Back to normal, as far as it goes here ....

Things have been busy here lately. Living in Madera has it's perks, -- wait, what did I just say?? Most people who have been here would tell you that Madera is quite near the last place you come to before you fall off the edge of the earth. I guess I say this as one who has just moved back to Madera after spending the past six months over the edge. Many would say we are still over the edge, just now not quite as far.

Anyway. Perks. One of them is that we are once again immersed in the Mexican culture and the Spanish language. After spending 4 months in language school, I think we felt like we were forgetting everything we had learned by not speaking Spanish every day. Now we're back into having to remember irregular verb forms in preterite and imperfect tenses, and trying to remember to use the subjunctive voice when needed. Our homework for our sunday school class this week is to read the entire book of John three times, and underline / note all uses of certain words and topics. Reading is still a little slower for me in Spanish than in English, but I'm reading it through in Spanish for the most part. Yeah, I speak Spanish; I just sound like king James when I talk.

We are acustomizing to our life here. Faith is starting to use the wood cook stove that we have here to heat the house to actually cook on sometimes. Which takes us back to that whole 'over the edge' thing again. No, actually it's been good. The kids are learning some things about life with animals and the realities of life that they don't learn at the grocery store. The week started off with a bang on Sunday afternoon when our landlord told Riley he'd kill a chicken for us. He had Riley catch one of the loud-crowing, strutting roosters in the back barnyard, and the two of them went out to the woodshed and lopped its head off. Then Janelle helped pluck it and clean it. Faith was just thrilled with the whole ordeal -- ok, actually she wasn't. But I'm pretty sure we'll laugh about it some day.

After haunting the Telmex office every Thursday morning for the past 4 or 5 weeks, we have a phone and internet connection at home now, gracias a Dios!! What this means is that we have (more or less) full-time skype access again, as well as e-mail and news headlines from the outside world - whoo hoo!!! Obama, Hillary and petroleum prices are all up; the dollar is down. Well, at least the skype and e-mail is a good thing.

I've been working at the children's home here in Madera for about a month now, and am finding myself in the middle of things again. One of the directors is in Juarez this week; this means I am taking the kids to school every morning at 8, and then picking them up after school at 1:30. Along with this, there are various businesses in town that now donate food to the home that needs to be picked up, all on the right days - two tortillarias (where they make tortillas) every day, one chicken place on Thursday and another on Friday, a panaderia (bread store) on Thursday, and vegetables from one of the main grocery stores on Friday. Also running some other odds and ends of errands here and there, paying some bills, buying some things. And in between, trying to replace a few broken windows and fix the front doors that are falling off the hinges to where they will keep out most of the frigid, winter night air. Another big project of late is converting the closets in the bedrooms into lockers, with a lockable section for each child. Along with fitting in an occasional soccer game, some basic carpentry lessons and other life lessons with the kids. I'm hoping to try and start leading a singing and worship time each week there, along with a bible study of some sort for the kids.