Dear Prayer Partners,
"In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you." I Thess. 5:18.
This has been the theme of the preaching for the last 3 Wednesdays, and it has been a real blessing to my heart especially.
1. Thank you Lord for the stolen electric lines! This was the second time that they were stolen in two months. The robbers get a lot of money from the copper that is in the wires. We were not able to purchase the 110 meters that were needed right away, so we were without electricity for the week. This situation has been a blessing for 3 reasons. First, we were so thankful to have our generator. It kept our freezer food from spoiling and helped Mikey to be able to finish his History of Civ. class online. Second, we were so thankful when everything was fixed! The generator was loud, and the silence was welcomed when the electricity returned. At night, we needed to turn the generator off to save gasoline. We realized that our fans normally block out a lot of the neighborhood noise. So when it was fixed, we were so thankful to sleep well. Third, we replaced the wires with aluminum wires that they will hopefully not steal. The true blessing of this is that the appliances are working so much better, and the lights are much brighter! We think that this change may even extend the life of some of our appliances----so that we do not have to replace them so rapidly.
2. Thank you, Lord, for the family that left. Although, this continues to be very difficult, the 3 young people in this family keep writing Mike and asking him to pray for their family. The oldest, who is Mikey's age, has said that he never valued the church like he does now-- and he is praying that the Lord would work in his father's heart. We really are a family, and we are praying that The Lord would continue to work out his will through the situation. The good news is that the boys invited Matthew to have a fun day with them as Matthew has really had a hard time with their leaving.
3. Thank you, Lord, for new people. Dinora and her daughter Alexia are very open to the Lord's leading in their lives. Bryce and her daughter Camelia have been happy to worship with us. Please pray for Fernando, Franscisco, and Amelia.
4. (This is the new big one). Thank you, Lord, that we need to be residents. We are trying to be thankful because we are not sure exactly how this new problem will pan out. However, we do know that God is in control and he has a plan.
At first when we were in Mexico, we lived on tourist papers. That meant that we had to go out of Mexico every 6 months to the border to renew those. This took up a lot of time to travel to the border so often, so the last 12 years or so they have given us FM3 papers. These papers are renewed each summer through our lawyer. Under these papers, we have been allowed to own an American car.------until now. Our lawyer just notified us that we can no longer renew our FM3 papers. Under some new laws, we need to become Mexican residents. This will cost about $2,300 dollars. Although it sounds expensive, we want to pay it because it costs Mike and I about $500 to renew each year---and the $2,300 is supposed to be a one-time fee for life.
This is not the problem. The problem is that when we become residents, we can no longer have our American vehicle. This takes effect immediately this Monday. So we are not supposed to drive the van at all. We somehow need to get it out of the country by then--which is impossible because our papers are in the process and we don’t have the ones we need to get out of the country. This is also a problem for many people in our church as we take about 25 people down the mountain sometimes on Sundays and Wednesdays. For one of their families, paying the fare to get to and from our services could be anywhere between 1/4 --1/2 of a day's pay.
So I said to Mike, "I know, we can just pay the $1000-$2,000 to have the van legalized in Mexico," ----because our van is absolutely wonderfully terrific and there is nothing at all wrong with it. Mike said, “I tried that, but they won't legalize it because it is too old." But I knew that people bring in old cars all the time, so I asked my friend Ceci. She then called her husband and asked him how he legalized his American cars. He said that there is this nifty little place in the north of the city that makes the papers look real..... She looked at me with a funny look and said, "We'll, that is how everyone is doing it, but I don't think you are going to do that---are you?" "Well, no." I said.
So we are back to square one. Mike's and my papers are in the process of being processed as residents. The children have no problem EVER because they were born here, and they are Mexican.
We are asking you to pray for wisdom. If Mike takes the car out, he will need to sell it and return to Mexico City by bus to then purchase a van here. He really doesn't want to leave us by ourselves (with intruders and what not). So there are many decisions to make.
But I have had in my mind constantly these last 2 days, "In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you." I Thess.5:18. It is a great lesson to learn, and it is so comforting to know that God is in control and working out every little detail.
In Christ,
Faith
