One Last Time...

If you read the last post you'll see that we've been busy preparing for our move. It seems with each day things get more intense. But it has also given us a chance to reflect on our time here in Guadalajara, visit "one last time" with friends in Mexico and visit our favorite haunts "one last time" as well. A couple fun things we've done in the past weeks:

We went to Tlaquepaque for an afternoon meal with our friend Sara and her Mom and Aunts. Sara is part of the Morelia team...see the link to their log in our 'links' area. If you've visited us here in Guadalajara I'm sure you've been to Tlaquepaque (Tla - Kay - Pa - Kay). It's a quaint tourist area with shops setup in old hacienda style buildings. There's a couple great restaurants too that we enjoy eating at....oh and a really big chair

Two weekends ago we traveled down to Morelia to see our friends down there. It's 300 kms door to door so it's not to bad of a trip. Only thing is all the interstates here are toll roads....so what in the US would cost just the one tank of gas there and back, we add $50 in tolls round trip. Anyway we had a wonderful time...this time making sure to be there on a Sunday to visit their church service. Bill was able to play keyboard with his good buddy Sam Gonzalez on the guitar leading the worship, along with the wonderful voices of Sara and Summer. Our kids enjoyed playing with Sam & Ann's kids as well. We ate lots of food and just hung out enjoying eachothers company. It was quite difficult to say goodbye, but we know when it comes to God's people, you're never saying goodbye forever.

Can you see the passion we have for worshiping God....we must have been on an "aaaahhhh" syllable :)

Here are our kids with Sam & Ann's 2 daughters (1 more on the way!) Victoria & Sofia

In the midst of all the transition we've realized the big need to shepherd our children through it all. We've made tough ministry decisions to allow us more time as a family in these last months as well as done some special things like videoing the house with the kids as the tour guides so they'll have some memories of their life here in Mexico. We also have tried to celebrate the little things in their lives, like finishing swimming lessons with an Ice Cream feast or rooting for Nathan as his relay team came in 1st place at his school's olypmics. And this Saturday we'll celebrate Ben's 3rd birthday (actually it's friday the 31st) with hopefully 80 people or so in a park...when we throw a combined b-day/thank you/good bye fiesta for our friends.

Well no one really gave us a full proof "Guide to Transition" but we wait on God's Grace and Mercies to show up each morning and march ahead. We thank you for praying for us and writing notes of encouragement to us.

One last picture that perhaps will give you a different view of Mexico then what you see in the news these days. We have found it quite amazing the difference between the Mexico we know now to the Mexico we knew when we were younger and visited border towns on short term missions trips etc (quite a bit of money floating around in the big city of Guadalajara). The vehicle in this picture is no where near being rare in Guadalajara....you see them quite often...one in fact lives next door to us.