To our loyal fans and readers!
In these last days before Christmas we write to you our last update letter concerning our trip to Mexico for my PRIME internship. It has been a wild ride! Before we left last Tuesday morning I prayed that God would help us have a safe and uneventful trip back to the states, and that if our journey was difficult God would help us to handle all situations as his disciples should—with love. Well, though it was a long and at times boring trip, we managed to jump through all the hoops without problems. Let me tell you how God blessed us! We left our apartment at 8:40ish and expected an hour and a half of traffic (or more!). But, it only took us about 40 minutes to get to the airport! We expected to wait in line for hours to check our bags, but we were the 5th couple in line! We thought we were going have problems with the customs department about our expired visas and would have to pay a 500+ paso fine, but the baggage check guy said nothing about it! None of our plans were delayed! U.S. customs was a breeze (and we expected that to be tough with all the stuff we had), and our connecting flight was on time! And, when we reached Cleveland Michelle and Audrey were waiting for us! All in all, we left our apartment at 8:40am and arrived at the in-laws house around 11:15pm…Like I said, long, boring, and uneventful. It was an answer to prayer!
Well, I can’t say that our trip was totally uneventful. While we were waiting in the Mexico City international airport for our flight we managed to find and get pictures with the Japanese version of Tom Hanks…or, the character that Tom played in the movie “The Terminal.” This guy is literally living in the airport, and has been for a few months now! Apparently, they can’t do anything about it because his visa doesn’t expire for a few months. Until then, they can’t kick him out! Dennis and I tried to approach him and speak with him. He was not very talkative; he did not engage us in conversation in either Spanish or English…But he did let us take a picture with him. Only after we tried to talk to him did we google how to say hello and a few other pleasantries in Japanese. We should have done that before hand; but, oh well...lesson learned.
Some of you may have heard me say that the smog is pretty bad in Mexico City, but I just cannot adequately describe in words how disgusting it looks, though I know some authors that could…Anyway, I have attached a picture of what I saw as our plain took off from the Mexico City airport; it was incredible! As we were ascending I was looking out the window and all of the sudden, I could see ten times further then I could just seconds before! We did not break through a cloud line, or fog; but the smog line from the city!! After having lived for 6 months in a place that gave me smog buggies just from talking a 20 minute walk I am SOOO thankful to live in a country with clean air policies—even as obnoxious as the E.P.A. and other green parties can be.
In closing I want to share with you a few other ways in which God has blessed us since we have been in Mexico. When we left we did not have the funds necessary for the duration of our trip, but we left in faith that God would provide. A month or so after we arrived a few unexpected donations came in that brought us up to and just over the amount we needed! To help matters, our host family in Cuernavaca (the place we lived for our first month while I was in language school) did not charge us any rent (though we were able to leave them with a gift). When we reached Mexico City we had some expenses that we had not anticipated, but God provided again as our Landlady charged us LESS THEN HALF of what he had budgeted for our rent, AND we did not have to pay water or electricity either!! BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! When we left for Mexico Nicolle’s car was on its last legs, and we were on a very limited budget for finding another car. But God saw fit to find us a sweet economy car through our friends and family (’93 Honda Accord, so cool!)! He practically dropped it in our lap! What an answer to prayer! Also, we had to leave our apartment in Huntington, which has since been rented out. But again, in an amazing answer to prayer, God helped us find a very economical apartment that will meet our needs beautifully through a dear friend of ours! We are so excited to return to H-town and set up our new pad!!! Lastly, Nicolle and I were both concerned about returning to quickly empting bank accounts and no jobs. In October I double checked the budget with our current spending habits and did not think we would have anything left over from our Mexico funds. However, the conversion rate took a dramatic turn in our favor around that same time—from about 10 USD to 1 Paso, to 13.8ish to 1! This doesn’t sound like much, but it slowed our cash flow enough that when we hit US soil we had a little over $700 bucks to help us transition as we look for jobs! God is sooooooooo good, providing above and beyond our needs!
Well, as I said this is the last up date, and I think there will only be one or two more extras and photo links put on the blog. But…Nicolle and I have enjoyed updating, and putting up pictures and such that we think we will continue the habit in the future. However, we are planning on starting a new blog that is not centered around our trip to Mexico. So, the very last message you will receive from us will be the info on the new blog, for those who are interested. I must say, it has been a pleasure sharing our stories with you all. We love you all very much and deeply thank you for all of your help and especially your prayers!

PS. Sorry the font is so small, I guess I had a lot to say…just zoom in! hahaha! Merry Christmas!

Please pray for: Jobs for when we return to Huntington; and safe travel from Ohio to Michigan, and to Indiana.
—Shalom.