12/8/11

Loving life in Baja


I haven't been able to share as much with you about our time in Baja Mexico as I would like to but here is a quick peak.  I'll have lots of stories once I get home and have convenient internet access again. Right now I'm sitting in my favorite internet cafe with my friend Amber sipping chai tea lattes while we both catch up on our internet/ blogs.   We're good multi-taskers that way...we can verbally solve the world's problems and type about the mundane details of our lives at the same time.

We have been at our little rental house in the San Quintin Valley of North Baja, Mexico for a week now and we are loving it here...well other than the flea bites which both Aili and I are suffering from.  Some people react with itchy welts and some people don't.  The sand fleas are unavoidable for the most part....especially if you leave your house.   Poor Aili has 31 bites on just the lower half of her body.  I'm a hygiene and cleaning freak (think slightly OCD)  whenever we're in Mexico but they still found their way into our clothes and house somehow...
anyway...
that's my only whine.  
We love life here.   Nathanael has been busy helping out a couple different friends with some building projects and other random things (today he took Roman with him to do construction work).  I've mostly been hanging out with the kids, visiting with the ministry and our friends next door, and keeping up with the house and laundry. 
 

The kids have put a small dent in their "Icecream for Orphans fund".  One day they bought "despensas" for their friends who we noticed had no food (or drinking water) in their house other than one small bag of pinto beans on a shelf.   They bought a bag of luxury type foods (anything other than beans and tortillas is a luxury for many people).  They also bought them a large water jug that they can get re-filled at a local store with purified water for quite cheap (that is how we get our drinking water too).  Another little project was buying new light bulbs and a locking door knob for the same kids.   Such basic simple things that people go without here.   


We certainly haven't been deprived by our living conditions.   We didn't know what to expect when we arrived.   We had seen a photo of the outside of the little house but really didn't think it would be this cute.   We even had a little Christmas tree set up when we arrived.   Life here is different though.  We are getting re-accustomed to not flushing our toilet paper, not drinking the tap water, and wearing our shoes in the house (actually it's so chilly that often I wear my coat in the house too).  We don't use or have a clothes dryer, bathtub or dishwasher.  Life here is simple...and yet complicated because we still have so much more than many people do.  


We are only here for a month but our desire is to use this little house to bless others, and to be a place of simple hospitality.   A nutritious meal for hungry tummies, a cup of coffee for a friend, and genuine relationships.  Those things were really hard to do with a trailer on the last couple trips down.  This house has been such a blessing to us already.


My clothes dryer.


Our little yard.  


Soaking up each beautiful day.

2 comments:

Jobina said...

looks like paradise! can't wait to hear all the ways that you use what you have to bless others :)

Marcy Payne said...

That is a super cute little house! I love the bright colors and, well, everything! Sweet. Makes me want summer back...or go to Mexico.