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.

Home, Car and Hurricane (2015 Part 2 & 2016 Part1)

Soooooooo its been a while since we've done an update 😀 We have been busy, so apologies these are so late.  We do update our Instagram account some. You're welcome to follow us there, our user ID is Dane_And_Emily

Some of you may know the gist of the following events and stories. But here are some more details and such. We hope you enjoy!

As we mentioned in our last post we had to move out of our house because of owner difficulties. Which was unfortunate because we really loved it there. Our move out date coincided with our yearly return to Oregon for work. When we returned to Manzanillo in the fall of 2015 we were essentially homeless and looking for a new place to call home.  We rented a room from the Molina Family while we looked for a place.  This is their son Ethan.

 He loves to draw.  This is his representation of one of our territories.

As we searched for our new home we also had another search going... For 4 years we were able to drive our 1995 Toyota Corolla with Oregon plates since we were Temporary Residents.  Since after 4 years being here we became Permanent Mexican Residents the laws did not allow us to drive a foreign plated vehicle.  That means we can only legally drive a Mexican Plated vehicle.
Which meant one of two things:
1) Pay $2500 USD or more to nationalize a vehicle from USA to Mexico
2) Buy a car in Mexico

Some things were not intimidating for us in coming to Mexico - dirty bathrooms, sounding dumb when we try to speak Spanish, etc...  But one of the things we were VERY intimidated by was buying a used car.  With the help of some friends in Colima (Oscar and Claudia) and a great website recommended by mechanics that has actual car owner reviews and real problems you can expect with any vehicle www.CarComplaints.com we were able to find a good used car.  It had some neglected maintenance but overall in good shape.  And because the Peso to US Dollar exchange rate had gone significantly in our favor we saved about 25% on the price compared to US prices. We were able to get an affordable service vehicle that handles the Mexican roads well, a 2005 Toyota RAV4.

From Mild Storm to the Strongest Recorded Hurricane Winds

Just one week after we purchased our car we heard news that there was a tropical storm coming.  By that evening it was upgraded to a hurricane - category 2 but it wasn't supposed to hit anywhere near us.  It was a very erratic storm and kept changing directions.  The wind speeds kept increasing and by 9am the next morning the wind speeds were faster than any hurricane ever recorded. And it was heading straight for us.  By noon we packed ourselves and the Molina family into our car and were on our way to Guadalajara.  We had a stressful day watching the storm but it was very nice to stay with our friends Kathy and Bernie in Guad. The wind speeds reached over 200 MPH - the highest every recorded for a Hurricane.  When we returned to Manzanillo Sunday there was some damage but not as bad as we had expected.  The hurricane had hit South of us and then veered away and hit again North of us.  No brothers or sisters were hurt but some had their homes damaged.

A week later in some towns north of us they were hit with extremely heavy rains and there was a lot of flooding from it.  There was actually more damage from that storm than from the hurricane!

It took us a longer than expected to find a new place.  One day Jordan was walking past a house and the door just happened to be open while someone was sweeping inside.  He could tell it was not lived in.   There was no sign saying it was for rent.  The owner had held off renting it out before and it had been empty for a couple of years.   Before we could move in there were a number of repairs that needed to be done.

 There was a lot of mold and water damage.  This is midway through the repairs.  Fortunately the owner was willing to take the repairs cost off the rent if we oversaw the work.

 We put in plenty of our own elbow grease as well...

Here is the street view

                         Spiritual Highlights

Paulina is sadly the only one in her family that is studying right now.  But she hasn't let that stop her.  She is still steadily moving forward.

 She has been working on memorizing scriptures.  We've found that using pictures instead of writing the words out helps her - and her drawings are so fun.  You might get a kick out of them too.

 (Isaiah 48:17,18)

 (2 Timothy 3:16)

 (1 John 5:19)

Paulina's fight to go to the Convention
Paulina had to really push to be able to go to the Regional Convention with us last year.  She had to go to all 9 of her teachers individually and tell them she needed the time off of school.  We asked the locals how to handle it and had practice sessions on our study.  All but one of her teachers allowed it.  But her math teacher said there was a math test that Friday.  And if she missed that test she wouldn't only fail the test but she would recieve a failing grade for the whole year.  She asked to take the test early but he refused.  We discussed it and decided the next person to talk to was the Administrator of her school.  She talked to him and he agreed it was a reasonable request and said that he would support her.  She then had to go back to the math teacher and ask again.  He finally agreed and gave her the test early.  So she was able to go with us to Guadalajara and get the Convention!

It's always a joy to meet new brothers and sisters.  This dear sister lost her husband shortly before the Convention but was still faithfully serving.  The man on the right is her late husband's bible study.  It was greatly encouraging to her that he came for the first time to the Convention.

Mmmmmm, a treat. Authentic Indian Food with long-time friends Kathy and Bernie!  The owners of the restaurant are from Southern India.  They were studying last year - several of them are now baptized!

Eric and Rosie Green decided to move back to the States. We were very sad to see them go after serving with them for many years.

One of their studies traveled to Guadalajara with her son to attend the Convention.

Monday we went to a park

The Memorial
You may recognize the woman on the left - Imelda.  She hasn't resumed her study but it was nice to have her with us at the Memorial.

Adriana had been studying for some time.  She has started using Jehovah's name and over the summer cleansed her home of idols and spiritistic items.  Her husband put up resistance to this at first but she persevered until everything was out of the house.  Doris is the older sister with us - she is in her 12th year in Mexico - at 82 years old!  One day Adriana made us mole' tacos and shrimp soup.

Rudy's First Circuit Assembly

It was a push to get Rudy to his first Assembly.  I'll let Dane explain....

So at first his mom was hesitant to let her boy go 4 hours away for 4 day, and that they had no money for him to go. Well, Jehovah is a generous God, and he touches the hearts of those that are humble and are willing. Jehovah found a way for it to happen and eventually Rudy's mom said yes and actually was happy for him to go. Some of you have made donations to our ministry here and us helping Rudy go was a way we could give back. Like Paulina, he had to talk to his teachers as well and get permission. He was amazed at the brotherhood and spiritual feast presented at the Convention.

Before the Circuit Assembly a group of us went to the Guadalajara Zoo. Here we have good buddies Rob and Lydia, some of their family the Wesolowskis (now serving in Guanajuato Mexico), Angie and Nyah.

These little fish eat your dead skin and make it soft!

In June we were short on brothers - including Dane who had gone back to Oregon to work.  Some of the sisters were able to do the michrophones!