Hannah and Nathanael decided on their own to put on a Christmas play for us. The play was performed in our house here in Ixtapaluca. I thought you might enjoy getting in on the premier. 🙂
I understand some of you have had some trouble viewing our videos, so I’m going to try a few videos through YouTube. Hopefully it will mean a little better video quality, and something a little easier to view for some of you. Let me know what you think!
Note: I had some trouble uploading this video, so I’m posting it a little late, but dating it back to when it was made.
A little disclaimer here – due to technical difficulties, I actually only have information from March to December. Still, this is probably pretty representative of what the most people read this year. Here they are, from least popular to the winner:
I’m cold. Deal with it. I realize it’s horrible to start with this post when my parents were recently experiencing a wind chill of -50°C. But stats are stats.
Want to see our house? Go figure – one of the most popular posts of 2008, and all I was doing was sending you to someone else’s blog.
Doing our kids’ homework I really need to do a new post on homework. I got stories. But this is from last year.
Kenya, English, Leaks and updates on everything I guess it’s appropriate that an update on everything should be a popular post! And, of course, it included a leak story. You’ll be glad to hear Shari’s Dad fixed one of our leaks last week. Another one down….
Watch these films (free download!) These are still good. And I’m excited to see they’re working on dubbing them in Spanish. I watched one or two with a friend and tried translating, but I think it will be a few more years before translating is really my thing. Sad thing is, you cant’ get them free by themselves anymore (although you can still watch one or two online).
Canadian Christian charity fined $23,000 Here it is, the #1 most popular post of the year. No, it’s not directly about our ministry in Mexico, but it’s bigger than that, and certainly worth a read. And don’t miss the comments! We even heard from someone with the organization that was fined.
And here’s one more surprising note. I’ve included here the most popular posts that were written in 2008. But the most popular post of 2008 actually wasn’t any of these! It was a post I wrote back in 2005 – How to peel a pineapple. I can tell you’d prefer I stick to food topics…
After getting some advice from our friends the Poulettes, we decided to go down to the Mexico City Zocalo for a little winter fun.
The highlight of the day was supposed to be ice skating, but there was an 8 hour wait. So much for that!
However, Nathanael got the chance to go tubing in the snow. And Hannah and Nathanael both built snowmen (little ones – you’ll see). We also got to visit the market and the Sanbourns restaurant at the house of tiles, so we had fun.
Having missed the skating at the zocalo, we decided to try out our skating rink here in Ixtapaluca today. As far as we know, this was Hannah and Nathanael’s first time on skates! It was fun, but I think we all used a lot of muscles that we don’t use all that often. 😉
So here’s some video and pictures – first downtown Mexico City, then here in Ixtapaluca. Grandpa and Grandma Winger were along, but only Grandpa went skating this time…
I thought my Canadian friends might be interested in this. I went to the mall – actually, two malls, here in town on the 26th of December. They were open. But they were dead. Not too many people around. Nice and peaceful, actually. Never seen them so quiet.
As I walked out in a parking lot, thinking how different things probably were in Canada, I glanced down and saw a licence plate that said Beautiful British Columbia (I don’t think I’ve ever seen another Canadian plate here in Ixtapaluca, except people we know)!
I guess old habits die hard – that mall has probably never seen such a high percentage of Canadians!
I wasn’t at the mall looking for deals, I was actually getting what I hope will be the last prescribed drugs I need for a while. I’ve been fighting some kind of stomach thing since before conference (at the end of November). I was actually quite sick at conference, then got a little better, then worse again.
Anyway, after several doctor’s visits, I think I’m on the mend. The doctor things I’m probably somewhat undernourished after all that time, so he’s got me on some super-vitamins for a while. Between that and the turkey, I should do fine… 😉
It’s about time I gave you an update about the last part of our week last week. It’s been quite a ride! Let me start with the concert.
The Battle of the Bands
The concert took place in the traffic circle in front of our church meeting place, and we got permission to actually close off the street. That night I was at Nathanael’s school Christmas concert, and so I arrived a couple of hours late, only to discover they hadn’t started yet! They were still putting the finishing touches on the massive light and sound system, I guess. So the concert finally started with Laura Guaza and her band (Laura is from Columbia but living here), then followed Charlie Bostik, and finally Lighthouse Collective from the USA.
I missed quite a bit of the concert, because I ended up taking Laura’s band back into Mexico City that night. It was a late night for me, but far later for those taking down the sound system, who I understand were working after 2am!
I do know that the message about Jesus as Saviour was shared at the concert, and one person accepted the Lord and came to our worship service on Sunday morning. His name is Alberto – please pray for him, and others who heard the message!h3>The Pastorela
The Pastorela, or Christmas play, took place Sunday night in the Walmart plaza (El Cortijo). The children from Hannah’s Sunday School were to put on a "Christmas Tree" first. They all wore black with green capes, and using benches made up a Christmas tree, telling the Christmas story with their lines and songs. Then the pastorela was to follow.
That’s basically what did happen, but a few things did go wrong.
First, a teen band ended up going on stage before us – and actually about when we were supposed to go on stage. That meant no time for a walk through on the stage and a test of the sound system and lights. It also meant that by the time the pastorela started, the shops were closing and people were heading home.
Next, during the children’s Christmas Tree, the microphone got handed to the wrong child at the wrong time, meaning that Hannah’s lines – which she had practised for weeks – were totally missed! She was pretty disappointed.
Having had no time to test the mics, we were halfway through the first scene before we discovered that no one could hear anything. We switched mid-scene to having everyone hold mics, which wasn’t ideal.
Now the mic thing was unfortunate, but two things were amazing. First, how prepared MartÃn and Miguel were, and how quickly the cast adapted, without missing a beat. Unbelievable.
In spite of things going wrong, a lot more went right. The kids did an amazing job (see a brief video here). They had all kinds of special hand motions planned, and it looked great. Here’s a clip from Rod:
The actors also did an amazing job in the pastorela. The message was clear … very clear. And there were surely a couple of hundred people listening, and many really were listening, not just wandering by.
I didn’t get to watch it all closely. I was busy fixing the backdrop that had come loose, or making sure people had mics, prompting, reminding people to pray, and so on. But from all I saw, it was a grand success, and God answered our prayers.
Here’s a brief clip from Rod, showing the entrance of the Magi. The stage is above (you can see Mary and Joseph and the baby in the house):
A team from Lighthouse Collective agreed to help as stage hands at the last minute, and they did an excellent job as well.
Directing the pastorela was not something I wanted to do. The language and cultural barrier are still pretty big for the subtleties involved. No doubt the cast missed half of what I tried to say, and I missed half of what they tried to say. But they were very patient, and I think we all had a great time (I did, anyway!), and God used it.
It was good to brush up on my drama skills anyway – it’s been a while!
The actors performed way beyond my expectations. Kinda wondering what their next triumph will be!
Thanks so much to those of you that prayed, or through your donations helped make all this a reality. And also to those who encouraged all of us involved. And of course, thanks to all who were a part of it – Lighthouse Collective, the people from our church, and others!
