to McD's for lunch, then we all went to Farnham Manor, one of the local nursing homes, for our monthly service and devotional. Mrs Ruth Richardson, who was the oldest living WWI veteran, lived there until she passed away on the 29th of December. She was a precious soul. clear eyes, alert, not ... disoriented in any way that i could tell. she was always at the services.

i missed her today.

This evening we had our usual 'family night' supper and missions 'moment'. the program tonight was US - leslie and me- sharing what a little about mexico and what we hope to do while we're there. we're looking to build relationships with the families of the men we've gotten to know in working with the hispanic community on the northern neck.

at the end the congregation commissioned us.

pretty cool, this being a church family and all.

REALLY cool.

grace & peace

just a quick note. drove to va beach yesterday to celebrate colin's birthday this morning, and had a wonderful time at chuck e cheese's. noise and all.

christmas in the orthodox tradition was just celebrated on ... thursday, otherwise known as the feast of the epiphany. nice tie-in, with the wise men bringing gifts to the holy family.

gotta go write.

grace & peace

4 Generations: Nana (Turner), Grana (Angela Turner Maccubbin). Leslie (Maccubbin) Park and Hannah (Park). Nana is 96!

Caleb's memento from vacation. after 3 days of being housebound due to the snow (they couldn't go out because we didn't think they'd NEED snow gear ... after all, this was VIRGINIA BEACH... (sigh) ... we were out at the local playground flying his remote control plane, and i was in charge of recharging it. while i was doing that, he ran off to play on the playground, and promptly slammed into a horizontal pole and cut his eyebrow open. he looks like a boxer, doesn't he? he has 2 internal and 6 external stiches to brag about to his friends at school tomorrow. :-)  

Scott made this for Angela a few years back. Grandy has a rice-filled satin rose stem stuck in his mouth like a pipe. He passed away in April of 99. We STILL miss him terribly.