Romualda (with Guadalupe next to her) shared with the group during our devotional time.

chimalhuacan: day seven 10:32 PM (Mexico DF time)

The encuentro here saw about 12 people gathered in the living room of the Manzano Arellanes family. Romualda and her daughter Cristina, and Juan Guadalupe were here, as well as a family friend of Norberto's and several other women and girls. opened with prayer, and singing. after going through most of the songs on the songsheet, we read scripture -- matthew 7 - where Jesus spoke of the wise man and the foolish man building their houses on the rock and sand, respectively. tied in well with the experiences of the week.

spoke about the Kingdom and how that is not only then and there, but here and now. Jesus never defined the Kingdom in propositional phrases, but always in parables. examples of the kingdom ... and explored how the events surrounding this trip are a picture of the Kingdom.

Afterwards, we ate these tostada things that had chicken and cream and onions and stuff ... REALLY good.

as i headed upstairs after excusing myself, Romualda stopped me at the foot of the stairs and thanked me again for what we are doing, and for the time we'd just had to share, and told me that this was the first time she'd ever felt the presence of God.

whew.

no pressure there or anything.

grace & peace

here they are! i can't WAIT to see them on friday!  

chimalhuacan: day seven 10:32 AM (Mexico DF time)

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!

i got a picture from Leslie and the kids. the three of them, each holding a piece of paper - with the word 'happy' 'father's' and 'day' on them.

what an incredible gift!

the post got interrupted, because we had to run down to the main drag here and buy lunch - barbacoa - Bar-b-que - but MUTTON ... really good stuff, but pretty greasy ... may or may not report on any significant side effects later. :-)

getting ready for the encuentro this afternoon.

it is HOT and there is little if any breeze ... hoping that will change before the day is out.

grace & peace

chimalhuacan: day six 6:44 PM (Mexico DF time)

Norberto got in about midnight last night, done with the recording sessions that were going to occupy him yesterday and today, and unaware that the guys had left last night to return tomorrow. he knocked on our door at 7:30 this morning and asked us if we wanted to work today. so we did. helped him lay brick pretty much all day. meaning, we mixed mortar, hauled bricks, hauled sand and cement and ... cal ... whatever that is in english ... STILL not sure what it translates to. but whatever it is, it's a white powder. when i went to dump out the bag of cement, i'd already emptied the bag of cal but the bag slipped out of my hands and landed on the pile of dry mix. of course it went everywhere. kinda fun ... there for a minute my shoes were the color they were when i first bought them. :-)

the high point of the day was Romualda feeding us both the noontime lunch and the 4 PM lunch. she was frustrated because she hadn't been able to do more for the crew during the week, mostly due to her limited income. she couldn't afford to feed 7 men. when it turned out today that there were only three of us working, she decided to surprise us and fix the two meals for us. they were both delicious. the green sauce she cooked the chicken in this evening was incredible - tomatillos and cilantro, a littel bit of onion, some garlic, and all blended together. wonderful taste.

looking forward (with not a little anxiety) to what God has for us at the gathering tomorrow evening at 5 (central time, 6 eastern).

Don just stopped in at the door to say 'later gator, i'm going to a ball game!' ... wish you could have seen the look on his face. :-)

grace & peace

chimalhuacan: day five 9:27 PM (Mexico DF time)

the guys just left. Lucio won't be coming back. He's got a previous engagment that is going to keep him home. Gumaro's son may be accompanying the rest of the men back.

After we said our goodbyes we had prayer together in a circle, next to the car. As we gathered, Lucio made the comment that he was thinking that something was missing. it is a precious time WHENEVER i can pray for these men, and it was a wonderful opportunity to thank God for the way they have really been heroes for me this week. they've shown what it means to follow Christ and love God.

So it looks like we'll be able to use the weekend to recuperate and gather strength for the final stretch beginning on monday.

Bless them O God, as they travel, keep them safe, and alert, and attentive to other drivers on the road.

grace & peace

Kenny

chimalhuacan: day five 5:44 PM (Mexico DF time)

the sun is out today. REALLY out. well, actually the cloud cover has increased to where we're shaded right now, but for most of the day -until we broke for lunch around 3, there were clouds, but none were overhead. the sun was almost a physical presence ... it makes you want to run for cover, find shade, hibernate. Siesta isn't so much a custom as it is a survival instinct. we got the middle wall footer dug and poured, and Margarito started laying bricks. he's the only one of us besides Norberto who knows how to. so the rest of us find things to do. Don ran a wire from the outside light on the back building across and along the wall to the new entryway, and connected it so that anytime Romualda or any of the family needs to go outside at night the length of the lot will be lit. we had some cement mix left over after pouring the footer, so we poured it onto the floor under the new gate, and angled it up to the row of bricks that extend across the internal courtyard, so Romualda and Mari won't have to wrestle the tricycle over that step when they bring it back in.

Norberto has been gone most of the day to the recording session that's been scheduled for the last month, and he'll be gone tomorrow as well. Valentin and the rest of the guys will be leaving tonight to head back to their respective homes for the weekend, and will return on Sunday evening so we can get back to work on Monday morning.

In conversation a couple of nights ago with Norberto and Isidra i found out that we're basically only going to be able to get the shell of the building done before WE head back. we're pouring the ceiling, and it has to cure for at least two full weeks before the supporting timbers can be removed, and THAT is when the wiring can be run and the floors poured. :-(

not that i'm unhappy about that. it is amazing how far we've come in the four days we've worked. i think there's even a chance that we might get the rest of the walls laid and the ceiling poured BEFORE next thursday ... but i won't count my chickens before they hatch. at the rate the guys are working, it's within reach.

Isidra has been feeding us delicious food. INTERESTING at times, but delicious nonetheless. with it just being Don and me from north of the border, she's much more at ease fixing traditional mexican fare for all of us. she confessed this afternoon at lunch that, in thinking about a team of six AMERICANS coming down, she was wigging out over WHAT she was going to be able to prepare that we would have EATEN. :-)

gonna check on the guys. Don and i stayed here at the house and rested this afternoon. we were dragging this morning, and the heat took whatever *i* had left out of me ... i asked the guys if it would be okay if i stayed here when they left after lunch, and they were fine with it. they realized that i'd just be standing around.

more later.

grace & peace

chimalhuacan: day four 10:47 PM (Mexico DF time)

it's bedtime. we're tired. we went back to work until almost 8... had to finish pouring the footers for the outside walls, it started to sprinkle on us but thank goodness it didn't turn into anything heavier. tomorrow we break through two floors and dig the footer for the middle wall, and hopefully we'll be able to fill it in as well... we shall see. there's a chance that we'll start laying bricks as well.

listen to me ... saying "we'll do this and we"ll do that ..." like i'm actually DOING some of the stuff ... the distribution of labor is PRETTY uneven, with me getting the lighter stuff ... i guess i still AM involved in this ... yeah ... i guess it might not be happening at all if we hadn't come here in january ... so okay. it IS we after all.

it's late. we're tired. i'm going to bed.

grace & peace

chimalhuacan: day four 4:10 PM

the day is going well. don is working on rebuilding the gate, and the guys are mixing concrete and pouring the footers. i've been able to haul several wheelbarrowfulls of sand and rocks back and forth, from their respective piles to the place where they are needed. i helped valentin twist ties to hold the forms together, and have done some buying of supplies as needed. the man at the hardware store and i are becoming close friends. it's a good thing --being able to open up and explain why we're here. good conversations.

i spent an hour this morning counseling a friend of Isidra's about some unhealthy family dynamics. she's asked me to speak to her son this evening. please pray for me as i approach that.

it's been a heavy cloud cover all day, so the weather has been REALLY good to us - even though it rained yesterday evening, we weren't at a point in the work where it was going to harm us or the construction. right now some of the cloud cover looks like it might bring some rain, but i think we'll be okay even if it does come down a little more. dust control is much easier that way. :-)

grace & peace

chimalhuacan: day three

today dawned cloudy. it was even a bit cool. the work was pretty hard from the git-go. had to bust up concrete, then dig down about 2 feet - through the underlying, original floor, laid down when Romualda and her husband first built on the lot, 10 years ago (or something like that). i was able to do SOME of it, but not a whole lot. between the 5 guys, norberto, and isidra insisting that i not work too hard, i'm pretty much relegated to do support work. i WAS able to paint the forms (small wooden palletts used to hold the cement in place while it hardens) with used motor oil, so the cement won't stick to them. which felt good. we have ... 50 or so, maybe a few more, and i was using a broom without the handle for the most part. then don walked over and commented that he really wished he had the handle to it, it would be a lot easier to do. well, i had watched norberto remove the handle, and took the broom head from him and started to do the painting bent over, figuring he knew what he was doing. and it WORKED, to be sure, it was just harder on my back than it might have been otherwise. don and i got into this groover thing where he would swab them down and i would haul them around and stack them inside the neighboring lot's wall. after a couple ... well, more like 4 or 5 times, of carrying the forms over my head and having used motor oil drip onto me, i decided to carry them at my side. :-)

supper last night was stuffed chicken breasts and cole slaw, tortillas and salsa ... but SERIOUS salsa ...at least to me and don ... it hardly merrited comment from the guys and the manzano family.

grace & peace

chimalhuacan: day two

the day started relatively early. sunny. sunny like you wouldn't believe. that was a good thing. the morning was actually slightly crisp. the bedroom cooled off as the night wore on to the point where i had to pull the comforter up over me to stay warm.

we started right in on demolishing the old structure. it was a lot more substantial than i remembered it being. we got the roof off and kept the corrugated sheets to use in other places, we took apart the wood framing and spent some time getting the nails out and stacking the wood, in case we could use it somewhere else as well. then we started to tear down the walls. as we were doing that, we realized that the bricks were still for the most part usable, so we started stacking them -- clearing off the mortar as well as we could and stacking them. we actually got a lot further than i thought we would --to the point of beginning to dig the footers for the new walls. we broke at about 11 for a late morning snack, then at about 3 for lunch, then back to work at 4, and wrapped up about ... 6:30, i guess. had to close off the front to keep people out who might have less than pure motives in getting onto the property.

wished romualda and juan guadalupe a restful night, and came back to the manzano's and pretty much collapsed. everyone was tired. had a late dinner around 9 or so. (did i mention that lunch was tripe soup? i just didn't think about what i was eating, and it was fine. Don gave it a try, but ended up eating most of the macaroni and cheese that Isidra made in case we didn't like it.

saying grace over dinner gave me a chance to thank God for what I will be thanking folks in the Northern Neck for for a long time coming --the opportunity to DO this --to BE here ... to show God´s love and grace to not just romualda, but everyone that comes by the lot ...and believe me, there are TONS of people who walk past each day.

grace & peace

at the end of each day we had to close off the property - to discourage strangers from wandering onto it. The 3 dogs would probably have done as good a job, but just in case ...

after lunch we got rid of the remainder of the two walls and began digging the footer -- all the way around the perimeter. 40 cm down and 60 across. through the existing floor and the earlier one - the original one - from when the building had first been built.

By lunchtime we'd pretty much demolished all but half the back wall and the shared wall with the neighboring lot. Fortunately, it was empty (the lot, that is).

the project begins: removing the old so as to make room for the new. Black dog down in front is 'Popis', who is just 7 months old. he was tiny when we were there in January. I hardly recognized him! He thought each shovelful or pail of water that was thrown was (of course) just for his enjoyment.

Chimalhuacan: day one

started the day off on an interesting note. boarded the plane in richmond, and after we backed away from the jetway, they began what i assume was the preflight check. a couple of minutes into it, we hear "BAM! BAM! BAM!" from the left engine. then it happens again. a pause, and then the captain comes over the intercom and tells us that that should not have happened, and that they were going to check it out.

we return to the gate, and wait. long story short, whatever it was that caused the problem got fixed, and we pulled away from the gate at the time that we should have been arriving in Atlanta.

Fortunately, our departure time fom Atlanta was late enough (almost noon) to allow us to still catch the flight, even arriving an hour and a half later than intended.

the flight to Mexico, DF was uneventful. got to the airport and Sergio and Norberto were waiting for us there. no bags lost, everything in order.

pulled into the house around ... 4:30 or so, i guess. walked down to greet Romualda for just a couple of minutes. returned to the house and ate supper, then waited for the guys (Valentin, Gumaro, Lucio, Domingo, and Margarito) to arrive. they pulled in a little after 10:30.

slept like rocks. :-)

This was what the front of Romualda's property looked like on Monday the 13th of June.

This was the existing structure. it was Romualda's first home there in Chimalhuacan, and held a LOT of memories. Don Bell is standing to the right.

Back in 1985, I was part of a group of 65 men and women who were sent all over the world to work in different capacities alongside career missionaries. Before going off to our respective assignments, we spent 5 and a half weeks going through ... training ... it was an interesting time ... and more than a little intense ... intentionally so, i suppose, to somehow prepare us for potential stresses that we might experience overseas. a couple of months ago, one of the group decided to start to try to get everyone back in touch with each other, and a little over a week ago i received a massive email with updates on 61 of the 65. It is truly amazing to read through what folks have been through in the last 80 years (since we last saw each other -- we had a debriefing conference after everyone was back in the states in glorietta, new mexico. If you'd like to stop in and see what's what, the blog is linked to the right -- the continuing journey. grace & peace

Yesterday, I helped Elvira with a few things, and in the process avoided an unnecessary trip to the ER for Cesar,and got to spend some time with him. Pretty cool to think that I was there when he was born -- see my post from May 10th, the last paragraph. He's doing great! What a precious little boy!