The Hayes Zoo

Our Purpose


- to know God and use our entire lives in service to Him.

- to stand in the gap through prayer, giving and service to viable ministries in Latin America.

- to be transparent helpers of fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, using our resources and skills that through the Holy Spirit, we might encourage and equip those who have less.

- to share a living perspective from Latin America to our churches, friends and family in the states and beyond.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Where oh where have those missionaries gone???

Hi there folks. Are you wondering what in the world we're up to??? Where are we now, still, heading in the future??? All of the above? Well, here is a boring little post to answer albeit briefly those nagging questions....:)

Where:

We're still here in Madera.

What:

Alan -

working on whatever is falling apart at the moment. (He's kind of like a fireman - except for the time waiting in the firehouse for the call...)
working on putting up donated sheet rock in our church a couple of days a week.
playing every night in the worship band from our church for an evangelical outreach in the area

Faith -
cooking several times off and on during the week at the children's home.helped work a VBS with our church here in Madera. (Another one coming up this week!!)
trying to keep up on the house these days....

Riley -
school
helping dad with above projects
catching new snakes, lizards, ect....
VBS and inviting half the neighborhood kids....
a smattering of translation work

Janelle:
school
learning to ride her new (to us!) bike
helping dad with above projects
falling off the top bunk onto the concrete floor - sigh.......that's a sound I'm hoping never to hear again. She's doing better by the way - thanks for the prayers!!
VBS

Natalie:
school
learning to ride the hand me down bike from Janelle
helping mom with grocery store trips
VBS

We took a bit of a break from daily work at the children's home to help some short term mission teams that showed up in the area. We will be very 'in and out' at the children's home until the first of August helping with another team that is here as of today! It's a nice change in pattern but my brain is very tired from the back and forth between languages. I'm feeling a bit like a train wreck in that my ability to talk or think in any language has apparently gone by the wayside...hopefully it will be back tomorrow.

As for the future - ahhhhh the future............... those details will need to wait for a post where my thinking skills, clarity and typing skills meet. :) I hope it won't be too long in coming.........

Much love to you all!!

Faith for the entire zoo....

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

New week - new happenings

Let's see - how to begin this update. For some reason I always feel I have a hard time getting started. There have been a couple of random themes the LORD has been showing me - I'm SURE they're NOT random - just not what I've been looking for if you know what I mean...

Proverbs 1:32-33 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them, but who ever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease without fear of harm. (emphasis mine)

2 Peter 3:8 But do not forget this one thing dear friends, with the LORD a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. The LORD is not slow in keeping his promises, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you (ME!!!!), not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Then this I read after a study this week - Double Mindedness....There is a need for constant self-examination. We have to live in the world and worldly things are necessary for our daily subsistence, but it requires great watchfulness to keep our affections and hearts focused on the things that are above. - Halley's Bible Handbook

I see a theme here and it's making me uncomfortable. All things I struggle with as an A type personality (or sinner - whatever...). Patience. Faith. Soul Searching. Confession. Focus. Sigh, I have a long way to go....doing life during all this and staying gracious...Oh my.

This is a new week and I remember a promise that those mercies are new every morning - thank goodness. Actually it's Tuesday but I feel like I'm just getting started with things. (See above. :) )

The weather: WOW! I feel like we're back in WA at the moment. The rainy season has started. It actually started about a month ago (early) but it's getting more serious about dumping large amounts of water into the parched earth so now we have something akin to a LAKE in our "driveway". You can't see the gravel, you can't tell how deep it is, and it's rather f.u.l.l. I'm hoping the level doesn't rise to the doors of the house...This is probably NOTHIN' to you Washingtonians but for here it does tend to make a mess. The roads are becoming a real adventure in driving and life threatening to walk on. Alan's truck is several different shades of brown now - depending on the level of puddle he just drove through. :)Believe it or not, rain does affect household things around here.

Laundry: This consists of staring a load right before I go to bed. I'm usually up pegging it out on the line by 6:30am to try and get as much dry time as possible. Any bit of sunshine and breeze is a benefit. Normally, I can get the one load done and dried before the rain starts at 1:30pm (like clockwork!) but today it didn't happen as we were all at the children's home 'till around 2. All of us did run out in the rain to pull down all the laundry there though! Our clothes here just needed an extra rinse cycle. :)Floors: UGH. I KNOW I don't want carpet but there are times when my tile floors drive me nuts and the muddy season is one of them. For some reason that I'm positive has to do with the gene pool, my son is a DIRT magnet. Funny, but he doesn't even notice being wet, muddy, sweaty, or otherwise less than clean. :) I can always tell where he's been though because he leaves a trail. The two entrances are a dingy sort of white 'till the rain stops - there's just no way around it.

Animals: Hmmm... they don't like the rain either. So, what do they do??? Seek indoor cover, of course! I'm finding numerous beetles, flies, moths, a cockroach (BLECH), and various others seeking refuge. So far the cat seems to be keeping mice at bay - I should hope so. She now has children to teach... See - here they are! Tortuga and Tigre....spanish names of course. To go with Besitos, la mama.

Anyway - the hills are turning a beautiful shade of green that is very refreshing to look at!


As far as work stuff goes - it IS a new week. There have been some things change at the children's home and a few workers have left. Looks as if they've either needed to find paying jobs, the work was too much, or other issues have taken precedence. We can't quite make out the turnover rate but I know that people get burn out pretty darn quick. Nancy and Alfredo are doing an AMAZING job but this last week has been pretty tough. They need our prayers.

I talked with her this afternoon about coming and kind of taking over the kitchen for a bit. It's a bit tricky for me as I don't want to push my way into a situation that is working but one of the workers that had to leave was doing all the cooking. So now there's not really anyone in charge and that area is difficult to leave to whoever. I would LOVE to have Concha come back and do what she'd been doing SO WELL the first year we were here but one, we don't have the money to pay her, and two, she fell a month and a half ago and broke her leg. It's bad, so if you could pray for her that would be wonderful. I don't know how long her recovery is going to be but it's looking like a long while. So, we're talking about how this is going to look but for a bit we're just going to wing it! They have great supplies built up there and I know how to cook 99% Mexican so I'm going to dive in starting tomorrow.

Alan has been doing his various handyman jobs as usual. The last week and the last couple of days were devoted to some translations work, errands for people, drywall at the church, trying to fix our camera to get pictures for the blog, and repairing and hooking up a dryer at the children's home to resolve the "nothing is getting dry in this weather" problem. He's so good....

Don't EVER disregard skills you have to learn. You just never know how they'll be used in the future...

We are getting ready for an evangelical camp that is coming to town and a couple of groups that are going to be helping with constructions projects and a VBS in the area. These next 3 weeks are going to go by f.a.s.t.

Wow - and it's ONLY Tuesday............

Friday, July 4, 2008

Independance day!

Happy 4th of July! We are spending the afternoon celebrating, or celebrating as best we can as Americans without guns or bombs or anything pyrotechnic of any kind. Maybe later we'll go out and try to get the federales to squeeze off a few rounds for us.

The kids got to go to Vacation Bible School here in Madera this week at the Baptist church. They enjoyed it a lot and made some new friends in the process.

A few snazzy pics of the digs here of late ....

We recently invested some money in building materials and I am spending time as I can doing some work on the church building where our church meets.


Some people from Hockinson Community Church will recognize this as the building we built 4 years ago, with an addition. We are in the process of adding on a bathroom / shower, and getting this ready for a married couple who work here to live in.


The laundry room here. The two new washers are brand new as of about three weeks ago.


This morning I spent part of my time fixing a leg on one of the sofas here, and also connecting the stovepipe for the small woodstove seen here. The sofas and chairs seen here arrived a week or so ago and are a huge addition.