NOVEMBER 28-

    Wet cool weather is here …and I know you may get tired of hearing it but again Praise God we have a dryer:) and a washer…the water is very cold on the fingers for washing by hand:( This last trip to US I brought an electric tea pot…how wonderful that has been for heating water in the kitchen for dishes, for tea, for cooking etc etc. I am not too good at washing dishes in cold water on a cold day…it makes my fingers hurt awful so hot water is awesome:)

    It seems like the building of our dining room is going too slow:) It was great the week Alfanso and Jaime were working all week but normally Jaime is working alone and maybe only 3 or 4 days instead of 5 or 6…so progress is slow:( Maybe the men don't mind the crowded kitchen where everybody cannot find a seat to eat and the kids eating outside in the cold and dark at night like I do:) LOL NO the guys are always busy. There's just too many things to do:)Yes well I guess slow progress is better than nothing.

    Since we last wrote the men bought a sow who will have babies the beginning of the year. Also Hermano Juan bought 2 calves. And Asher traded our 2 bulls for a cow and a heifer calf. So we are getting milk again ..on a good day we get a gallon in the morning and evening but some days she only does half a gallon at a time..we are trying to figure out the little tricks that help her give more milk. Its taking a good bit of Ashers time to be sure she gets enough grass…thankfully we already had a grinder so he can get corn husk from market for a little bit of nothing and bean hulls and orange peel and grind it all up with the grass and she eats it up….So if the milk doesn't get all drank in the morning with coffee then some days we get to make cheese which everybody loves….theres a variety on who likes the milk and who doesn't:) So we still buy some of the box fake stuff for those who don't want the real stuff:)

   We did switch the boys dorm and girls dorm…they are still in the process of building the addition up by the boys dorm which will be a room for the older single guys and a spare room for guest. When that room is done,  some of the older girls are moving into the room that the single guys are now in. That will open a number of beds in the girls dorm. After talking to us and Bertha, Evelyn is planning to move into  the girls dorm. The girls are all excited about it. She feels it will be good to help her Spanish and prepare her a little,when she  leaves the nest in 6 month to go back to Rose Creek to prepare for going to college.

   December 17 we leave for the border so we can renew our 6 month tourist visas and renew the van papers. We are asking God to provide enough money so we can register the van in Mexico. We do not have definite but from what people have told us we are guessing $500- $1000. Before that trip we really need to buy at least 2 tires which cost $200 each. We will be a little north of San Antonio in a rented house with family and friends for 3 days, 4 nights. We are very excited about this and grateful for friends and family who paid for this so we can all be together. We are looking to God provide financially what we need for the trip. 

    After being here a year and a half I thought I should be through the worst of homesickness but getting through Thanksgiving and our grandbaby, Jessica's first birthday were rough for me. Thankfully, its better now:) I am so grateful for my daughters who have become my close friends but some days I still just get lonely for my friends:)

   Blessings to each of you. Thank you for reading this and praying and all your love and support.

Today is Papa's 53rd birthday!!!!! 

So once again we have a few more recruits to The Village…About 2 weeks ago, a teenage girl Blanca came to stay for a while. Apparently she wasn't getting along with her step dad, so her mom wanted to get her out of the house.  There are also some more single guys: Teofilo is 18 and his cousin Jose is 28. Teofilo has actually been here for about 3 weeks. This last weekend he went back to his house to check on his work there, where he met his drunk cousin on the side of the road. He offered to bring him to the Village, and give him work to do. So they have been working in the gardens and stuff like that around the land. 

Our numbers are now up to about 55, so every meal we stuff anywhere from 45-55 people on 3 6ft tables with the children out in the pavilion. So we are definitely awaiting the finished dining room!!! 

In the pavilion they have the concrete beams poured and are starting to form for the rest of the ceiling. This will probably take several weeks to prepare for the pouring of the ceiling/floor. Just to explain: the same slab of concrete will be the ceiling for the dining room and the floor for the upper level. 

This month we were able to sell some roosters, a turkey, and some rabbits. Which was a good step towards selling enough to pay for feed. Our daughter Liz is working at an agriculture fundraiser for us, so we were able to get stuff to make rabbit cages. 

Our neighbor has been wanting to sell us his 3 cows. It was more money than we had and more commitment then we can handle at this point. So we just bought one cow and a little heifer calf in trade for our 2 bulls, plus we gave 150 cash besides. The reason we wanted to by a cow, is because our 2 cows are dry at the present and this one will milk till the others have their calves. The heifer calf is still taking 3L of milk morning and evening, so we are only getting a gallon a day for us. But in 2 weeks we will ween the calf, and get more milk then. So we have 3 cows, all are pregnant, and will be having their calves at the beginning of the year. We also now have 2 heifer calves and 1 more bull calf. We are not getting big amounts of milk at this point, but we are building slowly and are quite happy with our beginning. Because of having milk, we used some of the fundraiser money to buy a fridge!!! We are pleased with our bargain: its a 16 cubit for only $465. 

So the seasons here are obviously changing. Last week we had our first days with drizzle and fog, with its dreadful freezing coldness. The roadsides have taken on a fall-ish sort of look. The brothers are planning cool season vegetables. 

The brothers are building another 2 rooms where the mudslide, last year, wiped out 4, and the girls and boys will be switching dorms as soon as they get it finished. The girls will feel a little safer in the middle of things instead of on the edge.