update

My dad's surgery went well and he is now recovering at home. The surgery is called a laminectomy. During the surgery bone is removed from the spine to relieve pressure on the nerves and/or spinal cord due to spinal stenosis. If you want to know more go to http://www.spine-health.com/dir/laminectomy.html to read up on it or watch an interactive video. He will probably be at home for 3 weeks getting better. Thanks for the prayers!

I LOVE my Daddy!!!

Please pray for my dad because he is having back-surgery today.

Being Sick

I have learned some things from being sick here in Mexico. Everyone you meet who distinguishes that you are sick, immediately diagnoses you. All the sudden everyone is an expert on what you have and they all have their own types of cures, remedies, or medical advice. The most popular advice for the "gripe" (pronounced gree-pay) or cold/flu seems to be:

• hot tea (preferably chamomile) with honey and lime before bed. Someone actually invited me in their house and fixed it for me yesterday. It wasn't bad. I fixed it once.
• staying inside at night to avoid cold air. I have been told by several people that I shouldn't go out at night for anything.
• not drinking or eating anything cold. the cold is something to avoid here if you are sick.

None of this advice is necessarily bad and I have followed a lot of it myself. I just thought it was kind of interesting.

Here you are able to buy your own shots with medicine and inject them yourself. I don't think that's legal in the U. S. A. I have taken 6 shots. Three were of eucalyptus. The other three were some kind of medicine that is supposed to kill the bacteria of my cold. But don't worry, I didn't inject them myself. The well-trusted pharmacist who has been there for 40 years did. It wasn't all that bad. She also gave me jarabe (cough syrup) and pastillas (pills) to take.

It's probably a good thing I have so many people here telling me to how to take care of myself. I have been taking my medicine faithfully and hopefully I'll be completely healed soon! God is taking care of me here!!

Spanish

So I thought I would share my latest Spanish mistake...someone in the church was asking me about my hometown and other stuff and I started telling them about Sunset. Then I started telling them that there was a preaching school there too..."Hay una escuela de pecadores"... and I said that which means: There is a sinner's school. I meant to say this: "Hay una escuela de predicadores". There is a school for preachers. They knew what I meant, but it was a little embarrassing. I still laughed at myself though! Well, I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend. Tomorrow we are having a big annual women's day in the church's building. A lot of christian women are coming from different parts of Mexico. So you can pray for that to go well. Buenos Noches a todos!! Goodnight to all!!
Serving in Mexico,
Annie

Chosen and Blessed by God

wow...I haven't posted in forever! Sorry! Happy Late Thanksgiving and I hope all of you are able to see how much God has blessed you!! I know I can. My Thanksgiving was good and different. Because we can't get all the food here for a "traditional" Thanksgiving meal, some of the missionaries bought stuff the last time they went to the U. S. for our Thanksgiving celebration here. All of us were assigned to make or bring something and I got to make pumpkin pies!!! We don't have canned pumpkin so I got a stashed away can from the States. They turned out really well, thanks to Megan (my teammate), who taught me how to make really good crust, my mom, for the recipe, and my other teammates, Heather and Carl. The night before Thanksgiving everyone was in a frenzy making a lot of pie and other stuff; therefore our oven was on for forever. Entonces (for that reason) , it got really tired and decided not to heat up anymore. So Heather volunteered to bake the pies at our guys house, about 2 blocks away, because my team still has a curfew. Then Heather and Carl began carrying my two pies carefully down the street, going about the pace of a turtle, so as not to spill them! I have to say that it was really funny watching two gringos carrying pies down the street in Mexico at 11:30 at night walking really slow. You probably would have had to of been there to think its that funny...
Anyway, a lot has happened since my last post....let's see...,oh, I'm now 2o years old (kinda weird) and I had a really good Birthday!! I finally got to open a package from my parents and my family here made it really special!

Just recently we had a "Gratis Lentes" campaign (free glasses). On Thanksgiving Day 3 supporters of a missionary friend of ours,who lives in Guanajuato, came down to give away free glasses and see Raciel and his family. One of them is an eye doctor and their church in North Carolina had been gathering glasses for the campaign. The campaign went really well and from 9 am to 7pm at night over 250 people came to get glasses!! We all had different jobs; some to greet and talk about God, some for registration, some for eye testing, and others (my group) to fit people with glasses. It was very interesting and fun, because I got to talk to the people and I learned a lot about glasses! I also got to translate for people!! This is amazing because I know how much God has blessed me with my Spanish! In fact, I actually learned words just translating! Sometimes I catch myself thinking in Spanish and not even realizing it for a while. In the end, the campaign was a real success thanks to our awesome God!!! And a lot of people are intersted in studying the Bible!
A lot of people here don't know the Truth because they have never read the bible. It is really cool to be able to read the bible with someone for their first time ever! One verse that has caught my eye lately is Col. 3:12. "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience". I find this hard to do sometimes and then I remember the first part, "as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved". God has blessed us all so much!! We really are chosen, holy (by Christ), and dearly loved!!
Well, this is really long and I have to go!! I love you, my friends and family!!!! God Bless,
Annie

the end of the route...

This is a picture of Masha and I a couple months ago. On Thursdays, my teammate, Masha, and I go to visit a family from the church. We usually bring food and we have a bible study with whoever is there. Masha does the study, while I listen and help with the discussion whenever I can since I'm still studying Spanish (Masha knows fluent Spanish). Pretty soon, I hope to start leading the study every once in a while.We study with Lupe (the mom), Rosa (the grandmother), maybe Letty, Emelda, or Juana (other relatives) , and of course all their children. Just recently Lupe's

husband, Martin, left her, their kids, and the church for a better job in another state, so it's been really rough for her.
They live in a poor area on the outskirts of Leon. Actually, the area is called Leon #2, because it's so far out. By bus it takes from 45 minutes to an hour to get there. I really enjoy going out there, because they want to study God's word and know more about him. All the Christians in their household are very young in the faith. They were baptized not long before we arrived in Leon in May. So it's really cool to study the bible with them, because a lot of the stuff we read and talk about is new to them.
Anyway, so we took a bus out there, # 10, and since we were on there for a while we watched people come and go until finally we were the only ones left on the bus. We were pretty much out in the middle of nowhere when suddenly we noticed the bus came up to some really big gates with other buses parked inside this lot thing. We both looked at each other and knew something was wrong. We knew this bus went right by the apartments that Lupe and her family lived in, but we hadn't passed them yet.
So then, the doors on the bus slide open and the bus driver tells us we have to get off and that he's going on his lunch break. He also tells us we might can catch another bus coming out. So then, we step off the bus. Here we are, in the middle of nowhere, kind of bewildered and we started laughing at our situation. We had literally come to the end of the bus route...or at least the place where bus drivers take their lunch break. Right as my teammate Masha decides, since there are no taxies in this area, we should try and just catch a ride from someone (people hitchhike a lot in Mexico), we see a bus #10 emerging from the "break spot". We were just in time to catch it and were at the apartment complex in 5 minutes. It was truly a bizzarr experience.
After we arrived we had a study in 2 Corinthians and 1 John. Here is something from 1 John I thought was pretty awesome...
" How great is the love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."
-1 John 3:1
And..." No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another."
-1 John 3:9-11

WOW!! God's word is powerful and awesome!!! We are children of God!!.....I think one of the things God is telling us is to love, because we are children of the source of love.

well, I hope ya'll have a wonderful week and keep digging in God's word!!

We're a part of the Family......

This is a picture of J'Lae, me, and Isabel earlier this year at Isabel's house. Tonight, my teammates, Ben, J'Lae, and I went to visit a family in the church. The mom, Isabel, is divorced and trying to raise two kids with a full time job. On Saturday day night she became very ill and had to go to the emergency room and wait all night to be treated. Her two children are: David, who is 16, and Maribel, who is 11. Usually when we go we just hang out and eat with them. We went to try to encourage Isabel because part of her sickness is stress-related. It ended up being really good. While Ben and David went outside to hangout; J'Lae and I read and talking about the bible with Isabel. I had been kind of sad earlier, but just being there to encourage someone and talk about God really made me realize just how awesome He is and it also encouraged me. It was interesting because I read this passage out loud in Spanish and I had to be corrected a little bit by Isabel(just a little humbling). The whole study also made me see just how much God is growing me...I actually had a bible study in Spanish(even though it was a little garbled)!...And it made me realize just how important it is that I need to really practice and know the language here better. During our talk I talked about just how awesome it is that we have brothers and sisters around the world praying for us...a huge family! She told me that even though she didn't have a lot of family here in this world, she was encouraged because she has a huge family in Christ!! Please keep Isabel and her family in your prayers.

And now for a funny story....

On our way home we always take bus 36, because it's the fastest. Well, when we got on we all sat in the back of the bus. This isn't always a good idea, because the back is the bumpiest part. Then a random guy got on and sat on my side(it was one long bench in the back). During the ride we were just talking and we had only hit one really big bump. I let go of the rail for about 5 seconds(a VERY bad idea) and the bus lurched very hard to the right sending me sailing to the left right on the random Mexican guy sitting down from me on the bench. I would have to say it was one of my most embarrassing and awkward moments here. I apologized and we all laughed really hard. The End!