Mr. Mike is coming!

The big news this week is that Mr. Mike is coming! Last year we had planned to have our first team from our home church come and see exactly what it is that we are doing here. They were planning on coming the week after Annie had her accident. So that was postponed. They changed their plans and spent a week with us in Galveston,TX taking care of us instead of coming here to Mexico. Due to finances not all of the team that was going to come could do so this time, however Mr. Mike a good friend of our family will be coming! He is pictured here with Annie while she was recovering last year. She loves Mr. Mike!!

So, the time has once again arrived for Mike to make the trip here to see us and this time we are praying he will be able to make it here to Mexico and we will be able to have a wonderful time of fun and fellowship!Please pray that all goes well with his travel arrangements, luggage, etc... He will begin his travels on Wednesday to Charlotte,NC and will leave Charlotte and arrive here in Mexico on Thursday. We are excited about being able to share with him everything that God is doing and has done in the short time we have been here! He is sooo good! Please also pray for his wife and 5 boys while Daddy is gone! Thanks for praying! Love you all!! Missy

A Birthday Party!

Yesterday we attended our Goddaughter's birthday party. Her name is Yessica.I thought I would include some pictures of her big day. It is always fun to see how they celebrate such an event. Jerod and Alex taught all of the kids fun, American games like duck,duck,goose and a few others while I helped serve the food. The food they served is called pazole. It is a kind of soup that has a tomato broth with puffed corn in it. It is pretty good but extremely filling! The big custom is the mordita, which is where the birthday girl/boy has to take a bite of the cake and has their face smashed into the cake. Poor little Yessica didn't like it very much, however once everyone had eaten the cake, her parents told my crazy boys they could do it if they wanted to. So of course they thought this was wonderful! As you can see from the pictures! :o)

Please keep praying for our friend, Clay who was burnt in an accident. www.claydavidfite.blogspot.com He is having some tough days and we know that tough days are even tougher without a lot of prayer cover. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of all of you who prayed for Annie during those tough days. I say that with sincerity because I see her scars every day and am reminded of just how much worse she could have been. Then I think of Clay and just pray he will have a miraculous recovery like Annie did. Thank you all for your prayers! Don't know where we would be without them!! Love ya!! Missy

Celebrating our church!

Well... last night we celebrated the completion of our church building. We now have windows and doors, curtains, a cabinet to keep things in and electricity! God is good! We had a very American night, which is what they LOVE!! We served 90 hot dogs, with all the fixings, a LOT of Lays chips, lemonade, cake and popcorn during the movie. It was so fun!

We had a short church service thanking God for our wonderful group and for the blessing of this building and then we watched a DVD on a big screen of about 300 pictures that we have taken of all of them over the last almost 3 years.It was so fun to see the things that have been accomplished in just 3 short years! Then for those who wanted to stay, we watched the movie "Facing The Giants." Awesome movie!! They loved it and we all left feeling full of faith! We had almost everyone there, we were lacking a few men,but all in all it was an AWESOME night! Thank you all for praying for us on our journey! God bless you!

Oh, the cake says, "Congratulations! Thank you God for your blessings!"

Senators arguing their point!

Okay, Greg is always telling me NOT to get political on here but... it isn't really politics when it has to do with homeschool, right? I mean, I am simply telling all of you about what we are doing in school! :o) So, we are learning about standing up for what you believe in. Today we gave each of the boys 5 of the earmarks that were included in the Omnibus bill that was signed yesterday. They had to read them and then come up with a way to defend their reason for needing X amount of money for their important cause. I have listed the 10 they had to choose from.

#1. $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa
#2. $2 million "for the promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii
#3. $332,000 for the design and construction of a school sidewalk in Franklin, Texas
#4. $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York
#5. $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi (how do you manage a beaver?)
#6. $1 million for mormon cricket control in Utah
#7. $300,000 for the Montana World Trade Center
#8. $200,000 "tattoo removal violence outreach program that could help gang members or others shed visible signs of their past"
#9. $475,000 to build a parking garage in Provo City, Utah
#10. $1.7M "for a honey bee factory" in Weslaco, TX

So Jerod picked #4, and #8. It was so funny to hear how he defended spending $2.1 million on a center for grape genetics. Then the tattoo one, just about made us wet our pants. They were supposed to imagine that they were on FOX news and had to tell why they were okay with this spending even when the economy was bad. He said, well, I guess I could give the homeless grapes to eat and I could use grape juice to stain over the tattoos that weren't able to be removed! What a politician! :o)

Alex picked #6 and #9. He had a very difficult time defending the $1 million dollars,on cricket control but thought it would help because he felt these crickets were such a bother that soon they would take over the whole world's crops! He thought that the parking garage would bring in a lot of business for the stores nearby. They laughed through the entire thing, saying, "How can people defend these reasons?" Then as you can see in the picture below this post, they said that was how politicians ended their sessions, they just fought it out! :o) Aren't we good teachers? Hope this gives you a laugh!

Senators wrestling over earmarks!

One of our boy's favorite thing to listen to is Adventures in Odyssey, a "Focus on the Family" production. It is a series of stories that happen in a place called Odyssey. Well... I feel sure that one day Jerod, our writer, will have a book about all of the adventures of our life here in Mexico. Today was one of those days I am sure he will write about!

Let me give you some history. About 2 months ago, one of our new believers came to us with a VERY nice camera. He asked us if we could teach him how to use it. We asked him where he got the camera and he explained that he found it near a farm where a car had been "ditched." He said he left it there for 2 days and when he went back it was still there, so he took it. I looked at the camera and saw a name written on the case and a business card in the case and said, this is the name and address of the owner. I told him I would look on the internet to see if anything came up. I found out that the owner was a famous photographer in the U.S. and in Mexico. Greg and I both encouraged him to return it to the rightful owner. Well..... 2 months later, this camera had caused many fights in the family and he really wanted to sell it. (He could have made a ton of money)However, at our cookout( I must say, this cookout was a REALLY awesome day for us!!)we talked more about the camera and I told him that even though nobody knew it wasn't his to sell, God knew. He hung his head and said, "Will you take it to the owner for me?" To which we said, "YES!!"

So today we drove a little more than an hour away to the owner's home. We returned the camera and the response we received was, " There aren't people like that in Mexico!" Well... there are now! They were so happy and now this photographer has a way to continue to do what he does best...take pictures!
Sorry, this is so long! We returned home and called the man over to our home and gave him the reward of about a $80. He grinned from ear to ear and said, that is a week and a half's pay! He said, I am so glad I did this, I feel so much better! It was a huge lesson for him to learn and we are so happy that he did the right thing! Cool huh?

Please keep praying for Greg's father, Boyce. He is doing much better fighting his pancreatitis. Tomorrow they plan on starting him on a liquid diet. He is excited about that since he hasn't had anything to eat or drink since Sunday. Please pray that he will be able to catch up on his work. I mentioned that he is an accountant and during this time of year he is swamped! So, once he gets to feeling "normal" again he will have an enormous amount of work waiting for him. Pray he doesn't over do it! Thanks for joining us on our journey here in Mexico! It can be quite an adventure some days! Love to all! Missy

The pictures I posted are from our trip today. I don't know if you can see the flag at the top of the tree, but it looked really cool in person. Don't know if it showed up as good as a picture!

Prodigal Son

Dear friends, I am encouraged tonight by an answer to our prayers!We have been praying for our friend, Salvador for quite sometime now. He accepted Christ as his Savior about 2 years ago. He has had a rough time with this decision because he is an alcoholic. Alcoholism is everywhere here. It is very sad and ruins many families. Anyway, Salvador came to our cookout last Sunday and then he came to our Monday night meeting as well. We were encouraged then, but had our doubts as to if this would become a continuous thing or if he was just coming because of the cookout. However, he attended again tonight. We were excited! It just so happened that Greg was telling the story of the prodial son and Salvador knew it applied to him. He was happy to hear that just because he had left our group for awhile, that didn't mean that he wasn't welcome back and that Jesus was with him the whole time he was wandering by himself. Please pray for him. He is precious, but sooo weak in faith!

Please also pray for Greg's father, Boyce. He is in the hospital with pancreatitis. I am sure he will be fine, but being an accountant this isn't just painful, it is stressful as well. Thanks again for praying for us all. I really love having friends like all of you!