Tejacote

Greetings, faithful readers of The Blog. This is Stephanie, or Stephanie Uno, as I'm called here. So yesterday we got up at 6:30 in order to eat and leave the church at 8:00. Nope, I don't think many of us were entirely awake. We hopped in the van and drove to Cercado, where we changed vehicles - most of us spent the next 2 hours standing in the back of pickup trucks. But don't feel sorry for us, because we enjoyed one of the most scenic drives I've ever seen. It was a bit bumpy, and we all have the bruises to prove it, but it was definitely worth it. There's no way the pictures can do it justice. When we got to Tejacote we climbed into another truck and drove around delivering bags of groceries to the locals and praying for them. Becky and I even got to ride a burro (donkey) at one of the houses. (I'm pretty sure Ian got a video of that.)

On a more serious note, some of the prayers requests we were given were very sobering. One lady said she was sick with tuberculosis; another lady had a mysterious pain in her knee, and no medicine for it. (We gave Pastor David some Advil for her.) We visited one family that had an infant with a cleft pallet. The mother told us he was only 50 days old - he was so tiny! His parents seemed very comforted by our prayer for them and Pat's story of a child she knew with the same condition. Please keep him in your prayers too; Pat, who is a nurse and knows these things, told us that he'll have to go through at least two surgeries in the next year or so.

We had a bit of a scary moment on the way back down the mountain... we met a huge bus while going around bend in the road. With much careful maneuvering, we made it safely past... but for a few minutes we were close enough for Al to shake a passenger's hand. He (Al) said that was the biggest vehicle he'd seen that far up the mountain. And Becky got a video of the whole thing.

Well, that's all for now! We're leaving in a few minutes to go to the outdoor market... so adios!

~Stephanie