Outages and differences

Thank you for your prayers for us in transition!  We have certainly been encouraged by your notes, goodbye greetings and updates of goings on up in the States.  Some of you have asked how life is now that we have arrived in Mexico permanently. In our experience the leaving was not too difficult because we were excited to be doing ministry full-time here in Mexico.  Our departing was mixed with some saddness to say goodbye to many good friends we have known in our 13 years in Escondido.  Arriving however was like a birthday, you know you should feel different, but you hope not too different.

There are some clear differences in lifestyle that we have been acquainted with previously, but all of these differences take on new meaning when you are here to stay.  One of these differences is the unreliability of utilities.  Those of you who have travelled in Mexico and other places in the developing world will remember seeing water tanks on top of each house in Mexico and elsewhere.  Roof-top water tanks solve two problems.  The first is that it alleviates the need for each city to have pressurized water because the water in each tank is then gravity fed into the house.  The second reason is that when the water service is interrupted (a somewhat frequent occurrence) you always have the water in your tank to use until the service is restored. 

Broken water pipes and a long ditch always portend bad news about water.

The funny thing for us was that the last full day we were in our house in Escondido, the water department left a note on the door that the water would be turned off on our street for repairs for 12 hours. We put some water in buckets to give our house a last cleaning before our renters moved in, and the next day, the water was only off for a few hours, not the 12 hours they had announced. Therein underscores the small differences in life in Mexico as opposed to the U.S. After arriving last Monday, I was leaving Chacala early Tuesday morning for a meeting with some of our leaders when I saw that a large section of the water main pipe was dug up indicating that we would be without water for at least another day (it has been off since a week ago Saturday). Thus, we were hopeful that we would have water restored by today (Monday), but yesterday the town officials announced that during the night Saturday that the town water pump had been stolen extending our water outage for another week (hopefully). Thankfully the house we rent has a large cistern, which should last over a week, so we are fine and we can order a water truck if we have to.  

La pipa (water truck) delivering 14,000 liters of water is a welcome sight with one more week of waterless Chacala to continue.

Here the people are not happy to be inconvenienced by the lack of water, but everyone finds another way. Imagine in the U.S. if your water was off for 2 weeks or more, these things make national news back home!  Power outages are common here too during the rainy season (June-October) and sometimes longer ones (3-4+ days) when folks come in the night to steal the wire from the transmissions lines. Of course, there are other things which we foreigners consider inconveniences, but we're relatively used to them. Besides, if all we ever had to report from the field was how different everything is here, we probably wouldn't make it here for very long!  So don't read this as a rant, but rather a description of the reality of life, which is ever so more rich because we can invest our lives with these great folks without concern of when we have to return.  Thanks for holding us up in prayer as we seek to serve God here in His kingdom.