Comida Mexicana (video)
Our friend Mar came over today. Along with Shari and Shari’s Mom, they went to the market here in Ixtapaluca, and then came back to our house and cooked a fabulous meal. See Shari explain the finished product! 🙂
Mexico
Winter Fun in Mexico City
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…
Nathanael’s Christmas Program (video)
Here’s the Christmas program from Nathanael’s school that I mentioned in the 20 December post. This is about 3 minutes long, so it may be for more diehard Nathanael fans, or those who like programs with little kids (I know – 3 minutes – we have short attention spans these days!).
Let me mention some highlights. When the kids come in at the beginning, Nathanael is in the Santa suit, right behind Mary and her donkey. Then he’s in some other songs with the whole group. He’s also in "Navidad Rock", and at the very end you can see him hitting a piñata.
Hannah’s Christmas Program (video)
What follows is a 2-3 minute video of Hannah’s school Christmas program. It’s going to be a little hard to see what’s going on, since it was a little dark for my little free digital camera. 😉 But let me tell you a little about what you will see.
Hannah is in the first couple of songs, first with her class, and then singing "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" with her whole class. Then she’s done!
Edit: Forgot to tell you – her main song was “El Burrito de Belén” – the donkey of Bethlehem. It’s about someone urging their donkey to hurry because they’re going to Bethlehem to see Jesus.
Interwoven throughout the rest of the program was a pastorela. If you’re not familiar with Mexican Christmas traditions, you may be shocked to discover that the main characters were Lucifer and two of his demons! Devils are a common part of the Christmas story here – the bad guys, who are always lurking in nativity scenes.
You’ll also hear some traditional Mexican Christmas music, just brief clips.
Finally, with a whiplash-inducing change of pace, the program ended with an English praise and worship song – Who is like the Lord? Stand up, and give Him the praise!
Without further ado, here it is…
[Edit: Sorry, had a little trouble with the video, but it should be working now]
Before the concert
A quick video I took tonight to show you the venue of the concert, where our Christmas drama will also take place next week.
A Day in the Life of a First Term Missionary
It could have been a day in the life of any missionary, but because of the confusion that the day started out with, I thought I’d add "first term" in there.
Moving Instruments
You may know if you’ve been in our photo gallery that there has been some construction going on in the building where our church meets. Basically they knocked out a room so they could expand the main meeting area. At the moment, there’s quite a mess, and part of the roof is gone.
I thought we wouldn’t be meeting there on Sunday. That’s what I thought I was told. But I was asked to come early (8am) with the van to move instruments.
I got to the church and some people were there cleaning. Surely, we’re not going to meet here, I thought. But I went with Miguel to go and pick up the instruments and sound system.
Sure enough, we were going to meet at the church. We carried the speakers to the door, Miguel first, but he came back and said something along the lines of,"Ummmm… I think we won’t take these in yet."
I peeked in the door, and decided to agree with Miguel. Water was pouring from everywhere. It was cascading down the steps. It was pouring through the light fixture in the ceiling. It was dripping from various parts of the ceiling. And it was, of course, all over the floor, flooded.
A building half in construction, with rubble everywhere, dirt, and now a flood, isn’t the best place for sound equipment. "I know everything is possible in Mexico," I told Miguel,"but I’m starting to lose faith that we’ll have our service here!" I was joking. Mostly.
What had happened was that people were trying to clean upstairs. Because it’s basically a construction zone now, they just took a hose to it – a lot of water —- !
Miguel quickly checked to make sure the electricity was turned off. I was dressed in a nice suit, because I knew I wouldn’t have time to change all day. But I grabbed a broom and started sweeping the water out. Of course, the floor was sloped away from the door, so everytime you swept it toward the door, it came back.
Music Practice
Eventually, although the floor was of course still wet upstairs, we had it dry enough to bring up the equipment. But needless to say, we were a little late starting our music practice.
Music practice went fine, although there were several songs I didn’t know, so it was pretty short for me. But we were already running 20 minutes into what was supposed to be a drama practice.
Drama Practice
I got everyone together for the drama practice, only to realize almost half the cast was missing. So we talked about possible practice times for the following week, and then I got them started going over some scenes as well as I could.
Unfortunately, I had the van, and I had to pick up Shari, Hannah and Nathanael after the practice and before the service (since I was playing keyboard in the service). So I had to leave the drama practice early, pick up everyone, and get back in time to play. I was technically late for the service, but the service was late too, so no problem there.
Sunday Service
The new setup of the meeting room resulted in a session of musical chairs at the beginning, but everything got straightened out eventually. I played as well as I could (9 fingers – one was sore for some reason), and right after worship Shari and I headed out (a family from the church was watching our kids for the afternoon and evening).
Appreciation Dinner
 Jo Ann, Rollie and Shari serving ponche |
We rushed home, loaded up, and headed north to the Cena de Aprecio, the appreciation dinner for Christian leaders in CAM related churches in the Mexico City area. The trip went really well, and we arrived in good time to get set up.
The CAM missionaries were serving the tables, among other things. Our job was to serve ponche to people coming in (a delicious hot drink of Christmastime in Mexico), and later serve coffee.
All was going well, until the middle of the program when we tried to heat the water. We had three coffee makers – two for coffee and one for tea. We plugged them in and they started to heat up – and out went all the lights.
The good news is that earlier that day someone had rewired things so that the front area and the back (the kitchen and bathrooms) were on separate fuses. So for the most part we were able to keep the lights on in the meeting area.
But as we kept shuffling things, the power kept going off and on in the back. I’m not sure how they finished making the meal and how we finished making the coffee, but somehow it all worked out.
 Mauricio Perez, speaker at the dinner |
After all, todo es posible en México (everything is possible in Mexico).
The dinner was a success as far as I could see. Christian leaders who often feel very alone in the work got to see that there are others serving the Lord. A challenging message was given. We got to know a few people and see some old friends. And God very clearly got the glory for it all.
We were disappointed not to see our friends from Cuernavaca, two of whom were supposed to be at our table. We’re praying for the church in Cuernavaca, and hope we can see them again soon.
After hauling sound systems, cleaning up a flood, practising music, leading a drama practice, playing the keyboard in the service, packing up, and serving at the dinner, you might think I would be tired.
You would be right!
Not sure how we made it home, but we got back before 1am and thanked Paco and Lety for watching our kids. Then we went to bed, still able to get a few hour’s sleep before getting up just after 6am today…
Sunday was a good day. I’m sure we could use a lot of other words to describe it, but let’s just stop there. 😉