Frozen Chosen

Kevin writing...

The singer of a band in my university wrote a lyric, When did it get so cold in California/When did it start to snow in Los Angeles. Well it has snowed lightly in Los Angeles and all California readers of this can attest to the fact that it can get pretty cold in CA, but the readers who have not spent much time in CA see it as a sunny, beachy place where people walk around in shorts and tank-tops and what-not. The misperception is the same for Mexico. Most people think that it is hot where we are...but at thousands of feet above the sea level, surrounded by snow-caped volcanos (which were beautiful and we saw two of them yesterday!) it actually gets pretty cold here in the D.F. When the thermometer read 43 degrees...it did not read it at the stifling hot degrees Centigrade (which would be over 100 degrees Farenheit (sp?)). You from the Midwest might scoff at the high temperature of 43 degrees, but keep something in mind...our Indiana/Michigan friends here in D.F. get pretty cold. How can that be? one might ask...well we do not have heating in our houses or in most of the buildings. Fireplaces are generally out of the question because if one house goes up in flames here, it will destroy two city blocks. How do we heat our selves? Well our hands get warm by drinking plenty of hot drinks and our bodies are layered with 4-5 layers. Still we can rarely get quite warm enough.

On the positive side, though we have frozen the past few days, we have had some very exciting visits with some ministries and are getting a lot closer to fitting ourselves into one or two. This is very exciting as we have waited now over two months to get placed with full-time positions (or possibly two part-time positions). There is a lot that God is doing here in Mexico City, but the helping hands of volunteers are always needed. Through the support of family, friends and our church, we are able to provide consistent hands for many hours, and can help get projects off the ground. These organizations have dreams, but lack the man-power to carry them out. Most people in Mexico cannot volunteer long hours of the day to help at orphanages or tutoring centers because they themselves need to survive. Thanks for the support for us to be able to contribute a good amount of hand-power to the realization of dreams for these ministries.

Correction

On the picture of our supervisors I labeled them as Paula and Nydia, when really it is PAUL and Nydia, not Paula. Sorry Paul!

Here are some pics of what we have been doing...

After the majority of the rest of the Spearhead year outers made it to Mexico we had a retreat in Tequisquiapan. The following are some pictures from our visit there and to a neighboring pueblo....

Here we are: This is Kevin pre-haircut, which he got when he went to Phoenix for his friend John`s wedding.

This is the De Alba-Johnson family, Paul, Nydia and Andrès. Paula and Nydia are our supervisors.

Here is a picture of our group, we are missing Michelle and Wendy.

I was able to come back to the States for my friend Angie`s wedding. Lucky me I was able to see Stacia and Noelle as well.

It was a fun day, perfect weather!

So there you have it, a brief synopsis of what we have been up to. I don`t have any pics from the wedding Kevin went to because he forgot to bring our camera. Whoops. This past weekend we went to the Mole Fair. It was a lot of fun. I had absolutely no idea that there were so many different kinds of mole. For those of you who don`t know what mole is, it is a sauce you can put on top of meat or enchiladas that is made using chocolate. It is kind of sweet and spicy. There were a lot of booths with things to buy, fair rides, and lots of yummy food stands. We had a really good time. I wish we had brought our camera. Kevin´s favorite part of the night was his tamal de nopal. Which is a tamal made from cactus. I know it sounds funny, but it is really yummy. We also tried tortillas made from nopal, also very yummy. Please be continuing to think and pray for us in this next two weeks while Kevin finishes language school and we decide on our place of service for the rest of the time. Thanks!

New Adventures

So beginning this week I, Leah, will be helping out in a preschool. I am really excited. This month is one of a bit of transition for us, Kevin is still pretty intensively studying Spanish, but I am only studying a couple days a week now. When he finishes his study in another few weeks, we will begin our permanent assignment for the rest of the year. Until that time I will be helping out in a preschool that is connected with an organization called Alfalit. Alfalit is a really neat international organization that travels throughout Mexico teaching literacy. They have courses for both adults and children. Alfalit was founded through the influence of a missionary named Frank Laubach who was from the Philippines. His motto was that each one should teach one.

Kevin returned from Phoenix safely, he was there celebrating his best friend´s wedding. He had a really great time and was able to see his family, which was neat.

Please be thinking and praying for us this next month as we are searching for our permanent assignment. It is crazy to think that we have been here for two months already, time flies.

Back and rolling...

We got back from Tequisquiapan on Friday night...
On Sat. we went to the kids´English club at church...very fun. They had double the amount of kids from the first week.
On Sun. we relaxed some and went to church and Kevin prepared for his tutoring.
On Mon. Kevin went to tutoring for 3 hours with another missionary and Leah babysat the son of our bosses as they were at a teaching language and culture conference at our old school.
On Tues. we went to Chalco a part of the city, actually it was a town that is now overrun by Mexico City, about an hour and a half from where we live to go to a ministry site. It was really fun and they are doing a lot of really good work there.

On Thursday Kevin flies back to the States for the wedding of his best man...and you guessed it he is priveledged enough to be the best man in this wedding.

Time has gone by quickly but we are making use of our school-less schedule by taking tutors and studying a lot on our own.

More to come later...thanks for checking in...

Been Awhile...Here´s What We´ve Been Up To

Been a while since we last wrote. It has been a busy and not so busy week. Not so busy for Kevin who caught a pretty solid stomach virus a week ago and spent two days shivering with fever and finding his way to the baño often, missing two days of class. He read a ton, in English as comfort, but when the virus left the new enemy came on in the form of a final exam. Leah, for her part was very busy. She traveled to the US for a beautiful wedding in Indiana to be a part of the very special day for two very important people in our lives. She returned to the same enemy that plagued Kevin.

Celebration! We are done with the first term at school Leah completed her last exam today and Kevin did his yesterday.

Also over the course of the weekend, Kevin went to the airport twice where he helped his boss get two people who will be joining us in Mexico City and the most important person he helped pick up was Leah! He also partook in a fiesta to celebrate the birthday of the 8 year old who lives with us. There was lots of karioke (sp?) and lots of little girls doing little girl stuff.

Beginning tomorrow we join our other year-out staffers and our boss for a retreat a couple hours away from the city. We are excited to get to know them more.

As for ministry we have not set on one quite yet and could use your prayers. We did meet with Compassion International today and on Tuesday we are traveling to a city just south of Mexico City to another LAM missionary to view her work and discuss the potential for a partnership. That will be very exciting. We are also working with the English classes at church, helping out when we can be there (the retreat is taking away one of the weeks). It is quite enjoyable and great to get to know more people in the church.

That´s about it for now.