Saturday Morning - Ixtapaluca

Well, if there is one thing I`ve learned already, it is that computer keyboards are not the same all over the world. I`m struggling a bit with the one I`m using now as the layout is not exactly the same as at home.

Our flight to Mexico City on Thursday went without incident. Arrived about 3:00 p.m. central time. After passing our luggage on to Rod (the main missionary here) and Darrol Prusia, we took the metro to our hotel.

In general, Mexico City wasn`t nearly as crowded as I expected. Thursday evening we ate at a taqueria. They served us tacos, which are about 1/2 the size of those in the states. They were very good, althugh the choice of meats was interesting. You could have pork and beef (no problem) or tripe, which was beef intestine or beef tongue. I had one of the tripe tacos before I knew what it was. It tasted fine, but I couldn¨t eat another after knowing what it was.

That evening, we went to the Zocalo plaza, which was a mile or more from our hotel. Very beautfiul place. I may try uploading pictures from my camera later, but you google it if you want.

We returned to the hotel and after a team meeting with Rod & Darroll, we all got to bed about 11:00, after having been up since around 2:00 the previous day.

Friday morning, we had breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and went to the Basillica of the Virigin of Guadalupe. Quite a bit of climbing.

We then returned to downtown Mexico City via the subway (metro) and had lunch at a nice restaurant before finally leaving for Ixtapaluca.

The drive from Mexico City to Ixtapaluca was something to see. The traffic is as bad as you`ve heard. We finally arrived at Rod`s home, which is in what I think is called a puebalito (a small neighborhood). Very prety with lots of color. We had supper there and the students (both American and Mexican) played games to learn each others names, and also watched a movie together.

At about 10:30, Rod dropped me off at my host home. My hosts are named Ismael and Marta, and they have two daughters, one of which still lives at home. I`ll go into more detail later (I need to get ready for breakfast here in a minute), but the missionaries told us that the Mexican people are very relational. I found this to be true. My hosts speak no English, but we talked for the next two hours, sharing pictures of our families.

From all our conversations, I found that they had been married about as long as Lora and I, and that their older daugher, Elba, is married and has one child. I met their younger daughter, Gabriel, last night, and will meet Elba on Monday when she comes to help with vacation Bible School.

It seems that Ismael and Marta have been Christians for about 23 years. Rod told me earlier that when the church here is fully mature, they would like Ismael to become their pastor.

Need to go, but in spite of my butchering of the Spanish languge, we were able to communicate a lot about our families, what Nebraska was like (they couldn`t believe the range of temperatures) and our lives in general. Very, very nice people.

Well, gotta run. I`ll try and write again tonight. I have a computer in my room (actually Gabrieli`s room), which was totally unexpected.

Tim