Praise the Lord we made it— BUT IT SURE WAS A GRUELING DAY.
On Tuesday morning in Texas, Mike changed the title, plates and registration on the new van from Ohio to Texas. He made it a point to ask for a license plate that ended in a 0 or a 1. That may not seem important to you, but all cars in Mexico City are required to rest one day and that day depends on the last number of your license plate. Since our previous van ended in a 1, we have developed our schedule here planning on not driving on Thursdays. Hence that request was made and granted with a 0 on our license plate.
We made it to Monterrey, Mexico on Wednesday evening (February 7). We had a very nice time with the Zartmans and then planned on leaving late on Thursday morning to get us into Mexico City after 10:00 PM. (On the day that you are not allowed to drive, the affected hours are from 5:30 AM until 10:00 PM.) We left Monterrey about 11:15 AM. There are quite a few mountains between Mexico City and Monterrey. With the loaded van and trailer, we had a lot of weight to pull up the mountains and lots of weight pushing us down the mountains. We made a couple of stops for gas and food. Finally at 10:13 PM, we arrived at the Mexico City toll booth.
Now, we just had to get through the traffic and avoid the corrupt policemen and we were home free. But alas, five minutes into Mexico City, we were stopped by a crooked cop. He was surprised that we spoke Spanish. He said that a new law had just been made that states that all trailers have to have a permission to haul cargo. Of course, no such law has been enacted (I asked at the border,) and I pretty emphatically told the policeman that. He took my car papers and told me to get out of the car. The kids, Faith, and Riah and Amara (the two nieces), were all pretty upset in the car. I tried to take the papers back from the cop but he wouldn't give them to me. He used all sorts of language that you wouldn't want your children to hear. He said he had called a tow truck and that they would be there to take away the van and trailer and keep it overnight and that we would have to pay a fine. I asked him if he had no heart. He cussed me out some more and then said, "Get out of here." I, being totally taken aback said, "Why?" He said, "Because. Get out of here." I realized my error of trying to argue further to stay with the man so I jumped in the van, we pulled back onto the freeway and went as fast as we could until we were detoured (all we needed at 11:15 PM). The long day and added stress at the end of the trip gave Faith a good number of contractions. She is doing better today (Friday) though.
When we arrived home, we went into the house with the kids expecting to find dirt and dust and just the mess that I had left three weeks ago when I came back to work with Jon Davis for a week. What we found were the rooms all vaccumed and the mattresses on the bunk beds ready for the kids. No more leaks were found in the plumbing so Nicholas and Alejandro had put all the cement back and fixed the tile work. We were all able to take hot showers last night. Reme and Juana had swept and gotten all the dust out of the house. The kids were so excited to see their rooms and sleep in their beds. Faith and I were excited that all that work had been done. We finally got to bed about 2:30 and Cherith woke us up at 5:30.
We delivered a suitcase to Erasmo and Matilde today (Friday) from their son who lives in Minnesota. Then we were on our way to pick up our dining room table and chairs and hutch that had been stored for two years. Guess what happened? We got pulled over by another policeman. :-( We hadn't even been back for fourteen hours and I've already been pulled over twice!
Of all the things, they pulled me over for driving on the wrong day. It seems that I messed up and 1 and 2 cannot drive on Thursday and 9 and 0 cannot drive on FRIDAY. So I had to pay for my crime. We had lunch and then tried to get home as fast as possible before seeing another policeman. Sigh. After a nap this afternoon, we all are feeling better. Cherith and Cristiana have very very bad colds and Amara, Faith's niece has a pretty good one as well.
We have so much to do, but we thank the Lord for getting us here safely and not having to go on a trip anymore. It's been a long one.
Thank you so much for all of your prayers.
We appreciate them very much.
In Christ,
Mike for all of us
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