A quick update on what’s happening with the Cottrill family, and also news of the team from Michigan. By the way, if you want to read some of what the team is writing, if you’re reading this in time you should check out the Lighthouse Collective website. Great stuff!
I know some of you are looking for some last minute party games, or devotionals, or things you can do with your family or group over the Christmas season. Well, my Dad has posted some interesting things at his website, so I thought I’d pass them on.
First of all, there’s the Christmas Bible Quiz, a great one to bring out at the party. There’s a good mix of easier and trickier questions, and a mix of questions about the Bible and about familiar Christmas carols.
For example, do you know what Christmas carol started out as a single word? Which prophet predicted the virgin birth? And by the way, don’t breeze through and think you know everything, then skip reading the answers. There’s a whole lot of information and discussion starters in the answers too!
Print yourself a copy of the Christmas Bible Quiz here.
Also, my Dad has posted a great collection of devotionals based on Christmas carols. You’ll learn about the history behind many familiar carols, and at the same time be drawn back to the story of the incarnation and the purpose of Jesus’ coming.
You’ll learn things like – who really wrote Away in A Manger? What does "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" mean? What famous carol was first published as "A Hymn of Unknown Origin"?
One of the carols even includes a story about my great-grandfather, who got a nickname from a song we often sing at Christmastime.
Here’s an excerpt of one of the Christmas Carol Stories:
John Hopkins (1820-1891) was a clergyman and an experienced hymn writer. Most of his work is now forgotten, but Hopkins wrote the words and music for a Christmas song in 1857 which is still in use. The song was created for a Christmas pageant at the General Theological Seminary of New York. And you would think that Doctor Hopkins, writing for this distinguished body, would take care to get his facts straight. But apparently that did not much concern him … (read more)
See the index of Christmas Carol Stories here.
For more interesting Christmas stuff, here are some articles I’ve written in past years:
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Not wanting to be selfish here in the season of generosity, but some people have been asking about our wish lists at amazon.com. 🙂 We have had them listed in RSS format on our feeds page, but that format really isn’t incredibly useful, so I thought I’d just publish the links right here.
As you see, the kids have a combined wish list at the moment. They both love books, so that’s basically what’s there. Shari’s wish list is brand new, so there’s not much on it yet. Also, you’ll notice there are quite a few things here that will be helpful for our ministry, especially on my wish list (ie Bibles, books on culture, etc).
We wrote earlier about general information about sending care packages (not just to us, but whomever). Also, all of you who get our newsletter have address information and where to send what. For more information, feel free to contact us.
Today a nice man and his two helpers arrived at our door. Shari was doing laundry, I was getting last minute things done before our trip tomorrow (to our annual conference), and Hannah was on the couch. She was home sick today from school. 🙁
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The two helpers of the nice man had tools, and their plan was to use those tools to cut our house off from all access to water. That would solve our leak problem, wouldn’t it?
Actually, the nice man was from the water company. Apparently, "we" hadn’t paid our bill in 5 years (woah – and we haven’t even lived here for seven months!). "But, I’ve never received a bill" I protested.
I know, in your country you would have been hammering down the door of the water company if you had never received a bill. But here … well, things are different. I figured a bill would arrive eventually, and I’ve actually been saving money in my account to pay it when it does arrive.
But then I found out why we hadn’t received a bill. It’s because we don’t … or, I should say, the owner of the house doesn’t even have a contract with the water company!
Now I’m going to shut off your water, says the nice man.
Well, I told him I would call the owner while he went a few doors down to shut off someone else’s water.
Then I thought better of it, and I called our colleague Rod. Maybe Rod could talk to him and clarify things.
Kindly taking time out of their busy schedules (busy is an understatement for this week. But you know what I mean.), Rod and Mayra came right over to talk to the nice man.
During the conversation, one of our neighbours, Maricarmen, came over. Now we had our friends Rod and Mayra, and Shari (who was visibly upset and explaining to the nice man that we had a sick girl in the house and we need water), and a neighbour who was about to go to bat for us.
Maricarmen took his arm. "Oh, come on, your notice here says they have three days. You don’t have to do this now. Come on, they’re not even the owners. It’s not their fault!" etc etc
Well, the nice man and his two helpers were outnumbered 5-3, though I think the three women would have been more than a match for them.
The nice man kindly told us not to worry, to take our time. He shook my hand, and fled from the three women.
Later today Rod got a hold of the owner of the house, and he’ll be emailing the paperwork we need to get the contract and get everything organized.
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So, it sounds like our water won’t be cut off while we’re gone, and we should have time to get the paperwork done before any more nice men come to call.
I think I would like to solve the leak problems some other way.
Actually, the BIG leak that I told you about has been fixed! Our friend and all-around handyman Mario came and fixed it all up for a reasonable fee, and I think that’s one leak that’s gone for good.
If you like you can pray for Hannah, though, who has been sick in bed all day. We do have a drive on windy mountain roads tomorrow, and we’ll need wisdom in the morning to see whether she’s ready for the trip.
Never a dull moment.
It’s high time we gave you an overview of December’s activities! If you’ve received our November newsletter, you will have read an overview, but I’ll try to give you some more in-depth information here. (By the way, if you don’t get our quarterly newsletter, you can sign up here)
On the 1st of December we’ll be finishing our CAM Mexico conference in FortÃn de las Flores (it’s at the same place it was last year). When we get back, we’ll be swept up in getting ready for Christmas activities – drama practices, getting costumes for the kids, all that. But more about that later (actually, we’re not sure what’s happening at Hannah’s school yet… no doubt something’s happening around the 19th).
The cena de aprecio is an appreciation dinner given by the CAM Mexico missionaries for Christian leaders in the related churches in Mexico. It’s on the 7th of December at a church facility north of Mexico City. Shari and I will be attending and helping out here and there.
On the 13th of December, a team of 19 is planning to arrive in Ixtapaluca. They are from Woodside Bible Church in Troy, Michigan USA. The team includes a worship band from Lighthouse Collective, a ministry of the church. We’re going to let them have a night of rest before their BIG concert the next day!
Our church community, along with other believers in the area and the team from Troy will be involved in a whole bunch of activities in the following 8 days. Here’s the promo for the first concert:
Many of these activities will be at Plaza Cortijo (the "WalMart plaza") here in Ixtapaluca. They’re celebrating both Christmas and their 2nd anniversary, so we’ll be providing a great deal of the entertainment. 🙂
Through the following week, the team will be helping with music classes and English classes along with businesses at the plaza. On the 17th-19th, the team will be providing instrumental music at the plaza.
On Friday the 19th [this is an edit – originally it was the 20th], there will be a massive concert in front of the building where our church meets. We have permission to block off the street from 6pm until midnight. It’s going to be crazy. Brace yourself.
Throughout this time I’ll be chauffeuring the people involved all over Ixtapaluca, and trying to make sure the musicians have what they need.
This will be the last week of school for Hannah and Nathanael. We don’t yet know what fiestas will be going on, but Nathanael does have a Christmas program at 5pm on the 19th. He’s got a Santa Claus suit just for the occasion, and apparently the school will be providing a hat with lights. No doubt it will be a busy but fun week for Hannah and Nathanael.
A pastorela is a traditional Christmas play. This year at the plaza, the pastorela will be presented by – the people of our church! Hence all the drama practices – at the moment, we’re doing a few each week. Time is short. The drama is being presented Sunday the 21st.
In the drama, a normal Joe … er … José. Actually, Pedro. A normal Pedro from Ixtapaluca discovers the real story of the birth of Jesus along with his family. So we see both the modern family and the actual biblical story. (If you want to read one of the monologues in Spanish, click here.)
I’m going to the practices and giving recommendations on the acting and staging and so forth.
This year Shari’s parents will be coming from Canada to celebrate the holiday season. The team from Troy leaves on the 22nd, and Shari’s parents arrive the next day. They’re here until the middle of January. So we’ll be celebrating Christmas and Boxing Day and New Years and Three Kings Day with them. Et cetera. The Frys will also be here, so we’re talking about doing something with them too (do you think we’ll have 5 minutes between now and then to talk about it? Probably not.).
So now you know almost as much as we do about our December activities. Reading between the lines, you can see there are some incredible opportunities here. Connecting with people at the schools, and with people in the community. I’m guessing there will be other events that we don’t know about yet. There will be presentations at the plaza introducing people to the story of Jesus – His coming, and why He came. So we would all appreciate your prayers and encouragement as we continue to serve in this corner of Mexico City.
This past weekend we went to Cuernavaca to visit some friends and to fulfill a promise. We had promised that we would come back to the church to sing one more time.
Cuernavaca is different from Ixtapaluca. We were reminded of this as soon as we all got out of the van, and Nathanael found and killed a scorpion. 🙂
But of course the upside is the beautiful climate in Cuernavaca, as compared to Mexico City. Here at home we’re constantly trying to make sure our kids are wearing sweaters and jackets. On Sunday in Cuernavaca the kids grabbed bathing suits from their suitcases and ran around in the yard with those on and nothing else (ok, shoes too. Remember the scorpians).
But the highlight was seeing so many old friends. We had a great time with Kim and Gary Lidstone, who are here from Canada continuing with ministry and language learning for the next few months.
Unfortunately, I had a pretty bad migraine attack on Saturday, so the day is kind of a blur. I kept going for the most part, but I’m not sure what I did.
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We did a little shopping – there are things we can get in Cuernavaca that we can’t seem to find here, so we loaded up. Of course, Hannah and Nathanael don’t have much patience for shopping, so that was a little rough.
While in COSTCO, I was pushing the cart in the juice isle, and Nathanael reached up and grabbed a crate of grapefruit juice. Huge jugs of juice hurtled to the floor and burst open, on my shoes, pants, and all over the floor.
A COSTCO employee rushed up,"Oh, don’t worry about it! It was just an accident! Don’t worry, we’ll get it cleaned up…."
I’m not so sure if it was an accident, and I was going to offer to pay. But then I realized that the juice was rancid – the poisonous gases were rising from the floor, and I decided we had probably done a fellow shopper a favour.
Of course, on Sunday morning we went to Iglesia Bíblica El Renuevo. We saw so many friendly familiar faces. We sang two songs, which went all right I think (not so sure about my commentary before and between the songs, but that’s another story).
Afterwards we enjoyed catching up with people, hearing about their struggles and hearing about upcoming ministry. We were very sorry to miss some good friends who weren’t there, and to hear about the struggles one couple in particular have been going through (I won’t embarrass anyone by mentioning names, but we would appreciate your prayers).
We were also sorry to miss our former landlords, Lisandro and Lupita. We didn’t realize it when we planned to go, but this was a long weekend (for Revolution Day), and so a lot of people were travelling.
We got home late last night after going through some unusual traffic. Some of the things we saw while travelling back reminded me to thank you for your prayers for our safety on the road.
Thanks for your prayers for us, our sharing of God’s love, our safety, and our friends and the challenges they face.
About the picture: We went to Hannah and Nathanael’s favourite restaurant, Don Pollo. There was a clown there that made balloon art for each of them – and here he is, after making Hannah’s butterfly.