What is Family?

As we spend more time in Mexico, I am realizing that family extends further than I thought.  I have grown up with "adopted" grandparents, parents and siblings to an extent.  But as we are physically and emotionally away from our families with out realizing it, we are busy emotionally adopting in San Carlos! 

 This is a dear young friend of our family. His name is Cristian, and he is a gem. We have grown to love him as one of our own. We first met him through the Agua y Mas ministery in Guaymas.  He is one of the families that are currently living in the ministery shelter.  He has two younger sisters and a mom.  He does have a dad, who currently lives in Baja California.  He had searched for his father about 2 years ago, and with finding him.  He also found out that he the youngest of his fathers 6 children.  In hope of having a father-son relationship, he soon found out that his father was not interested. 
   As I particapate in the daily program at Agua y mas, I am able to watch him and the other children and watch their hearts shine forth.  Cristian is a young man of God.  At the age of 16, his heart is solely God's.  He is a servant to all those around him.  He wants to help, help, help!!!  I can see that helping is his way to show that he cares for you. I see this, but I also want him to see that we love him just as much when he sits down and chats (and helps us with our spanish big time!!) as when he is helping with whatever tasks are at hand.  As we have grown to love him more and more, he has slowly creeped into our "family". :)  He is able to come over some weekends and spend it with us.  He is so much fun.  He has a huge desire to learn english, and his vocabulary has exploded!!  We have to work hard with our spanish to keep up.  Having turned 16, here in Mexico you can go in and purchase your drivers license and then you can drive. Brian decided to teach Crisian how to drive so we got him his licence. You don't need to know the rules of the road or have any experience!!  (It sure explains a lot of the driving!!)  None the less, Brian had asked Cristian not to drive alone until they had practiced.  :)  A lot. lol  Like any boy, he loves to drive.  And is doing well.

Cristian is over this weekend as well, and last evening was one of "those" evenings where everything seems to go wrong.  Brian and Cristian left to go driving after 8.  First they headed to the bank to take out some gas money.  The ATM ate the debit card. ??!!!  (We use it at the bank all the time!!)  After calling the 1 800 number they found out the the card was not returnable and will be destroyed. Alright, Brian has his Visa to fill up gas.  He gets to Pemex and asks for them to run the card first before pumping.  No go.  So they leave to go to another Pemex.  On the way they are stopped by the police.  (Oh great! That is always an experience in it's self.  I recall the time I was flagged down during the day to slow down, because the cattle cross at night. ?!)  None the less, they work through it. This was the first time that Cristian was pulled over by the police. He was asked if he had been drinking and Cristian responded with "clearly not, I am a Christian!" They got back on the road and got to Pemex.  They are able to fill up, they go in the OXXO to purchase a coffee and K-Freeze.  (Like a Ice Capp.)  Well the Visa doesn't work at the Oxxo.  Oh, I can't forget that there was no cream for the  K-Freeze.  (Very important. lol) Then at some point the taillights don't work and Brian's ran out of minutes on his cell phone at the same time.  Brian is on the side of the road trying to replace the fuse but it kept shorting out. Luckily they found a short in the wiring that was causing the fuses to pop. Now, to try to buy credit for his phone, the 4th store finally accepted his Canadian Credit Card. When they get home, they enter in to find me running around because I forgot to switch off the water tap.  So the pool is flooding!!!  The sucky things is that the lowest point goes right into our bedroom.  Yup. Right now, I am just laughing. lol  I look back to yesterday and I ask myself "what was that all about?!!" I really don't think I will ever know.  But as I am mopping and mopping.  Cristian dives in to help however he can.  And in the end he goes up to me and says sorry.  Like it was his fault.  Even this morning, last night our boys had disobeyed a rule on using the ipad, it got dropped and the screen is cracked. If we take the cover off it will crumble. (still works though).  And we had said no more.  This morning one disobeyed and took it in his bedroom to play.  (Breaking multiple rules.)  None the less consequences were handed out.  And Cristian again apoligized for their actions.  Like he should have made sure they obeyed.  I'm  glad that I was able to explain how each person is responsible for their own actions. 

All in all we are doing well. We are busy helping Maggie out with her program and Brian is busy working on future plans for our Ministry here in Guaymas. We are very close to announcing what we will be up too. Please pray for us and particularily for a meeting taking place this Friday. We continue to see God busy at work here and are still encouraged that He seems to want to keep us here for awhile. Also, Please pray for our Cristian. We are in the process of applying for his USA and Canadian Visa. We really want to take him home with us for the summer. And he very badly wants to come with us. We have all the docs in order and so we trust God to help complete the process. We ask for your prayers, Cristian is very excited and any of you that have the opportunity tomeet him will be blessed.

Thank you all for praying for us, we miss you and are excited to see you soon.

Clarissa