Mexico

19 November 2008

I’m cold. Deal with it.

I hesitate to even write this, because I imagine very few people will understand. But here goes nothin’.

When we got up this morning, it was 3ÂºC outside. That’s 37ÂºF. I don’t know what it was inside, but I imagine it wouldn’t be a surprise if it was 15ÂºC or 59ÂºF all day long in the house.

I know, I know – deal with it, right? I could be in Canada, with temperatures well below 0ÂºC and snow (let me tell you, we would get a fair bit of snow here if it was rainy season instead of dry season).

I’m not complaining about living in Mexico — I just love Mexico. But as the temperatures continue to drop, there are some unique challenges.

There’s no central heating in any buildings, including our house. That means that it’s a challenge to keep warm, and keep the kids warm. In Canada you go inside and warm up – but here it’s cold inside too, and we suspect that the lingering coughs and sniffles the kids have are related to the chilly weather. Both the kids have warm jackets now – and they can wear them to school and in school.

The teachers at Nathanael’s school asked that we send water for him at room temperature, because the water at the school was too cold.

Shari and I are still sleeping on a matress on the floor (you may remember our box spring didn’t fit up the stairs), so we’re increasingly motivated to find a solution, since the floor is a lot colder than the rest of the room.

In Canada, keeping the house cooler and using space heaters is a way to save energy. Here, using space heaters uses a lot of energy, and since the houses aren’t as well sealed, they can waste a lot of energy.

So believe it or not, mock if you will, deride, but the cold really is a challenge for us. We’re concerned about our health, and concerned about not being wasteful.

When it gets cold, our Mexican friends say,"Oh, but you’re used to this. You’re from Canada". Ironically, the opposite is true. They’re used to it, and we’re not.

Now excuse me while I go stand in front of the oven.

Read this post for more on my theory about Canadians, Mexicans and cold weather.

17 November 2008

Our weekend in Cuernavaca

Jim Family, Mexico, Ministry glimpses, Prayer and Praise 2

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.

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.

25 October 2008

Dia de los Muertos (it’s that time again)

Jim Mexico 0

Photo courtesy of Drpoulette

It’s one of the biggest holidays in Mexico, and by some considered to be a tradition that truly defines Mexican culture. The celebrations take place in about a week – mainly on the 1st and 2nd of November.

Some Mexicans believe that during these times the dead come back to visit the living. Children on the 1st (the Day of the Innocents, or the Day of the Little Angels), and adults on the 2nd (Día de los Muertos). The tradition dates back to the days before the Spanish arrived in Mexico – the celebration in some form has probably been going on for thousands of years.

I’ve written about the Day of the Dead before, so I’m just going to point you back to my earlier posts. The second post includes several links that you can visit for more commentary, pictures and video.

24 October 2008

Tired Burros

Jim Mexico 3

If ever I would be tempted, once in a while, to forget I was in Mexico, something would come along to remind me.

Yesterday I was getting gas in the city, and two carts drawn by burros (donkeys – you knew that, right?) pulled into the gas station. They were filling up the air in their tires, apparently. Not that strange a site here, but I snapped the photo below with my camera phone for all you people outside of Mexico. You can just barely see both of them, to the left.

18 October 2008

Chalco (audio post)

Jim Audio Blogs, Mexico, Ministry glimpses, Missions, Other missionary blogs, Podcasts 1

17 October 2008

Shari and the Apple Pies

Jim Food, Mexico, Ministry glimpses 3

You need to understand the difference. Baked goods are a big deal here in Mexico. Sweet bread, cakes, doughnuts, buns – and if you go to a few birthday parties you’ll see cakes baked and decorated beyond belief.

Baking, on the other hand, is not big in Mexico. You go to the store for the baked goods, you don’t pull them out of your oven. In fact, some people store dishes in their oven.

So a bunch of the ladies of the church got together at Tania’s house to learn how to make apple pies. And boy did they have fun.

Crystal brought her Mamita’s super-duper-home-baked recipe from the USA. They managed to round up a few rolling pins from who knows where. Shari brought some mini-cookie cutters to make the crust fancy. And Tania invited some ladies from her neighbourhood.

They chopped up the apples. Crystal made sure they got the filling right. Shari got everyone making the perfect flaky crusts (in most cases!).

Crystal with
a completed apple pie

Some of the ladies were introduced to Jesus for the first time. And everyone made new friends.

Now they’re thinking of doing an encore performance – with some of the ladies who were running things and didn’t get to see all the “pie making secrets”. So the story may not be over yet!

As a side note, it looks like there will be some other baking going on here next week. Two months or so ago, Hannah and a girl from our neighbourhood were around the house, and I offered them some apple dumplings. Ever since that day, the girl has been bugging her Mom to make her some "apple pie" like she had at Hannah’s house. So her Mom knocked on our door and talked to Shari about coming over for an apple pie/dumpling lesson.

In my opinion, there’s nothing like making friends with food involved. And if I’m not doing it myself, I’ll be hoping to catch some of the leftovers!

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