Easter Egg Hunt/Church Picnic

Here are a few pictures from the Easter Egg Hunt and picnic that we had last Saturday. The easter egg hunt is a little bit different here on the Mexican border. They don't used hard boiled eggs like we do. They take a raw egg and somehow remove the yolk and the white. Then they have found some way of refilling it with confetti. The kids run around and find the hidden eggs. Then when all the eggs have been found, they run around and crack them open on each other's heads.

It would be safe to assume that the little guys derived great pleasure from cracking their eggs open on the pastors head! I had a head full of confetti by the time I made it home that evening! :)

Preacher on a hot tin roof

I believe I can fly! :)

We have been trying to catch up on some repair work around the church lately. One of the things that badly needed some attention was the steeple. We had planned to scrape, prime, and paint it, but had a hard time figuring out how to access it. The roof is very steep, and made of metal.

At last Lee Martinez, (a deacon in the church who also has a road sign construction business, offered to let us use his crane) I don't know when it happened, but somewhere in the last several years I have gained a fear of heights! The winds have been crazy down here with gusts of up to 40 and 50 miles per/hour.

We had planned to ride the bucket up, climb out, and strap ourselves to the steeple by some rope. However, as you can see by the pictures, due to the height and the wind, I never did make it out of the bucket! I just used my long arms to paint from there.

Thanks to Greg Yacobian for being a little more adventurous and climbing out of the bucket where he could reach the low spots. :)

Mission trip to Coyutla

A few weeks ago I made a trip into deep Mexico to visit some of our churches in the mountains near the village of Coyutla in the state of Vera Cruz. It was quite an experience as I decided to take the bus down instead of fly. I left Reynosa at 9:30 p.m. and 13 hours later I arrived. (My knees were not thrilled!)

We have three churches in those mountains, and it was a unique visit. My spanish has gotten very good, but many there speak the indiginous dialect of Totanaco. (I did learn several phrases by the time I left. Tlen Natalanin.)

In these pictures you can see how mountainous the region is. As some of you know, I've been exercising a lot and I know run between 4 and 7 miles every day. However, a brisk walk up a hill in the colonias nearly wore me out!

The people are extremely poor. Nearly all of the houses are made of sticks and branches and all the floors are dirt. Here is a picture of a baby in his homemade crib/swing. Another picture shows 2 of the women baking in their kitchen. Note the homemade stove they bake bread in. The last picture of the river is a long range view, but it shows the local women washing their clothes in the river.

All in all it was a great trip and I made some very great friends. Many thanks to the group from Missouri that were their to help in the purchase of property for a new church.

Winter Texan Day

Every winter we receive an influx of some 300 - 500,000 winter texans to the Rio Grande Valley. (For some reason they don't seem to miss the ice and snow, go figure.)

This last year we enjoyed the company of some 40 of these "tejanos invernales". We really enjoy the company and the different flavor they bring to the services. Here are a few pictures from a dinner we had in appreciation of them. The last picture is of some of our youth preparing to sing a few songs for them.