Dane had the privilege of giving a talk in Ciudad Guzman English Congregation. The town is about 3 hours east of Manzanillo. Enjoyed the company of many locals and foreigners. Such a welcoming Congregation.
Ciudad Guzman has some beautiful sights. Here are some ancient ruins in a large nature park with mountainous hiking.
Luis Alberto and Betty Munoz joined us. Always a good time with them ;-)
An unfortunate drawback to the fun hike was that Dane jumped down onto a loose rock and it slipped out from under him. He had to go for an X-Ray and thankfully it wasn't broken, just a bad sprain. He had to stay off of it for about a week.
Any guesses as to what this doctor specializes in? :-)
Dane made sure to use this opportunity to take full advantage of the non-walking amenities. He had to search for "medication" ;-)
Sandra and her kids joined the Congregation for some beach time. Eric was a little Superman with Vanessa Lofgren's help.
Mexico is home to some beautiful hardwoods. As our last post showed our great friends Josh and Holly Sinclair were reassigned to Belize last winter. Before they left we purchased Josh's great collection of beautiful wood he had gathered from fallen trees over the years. I had plans to make a table, cutting boards and other projects out of it. But for months it sat in the Office / Dane's "Man Cave". We decided we needed to either make things out of it or get rid of it. As many of you know Dane flew to Oregon last March to help Momma Sara for a couple of weeks to get her Condo ready to sell. I was in serious need of a distraction and this fit the bill perfectly! I had plenty to do and only two weeks to do it.
I had done carpentry work with my Second Dad David so I had a small amount of confidence starting out. I got out what tools I had and got to work.
Very quickly I realized I had NO IDEA what I was doing. Then I started looking on the internet for "Easy" Table Building instructions. The easiest tutorials featured videos like this one - and talked about tools I had never heard of. (Like a biscuit joiner....) It was fascinating but disappointing to realize I was in WAY over my head.
With the time I had left before Dane got back I found a good carpenter.
Josh had two large, thick pieces of Primavera wood. They were such neat pieces that I wanted to utilize them without loosing their character. One was about 5' x 1' x 3" but it was one long curve. It was a bit of a challenge to talk the carpenter into doing my idea for the legs but once I drew it out he was on board. He did an awesome job!
The other large piece of Primavera wood he made into a large cutting board
Kingdom Hall cleanup day! Preparing for the Memorial.
Dane taught Rudy a bit of window cleaning for a sparkling clean Memorial.
Even the little ones helped out :-)
Sandra and her kids, and Paulina...
Sorry Dane, not for you...
Pizza Party!!!
You may think this is at a fish market... But no, its our biggest grocery store. Lots of fresh options.
And in the ministry we get extra large freshwater Crawfish options. Dane wishes he could catch them this big in Oregon rivers!
Momma Sara was able to come for a visit. One of the highlights we enjoyed was the Guadalajara Zoo.
Took Momma to Barra De Navidad. A beach town about 40 minutes north of Manzanillo.
Rural Territory in La Central. Even their local Kingdom Hall has JW.org logo :-)
Assembly in Guad... Missing our Canadian friend Avery since she left in August.
This is a new family in our Congregation. Narda is a single Mom doing a great job raising these three sweet boys. Fernando, Vidal and Michael.
Paulina attended the Spanish Assembly...
Had a visit from some Seattle friends the Conway brothers and Buddies...
Paulinas first S'more
The Primavera ("Spring" in Spanish) tree only blooms for 2 weeks but it brightens up the whole landscape.
Hello?
We LOVE Mexican ingenuity!
Stairs territory!
The rooster proved very responsive to our message!
It rains so heavily here the streets become rivers. This is outside of Alba's home.
When we put in a small concrete ramp into our driveway we were able to write our own message by our front gate.
And from our house... We loved being on the porch when it poured down.
As many of you know our landlord said she was going to raise our rent quite a bit so we felt we had to move. It was tough to leave the house that we had enjoyed and made so many good memories in. Moew on that story and the result later...
To say Paulina loves chocolate is an understatement. This was her message...
On the drive back to Oregon to work for the summer we didn't have any troubles for the 22 hours of driving through Mexico or 18 hours of driving through Texas and New Mexico. At 1:00 in the morning Sunday - 10 minutes from our friends the Coleman's house we heard a bad noise. It felt like a tire was flat but when we got out everything looked fine. We said a prayer and decided to drive it to their place anyway - we made it safe, said "Hi" and went to bed. The next morning we asked if they knew of a mechanic that worked on Sundays. Melanie said "Just a minute" and started typing on her phone. Then she said "My new Son-In-Law knows how to repair cars and he'll be over after meeting to look at it." We were SO relieved!!! We enjoyed a great breakfast and caught up and enjoyed meeting the brothers and sisters in their congregation. Even though we hadn't seen the Colemans in about 10 years it was like we had just been hanging out in Portland a week before. They are such a loving, open family. It was so refreshing to be with them again.
After meeting the guys changed and headed to Auto Zone. Before they left Melanie's Father handed Dane his credit card and said "Just put the parts on this". We couldn't believe it! It made me want to cry it was so loving. The guys had a bonding experience replacing our two CV joints that afternoon. What a loving brotherhood. We were so grateful. It was tough to leave Monday.
In the meantime us girls were...
As a send off for now here's a few more.
When we need to take a break out in service...
I dreamed of having a tree house like this when I was a kid.
We still have a ways to go in our "Catch up". I'll try to share more soon! We think of all of our dear Spiritual Family often and hope each of you are doing well. Love and BIG Hugs, Emily and Dane
