Hola from Karina and Timoteo from Mérida, México.

We decided to adopt Latino names to make life easier while we are here. Though we’ve only been here 4 days so far, we have been blessed more than we could ever have imagined. God is GOOD!!! So we’re going to have a small daily report of the first couple days because they have all been amazing and noteworthy.

Saturday 8.8.2009= Left the hotel at 9:30, after a taxi, boat, taxi, 4hr bus, we arrived in Merida at 4:00pm. Our school director is very much on Mexican time, he was 15mins late to pick us up. No big deal, we were just very anxious to meet him! So Robert, his son Daniel, and a summer-time volunteer Jean picked us up from the station. We dropped our bags off at Roberts house before touring the school, church, and our new house!

See, our cute little yellow house!! It is so nice and clean and we love it! It exceeds all of our expectations and is so wonderful- it is already feeling like it is really our first home together!
After touring the house, we went to Wal-mart… what for you ask?? To buy everything necessary for the house! There was furniture and, well nothing else. So we went to Wal-mart to buy all the house essentials, pots and pans, a water jug (we can’t drink the water here), sheets and pillows, knives, towels, everything! It was a bit overwhelming, but Jean was with us and really helped us get going and just told us pick out what we want- they bought everything because it will all stay with the house for future missionaries that live here.
We then went out to dinner in a beautiful old plantation house in the center of town. This city is beautiful! It is clean and very nice! The center is filled with very old and grand plantation mansions converted into hotels, museums, restaurants, etc. Also, the main strip is called Pase de Montejo and is designed after the Champs de Lese (yea I have no idea how to spell the second word… but what I mean is the fancy road in Paris). After dinner we went to the central park for the free entertainment. In Merida there is free entertainment at one of the various parks 7 days a week all year long that are sponsored by the government. The Saturday one is the most attended and there are craft and food vendors and various artists who sing, dance, and do performances. Its great to be in such a culture-focused city. (Merida is about 1.5 million) We finally arrived home at 10:30, but the sheets on the bed and crashed.

Sunday 8.9.2009= Church 10:00am, well maybe 10:05, who are we kidding people really arrive around 10:20. Church was great, with about 200 people at worship. There is a band with good music, and the pastor did a good, long sermon.
After church we were invited by Victor and his wife Rosie to their home for dinner with one of the other missionaries from the US- Jeff

Lunch turned into 3 hours of chatting and looking at pictures. It was a blast! Rosie is the sweetest lady and was very welcoming and open. Victor is a gringo who moved to Mexico as a missionary and married Rosie. It was a fun lunch; Tim talked to Jeff and Victor and I talked to Rosie and her friend and sister in Spanish. It is amazing how welcoming and freely giving of their homes, food, lives and love this family is! We are confident we will spend more time with them soon!
After lunch Sunday… oh by the way, their food schedule is very strange here. Breakfast at 7, snack at 10, lunch at 2, siesta from 2:30-4, dinner at 8:30. And they really do take a siesta. At lunch at Victor’s house when it hit 3:00pm they said “Okay, we’ll see you tomorrow, its time for us to take a nap.” Siestas are practical here because 1-4 are the hottest hours of the day…. So as I was saying, after lunch we went shopping again, this time for groceries.
We finally got home and went to make spaghetti. We had no matches to light the stove. So I go over to the neighbors to ask for matches. Mardu and George were very kind and welcoming and gave us the matches we needed to create our spaghetti dinner which we ate right out of the pot in our underwear, sweating.


Monday 8.10.2009= We reported to school at 9am to help Jean set up the library and worked there till 2.
Then we went to “Super Salads” with Jean, Robert and his son. It was a very nice, Panera quality restaurant where we ate delicious salads and sandwiches. Before heading out to…..you guessed it…. shop. This time we went to Home Depot and a few furniture stores for random things.
Then we went home and clean and organized for a few hours before we made fajitas for dinner.
After we finished dinner, we heard a knock on the door at 8:00. It was our neighbor Mardu. Here’s how the conversation went (ps they speak no English)
Her: Would you like to come with us to my uncle’s birthday party?Me: Oh, sure, that would be wonderful, thanks for inviting us, when is it?Her: TodayMe: Oh… okay! Right now?Her: We can leave in 20mins.
Tim and I change, wash our sweaty faces and are ready to go 20mins later. We go next door and ding dong,… no answer. We go back home, wait 20 more mins, go back and ding dong… no answer again. Finally, 10 mins later still she beeps outside our house. She drives us 2 blocks to her parents house were the party it.
We are welcomed with open arms, kisses on the check and about a million “bienvenidos… mi casa es su casa” and “Dios les bendiga” (God bless you). We were offered sweet tamales, birthday cake, coke, jamica juice (juice from flower petals), and Lays chips. We sat around the table from 9 to midnight just talking up a storm. The “party” included our neighbors, their parents, and her sister, brother and niece. It was so much fun! As we sat and chatted it felt as if we’d been a part of the family for many years. No one spoke more than a couple words of English so the whole night was Spanish-only. Tim did a great job of keeping up with the topics and seemed to do great understanding the main jist of what was happening, and I helped and translated things for him too. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly Spanish has come back since Costa Rica. I was worried I would be rusty, but its like riding a bike!!
Tim and I finally got home from the party around mid-night but stayed up till 1am talking about what a wonderful and meaningful evening we’d just experienced. We were reached out to with love by our neighbors (they also go to our church). Then we were welcomed into the family. It really is amazing – they kept telling us that anything they have is ours because we are all brothers and sisters in Christ and that anyone God puts in their lives is a blessing and they want to bless our lives. When we were leaving Eva (our neighbors mom) said that she is home all day everyday and anything we need, no matter what it is, she will do her best to help us with, even if we just want company or get lonely she told us to come over for tea and just to share in fellowship. You know how with your one best friend, or with your immediate family you know that when they say they’d be happy to help, they really truly mean it with no reservations and would never feel put out? That is exactly how Mardu and her family, as well as Vicotor and Rosie were. It is so inspiring how genuine and loving they are.
Also, Tim and I talked about how we really believe that God brought us here to Merida for a variety of reasons, but one especially being to help me and Tim strengthen our relationships with God. Personally I know I was apathetic for a big part of college and did not make my faith development a priority. Already, we are in aw of how God is working in our lives and hearts to change our priorities. When we were at Mardu’s parents house, they prayed for us before dinner, and then we all held hands and prayed before we left. Things like that come naturally to the Christians we’ve met here so far, and we are very inspired by that.
We feel blessed beyond belief here together in Merida and are giving all the glory and praise to God!

Tuesday 8.11.2009= Got up to help in the library till 4pm. Pastor Sam of our church came up and talked to us while we were getting the library ready. He is such a friendly and kind man, we are having fun getting to know him. While he was with us he noticed my eye (which had been watering and really red and hurting for the past day and a half) and then he and his wife took me to the doctor.

The doctor visit cost $30 pesos which is $2.50usd. wow! Talk about difference in health care price between Mexico and the US. The Dr said I had an eye infection and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic/anti-inflammatory which we got filled for $7usd. All this with no insurance! So my eye is a bazillion times better with the meds and is already back to normal.
Random stories/facts= Tim is officially teaching 4th grade, and I am teaching 3rd. Orientation starts the 19th of August so we are excited for that. School starts the 31st.
Tim is an amazing husband! He is so loving and sweet and is always looking out for me, protecting me and making sure I’m doing okay physically, mentally, emotionally, etc. Also, he is so cute about our house. In the first few days he has come up with about 15 projects he wants to do to the house! And he’s already rigged the water jug with tape and plastic so it doesn’t leak anymore. He also cleared out all the weeds from our “garden.”

It makes me so excited for when we have a more permanent house because I know he will make it look so nice and will make sure everything is fixed and in proper working order! What a wonderful husband I have- It still seems pretty foreign to say he’s my husband, but I’m very happy he is- it has been absolutely wonderful spending all of our time together!
I know this is long, but we’ve been having such a wonderful, busy time we thought we’d share it with you. The other enteries won’t be as long! And I’ll try to make them more like my cousin Joy – her blogs were very entertaining and always made me laugh!

Love you and miss you all!

Keep emailing Tim and I what is happening in your lives – we want to know!!!