an Easter to remember!

Well, my first Easter in Mexico yesterday was my most memorable of all thus far...!

It began the afternoon before with the preparation of the menudo, which we finally put on the stove to cook around 11pm. I myself made it to bed around midnight, but since I had the advantage of being the first to shower, the others got even less sleep. When my alarm went off a few hours later at 3:30am, I headed into the kitchen where my glasses immediately fogged up. I could hear what sounding like water dripping from the ceiling, which confused me because the roof there doesn't leak and besides it hadn't been raining. Being that I couldn't see much of anything and that I was still half asleep, I figured there must be a completely logical explanation...it took me few moments, but once I wiped my glasses off, I realized what it was: the ceiling was raining menudo. Yes, you read that right. All of the vapor from the simmering pots had risen to the ceiling and condensed...and was now it was dripping back down onto the floor, down the walls, onto the table, into shoes, etc. I joked that it was pretty much my worst nightmare, since menudo is probably my absolute least favorite Mexican food, and now it was on every surface of the room and raining down all around me! Ugh.

We then headed down the road to open up the church. Upon arriving, we found an unfamiliar pick-up parked outside with a man slumped over in the driver's seat. As he didn't move when knocking on the truck window, the police were called. And called again (apparently they come sooner if they receive multiple calls from multiple numbers). Finally they arrived and it was discovered that he was alive, just very intoxicated. In the meantime, while we waited for them to arrive, we discovered a cat, who was in fact dead, on the floor of the church just inside the door. That was disposed of and we began our church's first ever Easter service. It was my turn to teach the kids' class during the sermon, and we had fun making empty tombs ("He is not here, He is risen!")...

Then the menudo-fest began, complete with some Vico C background music. Afterwards, some of us hung around for an impromptu concert, including the debut piano performance of 22-month-old Luis Angel (accompanied by Geovanny on the guitar)!

(I have a video of this but it doesn't seem to want to upload...maybe later...)

Then we headed back to the house, cleaned the menudo off the walls and ceiling, and crawled back into our beds for a much-needed nap! So that was our Easter excitement...

Oh wait, and then there was the earthquake.

Nereida and I had just woken up from our nap when it started. "Do you feel that shaking?" she asked me. "Um, I think so" I replied. Once I noticed the cement floor/walls visibly moving back and forth, I was a bit more certain. When we realized it wasn't going to stop anytime soon and people started yelling to each other to get out, we grabbed 5-year-old Israel and headed up the stairs to the street, where most of the whole neighborhood was gathered. Geovanny had been in the church building when it began and, thinking we were still asleep, was running down the road to wake us up.

Thankfully, by the end of it all, everything was still standing. The neighborhood is in a canyon with houses built rather haphazardly on the sides of the hill, so it was by the grace of God that no homes were seriously damaged. However, the already-questionable wall that holds up our 2nd story church sanctuary is quite a bit worse and we're worried that with too many people upstairs it might collapse.

Thank the Lord it was Easter and we held our service at 5am instead of the normal 4pm time (the earthquake hit at 3:40pm, when most of us would be upstairs in the church building)!

We will probably have to suspend services or hold them outside, weather permitting, until we can get the wall fixed. Please pray with us that God would provide the $570 needed for the materials for these repairs, not only to be able to hold services inside again, but also to have a classroom for the kids' class in the room below (right now we're holding classes in the adjoining kitchen). It needed to be done anyways, and we'd already gotten quotes on prices for the wood and such, but now it's a bit more urgent!

We've continued to feel some aftershocks but nothing like the first earthquake. Prayers for continued safety are much appreciated, as well as for those in the Mexicali area where it was the worst.

So, THAT was our Easter. It was definately a day to remember...