I HATE TOPES

Topes (toe-pays, more or less) are speedbumps. They are the main form of speed control here in Mexico City, right along with potholes. Last night I was a bit sick to my stomach (don't worry it has recently passed) and was driving around trying to find a home. We wanted to personally deliver invitations to two boys for our kids club that starts on Wednesday. HOWEVER their street was really hard to find. AND their area loves the topes. Everytime we went up on one, my stomach went into my throat, and everytime we went down, down my stomach would go causing a swirling effect in body and made me rather green. One road even had three topes on it!

When Heather Paty and I were trying to fall asleep later that night we were chatting about concerns. We were both feeling not so great and were exhausted. To show you the conversations you can have when you are in that state I'll let you know we started on the subject of having peace about marriage one day and ended up with disscussing how long Franklin Piles has been the president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada. There were many other random topics in there so it was rather difficult to trace how we had gotten from one to the other.

Spy Tours, Bosses and Boats

During this past week a couple and a single man from Calgary have been here checking out Mexico as a possibility of doing missions work here. We are all excited about people being interested in Mexico as we desperately need new and more workers here. Currently there are only six on the Mexico City team, all of them multi-tasking in their roles and fully aware of how much there is still do in a city of 28 million.

Yesterday Ric and Ruthanne Gilbertson the regional developers for Latin America and the new VP of missions (of the C&MA:Canada) Jim Foster were here. Them, the "spy tourers" and the whole Mexico City team went to Xochimilco. (So-chee-meel-co) (more or less) Its an area south of the city were you get on these very mexican looking boats and go on canals. Mariachi bands also have boats and you can pay them to sing to you. Or there are boats with food on them as well and they come around, just make sure the person serving the food is not the same one steering the boat as the water is polluted.

Polluted water aside, Xochimilco is a lot of fun and a great bonding time as you chat with those on your boat. Jim Foster shared about his family and his career as a missionary in the arab world. He reminded me of the bigger picture through his stories which came at a great time as I've been feeling quite dry to all of this lately. I also enjoyed speaking to Ric and Ruthanne as they are always great at encouraging and asking great quetions so you know they remember your needs, wants etc.

Last night after getting home from a long day with everyone, Heather Paty and I were blessed to find out our room's electricity had been returned due to our amazing Brother and Sister. Our room is somewhat seperate from the rest of the house and as it rained pretty hard here the past few nights the wires to our room were damaged. Therefore no light and no heater (and its VERY cold when it rains). BUT my sister is one semester away from being a mechanical engineer and my brother is seriously a jack of all trades as he has had 15 jobs and he is only 21. So together they fixed it. Have a mentioned I love my family?