Mexico

We spent May 31st through June 4th in Mexico, which was not nearly long enough. Originally, we were going to go down there for Ben's wedding. But, because of a BIG mistake on my part about mixing up some dates, we ended up going for the mission trip portion instead. Here is a summary of our trip.

Every Sunday night, the church members meet in a park and play games and fellowship together. This particular Sunday night, they celebrated the birthday of twins.


On Monday, the mission team met at the church building for a planning/working day. Notice that Marie is supervising this project.


On Tuesday morning we went to Jazmin's wedding shower. In the afternoon while Bill and Jason stayed and worked at the church building, the rest of us went to Guatajuanto. It was a beautiful city built on a hill. In the picture from left to right: Jim Cato (Valley CoC-AK); my nephew and his new wife, Ben and Jazmin Baker (South Leon CoC-Mexico); Jennifer Gardner (Valley CoC-AK); my sister and brother-in-law, Tammie and Pete Baker (Valley CoC-AK); me and Marie (Juneau CoC); and Emma, Micah, and Tana Palafox (South Leon CoC-Mexico).


On Wednesday afternoon, we visited an orphanage in Leon. From what I understand, this is more like a children's home because most children are not ever adopted out since Leon is not a well-known place were celebrities and other people come to adopt children. Some members of the AIM team at Leon are involved here. We had brought crayons and coloring books for the children. Then Bill told them the story about creation. After that we had a snack and a prayer.


One of the projects we did was building a new baptistery. Now, a baptistery here is not like the baptisteries we have in the US. They are not porcelain or fiberglass with a faucet. They are unattached; the baptistery has to be filled up before a baptism and then emptied afterwards. Well, the one they had was 5 years old and literally falling apart. So Bill and Jason (far right) took it upon themselves to plan and build a new one. It was actually a pretty neat design. Inside the baptistery, there is a little platform-like thing that the person being baptized sits down on. So they are actually baptized sitting down. This design allows less water to be used in filling up the baptistery. The person doing the baptizing can stand outside the baptistery (as shown by Bill here) or they can stand behind the person in the baptistery. As far as the draining is concerned - they put casters on the bottom of the baptistery which allows it to be rolled to a drain in the middle of the room and then you just pull the plug to drain it. Pretty ingenious if you ask me. The other projects we worked on was moving the projector and the screen - they had been wanting to change the direction of the auditorium. Pete built several wooden benches. Tammie, an AIM student, and I worked on organizing a supply room. And then there were several places in the roof covering that allowed a lot of light to come in, which made it hard to see what was projected on the screen. The cheapest solution we found for this was spray painting it from the inside. This trip may not have been a traditional mission trip, but it was definitely a working one.




On Wednesday night, the church meets together and sings for about 30 minutes and then they have a Bible study. It was a neat thought that even though we are singing the same song, it sounds completely different to us, but to God it sounds the same.

Happy Birthday Marie!

May 22nd was Marie's first birthday. Yes, I'm late posting, but we have been a little busy. In fact, we are in Mexico right now. I didn't get these pictures off my camera until yesterday. I felt like I had a little more energy tonight, so that's why I'm blogging. Enjoy the pictures!

A big thanks to Rachel, who captured a lot of good pictures (including this one) during the party.


On Marie's birthday, I had to work all day. It was up to her and Bill to decorate and get things ready for the party. Marie looks like she had a good time helping her daddy.


Marie enjoyed eating her birthday cake. She didn't want to stop!


Bill had some streamer paper left over, so he made this. I think Marie approves.


This is a big animal book that Marie's Aunt Tammie got for her. It is now one of her favorite things.

Learning new things

Both of these videos are a couple of weeks old. But Marie has been learning lots of new things lately. Her crawling is a lot better since the first video. I'll have to make a new video to blog on.

Things I Learned Yesterday

Well, Amanda and Marie went to Fairbanks to visit Roxie Stickle because she could not make it to lectureship and Amanda thought she could use the company for a few days. From what i hear, they are having a great time up there (even though Marie has a bit of a cold).

I am ready to have them back. Pure and simple. I prepared everything to preach and teach class yesterday, but it seemed that all the best laid plans of mice and men (or just bill in this case) did not follow through too smoothly. The class I prepared was interrupted by the Paden's having an "ox in the ditch". The tarps that were on their roof were being ripped off by the wind which would not have been too big a deal had rain not been forecasted to come in the afternoon. So nearly all the men who were at the church building made a mass exodus to their house to secure the tarps on the roof trusses. In just about 45 minutes all was secure and some efforts were put in place for it not to happen again. (class preparation not used so next month is already in place)

Then back to the building. We arrived at the building too late for me to run a final check on my powerpoint presentation, so we just jumped right into services. As I arrived at the pulpit, I noticed my computer had messed up. So with a slight delay, I began my lesson. As I began to talk I was (in my mind) frantically searching for my notes and guess what... left them at home. Too late now to go get them, you just got to continue on. Afte just a couple moments, Kevin Henderson flags me down and informs me from the back of the auditorium that my lapel mike (which was hung on my tie, so is it a tie mike?... anyway) was not functioning correctly. apparently (we figured out later on) someone turned off the portable mike which normally turns off with the rest of the system. So I am stuck behind the pulpit at the regular mike, which is no problem usually but guess what...I do not have my notes and I can't see the wall where my power point is being projected easily without having to be very obvious in turning to look at my lesson on the wall. Then, after about 10 minutes, my computer messed up again and I had to leave the pulpit and walk to my computer to fix the computer.

At the end of the lesson, Jon Paden made an announcement thanking all the men for helping at their house, then commented on how Amanda being gone really effected how together I was. And I had planned so well.

This all to say, I have been wanting to begin a study on pride in my personal growth to be more humble of a person. Since I have been procrastinating in beginning said study, it looks as if God wanted to give me an upfront lesson in being more humble as a preacher. Here endeth the lesson... for now.

Thank you for enduring this long post with no pictures. God bless you in this day.
Bill