Friday, July 22,2011

Horst family update:)

This morning we had a shower of rain but now the sun is trying to peak through. The wonderful thing for today is that TWO backhoes are here working at moving mud...the mountain is pretty much straight up in back of the houses so now the plan is to make a driveway behind the houses then make steps(4meters wide and 4 meters high) up the mountain to make it safer and avoid more mud slide drama...thats alot of moving dirt/mud...but we need to fill in in the front of the houses because a little more of the mountain slid away each year so that now in front of Jason and Nicoles room there is only 5 ft till it drops off...so the plan for the front drop off is to fill in and make a front yard and then steps.....thats all still in talk stage so we will see how it actually ends up...we will try to keep pictures posted of progress:)

The oven was set in place and hooked up yesterday...so Evelyn made her first batch of hot rolls and everybody loved it!! This morning we made zuccini bread in the cake pans and that was a big hit as well:) Now we are eager to make granola...and monster cookies for childrens church tomorrow:) It is wonderful and thank you again to those who shared in making this happen:) Now we are lookin forward to going to Telancingo to get whole grains and yummy things at a health food store...And maybe there we can find bread pans and muffin pans.I think of baking and have to adjust my ingredients a little...I looked for chocolate chips and there were none at the bodega, Nicole said they have them at Sams in the big city but it cost $25 for a 3# bag...well no chocolate chips for now:) Nuts are really expensive, about $8 a half pound so that will need to be a rare treat too. At least raisens arent too crazy expensive. They are looking forward to cinnamon rolls..and we can get cinnamom and sugar:) and I checked about apricot jelly and they do have that(for those who have eaten my cinnamon rolls made with apricot spreadable fruit instead of sugar) We also have m&ms to make my monster cookies so that I know is a big hit...so we wont be deprived, just some adjusting:)

Another big weekend is ahead of us...On Friday some of the men go out to visit the various outlying churches. They usually have a service and spend the night. Often going on to another village on Saturday. Returning on Sunday. One of theservices is held at a place called Africa, surrounding villages are called Santa Domingo and Buenos Aires. The brothers joke about this being the international part of our ministry:) Then Saturday is childrens church....the size of that depends a lot on the weather these days and of course we had to cancel several weeks because of the mudslide. But if the weather is not pouring rain tomorrow we will have childrens church again. Then in the afternoon we have a dinner party to go to. We do not go to all of them but these friends have come to the village different times and we do want them to feel our love and care for them...such times are kinda overwhelming for me because I sit there feeling like a lump on a log and an idiot because I can not speak but eventually things will get better:)

Yesterday while preparing dinner it became a spanish/english class which was fun, we all did a bunch of laughing of us americans trying to say the spanish words and the mexicans trying to say the english. Later the one girl asked me"dificil hablar en espanol?"(is it difficult to talk spanish) and I laughed and said "Si." I pointed to Eldora and said " no nino, yo abuela"(I am no little girl, I am a grandma) They got a good laugh at that:) It did make me stop and think too because I suddenly realized I am the oldest woman here:) Thats different for me! I was always the little girl, now in the last years I am gettting used to being one of the older women but to be the oldest is really strange:)...guess it shows you that the women are young here in this village!!