Ixtapaluca
A New View of Ixtapaluca
On the 17th and 18th of January we had a visit. Some new friends from Christ Chapel Bible Church (Fort Worth, Texas, USA) came down along with our mission‘s director, to investigate how they could be involved in the things God is doing in Mexico.
This gave us an excellent excuse to go out for tacos. Oh, and also to show them around Ixtapaluca! And what a beautiful clear day it was.
We went up to the local ancient ruins, looked out over the thousands of houses in the town and many housing developments. We visited Jesús María, the new house we’re renting there, and of course the building where Sendero de Vida (our church) meets here close to where we live.
So I put together this brief video with some views of the area that you may not have seen before. It was a windy day, so there was a lot of wind noise, but you can still hear some of what our pastor Martín and Rod Fry had to say about the area and ministry here.
Cotton Candy (video)
Just a quick video clip that I took back on the 18 of this month. It was recess time, and the Cotton Candy Man was ready to go. And being a windy day, it was more fun than usual.
(It was one of our friends, a boy named Olaf, who first got the enterprising idea of using a hula hoop, though that’s not him in the video)
Visit Ixtapaluca (but please, don’t bother getting up)
All right, so of course I want you to actually really visit us in person. But last month I made an amazing discovery – Google Street View has come to Ixtapaluca!
If you’ve never tried Street View, it works like this. You can go on to a map, then you can actually go down to street level and see what you would see if you were driving down the street. You can look around, up, down – all around. You can go back the other way, forward – the ability to move yourself and look around really does make you almost feel like you’re there.
What you’re seeing are a collection of special photos taken by Google employees. So they’re not right up to date, but it looks like the ones of Ixtapaluca right now were taken sometime this past summer.
So you can see the places we drive and walk every day, see the shops, the cars, the bicycle taxis – even people about their business. You can even zoom in and get a closer look of things. Amazing!
An image of Ixtapaluca from Street View.
I spy a bicycle taxi, combi taxis, election signs…
Now, every street isn’t on there – partly because there are so many closed communities (ie gated). But still, there’s a lot you can see.
And surprisingly, you can – now, don’t tell anyone – but you can actually see our house. Now I won’t tell you where it is here in public, but if you call or send me a note (and if I know you!) I might just spill the beans.
Meanwhile, go here to see Ixtapaluca. Take the little orange-ish man on the left side, and drag him on to one of the main streets. Give it a moment, and it will show with a blue outline all the streets with Street View. Drop the man down in the place you want to start exploring. More details on using Street View can be seen in the video below.
I’ll give you one clue – the street named Cuauhtémoc is what we drive down each day to take our kids to school.
I just tried it. I found a mailman on a motorcycle – cool. 😉 Hey, there’s a store we shop at all the time! Oops… looks like that guy is having car trouble.
Oh, sorry – I’ll let you go explore for yourself! Use full screen – looks great.
Google video explaining Street View
More of a main street in Ixtapaluca
Sounds of Christmas (in Central Mexico)
Hello, and happy Christmas Eve to you all!
This podcast has some sounds of some of the things that have been going on around here lately. You’ll hear sounds in a local mall, clips from Coro Unido, and even (for better or for worse) a clip from the Christmas sermon I preached this past Sunday.
It’s fairly long – almost 20 minutes – but I hope there will be something interesting for everyone. Remember you can subscribe in iTunes or your other favourite podcast subscription software, or you can download the MP3 directly to your computer or MP3 player. Enjoy!
Hannah’s School Christmas Program (2009) (video)
And now – Hannah’s Christmas program! Once again, I’ll play you clips from the whole program so you can get an idea what it’s like.
This program was in many ways very typical, except that the teachers performed the Christmas drama. But the drama itself (clips are included) was typical because it included pilgrims (aka shepherds) in traditional Mexican garb going to see baby Jesus, and demons playing tricks on them to stop them (although one demon apparently got converted in the end… perhaps it’s not best to derive any theology from this program!).
You’ll also hear many traditional Christmas songs. And there were some speeches about the true meaning of Christmas (apparently happiness and smiles)… I included one clip at the very end.
It’s unfortunately virtually impossible to see Hannah in the video. She’s generally in the back, because she’s tall – but not tall enough to tower over everyone else. 🙂 And, of course, it was pretty dark. However, you can get a glimpse of her starting around 2 minutes 10 seconds, I believe, jumping up and down in the back. She’s got looooong braids (not all real, mind you!).
Take our word for it, she did a great job. 🙂