Pizzas and... Nicole the Kidnapper

Last week, while the family was in the states, I spent quite a bit of time with Sis. Carmen and her girls. They always take good care of me when I'm all alone. I never leave this house hungry... More like painfully full.

One day I was over  at the house, Sis. Carmen wanted me to teach her how to make pizza.

The girls had fun helping decorate the pizzas

 Ana Belen loves smiling for the camera!

Jerameel not so much... haha

 Ana Belen entertained us with riddles and jokes while we waited for our pizza

 Hawaiian pizza!

Not my favorite, but hey- when you're hungry everything tastes good, right? 

After eating, we went outside to play a Mexican version of hopscotch. 

They call it "Chango" here. (Monkey)

The girls found pieces of broken red brick to draw the arms, feet, legs, belly, and head of 

the "monkey".

 Jerameel with Loca, one of the street dogs.

 We jumped around and played hopscotch for the next half hour or so until it started to sprinkle.

I headed home as soon as it started to rain. On the way there, I passed a little house that we pass by when we go on outreach every Sunday. There are always three little brothers and sisters all under the age of about 6. As I walked by the little kids called me over saying "Señora, Señora!" 

They asked me, "Why didn't you come to our house yesterday?" 

"Yesterday" happened to be a Thursday, so I explained to them that we come by on Sundays not Thursdays. 

Explaining the days of the week to a candy-hungry 6 year old is hard.

As I stood there chatting with the kiddos, the conversation slowed, and then halted.. The little girl looks down at my purse and says, "What do you have in there?" 

I'm sure she was hoping for a little piece of candy, but sadly I had none! :))

These kids want to come to Sunday School so badly. We have passed by their house and invited them so many times, but they have never come! They want to come have fun with all the other kids, but their mom has always seemed very disinterested. 

So I asked them to go get their mom so I could talk to her. Mom came out and I offered to come pick the children up on Sunday, and bring them back home after Sunday school.

I immediately became Enemy-Kidnapper #1. LOL

She looked at me like I was going to grab her kids right then and make a run for it.

I assured and reminded her to no avail that the church was just a block and a half down the road. 

She wasn't having it though and announced that she herself would take kids to Sunday school the coming Sunday! 

And were they with us this past Sunday? Nope.

Oh well kids... I tried. Haha.

*Nicole*

Dia del Niño

Since most of our family was going to be travelling on the official "Children's Day" of Mexico, we planned a special Saturday outing for all of our Sunday school kids. We went to the Parque Ecologico here in town. It's a beautiful, very large park. 

We contracted a bus to come pick all of us up and the church on Saturday morning. 

We had 30 riding on the bus

Jael, Beatriz, and Ana Belen

A very scary swaying bridge over the lake

Trying to cross

We started out by playing in the play gym...until a security guard told us most of our kids were too big!

Beatriz and Ana Belen, the little babysitter

Ailyn

A few of the kiddos

Watching the ducks in the lake

Nicole and Beatriz

Rolling down the hill

We crossed over this bridge and saw this...

A closer look...

I think people are trying to start a bridge like the one in Paris with locks all over it :) 

Jerameel

Eating lunch

Jael

Nicole found this brilliant game on Pinterest. With water bottle, wash cloth, and soapy water you can make "snake bubbles". Everyone got such a kick out this! 

All the kids wanted to try their hand at it. 

Crazy girl

Blowing snake bubbles turned into a bubble fight - people had suds all in their hair and on their faces. 

The napping ladies were especially susceptible...

Towards the end of the day, Austin and Choyo decided they wanted to go on the zip line. 

Austin

Choyo way up high, about to come sliding past us on the zip line. 

~Bethany~

Up To Our Eyeballs in Cake :))

Yesterday was Eddy's 10th birthday!!

He is the sweetest, and cutest out of all of our boys. :) 

Even though he is getting so old, he's still our little baby.

We had a mini celebration with cake during lunch. I set the cake in front of him, we sang happy birthday, and then came the moment we were all waiting for! The Mordida! 

I saw the mischievous glint in his older brother's eye as he crept inconspicuously towards Eddy... Eddy leaned forward to take a little nibble...

And.... BAM! 

AUSTIN had run forward and smashed this poor little guy's whole face into the cake!!! He was literally up to his eyeballs in cake! LOL

What had started as a fun and smiley time turned into watery red eyes and sniffing as we wiped the cake out his eyes. :( After he was done cleaning up and blowing all the cake out of his nose, he was able to laugh when he saw above picture of himself. Honestly I think he was just so shocked and maybe couldn't breathe out of his nose from all the cake that got shoved up there... Not being able to breathe is scary!:))

This has got to be the biggest mordida that I have ever seen!

For the record, Austin did get a good talking to about being gentler... 

Sigh. He is still growing into his muscles and just does NOT know his own strength...

*Nicole*

La Marcha de Victoria

Last weekend, we had our first "Marcha de Victoria" - Victory March! A couple months ago, God laid this burden on our pastor's heart - that our church would march through the streets of our neighborhood with music, candy, balloons, inviting everyone to "come and worship the Lord with us!" For the past month or so we have been preparing - getting signs made, making fliers, drawing up a map of our colonia to show people where our church is, praying, and transferring this vision into the hearts of our people. We invited Elder Wakefield's church to march with us. Twenty-two people from his church showed up! Their group along with our church made for quite the exciting, Holy Ghost march! 

The day started out with a bit of hitch - the banner that we had ordered was done wrong. In Spanish the verse translates into "I will rejoice with those that say to me, we will go to the house of the Lord". Instead of that, the sign read "I will rejoice with those that deserved it, we will go to the house of the Lord". Oh my word! Really?! The words "me decian" (they told me) and "merecian" (deserved) are very close...

...fortunately so!! With a little Sharpie and white-out we got the problem fixed. 

Every Sunday we go out on outreach right before Sunday school. We mount a speaker on top of the van and drive through the streets announcing that Sunday school is about to start. This Sunday was no different, except for the fact that these little guys got permission from their mom to ride to the church in the van with the outreach team! 

Beatriz and Nicole

While we waited for the the time to start our march, we gathered in the front patio of the church to sing and get our vocal chords warmed up for the march. 

These are the guys that marched in front holding the banner. 

A bunch of kids showed up early so they could march with us. (Instead of us picking them up as we marched past their houses.)

What could have turned out to be a very hot and tiring day for this little guy turned into a very fun one! He has a smart little mama :)

These two ladies wanted to participate but couldn't walk the route. Instead, they rode in the van with the chauffeur - Mom. I checked on them halfway through the march and they were sitting back there smiling and clapping their hands along with the music! 

Paulina and Miguel Angel

When we arrived back at the church there were refreshments for everyone. 

We pretty much went right into the church and got started with the service. Abner started it out by reading a few verses. (Look at all those kids! The first three rows were filled with them!)

Such a beautiful sight - for many of these kids this was their first time to ever be in an Apostolic service feeling the presence of God. 

We had a mini service - sang a few songs, but tried to keep things a bit shorter to be able to have the kids out at the normally scheduled time. Dad preached - 

To keep the kids' attention, he had them doing different things and quoting Scripture verses. This is Ailyn (pronounced Eileen), and she is a little girl we have mentioned a few times on this blog. She came to our very first Sunday school class a couple years ago and has been one of our most faithful kids since. She does NOT miss a Sunday!! She has such a sweet spirit and is an absolute joy to have around. In this picture she is quoting Acts 2:38 for the congregation! 

We are anxiously awaiting the day when we see this verse fulfilled in her life. 

Sunday school kids at the altar for the first time

Hno. Mario was such a huge help - he prayed with each kid with such a burden - the service wouldn't have been the same without him. We need more altar workers like him!! 

Pastor praying with the kids

This is Armando - a lot of the time his dad won't let him come to Sunday school, but when they do come, they are always so excited for snack time. These kids can break your heart!
Hno. Mario was praying with him and later told me that Armando didn't really know how to pray or what do say, but just cried and cried. It was obvious he was feeling the touch of the Lord. 

We are planning on doing this much more often. The march, the service for the kids, giving them an opportunity to really pray and get the Holy Ghost. Nothing, nothing, nothing can compare to this! 

~Bethany~