Updates, Surprises and Some Crazy Experiences with Happy Endings

An update on some interesting things. You never know what you'll run into here in Mexico, one thing we had to figure out  is, creatures.  Whether that be chickens and dogs around our house, or sometimes something a bit more interesting. When we moved to our current place we had to deal with an unwelcome visitor, The Invader, AKA a rat. We found out how he got in, fixed it and we haven’t had a “home Invasion” since. But when we did have the visit we had quite an experience. 

He saw us in the bedroom as we were waking up for morning service. He stopped in the doorway, looked in for a moment almost to say “Hey, guys. I’m planning to invade your house, open all the food packages I can get to and get my poop everywhere. See ya!”. Well, I had other thoughts in mind. First I had the “not-so-brilliant idea” of Emily holding a bucket to drop on top of him while I reach back and get him out from under the desk. Nope. He scurried past Emily and into our bedroom and under our bed. Not good. 

While I carefully watched where he was, Emily closed tightly the door of the bathroom so she could take a shower in peace. So no chance of The Invader getting into there. I saw him under the bed so I used a broom to scare him out in the open. I even crawled under the bed to make sure he wasn’t there anymore. Once I was sure he was not in the bedroom I closed the bedroom door and went hunting. About 5 minutes later I hear a VERY LOUD scream from the bathroom. Uh, oh… I run back and see Emily with eyes as wide as dinner plates, dripping wet and shaking.  She had a first hand and up-close encounter with “The Invader” so I'll let her explain what happened.

Emily: At the end of my shower I realized I needed y towel which was hanging on the outside of the bathroom door. Since the rat was assuredly in another part of the house, I felt confident I could open the door and grab my towel in one quick swooping motion. So that's what I did.  Safely back n the shower I opened my towel to dry off.  AND OUT DROPS THE RAT!!! He had crawled up inside my towel and fell out when the towel unfurled!  (insert hands on face emoji)  I instantly started to scream at the top of my lungs as my feet danced up and down in a panic.  With my feet speeding around next to him the rat saw no where to go so it raced in circles in front of me. Thankfully instinct kicked in after a couple of seconds. I jumped out of the shower and slammed the shower door closed. Trapping the rat inside the shower.  Stunned and shaking I stood dripping, my brain trying to catch up with what just happened.

Dane here, so I gotta hand it to her, in a moment of panic she kept her head on straight.  She had the presence of mind to close the shower door when she got out, thus trapping him in there. After Emily left for service I continued end the hunt.  From there .... well, it gets PG-13, so I'll spare you the gory details. Long story short, he wouldn't leave, and I wouldn't allow him to stay.  So I had to make the choice to "take him out".  He now "sleeps with the fishes" as they say.  

Sorry to all the animal lovers out there. But it had to be done, if by some chance I was able to get him out of the house he would have kept coming back in and doing his thing again. That was not an option.

Another first at our new place, is that there is a lot of foot traffic in front of our house.  Overall we really haven't had any crime issues here in Mexico. Our experience has been just crimes of convenience. Like for instance one night I left the windows open and our front gate unlocked. Unfortunately Emily's purse and service bag were on the counter a few feet from the window. So when we woke for service in the morning they were gone.

We couldn't think of anything to do so we went to the meeting for field service.  Then Emily had the idea that maybe the cash had been taken out and the bags thrown to the side.  She can continue the story:

I walked around the neighborhood and found these things from my service bag under a bush....

This gave me hope! So I started walking around the neighborhood and asking the neighbors if they had seen a black bag with a bible and "Atalaya" ("Watchtower") in it.   They were so nice!  They really wanted to help so after about 5 minutes I had 10 Mexicans with me walking down the street asking people if they knew anything.  A 12 year old boy approached us and said he thought his Aunt found my bag and was holding it for me.  He took me to her shop and she HAD it!!!  She is a sister and she saw our bible and books and knew it should not be in the garbage.  I started crying as I hugged and thanked the sister.  Some may recognize my RV book - it was been with me since I started pioneering.

Fun Sights from out in service....

Corn Nuts and Crikets anyone? Yummy!  Well, mostly crunchy and a little bitter, but not bad.

The only way to travel, plastic chair, no seat belt and the wind in your hair.

This is an ad for a political figure! - some of the cultural differences tickle our funny bone.

We have an iguana sanctuary in our territory.  There are hundreds of them and they are very friendly.

You may have heard that Jehovah's Witnesses were restricted here until around 1990.  They were not allowed to sing songs at their meetings and had to get authorization to go preaching.  Below are pictures of one sisters' documentation allowing her to go door to door.

We always love these visitors. They eat bugs for us!  The babies are about an inch long.

Yes we were actually working at the KH maintenance and cleanup day. And yes, it is a drill being used to put toilet paper onto a roll. Long story short the new big roll did not fit into the roll holder so we had to remove some of it...

We had fun introducing the American custom of breakfast for dinner to the Munoz family.

Miss our buddies the Seidl's and Wesolowskis! A fun day at El Salto.

Bible Character guessing game. You had to guess who you were. I could not seem to figure out that I was Enoch! Back to studying the Bible Story Book for me!

Matchy matchy beach time with Rob and Lydia!

Portlander's may remember Armondo Sandoval.  Here is his wife Damaris when their girl was a baby.

Minion time!  For all of us that enjoy silliness.

Our backyard with the firepit given to us by Auntie Debbie and Uncle Keith.

The kids had never tried drawing with coal before.  They came up with a lot of names!

Our congregation's first baby!

As part of the fun we gathered baby pics from everyone in the congregation.  Now I want to see baby pics for everyone I know.  I'm addicted!

The kids got to pet a baby crocodile at a crocodile sanctuary near us.

It took a team of us to unwind our vine.  It was like large scale  Twister.

Our congregation has changed to much since this pic taken quite a while ago.
But so many fun times with all of them!

This is our "Goodbye Rudy" picture.  His mom decided to send him to the states to live with his Aunt to go to High School in Florida.  It took a while to connect him with a local congregation but a couple have taken him under their wing and he is doing well.  We miss him a lot, but we are so proud of him for continuing his spiritual journey.