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This is not a good picture of my office at all, but with your laptop as a camera, it's hard to stand outside the doorway and take a good picture of a small room at night, facing the light. What looks like a shadow or a different-colored part of the wall above/behind the desk, is actually a white bulletin board that I will hang somewhere in that vicinity.



This is facing in the other direction.

Hooray! My office is done! I've begun putting things away; you can see some books and things on the shelves; I hope to finish that before I go on vacation. Then I'll have to hang things on the walls, but I probably won't do that before I go. I intend to have the room functionally finished, though, so that when I come back from vacation I can sit right down to work in my brand-new office.

I am very excited!

And I have two more days here before I get up early in the morning and leave on my vacation!!!

I am very excited about that, too.]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry090804-200649

bluejean soup.


Looks like it's almost ready.


I'm just kidding.

My best jeans were quite faded but not really worn out, so Marcela had the bright idea that I should dye them.
It's too early to tell, but it seems like it may have worked. Also on the same day, the jeans that were being made for me finally got done! (Those are the ones I'm wearing.) Hooray! I have jeans to take with me on vacation in a few days!]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry090721-085002
We have a bug problem. They are unpleasant, they are many, they live in the furniture. Last week we had a professional fumigator come in, which was a lot of work. We had to pack up all our stuff, go away, and then come back later and clean the house thoroughly. It's kind of like moving without changing houses, or spring cleaning all on one day. It's exhausting. And the bugs didn't die. The fumigation apparently only made the bugs mad, because now there seem to be more of them than ever. We called and complained, and the fumigators are coming back today for free. So once again, we have to pack everything up, leave, come back and clean... hoping and praying that it'll work!

Yesterday we bagged up all our clothing and towels and blankets and everything in plastic and brought it to the laundry room, to be washed in the hottest water possible before being allowed back in the house again. That'll be a lot of work, since we'll fill the machine by hand (it's faster, and we need to do it fast because we need our clothing) and hang everything to dry on the line. Also, we carted few items of furniture to the dump yesterday. Between the furniture and the clothing, parts of the house are quite a bit emptier than they were! Today we fumigate, tomorrow we clean, and by tomorrow night we are hoping and praying to be bug free! Please pray with us!

I am taking the time to write now because our water tank is empty, so I can't wash any more clothes. That's kind of a blessing, since it gives me time to do other things I need to do, like pack up my stuff and get ready to go away for the night.

A fun thing has happened: I've been teaching math! There is a young almost-teenager in our church and I'd been praying for a way to spend more time with her, since the teenage years are particularly difficult for Christians in Jerez and I figured she'd need someone she could talk to sometimes. I've been kind of a mentor for her, and I didn't want to lose her when things got hard as they undoubtedly will (not that her life has been easy up to now). Then one day I was talking to her mom about math, and the mom got all excited (she likes math too) and asked me to tutor her two daughters! So these two girls, aged 8 and 12, come over twice a week and do math with me. Incredibly, they seem to enjoy it. (As excited as I am about math, I know it isn't a favorite activity among students, and I really didn't expect them to have fun with it. But I guess it's always fun to discover something beautiful that you didn't know existed -- and to be able to perform a skill with which you have struggled before.) Who knew that math could be ministry!

Please keep Dan (my brother) and Marcela in your prayers as well. They have two toddlers and a baby, and my brother is carrying the main burden of responsibility for the church right now while the Schierkolks are away. The bug situation has not lessened their stress at all! Pray for the bugs to go away, for restful sleep, and for God's grace to continue to do the great job they've been doing! I've really been impressed with the way they've been handling it all.

Please pray also for Joanie, an American friend of ours who has been in the hospital for several days for an infection from a hip replacement surgery.

Well, I'd better get to work; I have a little over two and a half hours to assemble lasagnas for tomorrow's dinner and pack up my house.]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry090406-182720
I do put in many hours translating Sunday School material. I work hard on it. I take pride in it.

But sometimes I have to remind myself that those other things that take up so much time are also part of the work God has called me to do. With my personality, I would love to just sit at my desk all day long! Fortunately, God uses circumstances of Life to interfere with that. I find myself forced to interact with people, and I find myself blessed in the process.]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry090406-182237
We got our clothesline back! This happened several weeks ago, but what with the tumors and being healed and everything, I just didn't get around to mentioning it. :-) I was quite grateful! It had been long enough for me to become convinced that a clothesline is not a luxury. (I suppose technically it is, since there are people here in Jerez who don't have one... but it sure is hard to get by without it!) I think I had taken it for granted before I lost it. I'm glad to have it back.
(The white arches are not our house; the belong to the house across the street.)]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry090106-140302
I was right. :-S

One of the blankets billowed out like a sail, and... pulled up the stake to which the line was tied, which pulled with it a chunk of the side of the roof and top of the wall, to which it was anchored. Oops! That was actually funny, the only real problem is that now it will be difficult to dry our laundry until we get that repaired.

It took me the better part of an hour to clean up the mess, and the neighbor lady across the street helped me scrub the red brick marks and white cement marks off of the street and sidewalk. It is actually illegal in Jerez to let any part of your house fall into the street, so we had to clean up all the evidence. (Jerez is about four hundred fifty years old and some parts of it are better maintained than others, so part of a house falling into the street is quite a normal occurrence. The result of this law is that when it does happen, people are in a hurry to clean it up.)

I am thankful:
- That no one happened to be walking by at that time -- they could have been killed!
- That some of the laundry was dry already.
- That the neighbor helped me clean the street.
- That it is the owner's responsibility to fix it, and not ours!

So... laundry turned out to be an exciting chore today!]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry081110-104117 before the action.)

This photo is from an online newspaper called El Mañana and this is the url: http://www.elmananarey.com.mx/reynosa/h ... 1_0_C.html

I also want to post a photo that we took of us riding in the van on top of a tow truck, but it is on my brother's camera so I will have to wait until they return from running errands.
]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry081030-165924
Sometimes I think it's a drag to have to leave the country every six months in order to apply for a new visa, but this time I am very glad of that requirement!]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry081024-143504
Then we listened for gas trucks going by. Once, a truck went by fast and turned the corner, so that by the time we got outside it was already a block away. Twice, one of my friends and I chased a truck down the street, waving our arms and yelling, "GAS!!!" I had never had that problem before -- I mean, their job is to pay attention to people who might want to buy gas from them! Finally, a gas truck stopped across the street to fill a stationary tank. It wasn't the kind of gas truck I needed (I needed to buy a tank, not fill a stationary tank), but we went and asked them to send someone.

I left the door open, and after a few minutes a man walked in carrying a tank of gas. He made the exchange, and then asked me if I wanted him to fix my leak. I knew he couldn't -- the trouble was that the threads were stripped on the end of the hose and the whole hose needed to be replaced -- but I said sure. He worked on it for a couple of minutes and then told me that in order to stop the leak, I needed a new hose. I just said, "oh." Then he offered to buy one for me! He went to the hardware store and bought me a hose, then came back and installed it, free of charge. I only paid him for the hose itself, and of course for the gas he sold me.

This means I don't have to turn my gas on at the tank every time I want to use my stove, and turn it off at the tank again afterward. Now I can just turn it on or off at the stove. That will be especially nice as the evenings get colder. Now I can have a hot drink in the evening, without having to go outside to turn off the gas before I enjoy it!

I thank God:
That my dessert got perfectly done.
That I was able to use every last bit of gas in the tank.
For not letting the other gas trucks stop, so that the helpful gasman would come instead!
That I my leak was repaired -- for free!
That I can now have the convenience of using my stove at night without going outside again!

It was awfully nice of Him to do all that.]]> http://ingrid.zrgtech.com/index.php?entry=entry081006-141643
I don't know if I can adopt this baby, for many reasons. I am praying that God would allow it to grow up in a loving family and become a Christian.

Abortion has recently been legalized in Mexico. Zacatecas is a very conservative state and people here are not happy about abortion being legal; in fact, I have read that when a woman does go in to have an abortion, the doctor tells her it is wrong and instead of doing it he tries to talk her out of it. If only God would allow me to have one of these children who are not wanted by the woman carrying them! I can't believe it's His desire for them to be killed or to grow up unloved (especially in the state orphanage).]]>