Greetings everyone!! It has been too long since I have updated you all on how things are going down here and for that I must apologize! My once a week update intentions have been quite difficult to follow through with because of how busy we have been, but hopefully I can recap a few high lights...
Our time in Nochixtlan has been ablsolutely amazing. The people, the food, the parties, everything has been such a testament to the loving God that we serve. Christmas, although it was hard to pass away from family, I felt as if I was with my Mexican family. A few of the church families were concerned that we were homesick and wanted to us to feel as loved as possible so they threw a beautiful Christmas party for us. Here they celebrate Christmas by having a huge dinner late on the 24th, to be together to celebrate the first hour of Christmas together. Presents are by no means the focus, but rather Christ, sharing time with family and ofcourse...food! It was such a blessing to be here, a home away from home. As a team we put together a Christmas program which included a stomp routine and a drama. We were able to take it to a few of the surrounding towns and present it there. We have been to privileged to be apart of what God wants to accomplish here, it´s absolutely incredible. Besides presenting our Christmas program we have been doing various work projects in the homes of people from the church here. There are lots of single moms, widows and other families that don´t have the means to repair leaking roofs or instal a toilet or lay down concrete for a floor in their house, so we have been able to meet needs and encourage people in such amazing ways. It is such a humbling thing to see people with, literally nothing be so gracious and giving. Mexico has and continues to be my teacher in so many ways.

We have had the very privileged opportunity to be a part of various birthday parties and other celebrations. Joel´s son Joab turned two on the 27th and he invited us to a traditional Mixteco barbeque at his grandparents ranch. We actually went the night before to light off fireworks and watch how the prepared the in ground ovens for the bbq. They dug a hole about 4ft deep in the ground and lined it with speacial stones, then started a fire on top of it to heat the stones. After about five hours of heating, the stones turned red hot and the pit was then lined with agave leaves....then all the good stuff is put in, more avage leaves on top, then blankets and dirt, then it was left over night. We went back to the ranch early the next morning to help uncover the pit and celebrate Joab. It was such an incredible experience


Pastor Samuel and Pastor Joel, along with their families and a few other friends took us to Puebla for a few days last week. Puebla is a huge, beautiful city which is also home to the worlds smallest volcano! It was so fun to get some time to be a tourist and just explore an amazing Mexican city. Puebla has a beautiful center that felt more like a European city. It was refreshing, except for the part when I ate some funky food and had to visit every bathroom I saw for the entire day...but it eventually passed and all was well again!
This is Brenda and I have fun at the volcancito!


Here in Mexico and in most of Latin America they celebrate Three Kings day or Dia de los Reyes Magos...this is the day in which kids get presents. The town also celebrates her children by putting on a parade and a big party in the center of town. The Mayor of the town happens to be the father of the famiy I am staying with and he is in charge of the entire thing. Through a few conversations about our group he found out that Tyler is a race car driver and asked him to drive a 55 Ford Highlander in the parade, and he also invited me to ride in the car with Tyler. It was ablsolutely hilarious and such a blast! We wore speacial racing shirts and threw candy wit the three kings seated in the back. The car broke down like three times, then they realized there wasn´t enough gas in it, then it overheated, so for over half of the parade the Nochixtlan police department ended up pushing us all over town. Our faces hurt from laughing to hard and we, needless to say, will never forget January 6th 2009!
I hope all of you are doing well and enjoying the new year! I have a little less than three weeks left here and I can´t believe how time is flying by. As a I make my way over to Connecticut I will be home for a week at the end of January to grab some warm clothes and hugs from all of you! Blessings and love!