Comida and all day fun!

I’m sitting here in what has become my writing chair, drinking a cup of coffee and trying to wake up. I tiptoed out to the kitchen to get my coffee vividly aware of the fact that we are in scorpion country and I am in my bare feet. I left my shoes in the bedroom and don’t want to further disturb anyone by going back to get them. I suppose though a scorpion sting would definitely disturb their sleep for this would not be a quiet affair as everyone says that they are incredibly painful and of course can be very dangerous! During the daylight hours scorpions don’t seem to be an issue in the house and courtyard but when it is early morning I get nervous walking in the dark without any protection. Thankfully, I am sitting safely on my chair and won’t venture anywhere else until the sunrises!

Yesterday was an incredibly full day, with so much to write about! Where do I begin? Bethany and I stayed back from church yesterday morning because of all the preparation for comida. We worked well together and I was so thankful to have her help. I didn’t realize early in the morning when I gave her the choice to work with me or go to church, that I would have been totally lost without her sweet joyful spirit and her willingness to help with the enormous amount of preparation that we had.

I won’t describe all that we did but I will give you the menu that we prepared. We made 30 home made enchiladas/tacos (they are very similar in Mexico and I what I made was a combination of both put together.) with homemade green sauce, refried beans from scratch (“scratch” has to confuse my Mexican friend reading this. Sorry Abner! Scratch is another way to say totally homemade. J ) Bethany’s wonderful guacamole and good ole American Blackberry buckle with ice cream!

I am amazed at the ease in which I enjoy cooking, even in a totally different kitchen without any of my supplies.  I had to really get creative a couple of times as I tried to locate the correct size bowl or  a baking dish that would fit my dessert  for 9+ people in the B&B kitchen which has a mixture of broken cookware left over from WWII! I was dealing with all of that plus the struggle of trying to work with the oven that does not have an accurate temperature setting, not even accurate in Celsius let alone my comfortable familiar Fahrenheit. Who knows what temperature I baked my blackberry buckle in but I was able to watch it and figure out when to turn the gas flame up or down.  I am so thankful for the years in Colorado where I stayed home with my children, taught our homeschool and learned to cook. Now everything I do in the kitchen is second nature to me and even though it is a lot of work it is also very fun. Bethany and I sang as we worked and just enjoyed each other’s company!



Oscar and Gary



Everyone arrived around 2:15 and shortly after we sat down for comida together. We had nine people which consisted of, Oscar, Silvia, Josua (their 18-year old son who is going to med-school this fall!) and Emanuel (Their 16 year old son who is very quiet and sweet and who wants to be a chef! He is a boy after my own heart!) Hector, a leader in the church whose wife was at a woman’s retreat and who we invited to join us for comida. We had our guests as well as Gary, Nathaniel, Bethany and me.

I was a bit nervous to cook a Mexican meal for our Mexican friends. During our first week in Taxco we were invited to comida with the pastor and his wife. She prepared salad, meatloaf, and potatoes and it took me until the end of the meal to recognize that it was an American meal! LOL Thankfully Olga (the pastor’s wife) never knew the mystery that this meal was to me but we had to smile to ourselves that the attempt at making an American menu was so “Mexican” that we didn’t realize what we were being served! Would these enchiladas even remotely resemble a Mexican enchilada and would they be tasty to the our friends who would be accustomed to a certain way of cooking a particular national dish? All these questions haunted me as I prepared comida for our friends.



Gary and Silvia



Much to my relief everyone raved over the food and I felt confident that even if it wasn’t exactly what they were accustomed to, they at least enjoyed what was prepared.

Before we had sat down to eat I had given Silvia a dessert cookbook that I had bought for her several weeks ago. She has expressed numerous times that she would love to learn how to cook postres or desserts. I found a really nice hardbound postres cookbook in a local store and bought it for her. I wrote an inscription in Spanish and quietly gave it to her yesterday afternoon. Not only was she touched and thrilled but Emanuel was beside himself with excitement!   Yes, I understand his passion for cooking. He just pored over this cookbook with wide-eyed excitement. I think I may have to take this boy under my wing and have some cooking classes with him. He wanted to know if I had gone to chef’s school! That was probably the best compliment of the afternoon as well as Hector telling me that I should open a restaurant! That meant a lot to me, particularly coming from a Mexican man eating a white blond girl’s Mexican comida!



Hector and Josue



During comida Hector invited us all to his home to swim. He lives in Monte Taxco, which is an elite community built on the mountain top overlooking Taxco. He wanted to take our family to the retreat center with him to pick up his wife so that we could see what the retreat was like and how the church does ministry and outreach.  This began our all day adventure that did not end until we tumbled back into our house at 10:00 pm!

We went to the retreat center and enjoyed meeting people and talking with them (trying to anyway.) Josue, Oscar and Silvia’s son who is fairly fluent in English, told us that we have to learn Spanish quickly because everyone in the church wants so badly to talk with us! No pressure…....

 Actually this is a very difficult aspect for us. Typically missionaries go to language school for a year in a specific location and then move on to the particular town where they will be serving. Because there is a language school in Taxco we saw no need to keep our family in cultural limbo for a year while we study language in Cuernavaca and then uproot them again and move to Taxco. Yet, I don’t believe the people here understand how long it takes to learn a language. One lady in church was interpreting for us and the following week she didn’t interpret and said, “Do you understand everything they are saying now?” UGH! In one week we are supposed to be fluent??? There simply isn’t the knowledge of language acquisition and the comprehension of how long it takes. For one thing, everyone is taught some measure of English in Mexican public schools, they don’t realize that we haven’t been taught this same basic Spanish in our American public schools. We need prayer to know how to communicate with our dear friends, the length of time it will take Gary to be able to preach in Spanish and for us to carry on a fluent conversation. I’m finding that the lack of comprehension regarding language acquisition seems to be our biggest cultural hurdle right now.

We enjoyed our time at the retreat center and we are learning to relax in the flow of Mexican life. We spent a couple of hours at the retreat center. Nathaniel asked me how long we would be there and I replied, “I haven’t a clue!” But we have nothing else to do but learn the language by communicating and listening to Spanish speaking people and building relationships within the body of Christ in Taxco. So does it really matter what time it is or how long we will be doing a particular thing? Not really because whatever we are doing it is building our future ministry here in Taxco.

 After our time at the retreat center we road to Vickie and Hector’s home. Bethany and I went in Vicky’s car and enjoyed her ability to speak a small amount of English. The rest arrived in Oscar and Silvia’s car. We sat around outside by their pool and talked. Finally Bethany got enough nerve to jump in the pool despite her being the only one not too shy to swim. Then Emanuel got in and finally Nathaniel. They had a lot of fun in Hector and Vicky’s private pool! This was certainly a different side of Mexico than we have yet seen! Their home was large and beautiful, yet they are the sweetest and most loving couple you’d ever want to meet.

There is a house for rent right next door to Hector and Vicky’s home. They want us to rent it. We have to laugh; everyone we meet wants us to live next door to them! From the pastor, to Hector to Oscar and Silvia everyone wants us to live by them.  It’s so sweet but it does tickle our funny bone, “No, live next to me! No me!” This is the one area where Mexican’s are “selfish” and I say that totally joking because I don’t think they have a selfish bone in their body, but they do desperately want relationships. On the drive out Gary showed Hector the area that the house is in that we will probably rent and Hector said in fun that it was probably “too ugly” that we should live next to him! LOL I think it best that we don’t live next to anyone that we know! J

After the kids swam together, it began to storm so we went inside. Nathaniel and Hector proceeded to play a chess game that ended up taking two hours! Hector, the retired chief of the federal police, finally gave up and forfeited the game and Nathaniel won! It was a spirited match that challenged both of them. Hector said that he thought it would be boring and easy to win but he was wrong. He even had to open the door for some air because he was hot with the intensity of the challenge! Nathaniel said it was the best chess match that he ever played. This mystifies me because all they did was sit and stare for two hours. I am not born to enjoy chess but Nathaniel certainly does!



Emanuel, Silvia, Vicky, and Bethany



During the chess game the rest of us ate popcorn, talked and looked at pictures together.

Late in the evening we said our goodbyes. Vicky said, “mi casa es tu casa” to me as we hugged and kissed, which is a high compliment in Mexico and means, “My home is your home”.  This all is amazing to Gary and me. Now we have another set of friends and we’ve only been here seven weeks!

On the way home all eight of us piled into Oscar and Silvia’s small Volkswagen car! Bethany was on my lap, Emanuel was on Silvia’s lap and Nathaniel was on Gary’s lap! We had a lot of fun and even the ride home, in those close quarters is a bonding experience.

It was 10:00 pm when we arrived back home. We were all exhausted, particularly Bethany and me because we had put so much effort into cooking but we were all very happy and contented.

 Here are a few more pictures of our day together!